Navy Corpsman Sentenced to Life in Park Slaying of Homosexual : Justice: Widow gives an emotional 25-minute plea asking for a stiff sentence.

After hearing a passionate and bitter plea for a stiff sentence from the victim’s wife, a Superior Court judge Friday sentenced a Navy corpsman to spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering a closet homosexual in Balboa Park late last year.

Todd Everett Fluette, a 19-year-old Wisconsin native who was stationed at the Balboa Naval Hospital, was convicted in August of killing Michael Wayne Hamilton, a 48-year-old school counselor from El Cajon, on Dec. 8.

“He’s an arrogant psychopath who cares for no one but himself,” Barbara Hamilton proclaimed during an emotional 25-minute speech aimed at both Fluette and Superior Court Judge Herbert J. Exarhos.

Hamilton lambasted the defendant for testifying that he stabbed the victim out of fear of a homosexual attack.

“He’s a selfish, self-serving, evil entity,” she said. “I can’t even label him human.”

Hamilton has been highly critical of media reports that she had an agreement with her husband to allow regular forays into Balboa Park in search of homosexual encounters. On Friday she discussed the issue for the first time since a preliminary hearing in February, downplaying his homosexuality and saying how important he was in her life.

Hamilton said the victim was a loving husband and father during their 25-year marriage.

“He was everything to me and my children,” she said in comments that were later echoed by her two teen-age daughters.

“You wanted to see my husband die, and you did,” Hamilton said. “You bragged and boasted about what you did.”

Fluette and another Navy enlisted man--David Allen Kring, 23, who is serving a 25-year-to-life sentence he received as a result of plea bargain--met Hamilton on the west side of the park after a long night of heavy drinking. While both men told different stories, it is clear that they ended up with Hamilton alongside California 163 near the Laurel Street Bridge.

Hamilton died after his throat was slashed and he was stabbed nearly 10 times. His body was found under a pile of dirt and leaves.

During his trial, Fluette said that he attacked Hamilton because he was trying to protect an intoxicated Kring from Hamilton’s homosexual advances.

Evidence in the trial included an audio tape that was covertly made by another corpsman, in which Kring and Fluette discuss their roles in the murder. At one point, according to prosecutors, Fluette is heard laughing about the fatal attack.

Fluette sat calmly during Barbara Hamilton’s angry statement, but his new wife--an unidentified 19-year-old who married the convicted murderer only one month ago in a jailhouse ceremony--had to be comforted by relatives during the proceedings.