In 1986, within the walls of the Southern Michigan Institution near Jackson, a life was violently extinguished. Daniel A. Staggs, a 40-year-old man serving a life sentence for armed robbery, was found stabbed to death in Cell Block 4 of the prison. His death was not a random act of prison violence but a calculated murder-for-hire, orchestrated from within the prison's own population.
The inmate responsible for ordering the killing was Anthony Guy Walker, a fellow convict with a history of violence.
For years, the actual killer of Daniel Staggs remained a mystery, and it was believed that the person who carried out the stabbing had since passed away. The case grew cold, another unsolved homicide within the state's correctional system. It wasn't until decades later that the truth behind Staggs's death would come to light, not through a new investigation into his murder, but as a shocking confession during a completely separate and horrifying case.
Anthony Guy Walker, while on trial for a brutal triple murder, made a series of stunning admissions. In a bid to secure a deal with prosecutors, he confessed to a string of other killings, including ordering the death of Daniel Staggs. In a grim trade for his confessions to multiple murders, authorities agreed not to prosecute him for his role in Staggs's death. Consequently, while the mastermind behind the prison stabbing was identified, he never faced specific charges for that crime, leaving a complicated and unresolved chapter in the story of Daniel Staggs's murder.
