Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Drug dealers discovered that Floridian kids, the ones who were out for kicks, were more apt to pop a couple blue Roxicodone pills than stick needles in their arms. Business improved.

  Despite this, Detective Lynch was unaware of another local youth fight that could rise to the level of violence he saw that night in front of Javier Laboy’s house. This was new. He could only hope it was an isolated incident.

  Detective Lynch saw only the occasional girl-on-girl violence, which he called “she-looked-at-me-wrong” fights. They happened, but they rarely involved weapons or serious injuries.

  Lynch arrived at the scene of the stabbing about an hour after it had happened. Since he was the on-call detective, he became the case’s lead investigator. The first thing he did was talk to the first responders, who “gave him the lay of the land.”

  “Victim’s name?”

  “Sarah Ludemann.”

  The detective felt his shoulders slump just a little. He was familiar with this case. Sarah’s father had contacted him in the past about his daughter being harassed by another girl.

  In some ways, the early investigation was easy. For one thing, no apprehension would be necessary. All of the parties were still on hand. The accused was right over there, calmly sitting on a bench. All of the eyewitnesses were also present, which again simplified things. The witnesses had naturally divided themselves into two camps. The Rachel witnesses were standing in a driveway. Sarah’s friends were down at the other end of the street.

  In addition to the young adults who’d been on the scene since the stabbing, several curious and concerned neighbors were on the street. Lynch was told Sarah’s parents had been there earlier. As Lynch looked around, he felt a sense of déjà vu.

  He’d been on this street before, for another murder not long before. He recognized some of the family members from that other case standing nearby and observing. In fact, the boyfriend of a family member from the earlier case was among those who attended to Sarah as she lay in the street. Lynch saw him now, stained and shocked.

  The detective canvassed the scene, paying particular note to the bloodstained articles of attire on the street next to the victim’s minivan. About two feet away from the driver’s door was a portion of a light-colored bra, cut off Sarah by the EMTs so they could better access her wound. Almost under the vehicle was a pair of bloody white sandals, which Lynch correctly assumed were Sarah’s. Ten feet from the van was a blood-soaked orange T-shirt, which Lynch would later learn was Javier Laboy’s.

  He made sure that a line of communication was kept open with the hospital in case there was an update on Sarah’s condition.

  The priority at the crime scene shifted to finding the weapon. The canine team searched but was unsuccessful.

  Rachel said, “Knife? What knife? They came over to jump me. I don’t know where the knife is.”

  Lynch spoke with Dustin Grimes and Javier Laboy, who said that yes, they knew she had a knife with her, but they had no idea where it went.

  Sergeant Mark R. Berger grabbed Lynch by the arm and pulled him aside. He’d just heard from Lieutenant Kevin Riley that the victim was not good. This was probably going to end up as a homicide investigation.

  Lynch thanked him. They agreed to keep that under their hats for the time being.

  Sergeant Tina Trehy was still staying with Rachel Wade in front of Javier’s house, and was now joined by Officer C. D. Burns.

  “I was just defending myself,” Rachel kept saying. “It was obviously really stupid, because it did not change anything.”

  Rachel described how frightened she had been that Sarah and her friends were planning to jump her. She claimed to have called 911 earlier in the night when she thought they were following her. She discussed the swerving car that had almost hit her and had preceded the arrival of the van by a couple of minutes. She thought the swerving vehicle was a Jeep.

  “After the fight, Javier told me to go inside the house, but I didn’t want to disturb his mother so I stayed outside,” Rachel babbled.

  Officer Burns frisked Rachel and confiscated from her person a phone, keys, and a pack of cigarettes.

  “Have any weapons?” Burns asked.

  “No,” Rachel replied.

  At no time did she seem upset. At no time did she ask how Sarah was. Rachel complained that she was chilly. Her light blue jacket had been ripped off during the fight. Trehy went to her car, grabbed a sterile yellow blanket—each blanket was sealed in plastic and was thrown out once used—and gave that to Rachel.

