Backpage Prostitute Gets 15 Years for Murder of Brother Rice Teacher

Alisha Walker, 23, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 2014 stabbing death of Brother Rice High School teacher, Al Filan.

CHICAGO, IL -- A Cook County judge sentenced a 23-year-old prostitute convicted for the 2014 stabbing death of a Brother Rice High School Teacher to 15 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Alisha Walker was found guilty after a three-day jury trial in January for the murder of 61-year-old Al Filan, a long-time Brother Rice teacher, in his Orland Park home.

Filan was found during a well being check when he had not reported to work, dead in his kitchen with 14 stab wounds in January 2014.

During the trial, prosecutors said Walker and another woman who was not charged went to Filan’s home on Jan. 18, 2014, after he procured their services through the adult ads on Backpage.com.

It was Walker’s third encounter with Filan, a man known to his Brother Rice colleagues and students for his gruffness, and the other woman’s first. During their encounter, prosecutors said Filan negotiated a half-hour of sex with both women for $300. When he insisted on unprotected sex, the women refused and the three got into a heated argument.

The fight turned physical, and Walker claimed a drunken Filan punched her when she tried to retrieve $300 that he had promised to pay her.

Filan’s autopsy reports revealed him to have a .208 blood-alcohol content.

She claims to have stabbed him in self-defense and left his bloody body on his kitchen floor without calling for help. Walker was arrested a few days later. During her video-taped interrogation, she wept when she learned the teacher died.

Walker was charged with first-degree murder, but the jury convicted her of the lesser charge of second-degree murder. At her sentencing hearing on Thursday, Judge James Obbish said he found her tearful reaction to learning of Filan’s death to be genuine during the playing of her videotaped interrogation at Thursday’s sentencing, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

“I don’t think it was an act but I think she was living in denial,” the judge said.

During his remarks before passing sentence, Judge Obbish said he did not believe Walker went to Filan’s home intending to hurt him.

“She wasn’t going to leave without her money and that’s why we’re here today,” Judge Obbish said.

The Sun-Times also reported that Walker apologized to Filan’s family, stating that “I had no right to play God.”