Grace McAlister
Reporter1@riverbendnews.org
Richard Eugene Hamilton, 59, was serving time on death row at Union Correctional Institute for his conviction in a Hamilton County murder. According to the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC), Hamilton died on Friday, Jan. 13. The cause of death has not been released. Hamilton was sentenced to death on June 12, 1995, for his involvement with the murder of Carmen Gayheart.
"She was the sweetest girl on the face of the earth, really, and she didn't deserve what she got," Gayheart’s sister, Maria Tortora, said. Tortora and her mother, Joanne, had been waiting 20 years for Gayheart’s killer to be executed.
Born on Sept. 2, 1970, 23-year-old Gayheart was a Fort Lauderdale nursing student, wife and mother. In 1994, she and her husband moved to Lake City, Fla., searching for a safer, quieter life. On April 27 that year, Gayheart was on her way to pick up her children, aged six and four, from daycare when two escaped convicts from North Carolina, Anthony Wainwright and Hamilton, stalked her in a Winn-Dixie parking lot.
"And they, at gunpoint, forced her into her vehicle, and no one ever saw her again," Tortora said.
Her family and friends feared the worst for days, and then an off-duty state trooper, John Wayne Leggett, found Wainwright and Hamilton in Gayheart's stolen car. There was a shoot-out, and both convicts were injured and arrested. They ultimately confessed to kidnapping, raping, strangling and shooting Gayheart, and led police to her body in Hamilton County near Interstate-75 and State Road 6.
"They left her in the woods with her groceries. Like garbage. They didn't care," Tortora said. Not only did the killers lack remorse, but they also bragged in jail about the crime and taunted the grieving family in court. "He's blowing kisses across the room at myself and my brother-in-law, Carmen's husband," said Tortora about Hamilton.
Carmen is survived by her mother, Joanne Tortora; husband, Ricky Gayheart; children, Jessica and Chad Gayheart; her sisters, Maria and Tara Tortora; brothers, Tony Tortora, Vince Tortora, Billy Tortora and John Tortora; two half-sisters, Dolly and Christina Jimenez, as well as many friends and loved ones.
Gayheart’s husband and his father were masonry contractors who built the institute where Wainwright is being held at this time.
According to a court docket from Hamilton’s trial, during her final moments, Gayheart stated, “Please don't kill me, I'm a wife and I'm a mother.”