SEX SICKO GRILLS VICTIM ON STAND
By LAURA ITALIANO
October 24, 2008
JOHN HAMLETT Acting as own lawyer.
Two years ago, a young psychology student was sodomized at knifepoint in the bathroom of her Lower East Side apartment.
Yesterday, in an exchange nearly as harrowing, the woman squirmed in the witness stand as violent sex fiend John Hamlett—who’s acting as his own defense lawyer in the case—cross-examined her.
“I forced you to have oral sex, right?” the alleged fiend asked.
“Did I slap you hard?” he taunted.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I can go through with this!” the petite, curly-haired woman pleaded to the Manhattan Supreme Court judge toward the start of her ordeal, which lasted just over an hour—about as long as the attack had.
“Do I have to do this?”
Told by the judge just to do her best, the woman complied—even sparring deftly at times with the convicted crack dealer.
Hamlett is on trial for allegedly launching a three-burglary, double sex-attack rein of terror in a single apartment building at East Third Street and Avenue B in the spring of 2006.
“You stated I put you in a chokehold?” he asked.
“I sure did,” the woman snapped, averting her eyes.
“And you felt faint?” he asked.
“Actually, I thought I was going to die,” she answered. “Saying I felt faint was an understatement.”
Hamlett, 31, a registered violent sex offender who served time for raping a developmentally disabled woman in 1995, lived two blocks from the victims at the time of the attacks.
The women, sodomized two weeks apart, have both testified to having the sweating, trembling, foul-mouthed monster blindfold them, rub knives along their necks and threaten to slit their throats.
laura.italiano@nypost.com