How a rural Arkansas prosecutor advocated for her pedophile uncle

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Stranger in a Strange Land
Oct 17, 2011
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Last year, while campaigning for the top prosecutor’s job in the rural district that surrounds this close-knit river town, native daughter Jana Bradford cited a tough-on-crime record that she said had brought the worst offenders to justice and comfort to their victims.

“But time and again, Bradford used her clout and legal skills behind the scenes to assist her pedophile uncle, according to a paper trail of letters and other legal records.

Last June 9, just 16 days after she won election as chief prosecutor in a four-county judicial district, investigators from the state and county, responding to new allegations from three girls, seized a cache of more than 400 homemade videos and thousands of photos and downloaded images of child inappropriate contentography from Walker’s residence and arrested him.

Four months later, Walker, 59, who ran a successful construction business, pleaded guilty to more than 100 felony counts in two counties related to raping or molesting 31 children, some repeatedly. He received 39 life sentences totaling 1,710 years in prison with no chance for parole.

Another of Walker’s nieces and his former longtime girlfriend each have been charged with felony counts of permitting child sex abuse, while Walker’s brother faces a misdemeanor charge of failure to report child sex abuse, court records show.

The special prosecutor overseeing Walker’s case and related ones, who was assigned in part due to Bradford’s conflicts of interest, said in a recent interview that a criminal investigation of “secondary targets” remains ongoing. Neither the prosecutor nor a state special agent leading that probe would say whether Bradford is among those targets.