Transcript: 3. The Rolex Murder | England

This is The Evidence Locker.

Our cases have been researched using open source and archive materials. It deals with true crimes and real people. Each episode is produced with the utmost respect to the victims, their families and loved ones. 

28 July 1996, fisherman John Copik and his crew weren’t having a great day of fishing off the south coast of Devon, England. They had already been going for ten hours when they decided to go to an area where they rarely fished, known to locals as The Roughs. They weighted their nets down to scoop up fish from the sea floor, but they had found much more than they had bargained for.

From the onset, they felt that whatever they were pulling up was not a shoal of fish. They knew the tugs and pulls of a captured shoal. Instead there was the weight of a single, heavy item, perhaps a porpoise. Porpoises range in size 4.3 ft to 6.2 ft and (that is  between 1.3 and 1.9 metres). Not unlike a human body.

As they hauled the nets up to the side of the boat, they were stunned. What they had pulled out of the English Channel was indeed the body of a man. He was fully dressed in trousers and a long sleeve shirt and was wearing brown shoes. His pockets had been turned inside out. If he did have a wallet or identification on him, someone had made sure it had been removed.

The fishermen were hesitant to haul in the dead body as it could bring bad luck to their boat. Seamen are notoriously superstitious, and even those who aren’t won’t gamble the fate of their livelihood. The crew had to decide: do they release him back into his watery grave and drag him along until they were done for the day, or should they take him into the harbour? This meant their fish would be condemned and the crew would lose a day’s wages. They realised there was only one thing to do and captain John Copik called Brixham Coast Guard and informed them about the dead man in their fishing nets.

Little did they know that this discovery would launch an international investigation that would span through Europe and all the way across the Atlantic to Canada.

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When police arrived, they examined the fully dressed dead body with no identification. It looked like he had met with an unfortunate accident. With many boats and ferries crossing the English Channel, accidents do happen. However, nothing was reported, and police had to look into the case as a matter of urgency.

When the body arrived at the medical examiner’s, he was noted to be a 40 – 50-year-old man. He had been in the water for about a week at the time of his discovery.  

The man had a tattoo on his right hand that appeared to be cluster of stars at first. On his wrist they found a Rolex watch. Further examination showed he had a serious head injury, but not fatal head injury. It was also possible that the gash was inflicted when the fishing boat trawled him in. He had several injuries on his body, including bruises to his hip and leg. The official cause of death was ruled to be drowning.

Police were still unable to determine his identity. Nobody in the area had reported a missing person. Even dental records wouldn’t reveal who their John Doe was.

That is when one of the technicians in the mortuary realised that the dead man’s watch could help identify who he was. The watch on his right wrist was a gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual.

Each Rolex has a hidden serial number whis is engraved on the watch where the wrist band meets the watch face. As common practice, Rolex has meticulous records of all services and customers. Police were able to confirm that the watch had been serviced twice in the 1980’s by a dealership in Yorkshire. The last service was ten years earlier in 1986. The jeweller told police that the watch belonged to a man called Ronald Joseph Platt. 

It wasn’t until about a month after Ron’s body was found, that police were able to find his last known residential address. They contacted the landlord in Chelmsford, Essex. The leasing agent said that Ron didn’t live at the address anymore but was able to provide police with the name of one of his friends. On the lease application Ron Platt put down a man called David Davis as a personal referee. Davis’ mobile number was on the application and the police wasted no time in contacting him. 

Davis was quiet when he learnt about his friend’s death and didn’t ask too many questions. He said that Ron was his best friend. He was an unmarried 50-year old TV repair man and the two had met a couple of years before. Davis told police that he hadn’t seen Ron in over three months. He had lent him some money to start an electrical business in France and as far as Davis knew, Ron was in France. At this point the Police thought that Ron had taken a ferry to France and had fallen overboard. Nobody was looking for him and so he was never reported as missing.

Davis also told police that Ron had done his national service when he was younger. He had had a girlfriend for many years called Elaine Boyes, but they had gone their separate ways. Ron had always dreamt of living in Canada, which he did for a while, but it didn’t work out, so he came back to England.

Ron’s friend, David Davis was a 50-year-old retired financial advisor from Canada. He lived in England with his 21-year old wife, Noelle and their two daughters on Little London Farm in the small village of Woodham Walter in Essex.

