Man Sentneced To Twenty Years In Prison In Springfield Cold Case Murder:

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Richard Leroy Walker (mug shot GCSO)

A man who admitted to stabbing a woman to death in Springfield 28 years ago has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the crime.

Richard Leroy Walker, 56, told investigators he stabbed twenty two year-old Angela Baskin to death in the parking lot of a motel when she came up behind him and startled him as he was stripping wire in his truck. 
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He told investigators that he had met Baskin earlier that night at a nearby bar when she asked him to help her find some marijuana. 
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Angela C. Baskin

Walker admitted his role in the crime to Springfield detectives who went to question him in a Colorado prison where he was serving a life sentence for an unrelated sex offense.  He was always the chief suspect in the case but authorities never had enough evidence to charge him until he confessed.

Baskin's mother, Linda Holt, killed herself on her daughter's grave a few years after her death. In 1995 Baskin's son, who was just a toddler when his mother died, was killed on his mother's birthday when he pulled out in front of an oncoming vehicle in Texas.

Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson says Walker will be extradited back to Colorado to serve the remainder of his life sentence there.  If he is paroled, or at the completion of that sentence, he will be returned to Missouri to begin serving the twenty year sentence here.