[3] Herbert Walker's most notable action as a Superior Court Judge was to sign the ninth and final death warrant for Caryl Chessman, the "Red Light Bandit."

"[5] Walker graduated from the Hoover School and attended the California Institute of Technology for one year, excelling in electronics and radio engineering.

Walker was stationed in Brisbane, Australia, where he attended the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) U.S. Army Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Camp Columbia, Wacol.

[5] In November, he received orders transferring him to Leyte Island in the Philippines, where he was placed in charge of a Signal Corps radar detachment with 85 men.

[5] In later testimony, Walker related that upon arrival at Leyte, he and another officer, a close friend, selected the emplacement for the radar and took routine security measures but did not post a day guard because of standing orders.

He learned that John Brake of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, his closest friend, who was also his commanding officer and fellow Signal Corps OCS graduate, had been bayoneted in the neck and disemboweled in the initial assault.

All other members of the unit who had remained at the initial site were killed and horribly mutilated by their attackers, including disembowelment and amputation while they were still alive.

[9][3] Although Walker and his men were not combat infantrymen, his unit was not reinforced after the initial assault, and the small detachment endured three days and nights of continuous battle with fanatical Japanese paratroopers, who inflicted many casualties.

While a subsequent investigation found no dereliction of duty on the part of any of the officers in the detachment, Walker later testified that he felt responsible for what had happened.

He was released from active duty in the South Pacific in December 1944, but was promoted to first lieutenant in July 1945, three months after his arrival in the United States.

[5] According to his own later statements and those of his family, Walker returned from overseas duty deeply disturbed and convinced that he was responsible for the death of soldiers in his unit by not preparing defenses for his position.

[5] Early in 1945, still on active duty as an Army First Lieutenant, Walker burglarized an auto repair garage, taking a set of tools, voltmeter, and radio tuner.

In August 1945, he entered an Army Ordnance warehouse at night and stole seven 45-caliber Thompson submachine guns, twelve .45-caliber pistols, six .38-caliber revolvers, ammunition, holsters, and magazines.

[5] Using the garage as his base of operations, Walker continued to commit burglaries to pay his living expenses and acquire electronic equipment.

[3][4][11] Walker later explained that his crimes were motivated by a desire to gather funds and equipment to build an electronic radar gun (which, by shooting a beam, would disintegrate metal into powder) so that he could force the government to pass legislation raising soldiers' pay.

On April 25, 1946, LAPD Hollywood division detectives Lieutenant Colin C. Forbes, and his partner, Sergeant Stewart W. Johnson, staked out Starr's home to wait for the suspect's arrival.

On June 5, 1946, Walker drove to a meat market at the corner of Los Feliz Boulevard and Brunswick Avenue in Glendale, California.

Walker stated that he slowly eased a loaded .45 automatic pistol from under his belt and pointed it at Officer Roosevelt, who drew his own police service revolver in response.

Although badly wounded, Officer Roosevelt was able, before his death, to give both a physical description of his assailant and a different account of his encounter with Walker and the subsequent gunfight.

Walker's abandoned car was found to contain bolt cutters, a loaded Thompson submachine gun, a bag of tools, sap, sash cord, bell wire, hacksaw blades, hand drill, electric drill, crescent wrenches, pry bar, extension cord, hammer, pliers, wire cutters, nitroglycerine, adhesive tape, a percussion-type dynamite blasting cap crimped to a white blasting fuse, and a primer cord attached to the percussion cap.

Walker, who had been asleep with a .45-caliber pistol at his bedside table, was caught reaching for a Thompson submachine gun on the bed beside him when the three detectives burst into the living room.

[14][24] At the hospital, Walker was found to have scars from bullet wounds, a souvenir of the April gun battle with Forbes' partner, Sergeant Stewart Johnson.

[3] Police later obtained additional statements from Walker as he lay wounded on an ambulance stretcher on the way to the Georgia Street Receiving Hospital for emergency treatment.

[14][24][26] Despite his wounds, Walker told one of the detectives that he had been stopped the previous week by two motorcycle patrolmen on Hollywood Boulevard for a minor traffic violation but had been given only a warning: "Lucky for them they didn't try to make me get out of the car.

[25] At the time, Wynn testified that a stenographic reporter named Bechtel came and the conversation was repeated and transcribed in the hospital room at which a doctor and nurse were also present.

At his competency hearing, Walker was declared insane by a jury and committed to the Mendocino State Hospital in Talmage, California, where he would remain the next 12 years.

He played the tenor saxophone with various musical groups in the hospital and was a talented musician although, as he said, "I have a little difficulty fingering the sax because of nerve damage caused by an old bullet wound.

"[15] Walker was reportedly well-liked by both patients and staff, and as a result, he was subsequently granted a "white card," which permitted him access to hiking trails located outside the hospital building but within the boundaries of institutional property.

Walker was returned to the hospital and his white card privileges revoked, but he re-established himself as a model patient and was recruited to be a mentor in a Senior-Junior Big Brother type program on Ward 21, which housed responsible adult men, mostly military veterans, and dysfunctional teenage boys.

Walker filed a similar petition in the Solano County Superior Court and sought to have his 1947 trial set aside on several grounds, including an allegation that his 1946 confession had been made involuntarily.