Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (88 page)

“I haven’t talked to anybody.”

“I have more than one person confirming that you were on the phone with Rachel, talking on the phone, last night. Rachel sat in front of that residence for an hour on the phone. With you and with Sarah. And I’m telling you these cell phone records are not going to lie.”

“I’m telling you, the only time I talked to Rachel that night was while I was running to Sarah’s dad’s house.”

“I’m talking before that.”

“Before that, I didn’t talk to her at all.”

“How many text messages did you leave?”

“There was a lot.”

“So you were texting her.”

“Yes. A whole lot. That was when I told her to go home, when she was on my sister’s street.”

Lynch again said that wasn’t what he was talking about. Rachel was in front of Javier’s house for an hour before the incident, on the phone, arguing, growing agitated. Joshua said there were just texts; and if it was true that he was still communicating with her when she was at Javier’s house, he didn’t know where she was at the time.

“How do you think your sister, your girlfriend, went—instead of going to where it was safe—went to where Sarah was in danger? How did it happen? Why couldn’t they just do the safe thing? Have you asked yourself that question? Do you know what it sounds like to me? Sounds like the three of them were going to a beat down!”

“I know how Sarah is,” Joshua said. “If anyone says they want to fight her, she doesn’t care who it is, she doesn’t back down. Before she left, she said she was going home. If she had said she was going looking for Rachel or going someplace to get in a fight, I would have never let her leave.”

Lynch reiterated the bad job Janet did of protecting Sarah. He added, “I was told by Rachel that you were encouraging her to fight Sarah. That you said, if she loved you, she would fight for you. Is that true?”

“That’s a lie. I would never want Sarah to fight nobody.”

“What about Rachel? Did you care if she got into a fight?”

“No, I don’t care about her. I only cared about her when we were living together, and it all went downhill from there. That’s why I never went back out with her.”

“That’s not the way it’s being portrayed. Everybody is saying that you are playing the field, and seeing this girl behind her back, and seeing that girl behind her back.”

“No, that’s not true. I know everybody is saying that, but it’s not true.”

“I’m not saying that. The newspapers are saying that. Sarah’s own parents are saying that. Where are they getting that information?”

“I don’t know. People talk. They say things about me that aren’t true.”

“This is a girl that you say you loved. Why are Sarah’s parents telling me that you were screwing around behind their daughter’s back?”

Joshua was angered at the mention of Charlie and Gay Ludemann. “That’s what I don’t understand. If they were saying those things, then why wouldn’t they tell their daughter?”

“They did tell her,” Lynch said, his voice rising with excitement.

“Then why wouldn’t Sarah tell me?” Joshua asked.

“Because she loved you. Her parents tolerated you.”

“No parent would tolerate their child getting played on.”

“Unfortunately, they did—and it was the same thing with Rachel’s parents. They are devastated and destroyed as well. Same thing. So you are telling me that you are the kind of guy who has one girlfriend at a time?”

“That’s right. I wasn’t—”

“And you weren’t pitting these two against one another? You didn’t say to both of them that they should fight, with the winner getting you?”

“No. That’s why she was at Janet’s so late. I didn’t want there to be a fight.”

“Okay. What about Rachel? She’s saying you cared for her. That she should fight Sarah—and you would be the prize.”

“I never said that. I never sent it in a text.”

“Okay, you said that your phone was shut off.”

“Yeah, I went to the company about that and they say I got to pay an extra thirty dollars because that’s how the psychics [
sic
] work.”

“What do you mean?”

“Thirty dollars for when my phone turns off. Nothing would get erased—my call logs or anything. And I told them that was bull. Why would I have to pay them thirty more dollars added onto my bill every month just so my stuff could get saved.”

“Everything worked fine until that night?”

“Yeah, my phone died at the hospital that night.”

“Just mysteriously stopped working at that point?”

“Everything went away.”

“That’s a miracle, huh?” Lynch said.

“It had happened before. That’s why I went to the company.”

“Why would it delete?”

“It doesn’t delete from them. They still have it, but it deletes from my phone.”

