Suit claims Barry Walker bribed employee to keep quiet and moved assets to avoid losing them

By JOEL PHELPS | The Arkadelphian

Bribery. New teeth. Political ramifications. Fake margaritas. Threats of deportation. Hiding personal assets. Recorded conversations.

The saga continues and gets stranger for serial rapist Barry Alan Walker as his victims have filed suit against his companies and acquaintances.

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In a tort lawsuit filed this week in Clark County, five victims are seeking more than $2 million in damages from Walker’s enterprise, which includes a general contractor business and a real estate company. Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are Walker’s longtime girlfriend, his brother and a property manager. 

The lawsuit claims Lori Cogburn, Walker’s girlfriend since 1992, failed to report Walker’s behavior and even witnessed him in the act of rape. The suit also alleges that Walker and his brother, Bryce Walker, conspired to hide the former’s personal assets into his limited liability real estate company. A third defendant, Brandy Cox, failed to report Walker’s deviant activities because Walker bribed her with money and the promise to buy her new teeth, the suit alleges.

The 55-page lawsuit filed on behalf of the plaintiffs by the Mercy Carter law firm in Texarkana, Texas, claims a total of 30 counts including false imprisonment, invasion of privacy, negligence and outrage against the defendants. The defendants are seeking $75,000 in damages from each count.

Following a brief stint in prison for a 2000 case of indecency with a minor, Walker was released on parole as a registered sex offender. Just five months later, he continued what would become a decades-long raping spree that included at least 31 prepubescent girls. He recorded and photographed his rapes, methodically cataloguing each photo and video, using the victims’ first names while indexing the files on a hard drive.

The lawsuit claims Walker used his businesses — All Pro Contracting and Bear Lake Property Investments, both limited liability companies — to “finance his deviant sexual desires” and to acquire real estate where he could continue his raping spree. It is noted in the suit that $2,000 was being transferred each month from All Pro to Bear Lake, which has holdings in Pike and Garland counties that include lake homes in Hot Springs, duplexes in Pearcy and various properties in Pike County.

The defendants worked for Walker in some form, according to the document. Cogburn lived rent-free in one of the properties in exchange for managing the daily operations of properties owned by Bear Lake. Two of the plaintiffs allege that Cogburn witnessed Walker engaged in a rape during a camping trip but did nothing to stop it or report it. 

Cox and Bryce Walker also “knew or should have known” that Walker had been raping girls in the months before his June 2022 arrest but failed to report his actions “for a variety of reasons, including the potential for political ramifications” reporting him might have had on a relative. Walker’s niece, Jana Bradford, is the prosecutor-elect in Pike County.

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In the lawsuit some of the plaintiffs recount disturbing details of how Walker drugged them prior to their rapes. One of them noted Walker would make her “fake margaritas” that were actually laced with melatonin to cause grogginess. Another relayed that, although she realized she was victimized, she was afraid to tell anyone because Walker threatened to have her family deported if she told. One victim said she became entrapped in Walker’s activities after stabling her horse at Walker’s property.

Essentially “forced” to report Walker’s actions following the law enforcement raid at Walker’s Glenwood home in June, Cox confessed to authorities that Walker bribed her to keep mum and promised to buy her new teeth.

In 2020, Walker began moving assets out of his personal name and under Bear Lake, filing four quitclaim deeds with no monetary exchange. This June, Barry and Bryce Walker “entered into a conscious agreement, civil conspiracy and common plan to defraud” the victims by “scheming to hide assets, conduct unreported cash sales of assets” and transfer assets to other properties, then to hide the proceeds from sales.

Since his arrest, the suit alleges, the incarcerated Barry had been instructing Bryce to sell off Bear Lake’s assets. In doing so, the lawsuit claims, the brothers were “attempting to re-rape” the victims by evading a potential lawsuit seeking claims to Walker’s assets.

A recorded conversation between the two indicates that Barry Walker predicted civil lawsuits would follow his criminal convictions. Transcribed dialogue between the brothers show that Barry directed Bryce to lie to victims about his ownership of the assets. Bryce was recorded as saying he would need to “study up” on the laws pertaining to corporate properties. Barry went on to instruct Bryce to tell Cogburn and others that he didn’t own any property — that his companies, instead, owned the properties.

A month before Barry Walker pleaded guilty to the rapes, the company sold a Hot Springs property for $325,000.

After his guilty pleas earlier this month Walker attempted suicide while being held at the Pike County Jail awaiting transfer to the Arkansas Department of Correction. According to The Southern Standard, Walker slashed his wrists using a flex pen inmates are given to write letters — an instrument designed to avoid injuries from shanking. He was treated at a Hot Springs hospital. He has since been moved to ADC’s Varner Unit in Gould.