Sailor Convicted of Slaying in Park

A Navy corpsman was convicted Monday of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the stabbing death of a bisexual man in Balboa Park.

The jury also found that Todd Everett Fluette, 19, was lying in wait when he and a fellow enlisted man killed Michael Wayne Hamilton, 48, early on Dec. 8.

Because of mandatory sentencing guidelines, the murder conviction, coupled with the special circumstance allegation, means that Fluette will be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison without a chance of parole.

During his trial, Fluette testified that he slashed Hamilton’s throat with a knife he had recently purchased in Tijuana. The Wisconsin native said he struck Hamilton and then stabbed him numerous times because he was trying to protect his companion from Hamilton’s homosexual advances.

Hamilton, an elementary school counselor who lived with his wife and children in El Cajon, would regularly go to Balboa Park in search of homosexual encounters, according to evidence presented at the trial.

While the defendant denied making certain statements that were later presented to the jury, Fluette is heard discussing the murder--even appearing to laugh at one point--on an audio tape covertly made by another Navy man soon after the slaying.

Prosecutors in the case portrayed Fluette as a man with a plan to, as one person on the tape put it, “drink and kill a faggot in the park.”

During an emotional hearing, the jury announced its verdict, reached after 3 1/2 days of deliberations.

Fluette broke into tears as he was convicted on the first count--conspiring to commit murder with David Allen Kring.

During the course of a short proceeding before Superior Court Judge Herbert J. Exarhos, tears streamed down the faces of Fluette’s father, Hamilton’s widow and a female juror.

“It was a very emotional trial,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Gordon Paul Davis said outside the courtroom. The prosecutor added that he was glad that the jury was able to see through the “deception” that Fluette presented during the trial.

Barbara Hamilton, the victim’s widow, clutched the hands of her two daughters during the reading of the verdicts. She thanked each juror who walked by her seat in the front of the gallery.

“That psychopath--and that’s exactly what he is--never cried one tear all during his testimony,” Hamilton said later outside the courtroom. “He never felt sorry for my children. He never felt sorry for anything he did. He’s only crying for himself.”

Hamilton, who has been critical of the press for publicizing a personal “compromise” agreement that allowed her husband to secretly pursue homosexual activities, said that both killers “deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

Fluette “designated a certain portion of the population, went in and did what he said he was going to do,” Hamilton told reporters.

Fluette’s attorney, Joseph Kownacki, was out of town and could not attend the announcement of the verdicts. But another deputy public defender, Bill Youmans, comforted Fluette during his court appearance.

Fluette will be sentenced Oct. 30.

Fluette’s co-defendant, the 23-year-old Kring, pleaded guilty just as the trial was getting under way. For his guilty plea to first-degree murder, Kring will be given a mandatory prison sentence of 25 years to life at his sentencing Sept. 11.