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#Post#: 320--------------------------------------------------
~ Richard Hamilton, Found Dead on Jan 13th, 2023, (FL) ~
By: BuzzC Date: April 29, 2019, 8:51 pm
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Richard E. Hamilton is pure evil personified.
[IMG]
HTML http://www.dc.state.fl.us/inmatephotos/1/123846.jpg[/img]
He and his crime partner, Anthony F. Wainwright, kidnapped at
gunpoint the very beautiful Lake City Community College student
nurse, Carmen Gayheart, from the Lake City, Florida Winn-Dixie
food store parking lot.
Carmen had told the would-be killers when she was being
kidnapped, she said, "Please don't kill me, I'm a wife and I'm a
mother."
They committed this senselessly brutal crime in broad daylight
shortly after twelve noon as Carmen was on her way out of the
store after purchasing baby food for her two toddlers, who were
still at the daycare just down the street.
The date was Wednesday, the 27th day of April, 1994. Carmen, 23,
was due to pick up her kids, but instead was abducted and taken
15 miles north, off Interstate 75, to a wooded area of Hamilton
County. There, she was brutally ****. She was then robbed,
strangled, and shot dead through her head with a .22 caliber
rifle.
Wainwright & Hamilton were both escapees from Carteret
Correctional Center in Newport, North Carolina at the time that
they kidnapped, robbed, ****, strangled, and assassinated the
young mother.
Immediately after Carmen's murder, the two killers fled in her
Bronco. The next day they were involved in a shoot out with a
Mississippi State Trooper and were finally arrested.
Hamilton was the shooter in the attempted killing of the state
trooper. Wainwright was driving at that time.
As part of her nursing study program, Carmen had been working at
the Lake City VA Medical Center. The unit was called 'Two
South.' She had attended two weeks of work study there before
reporting back to LCCC.
Richard Hamilton gave several statements to police wherein he
admitted kidnapping, robbing, and raping Carmen, but he claimed
that Wainwright was the one who strangled and shot her.
Anthony Wainwright on the other hand, admitted to participating
in the kidnapping and robbery, but asserted that Hamilton was
the one who had **** and killed her.
Wainwright & Hamilton were both charged with first-degree
murder, sexual battery, robbery, and kidnapping, all with a
firearm, and were found guilty as charged.
For their efforts both Wainwright & Hamilton were sent to
Florida's Death Row to await the 'final justice,' (i.e. Carmen's
Revenge) that their execution will bring. These two monsters
deserve nothing more nor less than that.
Both killers also received three consecutive life prison
sentences in addition to their death sentence.
Some of the testimony given during the trial by Wainwright's
former cellmate, Robert Murphy--
Q. "Did Tony (Wainwright) say whether or not she [Gayheart] was
naked or clothed when she was killed?"
A. "Naked."
Q. "Did he tell you that they had killed anybody else?"
A. "He did. He mentioned something about after they had escaped
on the way down from North Carolina somewhere, that they had run
across some black people, a drug dealer or whatever, they robbed
and killed them. He didn't go into no detail about that. That
was about it."
Getting back to the case at hand, Murphy said, "Tony had her
[Gayheart] get out of the truck and lay in front of it on the
ground buck naked, and commenced to strangle her." "And what he
told me is that she didn't die." Hamilton's lawyer then asked,
"What do you mean, she didn't die?" Murphy replied, "You know,
Tony said, "Well, like when you hit a puppy in the head and it
kind of kicks before it dies, that's what she was doing. And
that's when I shot her in the back of the head twice and drug
her off into a ditch."
Wainwright's semen was found on the rear seat cover of the Ford
Bronco, along with some of Carmen's type 'A' blood and
Wainwright's type 'O' blood. Carmen's badly beaten, ****,
robbed, strangled, and shot body was found partially **** at the
scene of the crime some five days later.
Furthermore, Deputy Daniels testified that he learned the
following in his discussion with Wainwright:
Wainwright stated that Hamilton folded the backseat down and got
back into the Bronco. He made Carmen get all the way into the
rear of the Bronco with him and ordered her to take off all her
clothes. Wainwright said the tailgate was up and the back window
was down.
