Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (112 page)

According to Lisa, Rachel’s fear was what made her lash out. Rachel wasn’t innocent, her longtime friend said after the trial, but she was being
way
overpunished. It was those nasty voice mails. Rachel’s fear caused her to commit the crime, and it was her big mouth that earned her the long stint in prison.

Lisa attended the trial and watched that jury. She could tell they didn’t get it. They were all older, and there was only one woman! When those jurors listened to the tapes, they took everything Rachel said
literally.

A different kind of “wisdom” came from a blog called Chateau Heartiste, and its controversial column “Chicks Dig Jerks” set forth the premise that what girls
want
was
very
different from what they
said
they wanted. His argument was that women were subconsciously seeking the alpha male, and the guy who seemed most in charge was rarely the most likeable fellow.

One symptom of this was that the alpha male often attracted more than one woman; while the beta male struggled for companionship. Being a beta male, it followed, was an ugly virus of being second best, which consumed a man’s soul. Extrapolating from this theory, Heartiste believed there was a part of girls’ minds—with “all girls” being a constant, identical to one another in his world—that understood that being the alpha man’s old lady, though full of prestige, was not always going to be the smoothest ride.

They would gripe and cry and be miserable. “I’m so over him,” they would say, and that meant they were never more into him. That’s why girls were a mystery to most men. A girl’s perception of her own behavior was skewed.

There was a certain caveman sense to the theory, but the trouble in this case was convincing his readership that Joshua Camacho was in any way alpha. Real playas replaced compassion with instinct, he wrote. They knew what girls really wanted, and paid no attention to what girls said.

Alpha males didn’t say, “Okay, baby, I want to see you, too.”

They said, “Bring the movies.”

Joshua had game, intense game: he was the puppet master, pulling strings, making girls cry.

Fathers of daughters should be warned, Heartiste believed. Men worried about predators in the weeds, when the real enemy for a man was his daughter’s desire for bad-boy sex.

Rachel gave away her freedom. Sarah lost her life. That was the power Joshua had. Rachel still believed Joshua wanted her, even when Joshua was texting: I don’t like you no more. Why are you down this street? Go home.

Long before Sarah lost her life, she lost her grip on a promising future. Veterinary plans replaced by Joshua plans.

So the tawdry world of youthful Pinellas Park in 2009 wasn’t anything new. It was a typical community with the most intense misogynists being other females. It was just human nature, played out by grown-up kids trolling in cars—kids whose perceived lack of options spawned a reckless ennui.

Heartiste pointed out that Joshua Camacho’s sexuality was his
only
source of power. He lived off the women he dated. He either worked at Chick-fil-A or not at all. No money, no size—Joshua’s status in society came from the powerful fact that he had girls fighting over him.

Killing over him.

On September 8, 2010, Rachel Wade was moved to the Lowell Annex, a facility for women prisoners in Ocala, where she was known as Florida Department of Corrections Number R67662, and scheduled for release April 7, 2036, when she was forty-six years old.

There was a “Free Rachel Wade” page on Facebook, dedicated to the proposition that although Rachel was hardly an innocent bystander that night, her life was in danger at the “exact moment” she lashed out. The same social media that stoked the flames of hostility leading to Rachel’s incarceration, were now being used in an attempt to set her free.

As of Halloween, 2011, the “Free Rachel Wade” page had 349 “likes.”

In 2011, Detective Michael Lynch was a member of the PPPD’s Community Redevelopment Policing Unit (CRPU). The unit focused on a blighted two-square-mile area of Pinellas Park’s downtown, where there was an epidemic of crime. The idea was to saturate the area with police officers who worked in that area, and in that area only. Lynch conducted follow-up investigations, worked with crime analysis systems, assisted officers with day-to-day operations, and conducted training sessions for businesses and residents. The unit tried to rally businesses and residents to help clean up the community—painting, picking up the garbage, etc. The CRPU also used surplus tax revenues to help out the designated area in other ways, such as a major drainage project.

