Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  While the officer was questioning Rachel’s mom, Rachel called, said it was no big deal, and she was on her way home.

  “I still would appreciate it if you could fill out a report for me, anyway,” Janet said. Paperwork was desirable because, in addition to the lewd and lascivious charges Hernandez was facing, Janet Wade was seeking an injunction against Hernandez.

  The cop remained at the Wade house until Rachel did come home. Rachel explained that she’d been out with friends at a pool hall in Seminole.

  With the cop still present, Janet noticed a red welt on Rachel’s leg. She asked what had happened. Rachel said she got burned when she accidentally put her leg on a motorcycle’s exhaust pipe.

  Janet affirmed that she intended to do what she could to stop Jose. The officer reminded the Wades that the police were not in existence to play games with a fifteen-year-old girl every time she ran off. Then the officers said to be sure and call if there were future problems.

  On November 22, 2005, Rachel and her mother argued anew. Janet told Rachel that from then on every time she left the house without permission, or failed to come home when she was supposed to, the cops would be called.

  Rachel didn’t like that. At first, Rachel punched inanimate things: the wall, a door. Then she fixed her hostility on her mom. The fight became physical. Rachel attacked her mother and threw objects at her.

  Janet called 911.

  “What objects did she throw?” the dispatch operator asked.

  “Well, a hairbrush, for one thing. Hit me. Hit me in the lower thigh.”

  After that, Rachel, a little hellion now, ran into the kitchen and threw open cabinet doors. She found the place where the good knives were kept. She quickly chose one knife, which she liked; it was a knife sheathed in a white Pampered Chef knife carrier. Rachel slid the knife from its sheath and threw it at her mother, bouncing it off Janet’s abdomen. Rachel scooped up the knife, quick like a cat, and locked herself in the bathroom.

  Janet told 911 that Rachel had blades on her mind. There were “shaving razors” in that bathroom, and she didn’t trust Rachel not to hurt herself.

  Officer Shaun Grantham reported to the Wades’ home and found Janet Wade waiting in front of the house. Grantham asked if Rachel was still around. Janet shook her head no.

  Janet explained that right after she hung up with the operator, she screamed into the bathroom that Rachel better get out and give up the knife. Soon thereafter, Rachel exited the bathroom, put the knife back in its sheath and into its cabinet, hurriedly packed a bag of things, and stormed out the door, announcing that this time no one was ever going to find her! She disappeared into the night. Janet came outside, but she couldn’t even tell which direction Rachel was headed.

  The officer later noted that this was not his first time visiting the Wades’ home, and a lot of fellow officers were familiar with the Wades and their problems as well. It had become a regular pattern for Rachel: run away from home in the evening, stay out all night, and return the following afternoon. For a while, she had been packing up her things and taking them with her at night, like she thought she was moving out on the sly.

  Theft entered the mix. Janet caught Rachel in her purse, looking for something, probably money. When Janet tried to call 911, Rachel attacked and tried to wrestle the cell phone away from her mother. In the process, Rachel dug her nails into Janet’s forearm.

  “Has Rachel been suicidal before?” the cop asked.

  “Yes,” Janet Wade said, exhibiting long-suffering eyes.

  Grantham checked out the bathroom, the one that Rachel had locked herself in, and found nothing suspicious, no evidence she had done anything to hurt herself.

  He radioed in that he needed a search team, and a canine unit was assigned to the case. A police search dog named Dax was given a sniff of a piece of Rachel’s unlaundered apparel. The dog was then sent out to find Rachel.

  A photographer reported to the scene and took photos of the knife, its sheath, and the fingernail wounds on Janet Wade’s forearm.

  Grantham wanted to confiscate the hairbrush that Rachel threw at her mother, but the hairbrush could not be located.

