In TV interview, Oklahoma doctor says he didn't kill wife

BY KEN RAYMOND
Published: March 27, 2010

John Baxter Hamilton, an Oklahoma City physician convicted of murdering his wife on Valentine’s Day 2001, proclaimed his innocence in a prison interview that aired Friday on "Dateline NBC.”

"I didn’t do it,” he said. "I didn’t kill Susan.”

Hamilton, 62, was an Oklahoma City obstetrician, gynecologist and abortionist. On Feb. 14, 2001, he phoned 911 to report finding his wife in the master bathroom of their Quail Creek home.

Susan Hamilton, 55, had been strangled with two neckties and beaten. Her husband was arrested that day and later charged with her murder.

Hamilton maintained his innocence throughout his trial, which may have turned on dramatic testimony from the final witness in the case.

Tom Bevel, a blood spatter expert hired by the defense, testified on cross examination that the "most probable” explanation for blood inside Hamilton’s shirt sleeve was that he had struck his wife with a blunt object.

With that revelation, the defense expert became the star witness for the trial’s prosecution.

"It was a shock to everybody,” Hamilton said on the news program.

"Nobody expected that to happen.”

On "Dateline NBC,” as in his legal appeals, Hamilton criticized Bevel and the accuracy of his blood spatter analysis, which Hamilton called "junk science.”

His attorneys have claimed that police had improper contact with Bevel, who is a former police officer, during the trial. Bevel and prosecutors have denied those allegations.

"He (Hamilton) was really clinging to the defense lines that the blood result was not the way it was interpreted,” Dennis Murphy, a "Dateline NBC” reporter, told The Oklahoman on Wednesday. "Blood spatter is not an exact science, and Bevel had gone over to the dark side on him. He has not given an inch in that regard.”

Murphy said Hamilton still has the "command authority” of a physician and chatted about vacationing in Italy "as if he was still in touch with the outside world.”

Hamilton is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole at the state penitentiary in McAlester.