Lynch reiterated that Joshua was in big trouble if the T-Mobile records deviated from what he was saying. One call, one text different and, as Lynch put it, “you and I are going to be back in here again, and it isn’t going to be as friendly as it is now.”

“I understand you.”

“Because that’s what Rachel is telling me. She’s telling me that she was so afraid Sarah and Janet constantly chasing her around. And that she’d finally had enough and wanted to end the situation.”

“That’s what I don’t get. If she is so afraid of my family, then why is—”

“She wasn’t saying you. She was saying Sarah and Janet. She was upset with you, obviously the dating thing. She was under the impression that you guys were still together in some capacity. She said she only found out that night that you were breaking up with her.”

“The last time I talked to Rachel, I swear, I was running over to Sarah’s house. I asked Rachel where she was and she said she was still in front of Javier’s house.”

“When was the last time prior to that, that you spoke to Rachel?”

“I don’t remember. That was the only time I talked to her that night. All the rest was texts.”

“So during that hour she was at Javier’s and she was yelling into the phone and getting upset? Who was she yelling at?”

“Was she at Javier’s house before she drove down my block?” Joshua asked.

“No, this is all after,” Lynch said.

Joshua knew that wasn’t true. There was no way an hour lapsed between Rachel being on his block and Sarah getting stabbed. It wasn’t anywhere near that long.

“That’s impossible,” Joshua said.

Lynch wanted to make sure he had the order of events right: Sarah called Joshua and said, “It hurts.” Joshua called his sister, Janet, Jilica, and then Rachel. Was that correct?

Joshua said it was.

“What did you say to Rachel?”

“I asked where she was at. She said she was at Javier’s house. And I told her I was going to kill her. She said, ‘Okay, Josh.’”

Lynch verified that Joshua himself had not heard the “Mexican boyfriend” comment, but had been told about it an instant after it occurred, as it occurred before the minivan left Janet’s house.

“You went to the scene. You didn’t ask Janet or Jilica what happened. You didn’t yell at Rachel?”

“I didn’t see Rachel. I was screaming—”

“I understand that you were being ridiculous. I’m not going to get on you about that. Obviously, you lost someone you cared about.”

“The only thing Janet said to me was ‘I didn’t know she stabbed her.’”

“And you didn’t ask her what they were doing there, what happened?”

“No, I just started crying when I saw Sarah was on the floor.”

“Your sister took off her flip-flops and beat Rachel up in Javier’s front yard. She didn’t tell you any of that?”

“No.”

“Why was your sister the one who was punishing Rachel for what she’d done?”

“My sister had hatred for Rachel because after we broke up, Rachel was talking about my sister.”

“So she’s saying things about her. They’re words. Who cares? Now somebody is dead. And when I was out there at one o’clock in the morning, in charge of cleaning up this mess, I keep hearing that your sister and you and your family were going to get even for what happened. Is that what we really need here? Do we need someone else to die? Did you know that Javier tried to save Sarah’s life? Took his own T-shirt off and was down there on the ground putting pressure on Sarah’s wounds. Did you know that Javier ripped his own shirt off his own back and was trying to save her?”

Joshua couldn’t answer. He could only cry.

“If I hear one word about retaliation, we’re all going to have problems,” Lynch said. “Those three women made a huge error in judgment when they went over to that house that night. My question is, how did they know Rachel was there? Do you know how they knew? Did Rachel tell them?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

“Are you mad at Sarah for going over there? That would be natural.”

“I told her not to go!”

“I also have a report that a little white car drove by Javier’s only a couple of minutes before Sarah showed up there. I believe that was someone you know, someone they know, who told them where Rachel was. Do you know who that was?”

“I don’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“I promise.”

“You’re aware that they went to where Rachel was, right? Rachel didn’t find them.”

“You’ll have to check the phone records, see if she said where she was.”

“You know that I am the one in charge of building a case against Rachel. I was the one who arrested her. I interviewed her. I charged her with murder in the second degree. You understand that?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m not happy with what your sister told me about how they found Rachel that night.”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“Okay, we’re almost done. Janet said Sarah had your phone that night.”

