Touchdowns and Pom-Poms

Emma Walker was a 16-year-old junior at Central High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, a cheerleader and an honor student. In 2014 she began dating William Riley Gaul, a Central wide receiver two years older. The on-and-off relationship turned controlling, and after Gaul left to play football at Maryville College, Emma’s parents cut off contact between them in October 2016.

Emma tried to end it in November, and Gaul refused to accept it. He sent her anonymous messages, and on November 18, while she was at a friend’s party, he tried to lure her outside with a message claiming he had been dumped from a car nearby. Around then he took his grandfather’s 9mm pistol. In the early hours of November 21, 2016, he fired two shots from outside the Walker home into the area where Emma’s bed stood. One hit her in the head, and her mother found her that morning.

Two of Gaul’s friends agreed to wear recording devices and offered to help him throw the pistol into the Tennessee River. When he brought out the gun, police arrested him. In May 2018 a Knox County jury convicted him of first-degree murder, stalking, theft and other charges, and he was sentenced to life, a term that in Tennessee means at least 51 years before release. In February 2023 the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the murder conviction. A scholarship and a dog park now carry Emma’s name.