Wainwright said he walked around, got his cigarettes out of the
Bronco and told Hamilton to "come on." Hamilton was busy raping
Carmen at this time, having her lay over the backseat on her
stomach while he mounted her from behind. Wainwright said
Hamilton and Carmen were in the Bronco for about ten minutes. He
said Carmen was crying and asking if they were going to let her
go.
Carmen was kidnapped, robbed, ****, strangled, and murdered. Her
only crime was to stop off at the store to pick up some baby
food. For this sin she lost everything. She lost her SUV, her
clothing, her dignity, her loving husband... and her life.
The loss that concerned her the most though, the loss that
tormented her mind as her captors tormented her body, was the
loss of her children. In those final moments of her life, that
was what Carmen had talked about - her children.
Both criminals eventually admitted to raping Ms. Gayheart,
although the question of who was actually her shooter remains
unanswerable to this very day. That's because both killers lie
and have lied their entire adult lives.
Carmen was found on Monday, May the 2nd. She was laid to rest in
Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens, on Saturday, the 7th day of May,
1994. Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens is located approximately two
miles from the Winn-Dixie store, where her terrible ordeal
began.
[IMG]
HTML http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v63/Maverick1862/graves/carmengayheartgrave.jpg[/img]
#Post#: 321--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Richard Hamilton, (FL) ~
By: BuzzC Date: April 29, 2019, 9:00 pm
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Corrections Offender Network
(This information was current as of 4/28/2019)
DC Number:
123846
Name:
HAMILTON, RICHARD E
Race:
WHITE
Sex:
MALE
Birth Date:
02/16/1963
Initial Receipt Date:
06/12/1995
Current Facility:
UNION C.I.
Current Custody:
MAXIMUM
Current Release Date:
DEATH SENTENCE
Special Note:
See Detainer Section
Aliases: RICHARD EUGENE HAMILTON, RICHIE
Current Prison Sentence History:
Offense Date
Offense
Sentence Date
County
Case No.
Prison Sentence Length
04/27/1994 ROBB. GUN OR DEADLY WPN 06/01/1995 HAMILTON 9400150
SENTENCED TO LIFE
04/27/1994 KIDNAP;COMM.OR FAC.FELONY 06/01/1995 HAMILTON 9400150
SENTENCED TO LIFE
04/27/1994 SEX BAT/ WPN. OR FORCE 06/01/1995 HAMILTON 9400150
SENTENCED TO LIFE
04/27/1994 1ST DG MUR/PREMED. OR ATT. 06/12/1995 HAMILTON
9400150 DEATH SENTENCE
Detainers:(Further information may be obtained by contacting the
detaining agency)
Detainer Date
Agency
Type
Date Canceled
01/09/1997 N.C. DEPT OF CORR. DETAIN
01/09/1997 RALEIGH, NC DETAIN
Incarceration History:
Date In-Custody
Date Out-Custody
06/12/1995 - Currently Incarcerated
#Post#: 324--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Richard Hamilton, (FL) ~
By: BuzzC Date: April 29, 2019, 9:54 pm
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PRISON ESCAPEES SENTENCED TO DEATH IN R*p*, MURDER OF EX-BROWARD
WOMAN--
Tuesday, June 13, 1995
Carmen Tortora Gayheart should have been showing off a new
nursing diploma and cheering on 6-year-old Jessica and
4-year-old Chad as they learned to swim this spring.
Instead, a stone angel marks the scrub oak thicket in rural
Hamilton County where Gayheart, 23, begged in vain for her life.
Flowers of pink, purple and white dot the lonely spot where she
was raped, strangled and shot in the back of the head by two
prison escapees from North Carolina.
On Monday, Richard Eugene Hamilton, 32, and Anthony Floyd
Wainwright, 24, were sentenced to die in Florida's electric
chair for those crimes. Circuit Court Judge E. Vernon Douglas,
following jury recommendations in imposing the sentences, called
the two men's actions "conscienceless, pitiless."
