Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Denise Goff was a beautiful child who grew into a beautiful woman. (Yearbook photo)

  Denise was a bright but shy young woman who married her first and only boyfriend. (Courtesy Rick and Sue Goff)

  Everyone who knew her found in Denise a maturity and wisdom beyond her years. (Courtesy Rick and Sue Goff)

  A barefoot Denise negotiates a crystal clear stream while on vacation in Tennessee. (Courtesy Rick and Sue Goff)

  Denise, pregnant with Noah. (Courtesy Rick and Sue Goff)

  The entire region was heartbroken when they heard that beautiful 21-year-old Denise Lee, a loving wife and mother of two small sons, had been murdered. (Courtesy Rick and Sue Goff)

  Denise, the daughter of a cop, was courageous and quick-thinking to the end, saving her sons and leaving the clues necessary to capture her killer. (Courtesy Rick and Sue Goff)

  Denise’s teacher, Mrs. Kari Burgess, described Denise as ”bright as a shiny new penny. A girl who lit up a room with her smile.” (Yearbook photo)

  A check of Denise’s phone showed that her last call before her abduction was to her best friend Natalie Mink. (Yearbook photo)

  Mug shots of Michael King, with and without hair. (Florida Department of Corrections)

  King in handcuffs only hours after his arrest. (NPPD)

  King was arrested while wearing wet pants, his shoes covered with sand. (NPPD)

  The Lees’ home from which Denise was abducted. (NPPD)

  The view of the driveway from the Lees’ living room. Did Denise mistake Michael King’s Camaro for her husband’s car? (NPPD)

  The victim’s husband knew something was desperately wrong when Denise was gone, leaving her sons and her keys behind. (NPPD)

  The North Port house on Sardinia Avenue where Michael King brutally assaulted Denise Lee. (NPPD)

  Inside the Sardinia Avenue home police found Michael King’s rape dungeon. At the left is a radio with volume all the way up and a clump of duct tape with long hairs attached to it. Note the window has been covered with a blanket to provide maximum privacy. (NPPD)

  In Michael King’s garbage was another clump of duct tape with Denise Lee’s hairs attached. (NPPD)

  The bloodstained yellow blanket found in the back of King’s Camaro yielded Denise Lee’s DNA. (NPPD)

  Police give an initial once-over to the green Camaro belonging to Michael King. The car is on the shoulder of I-75 at the spot where King was pulled over and subsequently arrested. (NPPD)

  In the backseat of the Camaro was the shovel that King borrowed from a friend and used to dig his victim’s grave. (NPPD)

  The daughter of a cop, Denise left clues behind, assuring that her abductor would be caught. In the back seat of King’s car police found Denise’s ring, a present from her husband, which she managed to remove despite her bondage. (NPPD)

  The gas can King borrowed from a friend was found on the Camaro’s passenger seat. (NPPD)

  The phone Denise Lee used to call 911 during her abduction was found pulled apart and on the floor of King’s Camaro. (NPPD)

  North Port CSI Pam Schmidt photographs a fresh abrasion near King’s private parts. He said he got it trying to use the bathroom while in handcuffs. Police had other ideas. (NPPD)

  Saratoga County Animal Services supervisor Tami Treadway and her search dog Canine Sekou discovered the location of Denise Lee’s remains. (Photo by Linc Hay)

  A nine-millimeter shell casing was discovered in the grass near the spot where the fatal shot was fired. (NPPD)

  The suspicious area before excavation began. Sandbags were placed to keep water flow from affecting the site. (NPPD)

  The area was excavated by archaeologists, a fraction of an inch at a time, and slowly revealed the remains of Denise Lee. (NPPD)

  Among the items of clothing found near the burial site were a pair of blue boxer shorts, a bra, and a pair of red panties, all worn by Denise Lee at the time of her abduction. (NPPD)

  Prosecutor Suzanne O’Donnell laid out the evidence against Michael King for the jury. (Photo by Dawn Buff)

  The Honorable Deno G. Economou presided over Michael King’s murder trial with a cool steadiness that prevented raw emotions from overflowing in his courtroom. (Courtesy Judge Economou)

  A Knife in the Heart

  A Knife in the Heart

  MICHAEL BENSON

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many of my sources for this book have asked to remain anonymous, and so I can only thank them privately. The others I would like to acknowledge here, for without them the writing of this book would have been impossible: Cecilia Barreda, spokesperson for the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO); Connie Y. Brookes, legal assistant with the Hebert Law Group; the eagle-eyed production editor Robin Cook; Lane DeGregory, at the St. Petersburg Times; Stephanie Finnegan; Laura Forti, at Turner Broadcasting; Lisa Lafrance; Detective/Corporal Michael Lynch, of the Pinellas Park Police Department (PPPD); counselor/therapist Kathy A. Morelli; Jamie Severino; Erin Slothower; and Jan Zagorski, senior administrative clerk, Pinellas Park Police; and Rachel Wade. Thanks to Anne Darrigan for the emergency (and marathon) use of her computer.

