Two convicted killers face California trial

Molly Ball

Monday, Dec. 27, 2004 | 9:20 a.m.

David Riker and Richard Walker were on a killing spree, authorities said, when in 1992 they allegedly stabbed a man to death in California, drove his vehicle to Las Vegas and fatally stabbed another man.

Convicted of murder a decade ago for the Las Vegas killing, the two men will go on trial in California next week for the first murder. Both face the death penalty.

Riker, now 33, is already on death row in Nevada. Walker, now 41, received life in prison without parole from a Clark County jury.

In Indio, Calif., on Jan. 3, jury selection from a pool of 200 people is to begin. The trial is expected to last six months, according to the prosecutor on the California case, Riverside County Supervising Deputy District Attorney Paul Vinegrad.

In the 12 years since the killings, Riker and Walker have nearly exhausted their appeals in Nevada. Both their convictions have been affirmed by the state Supreme Court, though they can still bring procedural challenges at the state and federal level via habeas corpus motions.

The California case took so long because once the Nevada sentences came down in 1994, Walker fought extradition for five years, and after that a flurry of legal maneuvers in both states delayed the case further, Vinegrad said.

In April 1992, Riker and Walker quit their jobs as carnival workers in Blythe, Calif. Shortly thereafter, they met a 32-year-old oceanic surveyor named John Phippin at a bar and decided to rob and kill him, according to Vinegrad.

Phippin was stabbed in the heart in his motel room; he also showed evidence of a beating.

"Our position is that Riker was the stabber and Walker was the beater," Vinegrad said.

The two allegedly loaded up Phippin's work vehicle with his possessions and drove to Las Vegas, where they encountered 34-year-old Kevin Marble in a residential area near Industrial Road and Sahara Avenue.

Marble was stabbed to death multiple times with a 6-inch-long survival knife that had belonged to Phippin, the prosecutor said.

The two were caught driving Marble's van after a high-speed chase through Barstow, Calif., that ended when the van flipped over, seriously injuring both men.

Despite being captured in California, the two were tried first in Nevada for the second killing.

Lawyers for the younger man, Riker, have argued that he was mentally ill and under the spell of Walker, who also enchanted a prominent Las Vegas defense attorney, Patricia Erickson, into becoming his wife.

While Walker maintained his innocence and went to trial -- receiving a life sentence from a jury that was not allowed to know about the Blythe killing -- Riker insisted on pleading guilty without a plea-bargain. A three-judge panel sentenced Riker to die.

Vinegrad said it is only because state lines got in the way of the men's rampage that they will face two trials -- and for Riker, possibly two death sentences -- for what was essentially one crime spree.

"It was one spree that was ongoing, and if they hadn't been caught, who's to say what would have happened," he said.

If Riker is sentenced to death a second time and both sentences are upheld, he would probably be executed in Nevada because that case is farther along, Vinegrad said.