When the death penalties were announced, Carmen's father,
Richard Tortora of Plantation, punched the air with his right
fist. Her mother, Joanne Tortora of Oakland Park, wept quietly.
"It was way too much for anyone to go through. That terror. It
breaks my heart," Joanne Tortora said. "And Carmen was such a
sweetheart. She'd pick up a bug and put it out the door so I
wouldn't kill it. That this should happen to her is
unbelievable."
Five years ago, Carmen and her husband, Ricky, left the Fort
Lauderdale area - where both grew up - to raise their young
family in what they thought was a safer place. They built a
brick home on 10 acres near the Ichetucknee River south of Lake
City.
But on April 27, 1994, in a busy Winn-Dixie parking lot in Lake
City, she was abducted at midday - just moments before she was
due to pick up her two children at a day care center. She was
killed within hours, though her body wasn't found for a week.
For a while, her distraught husband drove day after day to the
murder site, about halfway between Tallahassee and Jacksonville
near the Georgia border. Now he holds his pain within, except
for an occasional flash of anger.
"Not until they die in the electric chair - not until then will
justice be done," Ricky Gayheart, 28, said after the sentencing.
"And then, never. It takes eight seconds to die in an electric
chair. Look what Carmen went through."
--
Four days before the murder, Hamilton walked away from his job
outside the gates of Carteret Correctional Center in North
Carolina and Wainwright jumped the fence.
Aided by their girlfriends, and stealing a car and guns along
the way, they headed south. Later, one of them would claim to
have killed a girl in Daytona Beach on the trip, though no body
was ever found.
Lake City was an accidental destination and Carmen's death a
heartbreaking coincidence. The killers' stolen Cadillac had a
broken water pump, so they wanted a new vehicle. They spotted a
slim, brown-eyed, brown-haired woman coming out of a convenience
store and began to follow her.
Some of the ugliest and saddest details of the crime surfaced as
Hamilton and Wainwright tried to blame each other for the
murder: that Carmen Gayheart was brutally raped almost
immediately, that she begged for mercy so she could see her
daughter and son again, that they discussed how to kill her
while she lay nearby, that she quivered while being strangled
with a towel.
Hamilton and Wainwright were arrested the next day after a gun
battle with a Mississippi trooper.
Wainwright, back in jail, bragged about the murder to other
inmates. Throughout the trial, neither Hamilton nor Wainwright
showed remorse. Hamilton sometimes smirked and even blew kisses.
Neither testified. But Hamilton read a statement on Monday that
blamed the political system for subjecting him to the death
penalty.
Earlier Monday, Hamilton may have been planning yet another
escape from jail. He talked of it in a note he tried to send
paper airplane-style to his accomplice.
When the death sentences were read, the killers' faces were
chillingly blank.
--
Carmen and Ricky's parents, sisters, half-brothers, aunts,
uncles, cousins and friends - a loving group of more than two
dozen - often sat through the trial together. Many made the long
trip from Fort Lauderdale over and over.
On Monday, they drove to the isolated spot where Carmen died to
say a communal Lord's Prayer. They brought a statue of the
Virgin Mary, a role Carmen played at age 4 in a Christmas
pageant.
A butterfly, brown with white markings, fluttered by and rested
on the Virgin Mary and the stone angel.
"It's Carmen," said her sister, Maria.
But peace is hard to come by for this grieving family.
Chad, Carmen's son, once pleaded for someone to dig up his
mother. He then started tearing up the dirt with his own hands.
And Jessica, Carmen's daughter, told her grandmother, Gale
Gayheart of Fort Lauderdale: "My heart hurts so bad I can't
breathe. It's never going to stop hurting, is it?"
#Post#: 593--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Richard Hamilton, (FL) ~
By: BuzzC Date: May 5, 2023, 9:58 pm
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Richard Hamilton was found dead in his cell on January 13th,
2023...
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