A Wright woman accused of taping a man to a chair and torturing him for three days claims she suffered from “extreme paranoia” at the time, and she’s invoking a mental incompetence plea in Campbell County District Court.
Kimberly Ann Walker, 41, is charged with one count of kidnapping and three counts of aggravated assault. Court documents say she bit her alleged victim’s ear, stabbed him, hit him with a hammer and openly discussed putting him in a freezer.
She could face a life sentence if a jury finds she didn’t let the man go unharmed.
Walker pleaded not guilty in January, but last week asked the court for permission to change her plea to not guilty by reason of mental illness. She also asked the court to pause her case and let a mental health evaluator test her to see if, during the alleged kidnapping, she was mentally incapable of rationalizing her conduct or conforming it to the law.
“The Defendant believes she was having a mental health episode at the time,” wrote contracted public defender Corrie Lamb in a May 6 petition for the change of plea. “(Walker) reported feelings of extreme paranoia and possible hallucinations regarding the weekend in question.”
Walker regularly experiences schizophrenia and “severe paranoia,” Lamb added.
District Court Judge Michael McGrady granted the request after a hearing and ordered Walker’s mental health evaluation.
If an examiner concludes that Walker’s mental health was not whole at the time of the alleged crime, Walker may then take that conclusion to trial and try to convince a jury that she can’t be held responsible since she couldn’t rationalize her conduct.
That’s a different process from a normal jury trial, where the prosecutor — not the defendant — tries to prove the case.
‘Off The Hook’
An evidentiary affidavit by Campbell County Sheriff’s Officre Investigator Heather Monson says someone called in a welfare check on the man at 1:21 p.m. on Jan. 2. The caller said Walker “went off the hook,” and tied the man to a chair and “nearly beat him to death,” says the document.
Deputies met with the man and with his roommate. They found him bruised and cut with both eyes blackened, Monson wrote.
He told them he went to Walker’s home Dec. 30 to retrieve a hoodie. He calls Walker “Mom,” the affidavit says.
When he entered Walker’s home, she started prodding him with a knife, then tied him to a black desk chair, Monson wrote.
She started grilling him about a “special penny,” but he didn’t know where it was, the man said, adding that she has “mental issues” and will go on rants.
He said Walker started punching, slapping and hitting him with blunt objects, including a ball-peen hammer and .45-caliber handgun, reportedly.
On Dec. 31, the document alleges, Jesse Osborne came to the home and barred the man from leaving.
The affidavit describes Osborne as being in a relationship with Walker.
Osborne was charged Jan. 14 with kidnapping, aggravated assault and felony gun theft. He is in Weston County jail on a probation violation, court documents say.
Osborne and Walker beat the throughout that day and the next, the affidavit says.
The affidavit says Walker stabbed the alleged victim in his right shoulder with a scalpel and that when deputies looked, they noticed a quarter-inch-wide, inch-deep cut on his shoulder.
On New Year’s Day, Walker’s son showed up, punched the man repeatedly and asked why he got himself into that situation. He then released the man and escorted him from the home, Monson wrote.
The son also drove him home, the affidavit says.
Roommate Said He Saw Him
The alleged victim’s friends confirmed to investigators that they didn’t see him from Dec. 30 to Jan.1.
At one point, his roommate knocked at Walker’s door and heard loud music, then Walker telling him to go away, the document says. At another friend’s urging, the roommate went back to Walker’s home the afternoon of Jan. 1.
That time, the man came to the door, the document says. His face was swollen and red. He kept looking to his left toward the stairwell leading upstairs and told the roommate to be quiet, says the affidavit.
When the roommate asked the man if he was OK, he said no, the document says.
The man said he’d come home soon, and the roommate said if he didn’t, he’d be back with more people to get him out, according to the affidavit.
The man finally came home at 5 p.m. with ripped jeans, a broken belt and wearing a ripped shirt that looked like it didn’t belong to him, the roommate later told investigators.
The man said he’d been taped to a chair and not allowed to leave. He tried to leave at one point, but the man who’d been beating him with Walker chased and caught him, then pistol-whipped his head as he crumbled into a fetal position on the floor, the affidavit alleges.
The document says deputies inspected the alleged victim’s coat and found pieces of tape and tape adhesive stuck to it.
Graphic
In an interview with Monson, the man described the alleged torture in harrowing and desperate terms, saying Walker mocked him. He was pistol-whipped, and at one point was allowed to shower so his bleeding head wounds wouldn’t mess up Walker’s property.
The man told investigators he couldn’t take the beating anymore. At one point when the pistol lay in front of him, he was tempted to grab it, pull the trigger and “end it,” he told the investigator.
The document says the man heard Walker and Osborne discuss putting him in the basement freezer so he couldn’t escape while they went to the store.
Monson found head wounds on the man and lacerations and bruises on his ears, she wrote.
The man also said that Walker told him she’d always fantasized about breaking someone’s finger with a ball-peen hammer, and she told him she could do that if she needed to.
This was to appease her so he could “survive,” he added, according to the affidavit.
Search
Investigators obtained a search warrant for Walker’s home and found fibers matching a certain chair on strips of used tape in the washing machine, the affidavit says.
They also found apparent blood residue on a pronged metal tool; a bloody pillowcase; several ball-peen hammers and blood by the front door, Monson wrote.
The affidavit theorizes that the blood by the front door was from Herden’s escape attempt and subsequent pistol whipping.
Oh, And This Witness
One witness told investigators that he dropped by Walker’s home Dec. 30 and noticed the alleged victim sitting in a chair while Walker yelled at him about a penny and bit his ears, says the affidavit. He found that odd and he left, Monson added.
The man told investigators that methamphetamine was involved.
Investigators found Walker in her home when they searched it. She had a recent head injury, and numerous injuries to her hands that Monson called consistent with having used them to strike someone.
She was taken to the hospital and later arrested.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
