A United States court has found guilty a 45-year-old Nigerian woman, Mrs. Uloma Curry-Walker, of killing her fire-fighter husband, Mr. William Walker, to collect $100,000 in insurance money.
Uloma faces life in prison without parole, according to Cleveland.com. The convict was said to have organised William’s killing in November 2013, although the couple got married four months earlier.
Jurors deliberated for less than two hours before reaching the verdict on Friday, while sentencing is on August 8.
Prosecutors said Uloma had financial difficulties after running up tens of thousands of dollars in debt when she asked her then-17-year-old daughter and the daughter’s boyfriend to find someone to kill her husband so she could collect the insurance money.
She, however, did not know that William had not yet changed the beneficiary on the insurance policy from his former wife’s name to Uloma’s when he was killed.
Ironically, while Uloma may spend the rest of her life in jail, William’s former wife received the insurance money.
It was revealed during trial that Uloma gave her daughter’s boyfriend, Chad Padgett, a $1,000 down payment to carry out the killing.
Padgett, the court was told, contacted his cousin, Chris Hein, who initially failed in his attempt to kill Walker.
But unrelenting, Hein turned to Ryan Dorty to carry out the murder.
Prosecutors told the court that Dorty ambushed William and shot him four times as he returned home from getting fast food which Uloma had requested.
The convict and her husband were packing the night he was killed for a move to a house they had purchased outside Cleveland.
The daughter, Padgett, Hein and Dorty testified against Uloma at trial as part of plea deal for their roles in the murder conspiracy.
Hein agreed to a sentence of 18 years to life, Padgett 28 years to life and Dorty 23 years to life.
Prosecutors agreed not to seek adult charges against Uloma’s daughter. Instead, she will spend a month in a juvenile detention centre.
The daughter testified at trial that her mother told her: “No one would believe I would hire a bunch of kids to kill someone when I know people that could.”
Uloma wrote a confession the day she surrendered to police that said she killed her husband because he was abusive.
But her attorneys did not call any witness to testify that William was violent toward Uloma.
One of Uloma’s attorneys, according to Cleveland.com, pointed to discrepancies in witness testimony during closing arguments and suggested the daughter had devised the murder scheme.
