Sailor Convicted of Killing 2 Roommates

A Navy enlisted man was convicted Thursday of murdering his two roommates and will be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Christopher Welters, an 18-year-old who grew up in Minnesota, was found guilty of killing his best friend, Thomas John Gulka, 22, and Thomas Wayne Grant, 24, on March 31. Both men were shot in the head as they lay asleep in the living room of the City Heights apartment all three shared.

A jury of nine men and three women determined that Welters committed the killings during a robbery. The jury found the murders involved special circumstances, meaning that Welters will receive a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole at a Dec. 11 hearing in front of Superior Court Judge Herbert Exarhos.

Welters was arrested by Las Vegas police two days after the shooting. When taken into custody, he was holding Gulka’s wallet and was stepping into Gulka’s Jeep. Investigators found the murder weapon, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol that Gulka also owned, in a safe in the hotel room Welters had rented.

During his closing argument to the jury last week, Deputy Dist. Atty. John Rice stressed that the murders were the culmination of a robbery.

“Something that night made the value of their lives less in his mind that the value of the property,” the prosecutor said.

During his trial, Welters testified that the killing took place after Gulka and Grant sexually assaulted him, an attack that capped a month-long series of harassments from the victims that included kissing Welters on the cheek in front of a woman at a bar.

Defense attorney Mary Jo Barr had asked the jury to convict her client only on charges of voluntary manslaughter, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of 11 years.

“The defense was the provocation was probably over a month’s time,” Barr said after the verdict was announced. She explained that Welters felt like “the odd man out” when the idolized Gulka became more friendly with Grant.