Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  The major highways into Tampa went through Pinellas Park. At night the population was approximately fifty thousand residents, but hundreds of thousands passed through the city during daytime hours.

  It was the third largest city in Pinellas County, behind Clearwater and St. Petersburg, and—perhaps revealingly—the county’s only landlocked town.

  There had been a time, a half century before, when the city was predominantly white, and its citizens liked it that way. Back then, prejudice ruled. But over the years, integration came and progressive thought pushed its way in.

  Of course, old-fashioned beliefs had not left completely, but groups of young people were far more inclined to be comprised of races mixing together than were those of their elders.

  Because there was no waterfront, there wasn’t a lot of money in Pinellas Park. Rich folks, for the most part, chose to live near the shore where ocean breezes provided nature’s air conditioning, where there were marinas for yachts and private boats. Instead, in Pinellas Park there were quite a few trailer parks and God-fearing people who worked hard and had kids.

  The springtime was the best season in Pinellas Park. The hard rains of winter were over, and the oppressive heat of summer had yet to come. On the third Saturday of March, after the Florida State Fair and the Florida Strawberry Festival, the city hosted an annual event called “Country in the Park.” There was a free daylong concert in the band shell behind City Hall, amusement park rides, NASCAR displays, and a firefighter chili cook-off.

  Like anywhere, there was a segment of the local youth that had antisocial difficulties. These kids lacked upward mobility and hope. Regardless of race, they were apt to be caught up in the prevalent “gangsta” culture.

  Pinellas Park High School—whose notable alumni included major-league baseball player Nick Masset, Playboy Playmate Pamela Stein, and former New York Jets quarterback Browning Nagle—was known for tragic and scandalous events. The school, in fact, had an uncomfortable history of violence, a Columbine-like legacy.

  On February 11, 1988, the school was thrust into the headlines when two students—Jason Harless and Jason McCoy—brought stolen guns to school with them and shot three members of the faculty and administration, killing one. Harless was sentenced to seventeen years in prison, but he served only eight. McCoy was sentenced to six years in prison, but he only served fourteen months in a juvie facility.

  In 2005, the school again earned unwanted publicity when police were called to break up a fight and used a Taser three times on one unruly student. That same year, a teacher was busted after he enticed several female students to e-mail him nude photos of themselves.

  In mid-April 2009, a time when the young people of Pinellas Park should have had their minds on upcoming proms, graduation, how many teens could fit into a limo, and other celebrations of youth, teenaged Sarah Ludemann was battling the Joshua blues. Simultaneously, news came to her attention of unspeakable carnage.

  On Friday night, April 10, four students had died, and another was seriously injured, when a 2005 Lexus, speeding south on Eighty-sixth Avenue in Seminole, was passing a 1993 Lumina on the left side, when the Lumina made a left turn. The cars came together, sending the Lexus into a large tree, where it caught fire. Three teens were pronounced dead at the scene, and a fourth passed away on his way to the hospital.

  A car crash with multiple fatalities!

  Knowing their school’s problematic history, students worried.

  Who would be next? Who would be the next kid to have something horrible happen?

  Chapter 2

  THE BUILDUP

  Media efforts to tell this story in shorthand have framed Sarah Ludemann and Rachel Wade as two girls with a lot in common. But was that really the case? Sure, both had once dreamed of being a veterinarian. Beyond that, though, they came from very different places.

  Sarah’s mom, Gay, was a surgical nurse. Her dad, Charlie, drove a cab. They were from New York but migrated southward to be “warm and safe.” They’d been married sixteen years when they had their only child, tomboy Sarah. Sarah lived her whole life in the same house, a single-level lime-colored stucco home.

  She liked to hang out with her dad, riding beside him sometimes in his taxi, blasting the radio and singing Keith Urban songs. According to Sarah’s friend since preschool, Danielle Eyermann, “Sarah loved to sing and dance.” The friends would work out their own Britney Spears–style choreography. Sarah attended John Hopkins Middle School in St. Petersburg. Danielle said that when other girls her age already had real boyfriends, Sarah was still crushing on country singers and Tampa Bay Rays baseball players.

  Sarah started high school at Tarpon Springs because it had a veterinary medicine program. But the school was more than an hour bus ride away, and she had to get up when it was still dark.

  In tenth grade, Sarah and friend Amber Malinchock hung out a lot and ate at Chick-fil-A. It was there that Sarah met Joshua Camacho, who used to come out and talk to the girls when he was on break.

  Joshua told them he was starting his senior year at Pinellas Park High School. Amber remembered he always reeked of French fries. One time he winked at Sarah, and that was that. She was giddy in love; her face was frozen into a dreamy smile.

  Sarah decided soon thereafter to replace one dream with another. She didn’t want to be a veterinarian anymore. She wanted to get close to Joshua Camacho—so she disregarded just about everybody’s advice and transferred to Pinellas Park High.

  Sarah was upset that fall when she showed up at her new school and Joshua gave her the cold shoulder. She had to prove her love for him before he would pay attention to her.

  As Sarah’s friend Amber later put it, “Most people have their first love when they’re younger. She loved him. She really, really loved him.”

