According to Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis, Detullio was participating in an initiation rite to the American Nazis when he targeted a white woman who kept company with a black man and a teenager who was thought to be gay. Both were attacked at the Griffin Park mobile home community in New Port Richey, Florida, during the night of March 23, 2006, by a man wearing a gas mask to conceal his identity.
As reported by Todd Leskanic of the Tampa Tribune, during Ditullio’s first trial in December, 2009, Halkitis displayed letters written by the defendant to the father of the teenager he is accused of stabbing to death.
Along with slurs about murder victim Kristofer King’s supposed sexuality, Ditullio wrote, “I am ready to die for what I believe in. I know what it means to die for my race.”
Detullio Sent Anit-Gay Christmas Card to Kris King's Father
Defense attorneys were concerned that the defendant's face and neck tattooes would prejudice the jury. Detullio sported a large barbed-wire tattoo down the right side of his forehead and cheek, with a heavily-inked swastika and a racist insult on his neck.
Just as Circuit Judge Michael Andrews ruled in 2009, another judge, whose name is being withheld, ruled on December 6,2010, that the state will pay for a makeup artist to give Detullio daily cosmetic attention to conceal his tattooes, agreeing with the defense motion that his appearance could prevent him from getting a fair trial.
When a similar request was made by the defense team of Joseph Bearden, Jr., during his 2009 trial in Bartow, Florida, for the murder of another gay man, Ryan Skipper, Judge Michael Hunter refused, noting that the defendant, like John Ditullio, had continued getting more and more tattooes while he was in prison awaiting triial.
Like Joe Bearden, John Ditullio Sported a Teardrop Tattoo
Judge Hunter told Jean Casarez of CNN's "In Session" that he couldn't justify the cost of a daily makeup artist, especially when photos of Beardon's face had been widely published on TV news and the internet and in newspapers throughout Polk County and the state of Florida.
Even if the trial were moved to Tampa, the defendant had succeeded in setting his own fate, Hunter said in court. "We couldn't move this far enough away to hide you from yourself, young man. Every time I see you, you've got a new tattoo. You're going to have to dance with the one that brought you."
Joseph Bearden was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. His case orginally included a death penalty phase if the jury had found him guilty of premeditation.
John Ditullio's tattooes were covered with makeup each day of his first trial. Some of the jurors later said they felt duped. The fact that they could not see Ditullio's real appearance may have contributed to the jury's "reasonable doubt" when the defense brought in a last-minute witness from the Neo-Nazi community in which Detullio resided at the time of the attacks, who testified that a man on whom Ditullio had tried to pin the guilt for the crime at the time of his arrest had also confessed to that second part.y.
Ditillio's retrial should settle the question of whether he has been held responsible for a crime actually committed by Shawn Plott, a well-known American Nazi and former leader of a biker gang known as Iron Coffins, according to Colleen Jenkins of the St. Petersburg Times.Plott had been questioned in the attack on Wells and King, but convinced police he was not a member of the Teak Street group, only frequenting the address to visit his girlfriend. Another suspect quoted in the Times story, one John Ditullio, told Jenkins on March 28, 2006, that Plott's girlfriend, Christine Cristinzio, had told Plott and others that "a black man visiting Wells pointed a gun at her."
Ditullio's Claim that Plott Sought Revenge didn't Stick
Shawn Plott was held after questioning when it was discovered that he had two outstanding probation warrants, like another accused murderer, Darrell Rice, who has also twice been brought back to prison for breaking the terms of his release for time served on lesser charges.
While Plott was being held for violating his parole, he was assaulted, according to a sheriff's report, by three black prisoners who heard that he was a white supremacist. The Southern Poverty Law Review said the beating happened when other inmates noticed Plott's Neo-Nazi tattooes.
John Ditullio told his interrogators that Shawn Plott had confessed, in the wee hours of the morning, to stabbing Wells and King shortly after midnight,.
"I've taken care of them forever," the St. Petersburg Times article quoted Shawn Plott as telling Ditullio about the victims, but it was Ditullio who was charged in the attack. The jury in his first trial could not agree on his innocence or guilt after a last-minute defense witness, Samantha Troupe, also brought up Plott's name. That led to 10 hours of jury deliberations and a divided vote of 10-2 in favor of acquittal.
Troupe claimed, as Ditullio had, that Plott confessed to the attacks on King and Wells.
On the other hand, a witness for the prosecution, Cory Panode, who had also lived at the Teak Street location, said that it was Ditullio who claimed credit for the stabbings, "word for word."
John Ditullio's case will have a death penalty phase if he is convicted of first degree murder. Since neither his old or new tattooes will be seen by the jurors in the courtroom, they cannot be used as an issue for appeal.
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