Sharon L. Sant - Utah - Dismembered

[LadyBlue]

HAMILTON IS CONVICTED AGAIN IN 2ND MURDER TRIAL

Jurors in the second trial of George Wesley Hamilton have found him guilty of second-degree murder in the mutilation slaying on Aug. 1, 1985, of Southern Utah State College student Sharon L. Sant.

The verdict Monday means Hamilton will be resentenced Oct. 6 in Provo before 4th District Judge George E. Ballif, who heard the case. Prosecutors expect Hamilton to be given the same sentence he received from his earlier conviction - five years to life in prison.Members of Hamilton's family wept after the verdict was read, while Sant's father and sister sighed in relief.

Hamilton was found guilty of the same charge two years ago, but in February Ballif ruled that a newspaper story about the first trial, which a juror brought into deliberations, tainted the verdict and was grounds for a retrial.

The newspaper story contained statements by Robert Bott, a second suspect in the case, implicating Hamilton in the murder and rape of Sant.

Bott's statements were not used as evidence in the trial.

After almost three hours of final arguments from prosecution and defense attorneys, the one-woman, seven-man jury began deliberation about 1:45 p.m. Monday. Less than four hours later - about the same amount of time taken in 1987 for deliberations - the verdict was announced.

Ballif reminded jurors to consider Hamilton's intoxicated condition at the time of the murder. Jurors were left to decide if he committed the crime intentionally or if it was merely reckless conduct. The latter would call for a conviction of manslaughter instead of second-degree murder.

But in his closing arguments, prosecutor John Soltis, deputy Utah attorney general, said, "The evidence of this case is not based on reckless behavior. The evidence of circumstances are bulletproof. We cannot penetrate them. We cannot cross-examine a (beer) bottle."

A beer bottle found near Sant's grave, a critical piece of evidence in the case, had several of Hamilton's fingerprints etched in blood inside and out. The prosecution said the bottle had been used as a tool to move Sant's intestines aside while removing her uterus.

"That is the ultimate act of degradation," Soltis said.

Sant, 19, disappeared Aug. 1, 1985, while hitchhiking from Cedar City to Fillmore. A road crew found her mutilated torso about two weeks later in a shallow grave near an I-15 exit at Cove Fort, Millard County.

Sant's death was "a brutal, vicious mutilation" caused by a wood-cutting maul and knife, Soltis said. "No other wounds show the cause of death."

Police found a maul near the grave site along with the bottle and several beer cans bearing Hamilton's fingerprints. Soltis said Sant's hands, feet and head were cut off to remove her identity by "a man who was aware of his senses and knew what he was doing."

Soltis described Sant as a determined woman who had taken several self-defense courses and was confident around men. "She was not threatened by woodcutters. She would fight for her life."

Defense attorney Fred Metos asked jurors to put aside the gruesomeness of the case and make their decisions based on the evidence.

Hamilton's "mere presence at the scene and knowledge about it isn't good enough," he said. "There is no such thing as guilt by association. The evidence at the scene does not show he committed any act to cause death."

Metos said it was Bott who planted evidence at the scene and made Hamilton appear to be the perpetrator.

Bott, a drifter from Montana, originally was charged along with Hamilton.

He first denied knowing about the murder and then later, after believing he had been granted immunity, claimed Hamilton had killed Sant. Because of the conflicting stories, his testimony was deemed unreliable.

He eventually was released because authorities had no evidence linking him to the murder or crime scene except for his own statements, which Ballif ruled could not be used against him.
www.deseretnews.com/article/65412/HAMILTON-IS-CONVICTED-AGAIN-IN-2ND-MURDER-TRIAL.html?pg=all

[LadyBlue]

11/22/91 STATE UTAH v. GEORGE WESLEY HAMILTON

SUPREME COURT OF UTAH
ut.findacase.com/research/wfrmDocViewer.aspx/xq/fac.19911122_0003.UT.htm/qx

Sharon L. Sant was a student at Southern Utah State College in Cedar City, Utah, during the summer of 1985. Around the end of July 1985, Sant told a friend, Cheryl Cox, that she intended to return to her hometown of Fillmore, Utah, to attend the funeral services of some high school friends. On August 1, after failing to obtain other transportation, Sant started to hitchhike from Cedar City to Fillmore. One of Sant's co-workers, Royce Barton, saw her at approximately 11:45 a.m. at a northbound on-ramp of Interstate 15 in Cedar City. She never arrived in Fillmore. Cox reported Sant missing on August 6, 1985.

Beginning in March 1985, defendant George Wesley Hamilton worked for Arnold Foch Parkinson on a ranch Parkinson leased north of Paragonah, Utah. Paragonah is twenty-two miles north of Cedar City on I-15, between Cedar City and Fillmore. Hamilton's co-worker on the ranch was Robert Bott. In early July, Hamilton stopped working full time for Parkinson. He then split his time between cutting firewood in the Paragonah area and working on the ranch. He continued to alternate between ranch work and woodcutting into early 1986.