  Javier’s mother, who’d been asleep, was up now. She came outside and talked to a police lieutenant for a few minutes. He asked if they could search her house for the weapon, and she said fine.

  Seeing that Rachel still looked cold, even with her sterile blanket, Javier’s mother went back in the house and came out with a jacket for Rachel to wear.

  Trehy searched the kitchen and did find a black-handled knife next to the kitchen sink, but it wasn’t the weapon. There were still small pieces of food adhering to the blade.

  Detective Adam Geissenberger, who had been so busy during Rachel Wade’s runaway phase, did not take an active part in the investigation into the death of Sarah Ludemann. His brief written report from that night does, however, provide one interesting tidbit. Joshua Camacho had arrived at the crime scene, screaming and hurling threats that blood would be shed in retaliation. Police took this seriously enough that a “suspicious person” call was put out over the radio for Joshua’s brother Jay, who was, according to one report, in his car and on his way to Javier Laboy’s house. If he was on his way, Jay never arrived.

  Meanwhile, Joshua went with the Ludemanns to the hospital, trailing the ambulance. Sarah was wheeled into the emergency room, where ER doctors frantically attempted to save her life. Gay went with the gurney. Charlie and Joshua stayed in the waiting room.

  The mother turned to the doctor and pleaded, “Please take her to surgery.”

  “I can’t,” the doctor replied. “I have to have a pulse first.”

  Gay held her daughter’s hand and rubbed her legs. She begged her daughter to respond, telling her that they were going to stop trying to save her if she didn’t respond.

  At 2:29 A.M., Sarah was officially pronounced dead. A doctor invited the Ludemanns and Joshua Camacho to view the body.

  “You ought to come,” Charlie said to Joshua.

  “No, I can’t see her like that,” Joshua said.

  “You’re the reason she’s like that!” Charlie said.

  Joshua left. They didn’t see him after that.

  Charlie later recalled, “I walk in there. There she is. Pale. Cold. I lost it.”

  Gay added, “She was our life. We lived and died for her. And she’s not here.”

  Amy Tyson, a victim advocate, arrived at the hospital and tried to comfort Sarah’s parents.

  Detective Lynch was still canvassing the crime scene when he received a call from an officer at the hospital informing him that the victim had expired.

  He notified the state attorney’s office that this was now a confirmed homicide investigation.

  After that phone call, Lynch kept the information to himself. Rachel Wade didn’t know, and he wanted to keep it that way—until the time was right.

  Since Rachel Wade was still not under arrest, Lynch asked her if she would be willing to return to the police department to talk to him some more about what had happened between her and Sarah. She voluntarily agreed to come. Lynch then talked her into signing a Consent to Search form, which meant police could go over Rachel’s car thoroughly without first obtaining a search warrant. The search of the Saturn yielded nothing of evidentiary value.

  Lynch ordered that Rachel’s car be moved to the driveway, where it could be picked up at a later time by her parents. Detective Doswell and Sergeant Trehy would accompany Rachel from the crime scene to the police station. Rachel rode to the PPPD headquarters in the front seat of Trehy’s car. No handcuffs. Doswell followe
d close behind.

  Lynch asked Trehy to transport Rachel to the police department, so Rachel was put in the back of Trehy’s patrol car.

  “You okay?” Trehy asked.

  Rachel said yes, for the most part, but she did have a headache and her stomach was upset. At the station, Rachel was placed in an interrogation room and was told to wait for Detective Lynch.

  Back at the crime scene, the minivan was impounded at the request of the forensic team from the county sheriff’s office. A truck with “JOE’S TOWING” painted on the side arrived and removed the victim’s vehicle.

  Finished at the scene, Lynch went to the hospital to observe Sarah’s wounds. A hospital staffer escorted Lynch to the body and pulled back the sheet so he could see. The victim, whose clothing had earlier been collected, had “two significant stab wounds” to her upper left chest. Stab wound number one was in the victim’s upper left shoulder, just below the shoulder blade.

