Interpol’s Most Wanted

Albert Johnson Walker ran a financial services business in Ontario, Canada. By 1990 he had taken about CA$3.2 million from more than seventy clients, and he fled to Europe with his teenage daughter. He became an international fugitive. In England he used the name David Davis and befriended Ronald Platt, a television repairman who had grown up in Canada. Walker later obtained Platt’s birth certificate and driving licence and began living as Ronald Platt.

In July 1996, fisherman John Copik pulled a man’s body from the English Channel off the south Devon coast. The most useful clue on the body was a Rolex watch. Rolex’s service records showed it had been repaired for Ronald Platt, and the watch’s power reserve helped investigators estimate when he died. Police found that another man was using Platt’s name, and that man was Albert Walker. Detectives concluded Platt had been killed and dumped at sea from Walker’s boat.

Walker was convicted of Platt’s murder in 1998 and given the mandatory life sentence. He was transferred to a Canadian prison in 2005 and in 2007 received four more years for his fraud. The Parole Board of Canada denied him day parole in 2024.