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Brick by brick, Carmen and Ricky Gayheart watched as their dream home took shape on a 5-acre piece of heaven in northern Florida.
They chose the tiny town of Fort White to raise their family and escape the crime in South Florida. The high school sweethearts spent two years living in a trailer on the wooded property as they worked on the house and finally moved in with their 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.
Once the home was finished, the young couple hung a sign outside: "Welcome to the Gayheart Corral."
Then on April 27, 1994, the stuff of nightmares befell the Gayhearts. Carmen, who was just 23, was raped and murdered after two North Carolina prison escapees kidnapped her while she was on a grocery store run in the middle of the day and fled.
Carmen's family was among dozens who searched for any sign of her for five days before sheriff's deputies found her brutalized body off a remote dirt road.
Her husband and children moved out of the dream home soon after.
"It was a beautiful house and she didn't even get a chance to enjoy it," her sister, Maria David, told USA TODAY in an exclusive interview. "She had just moved in and she was excited. She couldn't wait for us to see it."
David added: "I was so happy for her."
Now more than 30 years later, Carmen's family is preparing to close at least one chapter of their tragic story as one of her killers, Anthony Wainwright, is executed in Florida on Tuesday. As U.S. executions ramp up this year, USA TODAY is revisiting the criminal cases that led to the tragic deaths of victims and the ongoing trauma for their families and communities.
What happened to Carmen Gayheart?
On April 24, 1994, Anthony Wainwright and Richard Hamilton escaped from prison in Newport, North Carolina. Wainwright was serving 10 years for breaking and entering, Hamilton 25 years for armed robbery. The men stole a Cadillac and guns and headed south.
Three days and nearly 600 miles later, Wainwright and Hamilton spotted a pretty brunette walking into a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Lake City, Florida.
It was Carmen Gayheart. She had just finished up a class at nursing school and was stopping at 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 when the men attacked her at gunpoint in the parking lot and shoved her into her blue Bronco. Though it was broad daylight, no one is believed to have witnessed her abduction.
Carmen's disappearance set off a frantic search, during which hundreds of volunteers scoured the area for any sign of her. Her body was found five days later. She had been raped and shot twice in the back of the head. She was still wearing a shirt in her favorite color: pink.
Wainwright and Hamilton were captured the next day following a shootout with police in Brookhaven, Mississippi, about 520 miles west of the murder scene. The men, who both survived gunshot wounds, had been driving Carmen's Bronco.
Wainwright initially told police that he raped Carmen and that Hamilton killed her. He now denies doing either, though he says he was there, according to his spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeff Hunt.
Both men were convicted and sentenced to death. Hamilton died in 2023 of natural causes at the age of 59. Wainwright, 54, is set to be executed on Tuesday by lethal injection about an hour before Alabama executes Greg Hunt by nitrogen gas for the 1988 beating death of a woman he had been dating for a month named Karen Lane.
Carmen Gayheart: animal lover, nursing student, doting mother
Growing up in Fort Lauderdale, Carmen and Maria Tortora were sisters and best friends. As the oldest, Maria was always looking out for Carmen, whom she described as "beautiful inside and out."
Carmen loved animals and respected all creatures so much, that she wouldn't even kill a cockroach, her sister told USA TODAY.
"She would catch the bug and take it out. I am so serious," said Maria, whose last name is now David. "She would find a way to capture it safely, not hurt it in any way shape or form. She was one of a kind that’s for sure."
The sisters grew up around the family of Carmen's future husband, Ricky Gayheart, but the couple didn't experience a spark until high school, David said.
"We were walking around campus and he started following us around," the 56-year-old West Palm Beach resident recalled. "He said to her, 'I want you to come with me and take a ride in my truck.' And I was like, 'What? She's not going anywhere without me.' I was very protective over her."
The young couple soon fell in love and had their first baby when Carmen was 18. They married before the birth of their son two years later. Carmen loved being a mom so much she was planning on a third baby, David said. She had also returned to school to become a nurse and loved taking care of their dogs, cats and one horse.
"She loved animals, she loved people, she loved her children, she loved her husband," David said. "She was building something beautiful."
Ricky Gayheart, who did not respond to an interview request for this story, previously told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that his wife's murder shattered him.
"I loved her very much," he said through tears in an interview just a couple weeks after the murder. "We moved up here to get away from everything down there. We're in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the woods . . . It can happen anywhere. It goes to show you."
He added: "She didn't have a mean bone in her body. She's too good for this world."
Witnessing a killer's execution
David plans on being front and center at Wainwright's execution for "accountability" and because her heartbroken parents can't. Her father died in 2013 and her mother died in 2023.
Her mother, Joanne Tortora, told WPBF-TV in 2014 that she had been waiting for justice for 20 years after Carmen's murder.
"I have friends who say, 'Oh, you can't move on with your life until you forgive them,' and it's just not going to happen," she said of Wainwright and Hamilton. "I can't find it in my heart. I feel it's a betrayal to my daughter. No, they deserve everything they get and more."
David said that her emotions have been running high as she relives terrible memories leading up to the execution and that it's been difficult seeing Wainwright's fiancée post photos on Facebook of the two of them smiling and embracing.
"He's had 31 years breathing, phone calls, letters, all of that," she said. "Carmen didn’t have 31 seconds."
Not only were Carmen's children deprived of their mother but now her son Chad is a father to a 9-year-old daughter named Gabriela, named after her slain grandmother's middle name. Carmen's daughter Jessica also married and is a world traveler in the medical field.
To help keep Carmen's memory alive, David started a Facebook page and regularly posts about her sister. "She was here, she was loved, she deserves to be remembered, she mattered," she said.
David and her family are holding a prayer vigil outside for Gayheart outside the Florida State Prison in Raiford. The vigil will be streamed live here on Tuesday evening, just before David goes inside to watch Wainwright die.
"I look a lot like my sister and I’m hoping that he sees a glimpse of Carmen one more time before he goes to where he's going," she said. "It is pretty intimidating to be in the same room with the people that killed your sister but I feel like the strength will be there and it's something I really have to do."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: She stopped at the grocery store before picking up her kids. She was never seen alive again
Reporting by Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY / USA TODAY
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