Wife of Army Medic Found Dead in Hawaii Home
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Breaking news tonight. A well respected Army medic comes home from work to find his young wife dead, stabbed, knife wounds in her neck and torso, there in the family home. Bombshell tonight. Police hit a stone wall.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Say hi.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Authorities are investigating the death of the wife of an Army medic who was found dead inside of her home.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With a knife wound to her neck.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It could have been anybody.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What happened to Catherine Walker?</s>GRACE: And tonight, cult leader Charles Manson hits the headlines again over three decades after a murder spree that shocked the nation, including the murder of actress Sharon Tate. Tonight, the Sharon Tate family furious mass murderer Charles Manson set to wed behind bars to a 26-year-old woman, a Manson groupie look-alike. Jail policy -- he will get to kiss the bride!</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am Charles Manson`s wife. Charles is not innocent because he sought out to influence others.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Killing spree that left seven people dead, including actress Sharon Tate.</s>CHARLES MANSON, CONVICTED OF MURDER: Do I look like I have remorse or fear about anything?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I hate to see any young person get sucked into this.</s>GRACE: And to Tampa, a family rushed to the emergency room after chowing down on a steak from Walmart. Problem? The meat, bottom round steak, laced with LSD. Police say Mommy rushed to the hospital, gives birth prematurely. Now that`s a rollback! Good evening. I`m Nancy Grace. I want to thank you for being with us. Bombshell tonight, live, an Army wife found stabbed to death in her own home on a military reservation. As we learn, 38-year-old Catherine Walker found dead, a knife wound to the neck and torso. We join military police in the search for clues. Straight out to Brett Larson joining us, investigative reporter. Brett Larson, the husband comes home from work -- he`s a very well respected Army medic -- comes home from work to find his wife stabbed dead. What are the details? What do we know? Where was she in the home?</s>BRETT LARSON, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER: Well, she was just in the home, in the living room area. The husband had just returned. As you mentioned, he`s in the military. The two of them had had an argument the night before, but he says nothing -- it didn`t escalate to that point.</s>GRACE: OK, what I want to do is go through the facts as we know them tonight. For those of you just joining us, a well respected Army medic comes home from work to find his wife stabbed dead. To Matt Zarrell. Do we know where she was in the home?</s>MATT ZARRELL, NANCY GRACE PRODUCER (via telephone): No, Nancy. Police are not releasing that exact information. But we do know that there were knife wounds, as you mentioned, to the neck and torso, and the husband, just as he came home from work, found the body in the very early morning hours.</s>GRACE: Very early morning hours. All right, let`s talk about the body and what we can learn from the body. Matt, do we know whether the home had an alarm system that would have gone off if an intruder had come in?</s>ZARRELL: No, we don`t, but cops do tell us there are surveillance cameras in the area of the home. But they won`t say how close exactly to the home they are.</s>GRACE: Unleash the lawyers, Robert Schalk and Shireen Hormozdi. The problem, Robert Schalk, with surveillance video is, as we learned in the Chandra Levy case, very often, say every 72 hours or so, they repeat over. The video rolls over. And so whatever may have happened around the time that she was killed, Catherine Walker, that may have already been rolled over unless police moved quickly to get that surveillance video.</s>ROBERT SCHALK, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: Right. Always a big concern whenever you`re dealing with surveillance video is whether or not it`s being saved on a hard drive versus being recorded over, like you said. But a lot of things need to be looked into here, Nancy. As Brett said, there was an argument the night before, whether or not there`s any text messages or e- mails that authorities can get their hands on...</s>GRACE: Well, you know what? Before we start about the argument with the husband, right now, police are not lending that any credence because that is a very commonplace thing, to have an argument.</s>SCHALK: I don`t see how you can just disregard it.</s>GRACE: Well, of course, they`re not disregarding it. But as of right now, they have not named a suspect. Back to Matt Zarrell. Matt Zarrell, you`re saying that around the home, there is plenty of surveillance video. What more do we know? What do we know about the stab wounds themselves?</s>ZARRELL: OK. So the autopsy concluded that Cathy died from stab wounds specifically to the torso and neck by a knife. And we`re still working to determine, Nancy, what exactly -- what type of knife it was, where the knife was found and the severity of each injury, which injury specifically caused her death. We`re trying to figure that out.</s>GRACE: Everybody, it is an idyllic vacation spot where most people dream of going, and that`s just what she did. Catherine Walker gets married. Her husband`s stationed in Hawaii. He is a well respected Army medic. He comes home from work to find his wife stabbed dead. Joining me right now, medical examiner Dr. Tim Gallagher, medical examiner, forensic pathologist out of Daytona Beach. Dr. Gallagher, what do you make of the injuries?</s>DR. TIM GALLAGHER, MEDICAL EXAMINER, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST (via telephone): Well, thanks for having me on the show, Nancy. One of the injuries that I`d be most interested in seeing is, does she have any defensive wounds on her body? Was she struggling? Or did this person come up suddenly and surprise her? So defensive wounds would be one of the things I`d be very interested in knowing about.