On Wednesday, as the Idaho parole board deliberated whether to execute the death row inmate, California authorities announced that the serial killer, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, may be involved in a decades-old cold case. He expressed his view that it is.
On Wednesday, convicted murderer Thomas Creech was wanted as a suspect in the 1974 shooting death of Daniel Walker, who was shot to death in a van along Interstate 40 in California.
Walker, 21, and his passenger were able to flee and alert passing cars, but Walker escaped without injury.
The cracks in the cold case by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office became apparent after investigators struggled for several years to “develop viable leads” as they revisited the case. authorities said.
The sheriff's cold case unit reopened the investigation last November and sought more information about the murder linked to Creech, who was already in an Idaho prison after being convicted of five other murders. obtained, authorities said.
Detectives in California worked with prosecutors in Idaho to corroborate “intimate” details from Creech's statements about Daniel's murder, the sheriff's office said.
He was convicted of three murders in Idaho, one in California, and one in Oregon.
Creech has been incarcerated for nearly 50 years, during which time he has avoided 11 scheduled executions. This was reported by the Statesman newspaper in Idaho. He is the longest serving inmate on Idaho's death row.
Prosecutors first moved to execute Mr. Creech in 1981 after he fatally beat fellow inmate David Dale Jensen, 23, at the Idaho State Penitentiary. Mr Creech was already serving four life sentences at the time of the assault.
The state parole board met last week to discuss whether Creech's sentence should be commuted from the death penalty to life in prison as the 73-year-old seeks clemency.
“I regret everything I've ever done wrong,” Creech told the parole board. The Statesman reported. “I'm not the person I was then. Maybe I wasn't as worthy of mercy as I used to be. But I think I have a lot to offer people.”
But the Ada County Prosecutor's Office said he was a “sociopath” and in a press release He emphasized that Creech admitted to committing nearly 40 murders.
“If his sentence is commuted, he will return to a regular prison and have more contact with inmates, putting them at risk,” prosecutors said in a news release. .
The office also said that “seeking the death penalty is not a decision taken lightly by any prosecutor's office.”
Deborah Zuba, one of Creech's attorneys at the nonprofit Idaho Federal Defenders Office, told the Statesman that Wednesday's announcement did not provide “real evidence.”
“These details now make Mr. Creech a new suspect in a crime to which he has never been linked,” Zuba reportedly said. Enforcement officials were determined to prove his fantasy that he had committed 50 murders. ”
