Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Barry Wade told Lynch that when Rachel would become involved with “these guys,” and he didn’t mention any names, they were “Fatal Attraction” things. Whoever she ended up with, he was the one, the sole focus of her thinking, and the breakups were always bad.

  Rachel was booked and fingerprinted. Her mug shot was taken. Rachel flashed the saddest of all possible eyes.

  At 8:00 A.M., the sheriff’s office forensic specialist came by to confiscate the evidence on Rachel’s person. Her clothes—white top, blue jeans, bra, thong—were taken away from her, to be used as evidence.

  She stood naked for a moment; then she eagerly donned a white jumpsuit.

  Understanding that she was about to be put in a cage, Rachel wept.

  Rachel was transported from the PPPD’s criminal investigation section to the Pinellas County Jail. In charge of transportation was Corporal Michael Bingnear, winner of the department’s 2006 Officer of the Year Award.

  Lynch told Bingnear that Rachel was ready for transport. Bingnear handcuffed Rachel’s hands behind her back. She was barefoot—exposing little painted toenails.

  Bingnear escorted Rachel downstairs and into the parking lot on the building’s south side. They ran into a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) forensic technician, and Bingnear asked if the tech had a spare pair of protective shoe covers. Rachel put her feet in those to walk the rest of the way to Bingnear’s squad car.

  He put her in the passenger-side backseat of his car, and neither spoke as they made the fourteen-minute journey to the jail. She silently gazed out the front windshield for the whole trip.

  Corporal Bingnear stayed with Rachel until she was booked into the jail on a charge of murder, second degree. She was told to sit and wait for Detective Lynch. She did as she was told, and, with adrenaline crashing, she managed to doze off for a few minutes.

  Back at the crime scene, Detective Blessing took another crack at getting something out of Dustin Grimes, who, along with his buddy Javier, had seemed less than forthcoming during the initial interview, a few hours before.

  Blessing interviewed Dustin, who now described the stabbing in some detail. The eyewitness explained that Rachel Wade had approached the van the instant it pulled to a stop, even before Sarah had an opportunity to open her door.

  However, Dustin still insisted he didn’t see what had happened to the knife.

  In the meantime, Charlie Ludemann pulled out his cell phone and called his daughter’s number. He knew that it would go to message, and he wanted to hear her voice one more time, even if it was just a recording.

  At the sound of the beep, he left a message of his own: “Yeah, Sarah, it’s Daddy. I know you’re not with us no more. I’m hoping somebody’s listening to this phone. My daughter was killed last night. I just want a little closure.”

  Three or four times a week, Charlie called.

  That was all he had left.

  Erin Slothower, such a large player in the events that led up to Sarah’s death, was sound asleep when the tragedy occurred. She had turned her phone off so she would be able to read her texts, she remembered. She fell asleep; and when she woke up, she had a long list of messages and voice mails.

  Erin heard about the fight in the street and went to Janet’s house. There she learned that Sarah was dead.

  Jamie Severino, the other Camacho baby mama, was also home at the time of the stabbing, with her daughter, minding her own business. When her phone started to ring, she didn’t answer at first. She’d had an argument with Jay earlier in the evening, and she thought it was him calling. But it was Erin, who was texting that Sarah had died. Jamie thought it was some stupid lie they’d conjured up to trick her into going over there.

  Finally Jay spoke to Jamie on the phone, and he was crying. “Sarah’s dead. You got to get over here fast,” he said.

  It wasn’t a joke. It was like a nightmare.

  Half blind with tears, Erin drove over to Janet’s house; there were cop cars all over the place. Everyone was hysterical.

  According to Jamie, Erin—who couldn’t stop crying—received a voice mail that night, only hours after Sarah’s death, from Gay Ludemann. The message said, “You don’t have to worry about Sarah anymore. My daughter’s dead. Now you can have Joshua all to yourself.”

  After that, Erin was somewhat surprised when police never asked her questions. The press did try to interview her, but the young mother was a woman of few words.

  All she managed was “It’s all so sad.” What else could she say?

  Chapter 7

  POSTMORTEM

  From the hospital, Sarah Ludemann’s body was delivered to the District 6 medical examiner for autopsy. The ME’s office was next door to the sheriff’s office, and the ME was Dr. Jon Russell Thogmartin, a balding and bespectacled man. Attending the procedure for the PPPD was Detective Blessing, who had hours before found the bloody knife on a rooftop.

  In addition to being a licensed doctor in Florida since 1990, Dr. Thogmartin was also licensed in Texas and Alabama. A graduate of the University of Texas Health Center at San Antonio, he trained for another five years, first as a resident in Texas in anatomic and clinical pathology, then in Dade County, Florida, for a year in forensic pathology. He was board certified in anatomic, clinical, and forensic pathology, and had been doing forensic pathology ever since completing his fellowship in 1996. He was the District 6 medical examiner since December 2000, and he had performed approximately 2,500 autopsies.