Devon and Cornwall police were relieved to have more information about their victim, but when they called Davis again to tie up some loose ends, he stopped answering his phone. Local police in Essex were briefed about the situation and were asked to pay Mr Davis a visit at his home. At this point David Davis was considered to be a grieving friend of the victim, nothing more. 

When Detective Sergeant Frank Redman went to interview Davis in person, they accidentally went to the wrong house. Woodham Walter is in a rural area with only four houses in the street, none of them named. The policeman’s first call was at an elderly neighbour’s house. The neighbour pointed him in the right direction, to Little London Farmhouse, but said that the man who lived there was not called David Davis, he was Ronald Platt and he lived there with his young wife called Noelle. 

DS Redman was caught off-guard as the man police had thought to be dead was alive and kicking and living in Woodham Walter, Essex. Perhaps something more sinister was going on. The man with the maple leaf tattoo on his hand found dead in the English Channel was identified to be Ronald Joseph Platt. His own brother had confirmed it. 

The detective sergeant decided to leave the interview for that day and look into this person who was using his dead friend’s name. After some digging, police found that for the last three years, all of Davis’ bills were paid with Platt’s cheques and credit cards. Some signed by Platt, after his body was discovered. He clearly could not have signed cheques from the bottom of the ocean.

Who was David Davis and why was he posing as Ronald Platt? The investigation had opened the proverbial can of worms that would span across the Atlantic and reveal the story about one of Canada’s most wanted fugitives.

David Davis met Ronald Platt through Ron’s ex-girlfriend, Elaine Boyes. She worked for Davis at a small investment company he ran in London. Davis met Elaine by chance, when she was a receptionist at the fine art auctioneers in Harrogate. They struck up a conversation and Elaine was taken by his charm, she felt he was the bee’s knees. She commented on his North American accent and told Davis that her boyfriend grew up in Canada and always wanted to go back there. At the end of their hour and a half conversation he offered her a job as an executive assistant. 

Elaine was taken aback by the offer, but he was very convincing. He offered her more money than she earned at the time and she could not turn it down. She and Ron were saving up to relocate to Canada and this seemed like a great opportunity.

Ron was the quiet type, shy even. But when Elaine then introduced him to the man she knew as Mr. Davis they hit it off straight away. Ron, confirmed Elaine’s story, telling Davis that he was born in England but was raised in Canada and had hoped to return to the country of the Maple Leaf one day. He was so passionate about Canada, almost obsessed, which made him get a tattoo of a Maple Leaf on his right hand.

The couple looked up to Davis, who was a wealthy, well-educated man who had studied at Edinburgh University. They were mesmerised by his stories of brushing shoulders with the rich and famous and they admired his jet set lifestyle. 

Elaine was working for Davis as an executive assistant, but they were also friends. When Davis started a new business venture, he said he needed Ron and Elaine on board. Davis offered both of them directorship in his company The Cavendish Corporation, which dealt in antiques. Unsure if she was up to the task Elaine was hesitant to accept Davis’ offer. 

Davis put her at ease, he made her believe in herself and together with Ron, she became one of two directors. When they asked Davis why he wasn’t a director too, he admitted to them that he was trying to avoid his ex-wife. She was a wealthy medical practitioner who lived in New York, but still demanded alimony from him. He was afraid that if his name were to be on any documents, she would hunt him down and take all of his money. He simply didn’t want to be found.

His story sounded plausible and they didn’t think any more of it. He was their close friend and had given Elaine a good job, they had no reason to think that he could be lying to them.

For a while it was going well with The Cavendish Corporation. Davis sent the couple to Europe on business trips and asked them to open accounts and occasionally asked them to convert money from Swiss Francs to British Pounds while they were there. 

Davis went to church most Sundays and was a good contributing member of the church. Everybody met his quiet, shy daughter Noelle and it was obvious that she adored her father. She didn’t have many friends, but fellow churchgoers thought she was lovely.

Christmas of 1992 rolled along, and Davis invited Ron and Elaine over for a dinner. When it was time to exchange gifts, Davis presented them with a card that said he would buy them 

two tickets to Calgary, Canada. The could leave within a month.

Ron was over the moon. His dream of moving to Canada was about to become a reality. In the rush of arranging their departure, Davis picked up the slack at work. He promised the couple that they could remain directors of his company, but suggested they had stamps with their signatures made in case he needed something signed urgently. He also kept their drivers’ licenses in case proof of identity was needed with regards to the business. They were so deep into his world and happy about leaving, they never thought this church-going kind-hearted father could possibly be up to something bad.