  Also, special thanks to my agent, Jake Elwell, at Harold Ober Associates, to my super editor and “Man of Ideas,” Gary Goldstein, and as always to my wife, Lisa Grasso.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although this is a true story, some names will be changed to protect the privacy of the innocent. Pseudonyms will be noted upon their first usage. When possible, the spoken word has been quoted verbatim. However, when that is not possible, conversations have been reconstructed as closely as possible to reality, based on the recollections of those who spoke and heard the words. In places, there has been a slight editing of spoken words, but only to improve readability. The denotations and connotations of the words remain unaltered. In some cases, witnesses are credited with verbal quotes that in reality only occurred in written form.

  FOREWORD

  This is youth’s sub-rosa culture, an MTV world of shallow who-did-whom lives, a tinderbox world—one spark: senseless violence. Pinellas Park, Florida, had long stopped being a Norman Rockwell world, replaced by a new generation of tender savages, unsupervised, enflamed by sex and drugs, running wild in the streets.

  Regarding a teenaged girl’s violent death, a writer asked an early investigator: “Was this a love triangle?”

  “More like a love hexagon,” the overworked peace officer replied. Promiscuity-plus. Made you feel like you had to spit the bad taste from your mouth. How did it turn so tragic?

  It all boiled down to Rachel Marie Wade. She was the catalyst. It wasn’t her lust, although there was plenty of that. Under any analysis, the driving force wasn’t the diminutive blonde’s humming libido as much as her nineteen-year-old mind, her feverish mind, stuck in self-centered over-drive.

  She’d known many boys, and it always ended bad. Ex-boyfriends had been known to piss on her mom and dad’s front door!

  Now there was Joshua Camacho, who was not just her boyfriend again, but hers, her possession. If other girls didn’t get that, if they wouldn’t listen to the truth, drastic measures would need to be taken.

  There was a spot between Rachel’s eyes that went supernova when she thought of her rival: eighteen-year-old Sarah Ludemann, who was decidedly not diminutive, who thought she was all that when she was with Joshua.

  All that! Ha!

  Sarah was nothing, Rachel thought: she was less than zero, just an opening act, a fat body to warm up Rachel’s man so Rachel could get the real loving.

  Sarah had to use her parents’ car. Rachel had her own car.

  Sarah still lived at home. Rachel had her own place.

  Sarah had a curfew. Rachel could give her man what he wanted at any hour. She could offer him anything, any day of the week, 24/7—just as long as she wasn’t waitressing at Applebee’s.

&nbs
p; After months of trying to talk sense, Rachel was through talking. Finally the two were going to have it out. Leaning tough-girl-style against the snout of her car, Rachel heard the racing minivan before she saw it. A 2000 green-over-gold Villager, it tore around the corner, almost on two wheels, like in that movie Tokyo Drift. It screeched to a halt only a few feet in front of her.

  The moment was upon her. This was for Joshua, so good at making her feel special, so good at mind games. Um, when he screwed with a little girl’s mind, it stayed sca-rewed.

  Rachel tried to act cool, but everyone knew the number Joshua had done on Rachel. She said he’d held a gun to her head. “You’ll never leave me. You’ll never leave me,” he’d said, repeating it like a mantra. She got the picture: Joshua gave the orders. Rachel obeyed. In the bedroom. Outside the bedroom. Wherever.

  Some of Rachel’s girlfriends had told her to get away from Joshua. They said that the slave master hold he had on her wasn’t healthy, and he wasn’t worth it.

  Rachel didn’t listen. Those girls, Rachel thought, didn’t know what they were talking about; they had never been alone with Joshua. They hadn’t felt his complete and utter tautness. They didn’t know how he could make Rachel feel. He made her melt down like a nuclear reactor.

  Rachel said he’d told her: “If you love me enough, you’ll fight for me.” Well, bring it on—Rachel was ready. Rachel Wade did not make idle threats, and Rachel Wade did not back down. In her sweaty right hand, she tightly gripped the handle of a kitchen knife….

  Sarah Ludemann’s world consisted of home, with her mom and dad, three big people in a little house, doing stuff with Joshua Camacho, and the halls of Pinellas Park High School (PPHS), where Sarah was a recent transfer student and a senior.

  She had almost finished a veterinary program at another high school, but she dropped it and transferred to Pinellas Park High so she could be with Joshua. Her family and friends asked her, how could Sarah have switched schools over a boy? Wasn’t there part of her that realized what a loser move that was?

  As an only child, Sarah Ludemann had been a daddy’s girl. She and her father did nearly everything together. She took karate lessons, loved to sing and dance. Then she met Joshua—a bad egg, Dad thought—and, snap, just like that, she wasn’t her daddy’s girl anymore.

  Like many late bloomers, Sarah lengthened her stride in an effort to catch up. Maybe she’d moved too fast. Most of the time these days, she was nursing a bruise from getting hit or in tears over what an asshole Joshua could be.

  She knew Joshua was seeing other girls, at least two. She’d already fought Erin, the mother of Joshua’s baby. Now it was big mouth Rachel’s turn. Sarah would prove she was Joshua’s number one. Sarah hit the minivan’s brakes and opened the driver’s door in one fluid motion….

