Palm Beach County woman to witness execution of sister’s killer after 31-year wait

By Terri Parker

Click here for updates on this story

    Florida (WPBF) — A Palm Beach County woman who has spent more than three decades seeking justice for her murdered sister is preparing to witness the execution of one of the men convicted in the brutal killing.

Anthony Wainwright is scheduled to be put to death Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison. He will be the sixth person executed in the state this year. His victim, 23-year-old Carmen Gayheart, was a young wife, mother of two, and nursing student when she was abducted, raped, and murdered in 1994.

Her sister, Maria David, has waited 31 years for this moment.

“It may sound horrible to some people, but then again, you haven’t walked in my shoes,” David said. “Until your loved one is kidnapped, raped and murdered, you don’t know how you’re going to feel. You really don’t.”

David, who lives in Palm Beach County, has written letters, sent emails, protested, and petitioned every Florida governor since Wainwright was sentenced to death alongside his co-defendant. She has continued the fight even after losing both of her parents and after one of the two convicted men died in prison.

Now, she’s in a hotel room in Raiford, near the prison, waiting.

“She was thinking, this is it. This is it. Oh my God, this is it,” David said of her sister’s final moments. “So I can only hope that he’s thinking the same thing. These last few hours. This is it. This is it.”

According to court records, Wainwright and Richard Hamilton had escaped from a North Carolina prison when they spotted Carmen Gayheart in a Winn-Dixie parking lot near Jacksonville. They forced her into her car at gunpoint, drove her to a remote area, and confessed to raping her, strangling her, and then shooting her in the back of the head.

David said the two men taunted her family in court during the trial, and she believes justice was served when both were sentenced to death. But years of appeals and legal delays followed.

Now, after decades of waiting, David says she will be in the execution chamber, watching.

“No. What he did to my sister,” David said. “I have no problems watching him take his last breath.”

A group called Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty is planning to hold a vigil outside the prison if the execution goes forward. They’re also delivering thousands of petition signatures to Governor Ron DeSantis in a last-ditch effort to stop it. So far, no stay of execution has been granted.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.