In February 1993, Elaine and Ron went to Canada, but they struggled to settle in. It was in the middle of winter and not many jobs were going around. The couple found it very hard to find their feet and they drifted apart. When Elaine went back to the UK to her sister’s wedding five months later, she didn’t plan on returning to Canada. It was over between her and Ron.

Davis, who was a friend of the family by now, attended Elaine’s sister’s wedding. He was upset when he heard Elaine wasn’t going back to Canada and urged her to give Ron and Canada a second chance. But when she wouldn’t listen to him Davis turned his back on her and moved away, without giving her a forwarding address or phone number. After this he would call her occasionally, but the friendship wasn’t as close as it had once been. So, when he called her in late 1996, she didn’t think too much of it. It was a rather uneventful conversation, small talk about how both of them were doing, nothing in the conversation stood out as being unusual. 

By this time, Elaine and Ron had been separated for more than three years. They weren’t in touch anymore, but Elaine still cared for Ron. They did spend thirteen years together after all. 

When police called Elaine towards the end of 1996 to tell her that Ron had passed away she was understandably shocked. At first, she thought that he might have committed suicide after his dream of living in Canada had not worked out. But when police started asking questions about David Davis, Elaine felt uneasy. She remembered that Davis had called her three weeks before and had not mentioned anything about Ron. After talking to the police, she realised that at the time she spoke to him, he knew that Ron had died, but failed to mention it to her. Why didn’t he say anything? If anyone deserved to know that Ron had passed away it was his partner of 13 years, even though they were no longer together. 

Police found this curious too. David Davis had assumed Ron Platt’s identity, he did not mention to Elaine that Ron was dead. They had to put Davis under the microscope and find out what he has been up to.

The police went back to information Elaine Boyes gave them and tried to establish when David Davis changed his name to Ronald Platt. After seeing Elaine at her sister’s wedding in 1993, he left Harrogate with his daughter.

This is the first time the man called David Davis introduced himself as Ron Platt. He had started a new life, living in Tiverton in Devon. His daughter was pregnant, and he started introducing her to people as his wife. Sometimes he called her Elaine Boyes and other times Noelle Platt.

They lived on a farm, in a home called Kestrel Cottage for about a year after Noelle’s baby Emily was born. Who the father of the baby is, remains a mystery. Neighbours overheard Noelle calling Ron “daddy” on occasion, but didn’t think much of it, only that it was probably a term of endearment. 

It was common knowledge to all who knew him that Davis owned a sail boat that was moored in South Devon. In fact, not very far from where Ron Platt’s body was found. Davis’ mobile records also showed that calls were made from the same area where Ron was found during the same time in July that the medical examiner estimated the drowning had occurred.

Although Davis claimed that he hadn’t seen his friend in months, witnesses saw them together in the coastal Devon town of Totnes a month before Ron’s death. In fact, they checked into the Steam Packet Inn posing as two brothers, David and Ronald Platt. Why Ron agreed to this no-one knows, perhaps he wasn’t present when Davis checked in. Either way, something was cooking.

At this point police had enough to arrest David Davis on suspicion of the murder of Ronald Platt.

October 31st, 1996, police showed up at David Davis’ home on Little London Lane to arrest him and charge him with murder and fraud. As the task team pulled in and prepared for the arrest, a taxi appeared. Davis made a dash for it and made it into the front passenger seat of the taxi, which then sped off. They were quickly apprehended and with a police weapon to his head, Davis was forced into submission. Davis was cool and collected and did as he was told.

The pressure was on. Crown Prosecution Service gave inspectors one week to collect more conclusive evidence to pin him to the crime. 

With Davis in custody, Noelle and the two little girls were still in the house. Emily was three and Lilian only six months old. Before police took Noelle in for questioning, Noelle asked if she could pack a diaper bag, which officers allowed. But Noelle seemed jumpy and a suspicious officer realised she was hiding something. When he went through the diaper bag he found £4000 and two bars of gold. Her handbag had even more incriminating evidence: credit cards and documents belonging to Ronald Platt and his girlfriend Elaine Boyes. They also found the girls’ birth certificates which listed the parents as Ronald Platt and “Elaine Claire Boyes, otherwise Noelle Platt’.

When police confronted her about this, she explained. Noelle needed medical attention when she was pregnant, and Davis suggested she used Elaine Boyes’ details to get proper care, as she had better medical insurance. The fraud charges against Davis and his wife were piling up by the second.