  It happened so fast, five seconds tops, silence brittle to the crackling curses of angry young women, a residential street now a stage, a stormy sea of hair and flailing arms—then a glint of metal, and a razor-sharp flash of violence tearing open the peaceful night, tearing open Sarah Ludemann’s heart while breaking the hearts of those who loved her.

  At twelve forty-five, on a warm spring night in Pinellas Park, Florida, in front of a home on Fifty-second Street North, under a clear sky and a bright quarter moon, Sarah Rose Ludemann was stabbed twice in the chest with a kitchen knife.

  Sarah summoned up her will as things started swirling pretty fast. She found her way to the driver’s seat of her vehicle and she called Joshua. By the time he answered, all she could say was “It hurts.” She fell out of the vehicle to the pavement, where she lay motionless.

  Chaos erupted, and young people continued to shout and push and shove. Rachel was beaten, dragged by her hair across a sandy lawn. Fearing the bloody knife could be used against her, Rachel managed to break free momentarily and hurl it into the distance.

  Paramedics from the fire department appeared and worked urgently over the fallen Sarah; squad cars from the Pinellas Park Police Department (PPPD) came immediately behind.

  First responders noted blood on the minivan’s driver’s seat, floor, and interior wall panel.

  The victim’s parents arrived on the scene. Her father, a big man on tortured knees, arrived first and saw all; he saw Sarah, supine in the street, perpendicular to the minivan, her life slipping away.

  “Lying in a puddle of blood” was how he remembered it.

  Charlie Ludemann could tell by the sharp and urgent exchanges between paramedic firefighters that she was still alive—but it didn’t look good.

  Joshua Camacho arrived and went berserk, screaming that “somebody stab Sarah, somebody gonna get stabbed.”

  Police actively had to keep concerned witnesses back, so they couldn’t interfere with the paramedics. A noisy ambulance, with SUNSTAR painted on the side, arrived.

  Sarah—gray, limp, motionless—was placed on a gurney, loaded into the vehicle, and the ambulance pulled away, with siren screaming like a blues guitar. The ambulance was escorted by police officer John Coleman in his squad car.

  The ambulance took the victim to Northside Hospital and Heart Institute, a little more than a mile away to the south; Sarah’s parents were right behind.

  Back at the crime scene, it took some time to calm everyone down and figure out who was who. Loud and unruly eyewitnesses were separated; first to halt hostilities, then to keep them from comparing notes.

  The girl who’d had the knife was Rachel Marie Wade—thin, with big, sad eyes—now in possession of no knife. She complained of injuries to her head and face, but none were visible.

  An hour after her arrival at the hospital, just before 2:00 A.M., Sarah Ludemann was pronounced dead.

  One girl killing another wasn’t common in Pinellas Park, or anywhere else. Ninety-six percent of all homicides involved a male victim and/or killer. Males usually killed during the commission of other crimes, such as robberies and drug deals gone bad. Female violence, as a rule, was emotional and involved matters of the heart. Girls fought over relationships: parents, siblings, and boyfriends. Girls were possessive about relationships. Intrusion and disrespect easily led to violence, sometimes pernicious violence, but almost never fatal violence. That was what made this one special.

  The homicide investigation immediately dug into the emotional relationships between the players, revealing that Rachel Wade had a history of fiery and sometimes short-lived romances. Sarah Ludemann did not. Camacho was Sarah’s first and only.

  Now, as the rotating lights of cop cars still pulsed over the scene, the culprit sat quietly on a bench. All of her personal belongings had been confiscated as possible evidence, and she looked as dangerous as a sullen cheerleader.

  “Can I have a cigarette?” she asked a cop.

  Contents

  PART ONE: THE TENDER SAVAGES

  Chapter 1: UNTHINKABLE CARNAGE

  Chapter 2: THE BUILDUP

  Chapter 3: LISA

  Chapter 4: LAST DAY

  Chapter 5: “WE NEED AN AMBULANCE. PLEASE HELP.”

  PART TWO: THE INVESTIGATION

  Chapter 6: THE LEAD INVESTIGATOR

  Chapter 7: POSTMORTEM

  Chapter 8: JUDGE BULONE

  Chapter 9: TWO GIRLS IN JAIL

  PART THREE: THE TRIAL

  Chapter 10: DAY ONE

  Chapter 11: DAY TWO

  Chapter 12: DAY THREE

  Chapter 13: VERDICT

  Chapter 14: AFTERMATH

  Chapter 15: SENTENCING

  Epilogue

  PART ONE

  THE TENDER SAVAGES

  Chapter 1

  UNTHINKABLE CARNAGE

  Pinellas Park, Florida, was a working-class town, between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. In 1911, the town started out as one huge housing development when a Philadelphia publisher named F. A. Davis purchased almost thirteen thousand acres of undeveloped land and ordered a city to be built.

  In the modern era, it became an industrial city, home to major corporation
s, such as UPS and FedEx, which utilized Pinellas Park as a hub for their distribution, working out of large warehouses. Most folks had blue-collar jobs.

  In addition to industry, Pinellas Park had a large, close-knit residential community made up of people who were born and raised there, and chose to stay.