  They say that opposites attract. That was certainly the case here. The good girl was attracted to a bad boy. He sent her photos on her cell phone: flexing, smoking fat doobs, brandishing his CAMACHO tattoo in large letters across his back.

  But he wasn’t just a gangsta. He could sweet-talk, too. Sarah’s mother didn’t like it, but she understood the appeal. Was he good? Was he bad?

  Sarah had been yanked off the straight and narrow, and Gay Ludemann wondered if she’d ever get back on track. Her friends said it was stupid to be attracted to a boy like that; it was like climbing out on the ledge and wondering what it would feel like to fall.

  As Charlie put it, they did everything to get Sarah to “see the light.” They warned her that she’d never been with a boy before. She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know about the pitfalls of relationships. But it didn’t matter what they said. Parents were so yesterday. Joshua was now.

  Everything would be fine, if only it weren’t for that thorn in Sarah’s side—the little firecracker called Rachel Wade. Something was going to have to give with her.

  It had been months of insults back and forth, stalking, harassment, and domestic violence. Dealing with Rachel was nerve-racking. For friends and foe alike. Rachel came off sometimes as, well, not quite stable. Her history demonstrated that….

  Rachel didn’t come from a visibly broken home. Rachel’s mom, Janet, was an assistant teacher at an elementary school. Her dad, Barry, was a food-distributor truck driver.

  Her seemingly normal upbringing occurred in a suburban home, painted brown, with an aboveground pool in the backyard. The youngest of two children, she’d been a happy little girl, reading about, drawing, and pretending to be a Disney princess. She had so many friends and loved attention.

  Rachel’s friend Egle Nakaite said, “People sometimes thought she was prissy, but she wasn’t, once you got to know her.” Rachel was still in elementary school when she met Joshua Camacho, whose family—parents, six brothers, and a sister—had just moved to Florida from the Dominican Republic.

  By high school, Rachel had no desire to be one of the goody-goody girls. She saw life as one big party. Studying was cutting into her fun time
. By the time she was sixteen, she was a rebel, defying her parents’ attempts to keep her home.

  “I don’t need your rules,” she hissed, eyes squinted.

  “I kept telling her that nothing good ever happens after midnight,” her father, Barry, sadly recalled.

  On March 9, 2005, less than two weeks after her fifteenth birthday, Rachel started a long and painful habit of running away from home. The first time, it scared her parents half to death. She had been punished, grounded. But instead of coming home after school and staying inside as she was supposed to, she didn’t come home at all. Rachel’s parents called her friends, who agreed that they’d seen Rachel at school, but not since. She didn’t go home, but she did go to school the next day, and that was where cops nabbed her, taking her right out of class and into the Juvenile Assessment Center.

  Rachel pulled a switcheroo on May 27, 2005. She called 911 on her parents.

  Ha! That would show them.

  When the dispatcher asked what her emergency was, Rachel said her parents wouldn’t let her go out at night with her boyfriend and her friends. It was about ten o’clock when Officer John Coleman pulled up in front of the Wade household. Rachel complained to him that her parents didn’t like the guy she was dating. They thought he was too old for her, and that she wasn’t allowed to see him anymore. They said that she had to stay in her room. She was frustrated that her parents couldn’t communicate with her.

  After finishing with Rachel, Officer Coleman spoke with her dad. Barry Wade said that earlier in the day, he’d gone to one of Rachel’s friends’ houses to pick her up, and he saw her walking down the street with an older boy whom they didn’t like.

  Coleman tried to calm the situation down. He suggested family counseling, and recommended that another family member mediate the next time Barry and Rachel spoke.

  Rachel’s parents were away and her grandmother was babysitting on July 1, 2005, when Rachel snuck out her bedroom window. Her grandma called the police, suggesting they look for her at a guy named Jake’s house. Rachel came home before she could be listed as missing; and when police spoke to Jake, he said he had not seen or heard from Rachel.

  On October 12, Rachel fought with her mom and left the house. Janet called the police, who arrived to find Rachel had only gotten as far as the next block, where she’d stopped and cried. The cop took her home.

  On November 17, 2005, a woman named Gail Kish called Detective Adam Geissenberger. Kish was the secretary of the freshman department at Pinellas Park High School, and Geissenberger was the PPPD investigator who normally worked the PPHS beat. Kish said there was a problem regarding a student there named Rachel Wade.

  Geissenberger said he was familiar with Ms. Wade and would be right over. On the way, he recalled that he had seen Rachel just that morning in the parking lot outside school. She was with an older male, whom he recognized as Rachel’s boyfriend, Jose Hernandez (pseudonym). It had been almost nine o’clock, and school had started at 7:05 A.M., but he took no action because the couple was walking toward the school rather than away from it, and perhaps they were just late.

  At Kish’s office, Geissenberger learned that Rachel had been in school but left when Hernandez called her from outside. Hernandez did not have permission to take her out of school, and she did not have permission to leave.

