G. Daniel Walker: Ashlock Murder, Life Sentence, 15 Parole Denials

G. Daniel Walker is a convicted murderer serving a life sentence in California for the 1973 killing of Los Angeles advertising executive William Ashlock, who was shot at a Tulare County ranch after Walker conned his way into the victim’s life by posing as a Los Angeles Times reporter. Now in his nineties, Walker has been denied parole fifteen times and remains incarcerated at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton.¹

The 1973 Murder of William Ashlock

On February 23, 1973, a well-dressed man carrying a carved pipe walked into Dailey & Associates, an advertising agency on Wilshire Boulevard. He introduced himself as “Taylor Wright,” a reporter for the Los Angeles Times working on a feature about the city’s “ten most eligible bachelors.” His target was Bill Ashlock, a 40-year-old agency executive who was living with Hope Masters in Beverly Hills.²

Over a four-hour lunch interview, the man announced he would be driving to a ranch owned by Masters’s mother the following day to photograph Ashlock in a more picturesque setting. The timing was no coincidence. Ashlock and Masters were already planning a weekend trip to the same property, the River Valley Ranch, a 500-acre spread in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Springville.²

On February 27, 1973, Tulare County sheriff’s deputies responded to the ranch after a call from Beverly Hills. They found Ashlock’s body in a bedroom, wrapped in a bedspread and shot in the head.¹³⁴

Arrest, Trial, and Life Sentence

After the killing, Walker and Masters traveled to Beverly Hills. Walker took on another alias, “Tyler Taylor,” and contacted authorities with a story that Masters had witnessed a professional hit at the ranch and that her life was in danger. Masters told her parents she had witnessed a murder and been raped by the killer.¹

In early March 1973, investigators located Walker at a Howard Johnson’s hotel in North Hollywood. He was using Ashlock’s credit cards, and that paper trail led to his arrest.⁵

Walker was tried for first-degree murder in Porterville, California, in 1974. Masters turned on him and testified for the prosecution. The jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to life in prison.³¹

A Record of Violence Before the Murder

The Ashlock killing was not an isolated act. By 1973, Walker had accumulated a violent record stretching back two decades. The Tulare County District Attorney’s Office has described him as suspected in “a number of violent crimes, including murder, throughout the United States.”¹

1954: convicted of armed robbery in Florida.
1958: convicted of armed robbery in Ohio.
1969: shot Illinois State Trooper Sven G.S. Lundgren in the head during a traffic stop near Volo, Illinois, after being pulled over on U.S. Route 12 for driving a stolen 1968 Chevrolet without a front license plate. Walker, representing himself, argued the trooper’s own.25 caliber pistol had accidentally discharged when he fell. He was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 16 to 20 years.⁶

Walker never served out the Illinois sentence. He escaped from custody by faking a medical condition and fled to California.⁷ He was a fugitive when he walked into Dailey & Associates roughly four years later pretending to be a reporter. After his California conviction, he remained in the California prison system for nearly two decades before being returned to Illinois in 1992, and he eventually ended up back in California custody.⁸

Fifteen Parole Denials

Walker has been eligible for parole hearings periodically under California’s life-sentence framework, and the Tulare County District Attorney’s Office has opposed his release every time, as part of its policy of attending all life parole hearings.¹

His fifteenth hearing took place virtually on August 28, 2024, when Walker was 93. A supervising deputy district attorney from District Attorney Tim Ward’s office argued against release.⁹ Walker himself refused to participate in the proceedings. The commissioners denied parole for three years, citing his “recorded lack of programming and self-reflection while in custody.”¹ That finding tracks a pattern across decades of hearings: no documented remorse, no engagement with rehabilitative programs, and continued refusal to cooperate with the parole process itself.

Walker, born around 1931, is housed at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, a prison for inmates with significant medical needs. He will not be eligible for another hearing until 2027 at the earliest, and he has now spent more than fifty years in prison for Ashlock’s murder.¹

The Book and Miniseries

The case drew national attention and became the subject of a 1981 true-crime book, A Death in California, by journalist Joan Barthel, published by Congdon & Lattès at 370 pages.¹⁰ Barthel, who had previously written A Death in Canaan about the Peter Reilly case in Connecticut, drew on extensive reporting; a New York Times Magazine feature adapted from the book ran on September 27, 1981, under the headline “The Case of the Lady and the Killer.”² In 1985, ABC aired a television miniseries of the same title dramatizing the murder and Walker’s manipulation of Masters.¹¹

1
Tulare County District Attorney. G. Daniel Walker Denied Parole 15th Time for 1973 Murder
2
The New York Times. The Case of the Lady and the Killer
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KMPH. Parole Denied for 15th Time for Man Convicted of 1973 Tulare County Murder
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KMPH. Convicted Killer Denied Parole for the 14th Time
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YourCentralValley. 93-Year-Old Man Denied Parole for 1973 Tulare County Murder
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Justia. People Ex Rel. Walker v. Pate
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Tulare County District Attorney. G. Daniel Walker Denied Parole for 1973 Murder
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AELE. Walker v. Pate Summary
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Yahoo News. 93-Year-Old Man Denied Parole
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The Washington Post. Injustice Prevails
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Porterville Recorder. A Death in California Murderer Denied Parole for 15th Time