DA won't prosecute suspect in cold case

Man, 73, identified in 1974 killing currently on death row in Idaho, slated to be executed Wednesday

Idaho death row inmate Thomas Creech, who is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, will not be prosecuted in San Bernardino County for a 1974 slaying that the Sheriff’s Department said last month it had linked to the 73-year-old serial killer.

“At this point, it’s a jurisdictional issue and we are going to let the process play out,” District Attorney Jason Anderson said Tuesday.

Creech has been convicted of five murders: three in Idaho, one in California and one in Oregon. But he has confessed to perhaps dozens of killings that his attorneys believe he did not commit.

On Oct. 1, 1974, Daniel Ashton Walker, 21, parked his Volkswagen van alongside the 40 Freeway some 60 miles west of Needles so his passenger, hitchhiker Ken Robinson, 18, could rest. Someone showed up and fired on Walker several times as he begged for his life, inflicting fatal injuries. Robinson, who was asleep in the back of the van, apparently escaped notice and was able to flee.

Robinson provided investigators with a description of the shooter and his car, but they were never located.

Cold case detectives pulled the case file in 2010 when Walker’s brother, Doug Walker, came to the Inland Empire and retraced his brother’s steps, but they made no headway. Then in November, the cold case team resumed the investigation. The Sheriff’s Department did not say what prompted the new interest, other than it “obtained additional information.”

The Sheriff’s Department said that while working with the Ada County District Attorney’s Office in Idaho, cold case detectives corroborated “intimate details from statements Creech made regarding Daniel’s murder.”

Deborah A. Czuba, an attorney with the nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho, said that San Bernardino County’s announcement in January that Walker’s slaying had been solved lacks “any real evidence” against Creech.

Anderson said Creech would not have been named as a suspect without evidence that he believed prosecutors could prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

Doug Walker on Wednesday declined to comment on the decision of the District Attorney’s Office.