Still alive... 7 years after being freed to die, Army payroll triple murderer
A SOLDIER who deliberately shot dead three colleagues in an armed robbery is still alive more than seven years after being released from prison on compassionate grounds, despite being told he had only months to live.
Andrew Walker, now 64, was a corporal in the Royal Scots when he murdered Staff Sergeant Terence Hosker, 39, Major David Cunningham, 56, and Private John Thomson, 25, in a payroll hijacking in Midlothian in January 1985.
He was sentenced to at least 30 years in jail but was moved from prison to a care home in Lanarkshire in December 2011 after suffering a serious stroke.
The controversial decision by former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill to release Walker sparked outrage among family members of the dead men – an outcry similar to that which followed the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.
Al-Megrahi, who was released from prison to be treated for prostate cancer in August 2009, eventually died almost three years later in May 2012, making Walker now the longest to have survived after release on compassionate grounds.
Last night, Private Thomson’s widow, Susan, from Galashiels, Selkirkshire, said: ‘Each year he lives on after his release from prison, I get angrier. I always believed it was a mistake to release him and this is proof they were wrong.
‘The fact that he is still alive seven years on makes a mockery of their reasons for releasing him in the first place. I was told it was to save money, that it wasn’t financially viable to continue to keep him in prison because they didn’t have the facilities to give him the care he needed.
‘How much has it cost the taxpayer now to keep this killer in a care home?’
Walker, who had seven years added to his 30-year tariff after he led a riot at Peterhead Prison in 1986, collapsed in his cell from a stroke in 2009, which doctors said had left him severely disabled.
The Scottish Government said such prisoners released on compassionate grounds were either considered by doctors to be ‘severely incapacitated’ or had only up to three months to live.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: ‘There is a place in the justice system for the compassionate release of those who are staring death in the face.
‘However, given this evil individual is still alive after all these years, it was quite clearly a terrible error of judgment.
‘This decision was taken by an SNP government which wanted to be seen to be progressive. Instead, it has caused immense upset to the families of murder victims, and allowed a cold-blooded killer a new lease of life.’
Following Walker’s release, an angry Mrs Thomson, who was aged 19 with a toddler son when she became a widow, wrote to Mr MacAskill seeking an explanation and asking the Justice Secretary if he would meet her.
But she said: ‘He wouldn’t meet me and I got some bland, disappointing reply back along the lines of they couldn’t afford to keep Walker any longer given his condition and, as a result, they’d taken a decision to have his prison sentence “annulled”. It was a devastating decision for me, as my son and I have to live with what Walker did every day of our lives.
‘But given the cold-hearted way he ended the lives of my husband and the other men, I take some comfort in the fact that, if he is still alive, I hope he’s suffering every day because I can never forgive him for what he did.
‘Walker showed no compassion to the men he killed and he should have been given none.’
A Scottish Government spokesman declined to comment on Walker, adding that decisions about the release of prisoners on compassionate grounds were made only when specific criteria were met – such as the prisoner having a terminal illness, being severely incapacitated or where continued imprisonment would endanger or shorten life expectancy.
A spokesman for the Parole Board of Scotland said it did not comment on individual cases.
‘Each year he lives on I get angrier’ ‘How much has it cost to keep him in a home?’