Jason Futch: reporter2.riverbendnews@gmail.com
Judge Elmer Vernon Douglas presided over many heinous crimes in the decades he served as a circuit court judge, but nothing prepared him for the brutality of the crimes that Anthony Floyd Wainwright and Richard Eugene Hamilton were accused of committing in 1994. In an order following their death sentence, Douglas called the murder of 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart “extremely wicked, evil and vile.”
“The state made an offer to both defendants to avoid the death penalty,” Douglas said, recounting that Wainwright and Hamilton had an opportunity to avoid the death penalty if they confessed to the murder of the 23-year-old Lake City Community College student. The stipulation was to not only confess but also tell the story of the events leading up to and after the murder and take a polygraph to affirm their story. “Both of them confessed that the other one did it, and both failed the polygraph,” he said.
Douglas further stated that because they accused one another, both of their statements were admissible in court, which was helpful in determining their guilt. Both Wainwright and Hamilton were found guilty of Gayheart’s murder and were sentenced to death. Before his sentence was carried out, Hamilton died of unknown causes at the Union Correctional Institute in Raiford. Wainwright is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, June 10, at 6 p.m., barring any last-minute reprieves.
Recounting the crime, Douglas spoke of the harrowing details surrounding Gayheart’s murder. “Carmen Gayheart begged for her life so she could raise her three-year-old son,” he said. “When she was abducted, she was coming out of (the Lake City) Winn-Dixie with diapers for her child after finishing her class at the community college at the time.” According to Douglas, Wainwright and Hamilton—who had escaped from a North Carolina prison just two days earlier—abducted Gayheart in the grocery store parking lot. They stole her Ford Bronco, abandoning the stolen Cadillac they had driven from North Carolina. The two men then traveled together to Hamilton County, where Gayheart was subsequently sexually assaulted and murdered.
During the trial, Douglas recalled that both Wainwright and Hamilton had to be restrained due to the escape risks they posed. “They had to wear Bundy belts,” Douglas said, explaining that the belts were aptly named due to their relation to restraints Ted Bundy had to wear during his trials in the Chi Omega and Kimberly Leach murder trials. Bundy, who had previously escaped custody in the 1970s, posed an escape risk and was forced to wear a brace that would lock up if he tried to escape. In the case of Wainwright and Hamilton, the belts would send an electric current to their body, which would have paralyzed them temporarily if they tried to escape. A couple of times during the trial, Douglas said that Wainwright had been disorderly, causing the belt to shock him.
Douglas recalled that the two suspects had no remorse for their actions, which could have also helped their case for life in prison without parole. “During the penalty phase, where if a person wanted to avoid the death penalty, they would have an opportunity to show remorse, regret, and make a statement of compassion to the family. None of that was done,” he said.
Over 30 years later, Douglas remembered the attitude that Wainwright brought, which did not help his case for life in prison. “At the time of the crime, at the time of his capture by Mississippi state troopers, he retained his same mean, evil attitude and showed no remorse then,” Douglas said. “The only contrition was to blame it on the other guy to avoid the death penalty. He didn’t change in court, showed no remorse, and was just mean and evil. That’s who he was.”