  The canine search was unsuccessful. It got off to a bad start when Officer M. Turner, the human half of the canine team, reported to the wrong address. Even after communications were repaired, conditions for tracking were less than desirable. There was a cool, strong wind from the northwest—and the search bore no fruit. Dax sniffed around the residential streets for eight minutes and gave up. Dax perked up for a time on one stretch of nearby street—then, nothing. Rachel might not have gone far on foot before she got into a car.

  Rachel returned home at ten-thirty, the following night. Asked where she’d been, Rachel explained that she had been upset. She ended up sleeping on a chaise longue next to the Plantation Gardens Apartments pool. When she woke up in the morning, she just walked around before returning home.

  On February 2, 2006, Barry Wade called cops to report his runaway daughter. The next day, Rachel was located at her friend Heather’s house. Rachel said she spent the night with Heather, sitting outside the house and talking.

  Ten days later, Barry called again, but this time the paperwork for a missing juvenile was still being filled out—“four earrings in right ear, five earrings in left ear, no tattoos”—when Rachel returned home.

  On March 13, Barry called again, and Rachel came home on March 14, telling cops that she had spent the night with her friend Brittany. She didn’t know her address, and didn’t attend school that day because she feared she would be arrested for being a runaway.

  Rachel left behind a note on March 23 when she split, wrote that she would be with friends and back in the morning. The cops were called, nonetheless. Barry Wade reiterated that his insistence on the documentation of each of Rachel’s escapes was to create a paper trail in support of future court action that would, in turn, enable him to “help Rachel.”

  When Rachel returned, as she always did, she told her father and a cop that she’d been with her friend Sierra. She didn’t know the last name. She went to St. Pete Beach, and slept in an unknown male’s car.

  Four days later, Rachel took off again. This time Rachel put on music in her room, just before sneaking out the window. It was mother Janet’s turn to call police. Janet said that Rachel had no access to money. She didn’t think Rachel’s welfare was endangered, and she didn’t think she had a substance abuse problem—but she did think Rachel was spending the night with a man.

  On June 11, the police responded to reports of a fight at the Wades’ place, Rachel and her father. She’d been away without leave, and to punish her, Barry took her cell phone away. Barry told the cop he was planning to seek the help of “mental-health physicians” for Rachel in the near future.

  The next 911 call came in six days later, with Rachel returning right on schedule. A week after that, Rachel didn’t come home from work. Barry verified that she’d been at work that day, but she just didn’t come home afterward.

  Rachel’s attitude when answering grown-up questions grew increasingly belligerent. When Rachel came back now, she didn’t care enough to make up a lie.

  She told cops she didn’t remember what she did or whom she was with.

  One cop gave her a steady gaze and determined she was in good health. Uninjured, he wrote. More paperwork for Barry Wade’s pile.

  When they told her she should get a job and focus her attention on something constructive, she said she had a job. She had a telemarketing job at Vici Financial, located in the Winn-Dixie Shopping Mall.

  Rachel was now in possession of her learner’s permit to drive a car. Rachel’s runaway problem intensified a notch during the weekend of July 22 and 23. She called home a few times to say she was with friends. She didn’t have her cell phone with her and the Wades’ caller ID failed to determine from which number she was calling.

  “She must have done something to block the number,” Barry said to the cop.

/>   Then, disturbingly, Rachel did something she hadn’t done before. She called and said she was on her way home—and then failed to show up. It was as if she wanted them to think something bad had happened to her—and who knew? Maybe it had. Rachel stayed away for the entire weekend before returning.

  “Why do you keep running away?” a cop asked.

  “Because I’m fed up with my parents,” Rachel replied, scowling.

  On August 6, now sporting a nose piercing in addition to her nine earrings, Rachel took off with her friend Natasha—no surname given—and didn’t come back. When she returned the following day, she said she’d been at Natasha’s house in St. Pete. No, she didn’t know Natasha’s last name. A week later, she was missing again, and the brevity of the resulting police reports demonstrated how routine it was getting to be. She did it again. Said it all.

  Janet said next time she was going to have the cop take her straight to juvenile detention.