  Kish was particularly wary about this situation because she knew Rachel’s parents and knew that a few days earlier they had caught Rachel in Hernandez’s car engaging in sexual activity. Since he was nineteen—although still a student at PPHS—and she was fifteen, they were very worried about the situation and threatened to have the young man prosecuted if it didn’t stop. She would say she was going to walk the dog, but then she’d disappear. This morning’s movements near the high school led Kish to believe that Jose and Rachel hadn’t stopped having sex.

  Geissenberger called the Wades, reported the new information, and asked if they still wanted Hernandez prosecuted. They said they did. The officer had an office in the high school and went there. He summoned Rachel Wade, who reported to him, appearing somewhat sheepish.

  He explained that he was there because of her ongoing, inappropriate, and illegal relationship with Hernandez, and he was going to have to ask her a series of pretty personal questions.

  Rachel was quiet for a few moments and then asked Geissenberger how much he already knew. He told her, and then asked her how long she’d been seeing Hernandez. She said it started right at the beginning of the school year, which that year had been August 3.

  “You have been seeing him the whole time since the beginning of school?” the cop asked.

  “No, our relationship has been off and on,” Rachel replied.

  “Are you sexually active with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many times have you had sex with him?”

  Pause. “Two or three,” she said. All of the sex had been vaginal intercourse; all of it was consensual.

  “Oral sex?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you have sex with him, Rachel?”

  “He pressured me to do it with him,” she said. She held out for a while, but they kept getting closer and closer to doing it; then one day “it just happened.”

  Geissenberger asked about contraception. Rachel said they had used protection every time. Condoms at first, but she eventually went to the health department and got birth control pills, without telling her parents. Rachel said she and Hernandez had not had sex since they were caught. They’d only done it three times—once in his car and twice at his house.

  He asked her about that morning. She said she hadn’t been feeling good; and besides, she wanted to talk to Jose, so she left school, met him, and they drove around for an hour or so. Then she came back, and that was when Geissenberger saw her.

  The officer put Rachel in a separate office with the door shut. He didn’t want Rachel socializing and potentially interfering with the investigation.

  Geissenberger found out which classroom Hernandez was in and pulled him out of class personally. In the cop’s office, Geissenberger advised Hernandez that he was conducting a criminal investigation and read him his Miranda rights.

  “This is about Rachel Wade, isn’t it?” Hernandez asked.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s because she’s a minor, right?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You want to talk to me because I’m having sex with a minor, right?”

  Geissenberger said that was precisely right. “I’m going to ask you very direct questions about your relationship, and it would be in your best interests to tell me the whole and absolute truth.”

  “I understand. I’ll tell the truth.”

  His answers jibed with Rachel’s, at first. They’d had sex only two or three times. Always consensual. Always vaginal. Then his answers diverged from hers.

  “Have you ever performed oral sex on one another?” the detective asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who does it to who?”

  “In most cases, I do it to her, but she has done it to me as well, yes.”

  Hernandez told the cop about that morning. He said it was he, rather than she, who hadn’t felt okay. Rachel came out of school and got in his car. They drove to his house, but they just talked there. No sex.

  “You know, I’ve already talked to Rachel, and I think you are lying,” Geissenberger bluffed.

  Hernandez bit, and fessed up that he and Rachel had had vaginal intercourse that morning. He had also performed oral sex on her.

  “Tell me again how many times you and Rachel have had sex?”

  “Um, about twenty or thirty times,” Hernandez said, although he maintained that it was always consensual, and usually took place either at his house or in his car.

  Hernandez interrupted the interview and asked if he could call his boss at work and tell him that he was running late. The cop would not allow him to use his cell phone, but said it was okay to
use the office phone.

  He then asked if he could get his lunch from the cafeteria, and again Geissenberger said that was okay. The detective waited, and Hernandez returned with his lunch and ate as he answered further questions. The detective gave him a form to fill out, and then he went to talk to Rachel again.

  “You lied to me about the number of times you had sex with Jose,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “And you lied about oral sex, too.”

  “It’s embarrassing to talk about that stuff. I wanted to tell you the truth, but I’ve never been able to talk about that with anyone,” she said.

  “You have performed oral sex on Jose?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he has performed oral sex on you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you and he had sex this morning, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have had sex between twenty and thirty times with him?”

  “No!”

  “How often?”

  “Maybe fifteen times.”

  Rachel got a ride home from Ms. Kish. Hernandez was arrested by Detective Geissenberger and charged with lewd and lascivious battery in connection with unlawful sexual activity with a child.

  Rachel was home only a matter of minutes when her mother called the police. Rachel came home spitting mad that her parents had told her school that she’d been caught having sex. It was humiliating beyond words. An officer came to the house and stayed long enough to make sure everyone had calmed down; then the cop left.

  On November 20, 2005, Rachel’s mom called the police. Detective Geissenberger responded. Janet said Rachel was out again with Jose Hernandez, the adult ephebophile who was illegally having relations with her daughter.

  Police officers took all crime seriously, but some didn’t feel Janet’s plans to prosecute Jose were promising. The adult-having-sex-with-a-child thing seemed less perverted when one considered that Rachel and Jose attended the same school. Jose might have been an adult, technically, but he wasn’t forty, either. The trick here, they suspected, was getting Rachel to keep her pants on. If it wasn’t Jose, it was going to be someone else.