Alisha Walker loudly sobbed for several minutes when detectives told her that the Brother Rice High School teacher who had hired her for sex had died after they fought in his Orland Park home.
As Walker, now 22, watched the emotional interrogation tape at the beginning of her murder trial Tuesday, she put her head on a table in Cook County Judge James Obbish’s courtroom and cried, shaking uncontrollably.
Walker said in the tape prosecutors played to jurors that she and another woman had gone to 61-year-old Alan Filan’s house on Jan. 18, 2014 after he had contacted them on Backpage.com.
Walker, a prostitute from Akron, Ohio, had gone to Filan’s house twice before and characterized him as a “really good trick,” because he had given her $500 to $600 on those prior occasions.
But when Walker and her friend got to the house that day, Filan felt as if he was “cat-fished,” defense attorney Patrick O’Byrne said.
“She’s not the girl in the picture,” Filan complained to Walker about the other woman.
Filan eventually agreed to having sex with the two women for $300 for a half hour. But when he indicated that he wanted unprotected sex, and the women refused, Filan snatched the money back, O’Byrne said in his opening arguments.
That exchange snowballed up into a physical fight with shoving and pushing, Walker told Detective Michael Bennett, of the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force.
“You stupid bitch,” Walker said Filan hissed at her.
“He punched me in the face and hit me a couple of times. … He grabbed my arm,” Walker told Bennett.
“He was cussing me out the whole time.”
Soon, Walker said, Filan was lunging at her with a knife that he grabbed from the kitchen counter. Walker said she eventually wrestled the weapon from him.
“I don’t know how many times I hit him. I just know there was blood on the ground,” Walker said on the tape.
Walker said she and the other woman, who had since gone outside, then sped away from Filan’s house in a silver car.
During a well being check a few days later, a bloodied Filan was discovered sprawled on his back in his kitchen with over a dozen stab wounds, a bloody trail of high-heel footprints nearby.
Walker, and the other woman turned up with a man at a motel in Fort Wayne, Ind., soon after.
There, Orland Park Police found Walker’s ripped blue jeans with blood on them, her dark knee-high boots, two cell phones and a peach purse that had a bloody $50 bill, Sgt. Eric Rossi said.
Walker lifted her glasses and wiped away tears Tuesday when Assistant State’s Attorney James Papa displayed gruesome crime scene photos of Filan, who had taught at Brother Rice for nearly 40 years.
Walker’s trial will continue before Obbish on Wednesday.