On the morning of August 1, 1985, the owner of the ranch could not find Hamilton, Bott, or Parkinson on the ranch. Later that afternoon, while shopping at the M&D Market in Parowan, Utah, five miles north of Paragonah along I-15, Jacklyn Smith saw Hamilton and Bott in the store's parking lot. She saw Bott and a woman later identified as Sant seated in the cab of Hamilton's flatbed truck. She also saw Hamilton leave the store with a twelve-can pack of Budweiser beer, put the beer in the back of the truck, and then get into the driver's side of the truck cab. Hamilton, Bott, and Sant then drove away.

On August 16, 1985, a Utah Department of Transportation employee working near a frontage road and a northbound on-ramp of I-15 at Cove Fort, Utah, noticed some curious marks leading away from the road into some scrub trees. Upon investigation, he and two co-workers determined that they were drag marks. They followed the marks and discovered a small mound of dirt that had "sticks and an oily residue coming up through the dirt [to the] top of the mound." After the workers noticed what appeared to be a dried intestine on top of the mound, they left the area undisturbed and contacted police.

Officers of the Millard County Sheriff's Office arrived at the scene shortly thereafter. The officers opened the mound and found the unclothed, mutilated remains of a female. Both hands, feet, and breasts, the head, and the left arm had been removed. The left arm was in the grave between the legs of the torso. The body had been cut open from the breast bone to the pubic bone and the uterus and other sexual organs apparently had been removed. Sometime later, officers assisted by a canine team discovered breast tissue under a bush some thirty-nine feet from the grave. The deputy who discovered the tissue testified that there was "grease or a skid mark" about two feet long that led under the bush. "It was like the rolling of the dirt as if the item had struck the ground and skidded up underneath the bush." The other missing body parts were never recovered.

About seventy-five feet from the grave site, officers located a wood-splitting maul. The officers testified that the maul had been used in excavating the shallow grave. The maul carried traces of blood at the base of the metal head, on the wooden portion at the top of the head, and on the bottom of the handle. Investigators were unable to determine the blood type because there was an insufficient quantity of blood. The officers were likewise unable to recover fingerprints from the handle of the maul. Testimony at trial indicated that Ronald Frank Johnson, owner of a Parowan service station at which Hamilton was a regular customer, had seen a similar maul in Hamilton's truck in July 1985. Johnson further testified that in November 1985, he had noticed that a similar, but newer, maul had replaced the one he had seen in July.

In addition to the maul, officers recovered a considerable amount of physical evidence from the crime scene, including blood stains and hair recovered from gravel at the edge of the roadway. The hair was found to be similar to samples of Sant's hair taken from her hair brush and clothing. Similar hair was also found in Hamilton's truck. In addition, the two-hundred-foot drag trail, which began at the road and ended at the grave, was spotted in numerous places with type 0-positive human blood. Both Sant and Hamilton had this blood type. Specifically, officers recovered blood samples from stained soil and tree and sagebrush branches along the drag trail. Police testified that one area of the drag trail, which they called the "mutilation point," was particularly "covered with blood." Near this point, officers found a piece of cardboard with blood on it and a blood-stained beer bottle in the bushes. There were two bloody fingerprints on the bottle--one on the outside and one just inside the neck. The fingerprint on the outside was identified as Hamilton's. Although the other fingerprint had a whorl similar to one of Hamilton's, it did not have enough detail to positively identify it as his. Evidence showed that the beer bottle was manufactured between September and December of 1979. It would have been shipped to the bottler within thirty days of manufacture and filled and shipped immediately to the distributor.

Officers also collected five Budweiser cans near the drag trail. They lifted four latent fingerprints from two of the cans. Two of Hamilton's fingerprints were found on one can. Another of Hamilton's prints and a print of a man identified as Michael Perry were found on the second can. Evidence showed that three of the five beer cans were filled on July 2, 1985, and possibly were packaged together. The can with two of Hamilton's prints was one of these three. A fourth can, which had no identifiable prints, was packaged on July 1, 1985. The fifth can, which had the fingerprints of Hamilton and Perry, was packaged August 5, 1985. A Budweiser representative testified that Budweiser cans packed in a twelve-pack purchased from the M&D Market in Parowan on August 1st were packaged on July 1 and 2, 1985.

Dr. Edwin Sweeney, acting state medical examiner, examined the remains of the body. Through comparison of X-ray records, Dr. Sweeney identified the remains as Sant's. He testified that the marks on the body were consistent with the removal of the head, hands, feet, and one arm with a blunt instrument, such as the wood-splitting maul found at the scene. He also testified that the incision in the torso was made with a sharp instrument such as a knife and that the incisions around the breasts were made with the same type of instrument. Although Dr. Sweeney testified that the presence of blood and hair samples that appeared "somewhat squashed or stuck" in the gravel near the road implied that the victim had suffered a blow to the head, he was unable to determine the cause of death or whether the incisions and mutilation of the body occurred before or after death without the head. The decomposition of the body, however, was consistent with Sant's dying on August 1st.