A serial killer who has been on death row for nearly 40 years was implicated in a decades-old cold case slaying Wednesday by California authorities as a parole board in Idaho deliberates whether he should still be executed.
Convicted murderer Thomas Creech was fingered as a suspect Wednesday in the 1974 fatal shooting of Daniel Walker who was gunned down in his van alongside Interstate-40 in California.
The passenger with Walker, 21, was able to escape and flag down a passing car but Walker did not survive his wounds.
The crack in the cold case by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office comes after investigators struggled to “develop any workable leads” over several years when they would review the case, authorities said.
The sheriff’s cold case unit resumed its investigation last November, obtaining more intel into the murder that led them to Creech, who was sitting in an Idaho prison after he was already found guilty of five other murders, the agency said.