More than 30 years after Carmen’s Gay Heart was lured into the daytime, raped and murdered, one of her murderers is scheduled to be executed in Florida on Tuesday. USA Today recalls her life.
The US expands how it runs
Most death row inmates faced one method of execution in modern history. Now there are many alternative ways to die.
Note: Carmen Gayheart’s killer was executed Tuesday night. Read on about it here.
Brick, Carmen and Ricky Gayhart saw their dream home take shape in a five-acre heaven in northern Florida.
They chose the small town of Fort White to raise their families and escape the crimes of South Florida. My high school boyfriend worked at home and moved with his 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter, and lived in a trailer on the forest grounds for two years.
Once the house is complete, the young couple strolls around a sign saying “Welcome to Gay Heart Enclosure.”
Then, on April 27, 1994, a nightmare turned into a gay heart. Carmen, who was only 23 years old, was raped and murdered after two North Carolina prison escapes lured her out as she ran all day long.
Carmen’s family was among dozens of people searching for her signs for five days before sheriff’s deputies found her brutal body from a remote dirt road.
Her husband and children soon moved out of their dream home.
“It was a beautiful home and she didn’t even have the opportunity to enjoy it,” her sister, Maria David, told USA Today in an exclusive interview. “She had just moved out and was excited. She couldn’t wait for us to see it.”
David added: “I was very happy with her.”
More than 30 years later, Carmen’s family is preparing to close at least one chapter of their tragic story as one of her murderers, Anthony Wainwright, will be executed in Florida on Tuesday. As US executions rise this year, USA Today is revisiting criminal cases that have led to the tragic death of the victim and the ongoing trauma of their families and communities.
What happened to Carmen Gay Heart?
On April 24, 1994, Anthony Wainwright and Richard Hamilton fled the prison in Newport, North Carolina. Wainwright worked for 25 years in destruction and entry for Hamilton for armed robbery. The man stole the Cadillac and his gun and headed south.
Nearly 600 miles after three days, Wainwright and Hamilton spotted a cute brunette walking to a Grocery store in Lake City, Florida.
It was Carmen Gay Heart. She had just finished her class at nursing school and stopped by the store on her way to pick up her 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son from daycare.
Carmen’s arms were full of groceries as a man attacked her at the muzzle of the car park and thrust her into a blue bronco. It was wide sunlight, but I can’t believe no one had witnessed her abortion.
Carmen’s disappearance caused a desperate search, during which hundreds of volunteers scrutinised the area for her signs. Her body was discovered five days later. She was raped and shot twice in the back of her head. She was still wearing a shirt of her favorite color: pink.
Wainwright and Hamilton were captured the following day following a shootout with police in Brookhaven, Mississippi, about 520 miles west of the murder scene. Both men were driving a Carmen Bronco, having survived a bullet wound.
Wainwright initially told police that he raped Carmen and Hamilton killed her. He now denied either, but says he was there, according to his spiritual adviser, Pastor Jeff Hood.
Both men were convicted and sentenced to death. Hamilton died in 2023 at the age of 59 from natural causes. Wainwright, 54, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday by a fatal injection about an hour before Alabama executed Greg Hunt by nitrogen gas in 1988 for the death of a woman he had been dating for a month, called Karen Lane.
Carmen Gay Heart: Animal lover, nursing student, doting mother
Growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Carmen and Maria Tortola were sisters and best friends. As the oldest, Maria was always looking for Carmen, whom she described as “beautiful inside and out.”
Carmen loved animals and had so much respect for all creatures that she didn’t even kill cockroaches, her sister told USA Today.
“She’s going to catch the bug and take it out. I’m very serious,” Maria said. “She will find a way to safely capture it.
The sisters grew up around the family of Carmen’s future husband, Ricky Gayhart, but the couple didn’t experience any sparks until high school, David said.
“We were walking down campus and he started chasing us,” recalls the 56-year-old West Palm Beach resident. “He said to her, ‘I want you to come with me and get on my truck.’ And I was “she wouldn’t go anywhere without me” I was very protective of her. ”
The young couple quickly fell in love and gave birth to their first baby when Carmen was 18 years old. They married two years later before the birth of their son. Carmen loved being a mom, so she had planned a third baby, David said. She also loved returning to school to become a nurse and caring for dogs, cats and one horse.
“She loved animals, loved people, loved her children, she loved her husband,” David said. “She was making something beautiful.”
Ricky Gayhart, who failed to respond to the interview request for the story, previously told the Sun Sentinel in South Florida that his wife’s murder had shattered him.
“I loved her so much,” he said in tears in an interview weeks after the murder. “We moved here and ran away from everything there was. We’re not anywhere, in the middle of the woods. It can happen everywhere.
He added:
witness the execution of a murderer
David plans to become the fore and center with Wainwright’s execution for “accountability” and because her grieving parents cannot. Her father passed away in 2013 and her mother died in 2023.
Her mother, Joan Tortola, told WPBF-TV in 2014 that she had been waiting for justice for 20 years after Carmen’s murder.
“I have a friend who says, ‘Oh, you can’t continue your life until you forgive them,’ and that’s not going to happen,” she said of Wainwright and Hamilton. “I can’t find it in my mind. I feel it’s a betrayal to my daughter. No, they deserve everything they get.”
David said her feelings were hard to see her smiling and accepting a photo of Wainwright’s fiancee on Facebook, ousting the terrible memories leading up to her execution.
“He has 31 years of breath, a phone call, a letter, all of that,” she said. “Carmen didn’t have 31 seconds.”
Not only was Carmen’s child stolen from his mother, but now his son, Chad, is the father of a nine-year-old daughter named Gabriela, named after the middle name of his murdered grandmother. Carmen’s daughter Jessica has also been married and is a world traveler in the medical field.
To keep Carmen’s memories alive, David launched a Facebook page and regularly posted about his sister. “She was here, she was loved, she deserves to be remembered, she matters,” she said.
David and her family are having a prayer vigil for Gay Heart outside the Florida state prison in Rayford. The all-nighter will be streamed live here on Tuesday evening just before David enters and sees Wainwright die.
“I look like my sister. I hope he gets another glimpse of Carmen before he goes wherever he goes,” she said. “It’s pretty scary to be in the same room as those who killed your sister, but I feel that strength is there, and that’s something I really have to do.”