Tommy Lee Walker

The Crime

On Sept. 30, 1953, 31-year-old Venice Parker, a white store clerk and mother of a young son, was raped and stabbed while waiting at a bus stop on her way home from work in Dallas. She crawled to the middle of the road where two American Airline employees driving to work at the nearby Love Field Airport found her, helped her into the back seat and drove her to the airport to seek help. Asked what happened, she said, in a hoarse voice, “I have been stabbed.” 

Officer J.W. Gallagher was among the first officers to arrive at the airport. Gallagher reported that, upon his arrival, he got into the back seat of the car as Ms. Parker “kind of raised up in the seat and coughed.” He reported that he asked her what happened and Ms. Parker said that a Black man “took me under the bridge and slashed my throat,” and she then laid back down.

Although airline employees and a nurse were close to the open car door, no one heard Ms. Parker say anything. Ms. Parker was taken by ambulance to Parkland Hospital where, shortly thereafter, she was pronounced dead. An autopsy showed she also had been raped.

The Investigation

The murder came at a time when the city of Dallas was convulsed and in a state of near panic over a series of sexual assaults and break-ins that had begun in 1952 and continued into 1953. White women reported a sometimes nude, “huge” or “giant” “Negro prowler” was roaming through white neighborhoods, exposing himself and raping white women in Jim Crow Dallas. The fear — and violence associated with the fear — was palpable.

With only a belief that a Black man of no description had murdered Parker, Dallas police began arbitrarily arresting Black men to question them about the crime. Within 24 hours of the attack on Ms. Parker, dozens of Black men who were near the scene of the attack on Ms. Parker were picked and questioned. Another 40 Black men were questioned during that time, and at least 15 were jailed. But the police had no leads and no suspects.

The crime was still unsolved in January 1954 when police said a tipster suggested that 19-year-old Tommy Lee Walker be investigated as the perpetrator. On Jan. 29, 1954, Mr. Walker was arrested. He denied involvement in the crime and said that at the time of the crime, he was with his girlfriend who was in labor and who gave birth to their son three hours later.

The following night, after spending over 24 hours in jail and witnessing armed officers physically assault another Black man in a holding cell, Mr. Walker was taken to Captain Will Fritz’s office for interrogation. Beginning at about 10:30 p.m., Mr. Walker was questioned by Captain Fritz, a one-time member of the Ku Klux Klan. Captain Fritz called Mr. Walker a “damned liar” and threatened him with the electric chair. Captain Fritz also falsely said witnesses had identified Mr. Walker.

Ultimately, Mr. Walker broke down and signed a confession. It was discovered that the confession had significant errors, perhaps most importantly the wrong date for the crime. A week later, Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade and Captain Fritz interrogated Mr. Walker again, after he purportedly failed a polygraph examination. A second statement was prepared that fixed the errors and Mr. Walker signed it. He immediately recanted the statement and insisted he was innocent.

Mr. Walker’s photograph was on the front page of the Dallas Morning News and displayed on television news broadcasts. Not long after, at least two witnesses — both white people who, at the time of Ms. Parker’s murder, were admittedly “conscious” about Black men in the neighborhood in light of the “prowler” scare — were brought in and asked to view a five-person line-up. These witnesses were asked to identify the unknown Black man they had seen on the side of the road, momentarily, at night, four months earlier, while driving past him. Both witnesses identified Mr. Walker.

The Trial

Mr. Walker went to trial before Criminal District Judge Henry King and a jury of 12 white men on March 26, 1954. The two witnesses testified and identified him. The prosecution presented the confession. There was no forensic or physical evidence connecting Mr. Walker to the crime. 

Ten witnesses testified on his behalf that he was with his girlfriend through her labor and was at the hospital when his son was born.

Mr. Walker was the last defense witness to take the stand. He adamantly maintained his innocence and explained that he signed the written confessions only because of the threats by Captain Fritz and his men and the lies he was told by Captain Fritz, District Attorney Wade, and the other officers involved. While Mr. Walker acknowledged that he was not physically assaulted, he explained that he felt frightened by the violence he saw inflicted on another Black detainee and that, even as he testified in open court, he was still afraid of Captain Fritz. His testimony also made clear that he was deceived by Captain Fritz’s false claims of overwhelming evidence of his guilt and District Attorney Wade’s lies that he could escape the death penalty only if he signed the confession.

And, in flagrantly inappropriate conduct, District Attorney Wade personally took the witness stand on rebuttal and testified to his own personal belief that Mr. Walker was guilty. He then re-assumed his role as lead prosecutor in the case and, during closing arguments, told the jury that he’d happily “pull the switch” on Mr. Walker himself. 

On March 29, 1954, the jury found Mr. Walker guilty of murder with malice, and the court sentenced him to death by electric chair. Mr. Walker’s appeal, based on 12 claims of error, including racial discrimination in grand jury and trial jury selection, was rejected in 1955.

His motion for rehearing following appeal was denied on June 1, 1955. He filed a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court, which was denied on Jan. 9, 1956.

Mr. Walker’s execution was set for February 25, 1956. After two postponements, the death sentence finally was carried out just after midnight on May 12, 1956. Asked if he had any last words, Mr. Walker shook his head and said, “I’m innocent.” 

Edward Lee Smith, Mr. Walker’s son who was born on the night of the crime, was 2 years old.

The Exoneration

Nearly 70 years later, Mr. Smith, age 72, asked the Dallas County Commissioners Court to exonerate his father. 

Mr. Smith was represented by Innocence Project’s Director of Strategic Litigation M. Chris Fabricant and Senior Staff Attorney Lauren Gottesman; and Margaret A. Burnham, director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ) at Northeastern University School of Law and Alex Stein, program director and staff attorney at CRRJ.

They filed a detailed 148-page analysis of the case titled: “The Execution of an Innocent Black Man in Jim Crow Texas: The State of Texas v. Tommy Lee Walker.”

“In examining the evidence, it becomes clear that Tommy Lee Walker is actually innocent of the crime. [Mr.] Walker’s conviction and execution resulted from egregious violations of his due process rights and a jury’s implausible embrace of inconsistent, unreasonable, and patently unreliable evidence,” the report said.

Mr. Walker was interrogated in a fashion that, decades later, had been demonstrated to produce false confessions. His trial was “poisoned by racial bias and prosecutorial misconduct,” the report said. 

At a hearing before the Commissioners Court on January 21, 2026, John Creuzot, the Dallas County district attorney, told the commissioners that Mr. Walker should not have been prosecuted, but was arrested because of the color of his skin and coerced into giving a false confession.

“It is my duty to make every effort to right the wrongs of the past,” Mr. Creuzot said. “Tommy Lee Walker’s constitutional rights were violated at every turn, from his warrantless arrest to his interrogation, right down to his prosecution. The criminal justice system failed him.”

The Commissioners then voted unanimously to grant Mr. Walker a posthumous pardon.