After further questioning, Noelle finally broke down and admitted something that surprised even the most hardened investigators. Noelle revealed that she was not really Davis’ wife, but in fact his daughter. When news of this broke, people who knew the couple were astounded. They were very convincing as husband and wife, nobody would ever have thought that the girl they knew as Noelle was in fact the daughter.

This brought along the next question: who was the father of Noelle’s kids? Till this day, she refuses to identify the father of her children. 

The Davis’ home was searched, and they found a further £30 000’s worth in British Pounds and Swiss Francs, US Dollars, keys to storage lockers, gold bars and paintings to the value of £6000. They also discovered that in the month leading up to Ron’s murder, Walker had bought over £67 000 worth of gold bullion, or gold bars. 

Davis was somewhat of a hoarder and had many documents and items that the police had to work their way through. Among hundreds of documents, investigators found a small receipt that would change the course of the investigation. It was from a shop called ‘Sport Nautique” in Dartmouth which showed that a ten-pound galvanised zinc plough anchor was purchased for £2.95 on the 8th of July – less than two weeks before Ron drowned. It was paid for with a credit card in Ronald Platt’s name.

The fisherman who found Platt’s body confirmed that there was an anchor tangled up in the same net that found Platt, but that he had given it to a friend. The friend had in turn given it to his mother to sell in a car boot sale. Fortunately for police, an anchor isn’t on the top of thrifty shoppers in Brixham, and they found it at the car boot sale, complete with the price sticker for re-sale.

The medical examiner measured the anchor and laid it next to the bruises on Platt’s body, he found what had caused it. A bruise on the hip was caused by the bottom end of the anchor and the bruise on the thigh was caused by the top end. The anchor had been hooked to his belt. Further analysis showed that there was also a mark on the belt. This was found to be predominantly zinc, proving that the galvanised zinc anchor had caused it.

Scientists proved that the anchor had weighed Platt’s body down, in spite of currents in the English Channel. His body was dumped in the same location where it was found. This location is only eight nautical miles from where Davis kept his yacht. The obvious next item to search was Davis’ 24ft yacht, the “Lady Jane.”

Inside the cabin, they found a “Sport Nautique” bag and all the other items that were on the receipt recovered in Davis’ home. All the items were there, except for the first one on the list: a ten-pound plough anchor. Platt’s fingerprint was also found on the bag.

Forensic examiners recovered blood and three dark brown head hairs, from a cushion inside the cabin. DNA testing revealed that the hair belonged to Ronald Platt. This proved without a doubt that Ron had been on the Lady Jane. And furthermore: it was concluded that the hair was removed forcibly, which supported the theory that Davis had knocked Ron unconscious before throwing him overboard.

Now police knew that Ron’s drowning could not have been accidental. Their hunch was right on the money: this was indeed a murder case. 

In 1996 GPS technology was still pretty basic, but it was able to record the time and location of a boat when it was last turned off. David Davis’ GPS on The Lady Jane was switched off 3.8 nautical miles from where Ron Platt’s body resurfaced. The date was July 20th.  

Now they had to prove that Davis was on the boat with Ron Platt. The vital witness placing him on the Lady Jane: his daughter who he posed as his wife. She agreed to co-operate with police and confirmed that on the Saturday night of the 20th of July 1996, David Davis left their holiday rental in Totnes and went out on his yacht, alone. 

The Rolex on Platt’s arm was self-winding. It is fully waterproof and runs for 40 hours after it stops moving. It had stopped at 11:35 on the 22nd of the month, which meant that Ron was probably killed and thrown overboard two days before, on Saturday the 20th of July.

So, who was David Davis? And why did he assume Ronald Platt’s identity and then kill him?

As is the custom, when Davis was arrested, his fingerprints were taken. When they ran his fingerprints in the international database, the investigation was twisted into another direction. Swiss authorities came back and said the prints belonged to a man called Albert Johnson Walker, not David Davis. And Mr Walker was Number 4 on Interpol’s wanted list. He ranked fourth after a man wanted in Spain for abduction, rape and murder; a Croatian wanted for genocide; and an escaped convict wanted in the United States, Costa Rica and Spain.

The man Essex police had in custody was a man on the run from Canadian police for six years. In fact, never mind being Number 4 on Interpol’s Wanted List, Albert Walker was Canada’s Most Wanted Fugitive. He was being chased down for committing fraud, theft and money laundering close to the amount of $4 Million Dollars.