  Comparing it to the face of a clock, the wound was oriented to a position of one o’clock at the top to seven o’clock at the bottom. Stab wound number two was directly over the area of the left breast. It was oriented from twelve to six o’clock.

  The wound over the breast was larger than the wound in the shoulder—two to three inches long. The shoulder wound was one to two inches long.

  The detective noticed no defensive injuries—that is, injuries the victim might have suffered while trying to protect herself, which are most commonly found on the hands or arms.

  After Lynch concluded his examination of the victim’s body, he called Investigator John Rush, of the Pinellas County Medical Examiner’s Office. Rush said he would send the county transport to the hospital to bring Sarah’s remains to the medical examiner’s (ME) office. An autopsy was scheduled for ten-thirty in the morning. An employee of the ME’s Office, Steve Sellick, took custody of Sarah’s body.

  Lynch needed to speak to Charlie and Gay Ludemann, who were still in solemn discussion with victim advocate Amy Tyson.

  Lynch introduced himself to the Ludemanns and “let them know where we were at in the investigation.” He stressed the importance of the upcoming autopsy.

  “Did you have any advance knowledge of the events leading up to Sarah’s death?” Lynch asked.

  The parents said they were unaware of the night’s events, except for what they’d been told since the stabbing.

  Charlie said, “My daughter left our house at eight-thirty to go to Taco Bell, and she never came back.”

  Detective Chris Piccione remained at the crime scene and went door-to-door speaking to neighbors to see if anyone saw or heard anything. No one was helpful.

  John Wilkes heard loud voices but saw nothing.

  Brent Godels, who was visiting his grandmother, also heard shouting, plus a loud pop that he thought might’ve been a gunshot.

  Binh Nguyen heard loud screaming right outside his house, but he didn’t know what it was all about until the ambulance arrived.

  After what seemed like an eternity of waiting around while the nightmare refused to end, Janet and Jilica were through, as far as the cops were concerned. Done for the time being, anyway.

  Someone would want to do a follow-up interview in the next couple of days. Detective Blessing gave the pair a ride to Janet’s house.

  Was it possible that less than three hours had passed since they left in Sarah’s van? It was only two hours and forty minutes later, but it felt so much longer than that, like part of a lifetime.

  Rachel was upstairs in police headquarters, in the criminal investigation section, in the second of three small windowless interrogation rooms.

  After Detective Lynch finished with his rounds of official duties, he returned to the police department. With Detective Joe Doswell also in the room, he began questioning Rachel Wade at a few minutes past five in the morning.

  There were preliminaries: before anything, Lynch had Rachel sign an Acknowledgment of Rights form, signifying that she had been advised of her Miranda rights.

  At the time of the interview, Rachel was five-four, weighing 110 pounds. Her hair was sandy, and her eyes blue. Her birthday was February 27, 1990.

  She had five tattoos: One said TRUE; another said NICK. There were flowers on her right hip. STAY was on her right arm, and a rosary draped her right leg. Lynch jotted it all down.

  Rachel began by talking about her relationship with Joshua. They dated from June of 2008 through November 2008. It was that October that she first realized she had a problem with Sarah Ludemann, another girl who was interested in Joshua. Sarah had made many threats, even threats to kill her. She admitted that she never really believed that Sarah was going to follow up on any of her threats, and this was the first time that the two had fought.

  Lynch asked about the events that led to the fight.

  At about five o’clock that evening, Joshua texted her, saying he wanted to come over and spend the night. Two hours later, Rachel claimed, she received a text from Sarah.

  The girl wrote: Stop texting my man.

  Sarah said Rachel could forget her plans because Joshua was going to be with her that night. There was a threat. Sarah said Rachel had “something coming” if she didn’t leave Joshua alone.

  Rachel said that Sarah stopped at one point sending her texts, but Joshua continued to text her and call her throughout the night.

