Walker captured; Director Allbaugh calls for full report on escape

OKLAHOMA CITY – US Marshals report Oklahoma Department of Corrections inmate Patrick M. Walker has been captured at a St. Louis motel.

Walker, who was serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, escaped Thursday night from the Payne County Jail in Stillwater. He was at the jail for a court case stemming from his assault on a correctional officer last May at Cimarron Correctional Facility in nearby Cushing, where he was housed then.

“We deeply appreciate the dogged, tireless efforts of the U.S. Marshals to take Patrick Walker into custody,” ODOC Director Joe M. Allbaugh said. “Fortunately, they were able to capture him without incident, and he will soon be back in Oklahoma.”

The search for Walker began Friday after the Payne County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the jail, informed ODOC he had bonded out using another inmate’s identity.

Since then, ODOC Fugitive Apprehension and Investigations agents, as well as sheriff’s deputies, state troopers and a host of other law enforcement had been looking for him around-the-clock.

When he escaped, Walker, 34, had been incarcerated since 2003 for the murder conviction and several other convictions, including felony drug possession, firearm possession, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

ODOC moved Walker from CCF to Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, a maximum-security male prison, before his transfer to the county jail for that assault case, which was filed in Payne County where CCF is located.

“I’m looking forward to a full report explaining how one of our most dangerous inmates could bond out of a county jail,” Allbaugh said. “We can’t have this happen again in any of the 76 other counties of this state.”