  But she did take off again, on August 19, this time explaining that she went to the Countryside Mall in Clearwater with an unnamed friend. Rachel was not taken to juvie.

  Rachel next disappeared on September 9, this time perhaps because she feared an upcoming court date from when she attacked her mother. Janet suggested cops pick her up at her telemarketing job in the Winn-Dixie Mall. Police did go there, but they discovered Vici Financial had moved to another unknown location.

  Police located her on September 10, at a party where alcohol was served. So in addition to being a runaway, Rachel was picked up for underage drinking. Barry came and got her, but she was upset and gone again the next day, calling home to tell her dad that she was in Tampa. Barry Wade told police that contrary to anything his wife might have said, he did not want his daughter taken to juvenile detention. She was to be brought home to him, and a report was to be filed.

  The battery charge against Rachel for the fingernails to her mother’s forearm was eventually dropped. Janet showed no inclination to help with her daughter’s prosecution, which caused the state attorney’s office to drop the matter.

  Even when Rachel wasn’t in trouble, she lingered in trouble’s vicinity. Done with Jose and looking forward to bigger and better things, Rachel moved on with her life. On September 16, 2006, at ten o’clock at night, Pinellas Park police responded to a call that someone had been jumped in the street. By the time police arrived, the crowd of young people had dispersed, but four young pedestrians—two guys, two gals—in the area were stopped and questioned. One of them was Rachel Wade.

  Why was Rachel in such a hurry to grow up? A lot of fifteen-year-old girls wanted to have boyfriends, but they understood that the security of living with parents outweighed the advantages of being without a safety net. No one could figure out what the unscratchable itch was. Was it just normal adolescent chemistry?

  It was a proven scientific fact that a “normal” teenaged brain, with its still-developing frontal cortex and immature neural structure, came replete with impulsivity, social anxiety, and poor judgment.

  Although it was true that adults also felt anxiety, teens and adults grew nervous over different things. The immature brain did not grow as anxious when encountering physical dangers (which is why teenagers tend to be reckless drivers) but became much more anxious over feelings of being left out and not being a part of things.

  So maybe it was a simple matter of chemistry, making Rachel unwilling to be a normal teenager who had to (at least pretend to) obey her parents’ rules.

  Still, teens were responsible for their actions. Everyone’s behavior wasn’t influenced by social and environmental factors. Rachel’s behavior should have been maturing.

  On November 11, 2006, after a few months off, she ran away again. She dropped out of school as soon as she turned sixteen. She told friends her badass boyfriend was expelled, so she didn’t want to go to school, either. Her parents tried taking her to counseling and got her a job at Paws of Paradise, a doggie day care business.

  On January 26, 2007, Rachel took off, and Janet notified the authorities. Rachel returned, although not until January 28. A police officer spoke to Rachel to try to figure out what was up. Rachel was back to giving elaborate yet unhelpful explanations of her whereabouts. She said she didn’t know what the big deal was. She’d left a note for her mother before leaving. Who was she with? Rachel said she was with a friend named Hiram. She didn’t know his last name, and they’d gone together to Lakeland, Florida, to see a football game. She’d planned to come home the previous night, but Hiram had car trouble and they spent the night in the car “somewhere in Polk County.” She made it home on January 28, only after Hiram got gas.

  Somewhere in this time frame, Rachel acquired a new beau, a guy named Nick Reynolds (pseudonym). He had his own place, a great place to hang out. There was a lot of sex and drugs going on.

  On March 6, at 2:30 A.M., Rachel was a passenger in a car Nick was driving. According to their story, the car in front of them stopped abruptly, as if to purposefully cause an accident. Nick’s car rear-ended the guy so hard that although they were not injured, Nick’s car suffered extensive frontal damage, so bad he needed a tow. Nick and Rachel told police they’d gotten a pretty good look at the guy who’d done it to them: white male, sixteen to eighteen years old, with “bushy hair.” They didn’t know the make of the car. Police ended the investigation after it was discovered that surveillance cameras in the area had failed to capture the car accident.