</s>GRACE: You know, another issue is the timing of when he got home. Matt Zarrell, you`re telling me he found her body in the early morning hours, and according to sources, he came straight from work. That suggests that he worked a night shift, had a night job, comes home and finds her in the early morning hours. As we know, crime goes up at night. What more do we know about their home, Matt? Do we know if they had a surveillance camera? Do we know if they had a dog that started barking? Do we know if there was a forced entry? Do we know if there was a burglar alarm that was set?</s>ZARRELL: I can tell you this, Nancy, all of those questions you had, we have had for the investigators, as well. They`re not disclosing a lot of information. But here`s what I do know. They have police and K9 units out searching the area for evidence. They`re even combing in the grass behind the house. Soldiers are out there looking. And the military is handling this because it was on a reservation, but the residents in the area are concerned because they say that the gates to the area where everyone lives is not guarded 24/7, and they`re worried that someone could break into their houses.</s>GRACE: OK, let`s talk about those gates, Matt Zarrell. I am taking it that there`s no surveillance on the gates, or we would already know that. So you`ve got gates that anybody can scale. They`re not monitored. Now the other residents are afraid. Now, police have not put out a warning to the neighborhood. There you see it right there. This is an idyllic area where people spend their whole life dreaming of visiting. It`s Hawaii. There at the Aliamanu base, Catherine Walker weds and they`re stationed here. The husband, a well respected Army medic, comes home to find her dead. Back to you, Matt Zarrell. Do we know if she was in the floor? Was she by the door? Was she in her bed? Had she been sleeping? What do we know, any other shred of evidence to help solve this riddle?</s>ZARRELL: Well, I do have one piece of information, which is that a close friend of the couple has told a local station that the husband`s car was broken into five days before Cathy was found dead, and some of the items taken include the husband`s wallet, which you would think, Nancy, would contain their home address.</s>GRACE: Joining me right now is Jessica Benson, a very dear friend of the wife, Catherine Walker. Jessica, thank you for being with us.</s>JESSICA BENSON, FRIEND OF VICTIM (via telephone): Thank you.</s>GRACE: Jessica, when did you learn of your friend`s death?</s>BENSON: I learned -- I -- her sister called me on Sunday night to let me know.</s>GRACE: And what were you told at that time?</s>BENSON: I was just told that there was some very sad news, that Cathy had been killed, and that that is all that they knew.</s>GRACE: At this juncture, no suspect has been named. Police apparently have hit a stone wall. You are seeing shots of Catherine and her husband, who discovered her body. Back to you, Brett Larson. Were there two stab wounds?</s>LARSON: We know of -- yes, there were two stab wounds to the neck and torso, and that was what they -- the medical examiner, rather, concluded that the death was, in fact, a homicide.</s>GRACE: To Bethany Marshall, psychoanalyst, author of "DealBreakers." Bethany, that brings up two scenarios. One, a stabbing is very often considered a sweetheart murder, which is quite the dichotomy, the irony, sweetheart murder, because unlike a shooting or running somebody down with a car or even poisoning them, which is also an intimate crime in a sense, stabbing, you`re in very close proximity with the victim. They are probably fighting with you.</s>BETHANY MARSHALL, PSYCHOANALYST: That`s right.</s>GRACE: Also, the fact that this was in the home. That does not rule out an intruder, but it may suggest it is somebody she knows.</s>MARSHALL: It`s true, Nancy, because the neck and the torso -- I mean, whoever did this was looking the victim in the eyes. That suggests an intimate type of rage. And one of the things we know about homicide is that the feelings that lean towards homicide often occur in the context of intimate relationships. Think about it -- envy, jealousy, rage, the fear that the other person is going betray you or they have insulted you in some way. And that`s why we always look to intimates and family members first. And so from this standpoint, the timeline`s extremely important. But some people might actually have the illusion of intimacy, even if they`re not close to the victim. For instance, he was a medic. What if in his service -- his public service, he tried to save somebody`s life and was unsuccessful, and that brought about rage on a family member`s part, and someone attacked her out of some sense of vengeance towards him? So intimacy doesn`t mean an intimate.</s>GRACE: And when we were talking about the killer possibly knowing her, we`re not point the finger at the husband. The husband was at work, we believe, at the time of the killing, but he had been at work. He gets home. He finds her body around 6:30 AM there in the home, stabbed twice to the neck and the torso. Back to Jessica Benson, a very dear friend of the victim, Catherine Walker. Jessica, what can you tell us about Catherine? What can you tell us about her marriage, if anything?</s>BENSON: I can tell you that every time I have seen them -- I was at their wedding celebration -- every time I have seen them, they`ve always been happy. Any time that I talked to Cathy, she`s always mentioned that they were happy.</s>GRACE: Have you spoken to the husband since the death?</s>BENSON: Other than a Facebook message back and forth, no, I haven`t.</s>GRACE: Did she, Catherine, ever discuss with you troubles in their marriage?</s>BENSON: Never.</s>GRACE: Now, see, I find that very telling. Out to Brett Larson, investigative reporter. If they had had troubles in their marriage, certainly she would have told one of her best friends.</s>LARSON: Oh, absolutely. And the neighbors echo what this friend is saying, that this woman had a heart of gold, she loved doing community service. She was working with her church. She worked with young women. She sold essential oils. I mean, this is an all-around great person that you can`t -- you couldn`t say -- point the finger at someone per se that would say, I`ve got to go and take out this rage on her. And yes, no -- the neighbors have not said that their -- that the couple had ever fought prior.