Even in Los Angeles County, where hundreds of people are murdered each year, the three killings in a homeless encampment along the banks of the Compton Creek stood out.
In death, the victims came to underscore the precarious, dangerous existence of homeless people in the county. Like many others scraping out lives on the streets, they were in the grips of drug abuse or mental illness. And they belonged to a population that disproportionately falls victim to homicides and other violent crimes.
But little was known about their killer, other than the fact that he too was homeless. Now, through court records and interviews with his attorney, a detective who worked the case and others, a portrait comes into focus of a man submerged in a solitary, paranoid existence, who saw people either as “predators” or “prey.”
Tracy Walker does not dispute his crimes. He pleaded guilty to the three murders and recently was sentenced to 110 years in state prison. Ineligible for parole, Walker will die there.
After he was arrested, Walker talked to Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives about the killings. His victims, he claimed, had trespassed in his tent, stolen his possessions, even held him up at gunpoint. He had been left with no choice but to defend himself, he claimed.
Detectives collected some evidence that suggests otherwise. They concede they’ll likely never know if they’ve learned the full story of why Walker killed or merely the one he chose to tell.
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Walker was born in 1964 in Mississippi, according to a probation report reviewed by The Times. He was one of about eight brothers, most of them born to different fathers, said his attorney, Kelly L. O’Brien.
Walker, 57, declined an interview request but asked his lawyer to speak on his behalf.
When he was 21, Walker left Mississippi for Los Angeles, where he found work as a security guard. While watching over a bus yard on 77th Street in South Los Angeles early one Saturday morning, he got into a dispute with…