“I had my phone. Sarah had her own phone.”

“Any idea why your sister said that?”

“No.”

“What does your dad know about all of this?”

“After I left the hospital, I went to my dad’s house, talked to my mom and dad.”

“Did they know anything about this before that?”

“No, just when they saw it on the television.”

“They didn’t know anything about the problems beforehand?”

“No.”

“I need to know what brought Sarah to that house,” Detective Lynch said, and concluded the interview.

Charlie and Gay Ludemann had kept Sarah’s room just the way it was, as a sort of shrine to her memory. Just the same, but with one exception. All photos of Joshua Camacho were destroyed.

Gay ran events through her head, again and again, but the outcome never wavered. Normal night, Sarah out with friends. Said she’d be home soon. Gay was waiting up. Phone rang. Joshua calling with the bad news. Arriving at the scene while the paramedics were still working on Sarah, getting there too late. Sarah never got to hear her mother say, “I love you, Sarah.” Gay said it over and over, but Sarah couldn’t hear. Sarah was a good, loving girl. Gay’s heart was broken. Gay felt her heart breaking. Just a teenager. Simple pleasures. Movies, bowling, the beach. She was making straight A’s, going to college next year….

And Joshua? Gay’s heart went out to him. But here was another thing: she knew he was a big part of the reason Sarah was killed.

A few days after the stabbing, Lisa Lafrance went to the county jail to visit Rachel. They had stopped speaking because of Lisa’s drug habit—but this was a crisis. Lisa still considered Rachel her best friend.

“I don’t know if it’s true, but she told me she blacked out and she didn’t remember anything about the stabbing. The last thing she remembered, Sarah and Janet and their friend jumped her. She said she didn’t know what she was doing,” Lisa recalled.

To a certain extent, Lisa believed her. She knew Rachel really well, maybe better than anyone, and Rachel would not just run up to Sarah and stab her. Rachel was afraid of being beaten up. That would have been the reason why she brought the knife in the first place. She had been afraid of getting jumped by Sarah and her friends for a long time. Months.

She wasn’t very big, but she had a big mouth. In Lisa’s experience, when crunch time came, Rachel lacked the courage to back up her words.

Sarah obviously wasn’t in a position to defend herself, but Lisa would always believe that Sarah was the one who went to that location looking for a fight that night.

Rachel said that she brought the knife because she thought it would scare them off, and that made sense to Lisa. Imagine how the situation must have looked to Rachel, Lisa said. Rachel was already scared of Janet. The third girl was big. This was the nightmare scenario, the very thing that Rachel had been dreading for months, the reason that she used to call Lisa when she was on her way home from work and kept her talking until she was safely inside her apartment. Arming herself when she knew the attack was coming was exactly the sort of thing Rachel would do. It wasn’t the smart thing to do, of course, but it was in keeping with the way Rachel’s mind worked. She was attacked. Three on one. The stabbing was
reflex.

At five o’clock in the evening, on April 15, nearly seventeen hours after the stabbing, Sarah’s minivan was towed from in front of Javier’s house to a PCSO garage for automotive evidence.

With PPPD detective Kenneth Blessing observing, a crime scene technician processed the van for latent prints, took samples from the various blood drops, and thoroughly photographed the vehicle.

When processing was complete, the vehicle—blood drops and all—was returned to Charlie Ludemann. Blessing glanced at his watch: 6:30
P.M
.

Rachel Wade’s parents did not skimp when it came to their daughter’s legal representation. They hired forty-five-year-old award-winning defense attorney Jay Hebert, who had his own law firm, the Hebert Law Group, in Clearwater, Florida. Hebert was a Floridian born and raised, having grown up in Winter Park, just outside of Orlando. He earned his law degree at Stetson University and had been practicing law since 1991. In addition to being a top local trial attorney, Hebert was also a board member of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Police Athletic League (PAL) and Tampa Bay Junior Lightning Ice Hockey.

During one of Hebert’s first interviews of Rachel Wade, Hebert tried to get to the crux of the matter. Why had this situation been allowed to stew for month after month until it finally exploded into violence, bloodshed, and death?