During that same year, defense attorney Jay Hebert went on a consciousness-raising campaign, lecturing at schools and elsewhere about the potential effects of the Internet social networks on youth crime.

Erin Slothower graduated from Everest University in 2009 with a degree in medical assistance and nursing. The degree enabled her to cut down from two jobs to one. She gained employment as a medical assistant at a dermatology office in St. Petersburg. That meant she could spend more time with her and Joshua’s son, who stayed with her parents and her brother when she was working.

She got back with Joshua briefly, but “he wasn’t the same.” She didn’t talk to Joshua anymore, and she was content with her “new life.” She used to let herself get caught up in the social drama, but she’d grown up and had no use for that lifestyle any longer.

Erin Slothower would always have a connection to Joshua Camacho in the form of their son. As for that horrible night, and the press attention it brought her, she just wanted to be left alone.

Erin explained, “I mean, I could say a lot, but what good would it do? I just wish I had a do-over button so I could change this terrible outcome. Sarah really did love Joshua. I also know he loved her also, despite everything.”

In December 2010, Lisa Lafrance took the bold step of cleaning up her act. As of this writing, she remained clean of painkillers, and was taking it one day at a time.

By 2011, Jamie Severino was out of jail, but her legal woes weren’t completely over. Her daughter with Jay Camacho was three years old. Alliana Camacho had been staying in day care for a while; but in 2011, Jamie’s mom, who no longer worked, babysat. Jamie was gainfully employed as a customer service representative over the phone. She was allowed to go to school, but she wasn’t allowed to operate a motor vehicle. She had to wear an ankle monitor at all times.

According to police, Joshua Camacho left Florida and was living for a time in New York City with relatives. Joshua’s mother refused to give Joshua’s new contact information, claiming that the media had been distorting the image of her boy.

“Everyone already put his reputation down so bad, told so many lies about my boy. I don’t have nothing to say,” she said.

As of 2011, Joshua had returned to Florida.

During the summer of 2010, not long after Rachel Wade was convicted of murder, Jay Camacho pleaded guilty of possession of crack cocaine. As he was in violation of probation on charges of stolen goods, he was sentenced to nine months in the Gulf Correctional Institute Annex. He was released on April 21, 2011.

Charlie Ludemann has three tattoos of Sarah on the inside of his right arm: one was made when Sarah was a year old; a second, when she was ten; and a third after her death, at age eighteen.

After his daughter was cremated, Charlie had Sarah’s ashes mixed with the tattoo ink so he would carry her around with him forever.

When Charlie drove his cab, he would sometimes stop at the spot where she lost her life. It was there that he felt closest to her.

He asked her why: Why did she go? Why did she leave? Why didn’t she listen to him?

He’d tried so hard to protect her.

Over the years, at night, Gay Ludemann tried to soothe the ache in her heart by standing in her backyard and gazing at the sky.

She believed Sarah was a star “as bright as a diamond.”

In the dark, she can be heard to say, “Good night, honey. I love you.”

In March 2011, Rachel Wade wrote a letter to the author in which she apologized for not getting in touch sooner, explaining that, obviously, she “had a lot going on.”

Despite her predicament, Rachel described herself much as she might’ve before her freedom was taken away:
I’m laid-back, carefree, fun-loving, silly, outgoing, hardworking [and] very family oriented.
She loved music, work, the beach, and animals. Her interests were art, music, and fashion.

I’m very creative,
she wrote.

Her flaw was her own trusting nature. She said she always looked for the good in people, even when it wasn’t there.

She also smoked
way
too many cigarettes.

According to Jamie Severino (pictured), Rachel Wade once threatened to “slit her throat.” Sadly, Rachel’s bloody threats had a desensitizing effect. She was a barker, not a biter. When she started in with Sarah, nobody blinked. It was Rachel being Rachel.
(Photo courtesy Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)