  On March 26, Officer John Lagasse responded to yet another call from Janet Wade. Rachel ran away again. This time Janet offered the authorities a key piece of intelligence. She gave Nick Reynolds’s address to Officer Lagasse. Sure enough, Rachel was there, and the cop went and got her.

  On April 14, Rachel told her mom on her way out the door that she would be home by early evening. Instead, she had not come home all night, and wasn’t answering her cell phone. Rachel was again listed as a missing person. Lagasse found Rachel and spoke with her. Rachel said she had been out with friends, but she refused to give names.

  “I was in East Lake, near Oldsmar. I didn’t have phone reception and no one would give me a ride home,” Rachel explained.

  Not that Rachel ever had a relationship with a boy that went smoothly, her relationship with Nick was particularly rocky. She still loved him and all, but … she no longer felt it was necessary to keep her blinkers on when it came to looking at other boys. Rachel liked to think of herself as an open person, a girl who always had her heart open for new romance.

  Rachel ran into Joshua Camacho at a party. She hadn’t talked to him in a long time and was instantly smitten.

  On November 9, 2007, cops were called, responding to a domestic dispute at Nick’s apartment. Nick and Rachel apologized for the noise, stated that they had been arguing about a relationship problem, but they were through, and the fight was not physical.

  After fighting the good battle for many long months, after dealing with police on at least fourteen occasions when Rachel ran away, the Wades stopped calling.

  Rachel had Nick, and the Wades understood that she was going to be there, with him, most of the time. You could see the defeat in their shoulders.

  That didn’t mean, however, that the PPPD was through with Rachel Wade—or her friends. Or her enemies.

  It was also at about this time that one small subsection of the Pinellas Park population—young people who knew Rachel Wade—did its best to keep the PPPD busy all by themselves.

  The instant Sarah Ludemann had received her driver’s license, she demonstrated no fear of speed. Her father was a cabdriver, so it only made sense she’d drive like a pro, and that meant fast. She enjoyed playing road tag with her friends, weaving in and out of traffic, playing games of pursuit, playing chicken at high speeds.

  At two in the afternoon on November 29, 2007, Sarah was burned by her own carelessness. She and three other drivers were allegedly using the roads as their personal playground. When the reckless parade of young people encou
ntered a car accident on the road, the front car slowed down abruptly, starting a chain reaction that injured no one but caused medium to severe damage to all of the cars.

  On December 6, 2007, cops were again called to Nick’s apartment, and this time it was Rachel complaining. She explained her live-in boyfriend got pissed because she was babysitting for a friend instead of being with him. She wanted to move out and return to her parents’ home. Nick threatened to throw all of her belongings in the lake. Rachel and Nick again agreed the argument was only verbal.

  On December 21, with the holidays approaching, the kids of Pinellas Park were out in force. Officer Richard Bynum responded to a complaint of two cars full of kids fighting near the corner of 102nd Avenue and Sixty-third Lane. The incident involved many familiar names, as well as names that would later become recognizable. Jay and Joshua Camacho, Sarah Ludemann, and Ashley Lovelady were in one car. Erin Slothower and three of her girlfriends were in the other. Police questioned all eight of them, and everyone agreed no blows had been thrown. During the questioning, cops confiscated a set of brass knuckles from an unnamed occupant.

  Rachel’s on-again, off-again relationship with Nick was off again. During the evening of February 3, 2008, Rachel’s mom heard a commotion in front of the house. When she opened the front door, she saw a young man urinating on her lawn. Ten minutes later, Janet heard a noise again and went to investigate—now she found a young man urinating on her front door. The kid ran off and climbed into a waiting car, but Janet Wade got the license number.

  “Ma’am, did you see genitals?”

  “No.”

  “Neither time?”

  “No genitals either time.”

  “Have any idea why young men are urinating on your property?”