5 children died in their Clayton home. Did their killer escape?

Panadero Court in Clayton, Calif., seen as it appears today, was the site of a fire that killed five children in 1968.

As Richard and Jean Walker pulled into their normally quiet street in Clayton on Sept. 8, 1968, they were met by the flashing red lights of fire trucks. Their night had been a pleasant one, spent at a fundraiser for John Muir Memorial Hospital, but now horror awaited them at 1042 Panadero Court.

They saw, as they ran toward their blazing home, the bodies of their children being carried out by firefighters.

Six of the Walker family's children were sound asleep when the fire started sometime after 1 a.m. Spread across several bedrooms, Linda, 20, Cynthia, 13, Carlton, 9, Carolyn, 6, Theodore, 3, and 6-month-old Mary Ann didn't realize flames were beginning to inch across the large ranch-style home.

Within an hour, five of them were dead.

The Walkers were well known around town. Richard Walker, the son of a lumber company owner, joined the Navy during World War II and served as a medic at Guadalcanal. When he returned home, he settled into civilian life as a real estate developer during the massive housing and baby boom of the postwar era. According to his obituary, he built the first large subdivision in Milpitas and Modesto's very first gated community. He also built custom homes and, at the time of the fire, was serving a four-year term as a member of Clayton's planning commission.

He and his wife Jean had both been married before, and their blended family lived on Panadero Court. They had just welcomed their first child together, Mary Ann, in March 1968.

"People like Mr. and Mrs. Richard P. Walker of Clayton like children — so they recently brought home their eighth from John Muir Memorial Hospital," the Concord Transcript wrote in a story about Mary Ann's birth. The story noted Jean was herself a grandmother; her 22-year-old son, who lived in Florida, was a father.

The Walkers were not just in the hospital for Jean's delivery, though. That year, 3-year-old Theodore, called Teddy, nearly drowned in their backyard swimming pool. He was rescued in time to save his life but suffered brain damage that required a long hospitalization.

Teddy was back home on the night of Sept. 8, 1968. The kids had a friend over, the young son of their neighbor, a Contra Costa County municipal court judge. After dinner, Richard and Jean headed out to the hospital fundraiser, and the boy headed a few doors down to his home. Lights flicked off, and quiet fell on the suburban street.

Around 1:30 a.m., 20-year-old college student James Hanson was awoken by the sound of his German shepherd barking. When he looked out his window, Hanson later told the Oakland Tribune, he saw "flames shooting 60 feet in the air." He raced outside to rouse his neighbor, a fellow student named Dale Cross, and the pair ran to the Walker home. Inside, they could hear 6-year-old Carolyn screaming.

"We broke a window and I reached in for her. The heat drove me back," Hanson told the Tribune. "Dale reached in and got her. He closed his eyes against the smoke and reached into the bedroom up to his waist trying to find her. He got her and yanked her out on the side of the house."

Nine-year-old Carlton was also inside, but he turned away from the hands reaching to help him.

"I’ve got to go back after the baby," he shouted as he headed back into the flames. He was later found dead beside Mary Ann's crib. Carolyn was the lone survivor.

The front page of the Concord Transcript on Sept. 9, 1968, shows headlines after five of the Walker family's children died in a blaze at their Clayton home.

The conflagration destroyed the Walker home, leaving chaos and ruins for fire investigators to sift through. A few days after the fire, the Concord Transcript reported that "early investigation indicated the fire may have started in a utility room, where a swimming pool heater was located, but investigators said they are still trying to pin down the exact cause." Soon, though, a chilling rumor emerged: The Walkers were the victims of mistaken identity.

About a month after the fatal blaze, a Contra Costa fire chief announced that investigators determined "all natural and accidental causes have been ruled out." Some reports said a Molotov cocktail had been thrown inside the home, while others said an accelerant of some kind was used.

"An anonymous source had earlier suggested perhaps the arsonist had another target in mind," the Transcript reported, "that being the home of a judge who lives in the vicinity of Panadero."

It would be several decades before the name of that suspected arsonist became public.

In 1991, John Sapp, then 38, was convicted of killing at least three people in the Bay Area. Between 1975 and 1985, prosecutors said, Sapp killed a former girlfriend, two friends and almost certainly his own mother. Sapp had a long criminal history dating back to his teenage years in Contra Costa County. At 15, he’d already been sentenced to juvenile hall, reportedly by the judge who was neighbors with the Walkers.

Sapp was such an unsympathetic character that even his own lawyer admitted Sapp was a killer, claiming the man violently struck out whenever he felt lonely or rejected. When Sapp learned he’d been sentenced to death, he laughed in the courtroom. "Am I supposed to cry now?" he told reporters afterward. "I don't feel any different than I did yesterday, last week or last month."

Since then, Sapp has been an inmate on San Quentin State Prison's death row. He's been questioned repeatedly about connections to other unsolved Bay Area crimes, including the fire at the Walker home. He's denied his involvement.

"We think he was trying to burn down the judge's home but got the wrong house," Concord police Detective Sgt. Steve Chiabotti told the East Bay Times in 2014. "But the circumstantial evidence and lack of eyewitnesses isn't enough to bring him down."

The home at Panadero Court no longer exists; it was heavily damaged in the fire and was razed by its new owner the following year. Richard Walker died without ever knowing what happened to his children. On Sept. 24, 2001, he died on what would have been Teddy's 37th birthday. The Walkers are buried together at St. Stanislaus Catholic Cemetery in Modesto.

Anyone with information about the fire on Panadero Court is asked to contact Concord police at 925-671-3220.

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