Police had a professional con-man turned murderer in their custody. Their case against him had to be airtight – there was no way he could slip through their fingers. So, the research into his background began, leaving no stone unturned.

Walker was born in the steel-producing town of Hamilton in Ontario. He came from a modest family, but always had bigger dreams. A high school drop-out with a large personality, he soon landed a job as a bank teller. He spent a lot of free time on the social scene of Ontario’s University of Waterloo.

It is here where he met Barbara MacDonald and a whirlwind romance followed. Within a couple of days, he proposed to her and they married in 1968. The couple didn’t wait long to start a family. They lived in Paris, Ontario with four children: three girls and a boy.

Before long he Albert Walker was completing other people’s, tax returns and realised he was ready to start something of his own. He started ‘Walker Financial Services Incorporated” with his wife, Barb, in Woodstock Ontario – a freelance bookkeeping business.

The business was thriving, within 10 years Walker had over 30 employees working at Walker Financial Services’ six branches, providing mortgage brokerage and other financial services. In this time Walker lined his own pockets very well. He only wore the best label clothing and loved driving his Jaguar. He lived a life of extravagant spending, travelling through Canada, Britain and Switzerland.

Walker was a smooth and friendly guy, and everybody trusted him. By his own account he held a degree from Oxford University, when in fact he never even finished high school back in Hamilton. He was an elder at his local church, sang in the choir and taught Sunday school. 70 of his clients, friends and fellow-churchgoers unwittingly lost $3.2 million to the swindling broker.

He duped his friends by saying their money would be invested in government bonds and other reliable investments. Instead the money was transferred to off-shore accounts he held in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. 

One acquaintance sold her tax and accounting business to Walker, but he never paid her the $100 000 they agreed on. He even re-mortgaged his family home without informing his wife. 

By this time, he had been married to his wife, Barb, for 22 years and together they had four kids. But Albert Walker wasn’t quite living up to the church-going loving family man image he had created. A string of extra marital affairs eventually led to the breakdown of his marriage and he and Barb divorced.

It wasn’t an amicable split. Walker decided to move out of the family home on Watts Pond Road but took all four of their children with him. Barb was not going to accept that and fought him in a bitter court battle. Only the two youngest kids, Duncan and Heather were returned to their mother while Sheena and Jill stayed with their father.

Barbara did not give up the fight. Walker paid for their eldest daughter, Jill, to have breast enlargement surgery, at the age of 18 and Sheena – at the age of 15 – got the green light from her dad to start using birth control pills. Barb was furious.

In a desperate attempt to at least protect what she could, she prevented Walker from seeing his youngest children at all. This infuriated Walker so much, that he went to the family home where Barb and the youngest two lived and kicked in the front door. Barb called the police and Walker was taken in for destruction of property. 

Because of his arrest, Walker’s fingerprints were taken, so Canadian Authorities now had a record for a man called Albert Johnson Walker. The fingerprints that would eventually expose him while he was hiding out in England under the assumed names of David Davis and Ronald Platt.

In 1990, Walker started feeling the heat from people working for him, asking questions about his clients’ investments. He was a smooth talker and put them at ease, but realised it was only a matter of time before he was found out.

Before the truth of his embezzlement schemes came out, however, he fled Canada, telling his family and friends that he and his 15-year-old daughter Sheena were going to Europe on a skiing trip. 

Then, together with Sheena, he disappeared off the face of the earth. When Barb realised what was going on, she was deeply concerned about Sheena’s safety and declared her a missing person. 

Police followed his trail to England, where they lived it up by staying in the Ritz in London. At the Ritz they still existed as Albert and Sheena Walker. Once they checked out, no one was able to track them down – their trail had gone cold. 

Back in Ontario many of Walker’s parishioners contributed to the Sheena Walker Search Fund to help Barb pay for a private investigator. And a dance and beef barbecue at the fair grounds in Paris raised more than $2,000. Barb Walker said to a local newspaper:

"It seems like it's my job to find my daughter. I'm afraid at this point we don't know whether we even have a living person. The police are no longer actively looking.”

In fact, police were doing everything they could with a cold trail. But Walker was two steps ahead and had changed his name to David Wallace Davis and went under the radar of detection. 

