Minister Pleads Guilty To '74 Slaying In Arizona

PHOENIX - A man who lived free for more than two decades under a new name after a Phoenix motel manager was slain during a 1974 robbery has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

Johnny Lee Riley, 49, had become a minister and was living in Tacoma when he was tracked down in late 1997 by Phoenix police, who had finally matched a crime-scene fingerprint to Riley's accomplice using a computerized system not available in 1974.

Riley admitted in an interview with Phoenix Detective Ed Reynolds that he had exchanged gunfire with the motel manager, Dale Sechrist, but claimed he didn't know the man had died.

Riley was extradited to Phoenix in March 1998 on a first-degree murder charge. He spent nine months in the Madison Street Jail in Phoenix until Maricopa Superior Court Judge Sherry Hutt approved a request to drop his bond to $5,000, citing his apparent self-rehabilitation. He had since been out on bail, living with his mother in Phoenix.

He pleaded guilty May 21.

"He chose to plead guilty because he is guilty," Riley's Phoenix attorney, Rick Miller, said. "He recognizes that, even though it was such a long time ago."

He faces 10 years to life when he is sentenced June 21, said Bill FitzGerald, spokesman for the Maricopa County Attorney's Office. Under laws in effect at the time, if Riley receives the minimum sentence, he could be eligible for parole in two years and three months.

Riley's accomplice in the robbery, Joseph Gillum, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the case and also will be sentenced June 21, FitzGerald said.

In the years after Sechrist's death, Riley and his wife, Wanda, moved to Tacoma, where they raised 16 children. Johnny Riley became an ordained minister and pastor of a now-closed church there.

Wanda Riley said her husband decided to plead guilty because he feared facing a hostile jury and believed he would get a fair hearing from a judge.

"It's heartbreaking for me," she said. "I don't know what our future is going to be like."