Execution date set for sailor in Houston County slaying, dismemberment
Nearly 24 years since he and another man killed and dismembered a fellow Navy shipmate inside a Kathleen home, Travis Clinton Hittson is scheduled to die by lethal injection.
Houston County Chief Superior Court Judge George F. Nunn has signed the order calling for Hittson's execution between noon Feb. 17 and noon Feb. 24.
Homer Bryson, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Corrections, set the execution for Feb. 17 in Jackson.
Hittson, then 22, was sentenced to death in March 1993 for the slaying of 20-year-old Conway C. Utterbeck the previous year while the two were on military leave in Houston County. Another shipmate, Ed Vollmer, also was charged with murder but was sentenced to life in prison as part of a plea bargain.
According to an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals summary of the case, Hittson and Vollmer beat Utterbeck, from Missouri, with a baseball bat and shot him at Vollmer's parents' home. The parents were out of town for the weekend.
On the morning of April 5, 1992, Hittson and Vollmer returned to the Warner Robins home after having been out for several hours drinking. Utterbeck was asleep in recliner in the living room.
Vollmer had convinced Hittson that Utterbeck had been plotting to kill them.
Hittson hit a sleeping Utterbeck in the head with an aluminum bat. He woke up, jumped out of the chair, and Hittson hit him a second time in the head.
Now on the floor, Utterbeck raised a hand to defend himself. But Hittson subdued him with a third hit with the bat and drug him into the kitchen where Vollmer was waiting.
According to the summary, Utterbeck asked Hittson, "What did I ever do to you?"
Vollmer gave Hittson a .22-caliber pistol and stood on Utterbeck's hand to keep him from struggling. Utterbeck screamed and begged for his life. But Hittson shot him in the forehead, according to the summary.
Hittson later told investigators, "I had no emotion or nothing on my face. I know I didn't. I was cold and Vollmer steps on his hand and ... handed me the gun, I shot him."
The men stripped Utterbeck's body, took $62 out of his pockets and went to a nearby Waffle House to eat. They returned, dismembered his body and cleaned up the crime scene.
They buried his torso in a shallow grave in Houston County. The torso was later discovered by loggers. They threw his clothing, his identification card and the gun's shell casings in a dumpster near Vollmer's parents' home. They buried Utterbeck's hands, head and feet and other body parts in a wooded area outside of Pensacola, Florida. The shipmates had been aboard the USS Forrestal, an aircraft carrier that was based in Pensacola at the time of killing.
Telegraph writer Joe Kovac Jr. contributed to this report, which includes information from Telegraph archives. To contact writer Becky Purser, call 256-9559 or find her on Twitter@becpurser.
This story was originally published February 2, 2016 at 7:37 PM with the headline "Execution date set for sailor in Houston County slaying, dismemberment ."