The actual David Davis was a colleague who worked with Walker in Canada. Co-workers had commented that they looked so similar, they could pass as brothers. In planning his escape from Canada, Walker managed to steal Davis’ birth certificate and his national security number. This wasn’t too hard to do, as Walker handled a personal investment for Davis before he left, and it was normal procedure to use these documents when an investment was made.

Walker and his daughter Sheena first lived in Chelsea, London where he introduced himself as David Wallace Davis, a wealthy American entrepreneur and single father of his daughter, who he called Noelle. In 1991, a year after leaving Canada, the two of them moved to Harrogate in North Yorkshire. This is where he met Ron Platt and thought he would be the ideal new identity.

The thing is… His alias of David Davis still linked him to his original identity of Albert Walker – Canada’s most wanted man. He had to shake any connection to his old life and Ron Platt was the perfect scapegoat. With Ron living out his dream on the other side of the world in Canada, Walker could completely immerse himself into Ron’s identity. And Ron, being an introverted person did not have an extended circle of friends who would be suspicious and cause Walker to look over his shoulder. He could use the unsuspecting Ron’s bank accounts to launder embezzled money and live it up without the fear of being caught.

After their stint on the Farm, living in Kestrel Cottage in Devon, Walker and his daughter Sheena settled in Essex. Walker told people that he was a psychologist but avoided networking with fellow professionals. 

He lived lavishly and in April 1994 bought a yacht called Peach. Not too impressed with the vessel’s name, he changed it to “Lady Jane”. This conforms more with the ideology that boats or ships should be named after historical figures, to ensure they safely make their way back to shore. With superstition and seafaring going hand-in-hand, it is curious to know that some believe renaming a boat is tantamount to defying the deities. According to myth, every vessel’s name is recorded in the Ledger of the Deep, which is Poseidon’s personal record book. To change a boat’s name, you must first purge its original name from the ledger and have a proper naming ceremony. Failure to do so could invoke the wrath of Poseidon.

The odds of John Copik’s fishing crew finding Ron Platt where they did, was beyond coincidental. Perhaps there is something to the myth, perhaps old Poseidon’s legend caught up with Albert Walker and ended his life of deceit.

Either way, in 1995 the actual Ron Platt informed his so-called friend, Mr so-called Davis, that things hadn’t worked out for him in Canada. He was broke and decided to move back to England. He would settle in Essex to be near Davis and his daughter. The heat was turning on Walker: there could not be two Ron Platt’s with the same date of birth and same documentation in close proximity to each other. His cover would be blown, it was only a matter of time.

Walker kept up appearances and supported Ron when he returned to Britain. But he tried his best to convince him to go back to Canada and give it another chance. Ron didn’t want to return and stayed close with Walker and his daughter Sheena. When Sheena’s second child was born in January 1996, Ron must’ve thought it the girl he knew as Noelle was simply a single mother, lucky to have the support of her father. Ron was a private, introverted man, so it is fair to assume he would not have asked too many questions. He certainly would not have known that he was listed as the father on Lilian Platt’s birth certificate.

Six months later, in June Walker and his family went to the Steam Packet Inn, Totnes, for two days to oversee the launch of his renamed yacht, “Lady Jane”. 

On the weekend of the 6th to the 8th of July, Walker took Ron Platt to Totnes. This is when they booked in to the Steam Packet Inn as brothers David and Ronald Platt. This is also when Walker bought the ten-pound anchor at “Sport Nautique” that would weigh Ron’s body down in the English Channel. Fingerprints on the plastic bag from the shop indicates that Ron carried the bag, a grim picture knowing what it contained.

Three weeks later the friends from Essex returned to Devon and Walker invited Ron to go out to sea on the Lady Jane. Once they were a safe distance away from shore, he knocked Ron unconscious with a blunt object, then pulled him to the upper deck, attached the plough anchor to his belt and threw him overboard.

Albert Johnson Walker’s murder trial started in April 1998, almost two years after Ron Platt’s death, in the English city of Exeter. When Walker was arrested, his daughter Sheena returned to Canada with her kids and stayed with her mother Barb in Paris, Ontario. Despite Walker’s pleads for her not to testify or to change facts if she did, she returned to England to make sure he was found guilty. 

Albert Walker pleaded NOT guilty, but the case against him was as watertight as Ron Platt’s Rolex watch.

Ron’s ex-girlfriend, Elaine Boyes, testified as to the background of Walker’s friendship with Ron Platt. She explained everything about her and Ron’s directorships of Walker’s bogus company and that he had access to all their personal documents at the time of setting up the business. The motive for Walker wanting to eliminate Ron Platt was as clear as daylight. With Ron back in England, Walker’s identity theft – and probably all his other crimes – would have been exposed.