  “He was encouraging me to fight Sarah,” Rachel said. “If I loved him, I would fight for him.”

  And so Rachel went to Javier’s house, and she was on the phone with Joshua when a car, maybe a Jeep, with an unknown driver, swerved and tried to run her over in the street. Then the van pulled up. Sarah, Janet, and a girl she didn’t know got out.

  Sarah hit her a few times and she tried to fight back. Sarah grabbed her by the hair. Janet hit her in the head. Janet had her by the hair and was dragging her around.

  Rachel heard Sarah call out for Janet to get back in the van; it was time for them to go. It seemed about that time the cops arrived.

  Lynch asked, “When Sarah got out of the minivan, did she come over to you?”

  “Yeah, she hit me a couple of times.”

  “Where did she hit you?”

  “On the side of my face and the back of my head.”

  Lynch explained that her story didn’t match the facts. It didn’t match what others were saying—not just the statements of Sarah’s friends, but the statements of her own friends as well.

  “She was there to fight you. How do you think Sarah ended up getting stabbed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Detective Lynch explained that he knew what had happened, and she needed to know what happened, too.

  “I know you had the knife,” Lynch said.

  Rachel admitted to bringing the knife with her. She was scared of Sarah and her friends. She thought the knife would scare them. She admitted to approaching Sarah with the knife in her hand. She said Sarah backed up a couple of steps and then started to swing at her.

  “I began to swing in Sarah’s direction.”

  “With the knife in your hand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you stab Sarah?”

  “I don’t know. Janet came over and started hitting me at that point. I never meant to hurt anyone. I just wanted it all to end.”

  “You stabbed Sarah,” he said. “And here’s another piece of information you need to know. She is dead.”

  “Oh my God.” Rachel was instantly hysterical. She said she never intended for anyone to get hurt. She never wanted anyone to die.

  “And she died as a result of these stab wounds she had. All this over Joshua?”

  “I just didn’t want them to terrorize me anymore. They follow me everywhere. They come to my job. They come to my house.”

  “Well, she’s not going to follow you anymore because she’s dead now.”

  Rachel wailed: “Oh my God. I just wanted her to fight me and get it over with. I don’t care anymore. A guy is not that important t
o me.”

  “Well, this guy has now completely ruined your life,” Lynch said.

  The detective asked Rachel if she had ever threatened to stab or kill Sarah before that night. Rachel assured Lynch that she had not. Lynch asked where the knife was. She said she’d thrown it in the direction of the house next door.

  Lynch called Detective Kenneth Blessing back at the crime scene and informed him of this revelation. After getting a set of keys from the homeowner to open a gate, Blessing, Officer Burns, and Dax, the canine, as well as a couple of the crime scene technicians from the sheriff’s office, looked around the grounds next door and found nothing.

  There was only one other possibility: “The roof,” Blessing said.

  The county technicians had a ladder with them.

  Blessing climbed up on the neighbor’s roof. Using a flashlight, he quickly located one bloody kitchen knife, which the crime scene technicians photographed and collected.

  Back at the police station, Rachel and Lynch parted ways. Rachel had a favor to ask: Would Lynch talk to her mom and dad, explain what happened, please? Lynch said he would do that.

  So Detective Lynch called the home of Barry and Janet Wade to tell them that their daughter was under arrest.

  “I felt just as bad talking to Rachel’s parents as I had talking to Sarah’s,” Lynch admitted. “I know that sounds strange. I knew one lost a child and the other one was still alive, but … when I gave the news to Rachel’s mom, she just dropped the phone. I could hear her screaming through the house.”

  That afternoon he visited the Wades in person, to give them the keys to Rachel’s car.

  “The mom was just catatonic, sitting there in complete disarray,” Lynch recalled. “To her, it was all too surreal, and there was no way for her to completely register what was happening. The dad was just as bad. He managed to speak with me, but I could see that he was completely in shock.”