The tension in the courtroom was palpable when Sheena Walker testified against her father. She said that on the weekend of Ron Platt’s murder, they were staying in a holiday rental in Devon, but her father did not mention that Ron was also in Totnes, Devon. She was completely unaware that Ron was there too. She could also not give Walker an alibi for the day of the murder. In fact, she could confirm that he had been out on the boat on Saturday the 20th of July and that when he came back it was late and he was dishevelled and agitated.

Sheena felt as much a victim of Walker and claimed that she was hypnotised by him. He forced her to play along and she was too scared to say no. As for the question about the paternity of her children… She commented on it during the trial, saying that when she fell pregnant in 1992, Walker tried to comfort her by saying: 

"All sorts of girls have children out of wedlock. Don't let it bother you."

To this day Sheena refuses to comment further on it or to have DNA tests done on the girls. Nobody has claimed paternity of the kids.

Walker took the stand in his own defence and was his own charming self. He made it clear that he never wanted to take Sheena with him when he fled Canada, but that she pleaded and begged with him to go. He admitted to fraud and other sins but denied killing Ron. As for the blood found on the Lady Jane, Walker claimed that Ron had bumped his head while they were out fishing.

But nobody bought it. If anything, Walker showcased how charming and believable he can be when in fact you know he’s lying through his teeth. High Court Justice Neil Butterfield addressing Walker, said:

“The killing was carefully planned and cunningly executed with chilling efficiency. You are a plausible, intelligent and ruthless man who poses a serious threat to anyone who stands in your way.”

The jury only took two hours to find him guilty. Albert Johnson Walker was sentenced to Life in prison with 15 years without the possibility of parole. 

"It was nothing personal," Walker told CTV's W-Five in 1998. "My marriage was falling apart, my business was falling apart, we were heading into a deep recession. So, I took some money and left."

Elaine Boyes was relieved and felt her kind, honest ex-partner got the justice he deserved. 

“For his life to end in this tragic way by a so-called friend whom Ron and I felt at ease with and trusted is – well, I cannot find the words to express my horror.”

In the end, it was Ron Platt himself who helped police to solve his murder. His Rolex watch identified him, his tattoo confirmed his identity, his lease application put police in touch with David Davis (or Albert Walker as we now know), his fingerprints and hair on the Lady Jane proved that he was on it.

The treasure hunt to recover the Millions of Dollars Walker had embezzled was on. Walker was thought to have had a maze of 40 different accounts in two dozen banks. Efforts were made, through diplomatic channels and Interpol, to gain access to these accounts in countries like Switzerland, Italy and France and the Cayman Islands. 

In 2000, half a million Pounds of embezzled money was recovered by bankruptcy trustee KPMG. Authorities aren’t 100% sure how much money Walker stole but suspect there is another £150 000 worth of gold bars hidden somewhere. 

Sheena Walker claimed she never knew where her father hid his money.

"I don't know anything about it. He didn't confide in me, he manipulated me and lied to me just like everybody else," she said.

This is interesting because she managed to find a couple of gold bars and plenty of cash to stuff in the diaper bag pretty swiftly on the day of his arrest. 

At the age of 61 Walker was transferred to Canada in 2007, where he was sentenced 4 years for 19 fraud-related crimes and will live out his life sentence at the maximum-security prison, Millhaven Institute, in British Colombia. He had reportedly said he wanted to be closer to his family. Sheena came out publicly and said he should have stayed in an English prison until the day he died. She does not want him anywhere near her or her daughters, 9 and 11 at the time of his return to Canada. She remains in Canada today, dreading her father’s release one day.

In 2015 Walker filed an application for parole, but later in the same year he withdrew the application. There are many reasons why prisoners withdraw parole applications, mostly it’s because they know the application is likely to be turned down. 

It’s safe to say that Albert Walker, once Canada’s most wanted man, would not be the popular member of the community he once was, should he ever see the light of day outside of prison walls again.

This was The Evidence Locker. Thanks for listening!

If you’d like to read up more about this case, have a look at the resources used for this episode in the show notes. 

A Hand in the Water: The Many Lies of Albert Walker by Bill Schiller or Dancing Devil - My twenty years with Albert Walker by Barb Walker are both books written about this case and both are available for purchase on Amazon.

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