  The autopsy began at 11:00 A.M. on April 15, about ten hours after the stabbing. In cases in which the deceased died at the scene of the crime, someone from the ME’s office was often sent there to help determine what had occurred. Since Sarah had died in the hospital, this was not done in her case.

  Dr. Thogmartin performed both an exterior and interior examination on the body, found her to be “about five foot nine, 166 pounds, fully developed, about eighteen years old.”

  With the exception of her stab wounds—two wounds, one small, one very large, the large one on her left breast—she had nothing wrong with her.

  In order to distinguish her wounds, he numbered them one and two, not ordering them by severity but rather by location. The topmost wound was one; the lower, more severe wound two.

  In an autopsy’s written report, right and left referred to the decedent’s right and left. The front of a body referred to the side that faced forward as a person was standing with their palms facing forward. The palms and knees, for example, were both on the front of the body. Up and down referred again to when the body was standing; even though, obviously, the body was prone during the autopsy.

  Wound number one was a slitlike elliptical skin defect caused by a sharp object, 2.1 by 0.4 centimeters. Dr. Thogmartin probed the wound to determine its depth and direction. It was only a half an inch deep, and too shallow to determine the angle. If the wound had been any deeper, it probably would have severed a couple of large blood vessels, but that had not occurred. It might have caused a little bleeding, but that was about it. If wound number one had been the only wound, treatment would have involved cleaning it out well, a couple of stitches, and maybe some antibiotics—nothing more.

  Even without outside knowledge of the case, the ME would have assumed that this was a knife wound. The lower corner of the wound was rough and squared. The upper corner was sharp—particularly when he examined it with the skin pushed together.

  He could tell the weapon was most likely a single-edged blade. A double-edged dagger with sharp edges on both sides would have created a wound of a different shape. The weapon had one dull and one sharp edge.

  Even at first glance, wound number two appeared to be the fatal wound. It was not a slit but rather gaping. The wound was open so far that he had to re-approximate it, push the skin together to get a better idea. The weight of the decedent’s breast falling to one side stretched the entrance to the wound open, so that he had to compensate for the gravity and tension when measuring: eight centimeters
by four millimeters.

  Accurately measuring the wound’s depth was tricky, perhaps impossible. That depth would change, depending on whether the victim was inhaling or exhaling. With lungs full, the wound would have been a full two inches deeper than with lungs empty. In his written report, the ME recorded that the second wound was about two and a half inches deep.

  The wound went into the fatty tissue of her chest and her pectoral muscles, cut through her fourth rib, and—as her left lung overlaid her heart in that area—into her left lung, through her pericardial sac—the sac that held the heart—and into the right ventricle of her heart, where it terminated. The medical examiner made it official: it was the fatal injury.

  When he performed his internal examination, Dr. Thogmartin looked for the quantity of blood loss. There was blood coming out of her heart and her perforated lung. The blood coming out of her heart accumulated in the sac around her heart. Three hundred milliliters of blood was found there. An additional two liters of blood was found in her chest cavity. Her lung collapsed due to the accumulating blood.

  A woman of Sarah’s size may have four and a half liters of blood, give or take, and she had lost more than two, so she’d lost about half of the blood that her body contained outside of her blood vessels. That would have caused severe shock.

  As wound number two was being created—perhaps when the knife was going in, but more likely when the knife was being pulled out—the cutaneous portion of the wound, meaning the opening created in the skin, was stretched and enlarged. This enlargement was caused either by movement in the victim’s breast or movement by the stabber or the victim.

  Dr. Thogmartin filled out Sarah Ludemann’s death certificate. He listed the cause of death as a stab wound to the chest. He listed the manner of death as homicide.

  A blood sample was taken and sent to toxicology. Tests were run to determine if she had alcohol or other drugs of abuse in her system. Sarah Ludemann’s remains were tested for amphetamines, barbiturates, cocaine, all sorts of opiates, and methadone. No test was made for marijuana. All tests came back negative.

  Lisa Lafrance heard the bad news on the morning of April 15, when she arrived at work for her waitressing job at Mugs ’N Jugs Restaurant & Bar in Clearwater. The “Jugs” in the name of the restaurant referred to—as was the case with Hooters—the large breasts of the youthful waitresses.

  “I was just about to start my shift, and my phone started to ring. It was Nick, Rachel’s old boyfriend. He said, ‘Did you hear about Rachel?’ And I was like, ‘What happened? Did you guys get back together?’ They were always breaking up and getting back together. He’s like, ‘No, she killed some girl named Sarah.’”

  It took Lisa a few seconds to register what he’d said and that he was for real. She freaked out. Through her tears, she put on the news. She had to explain to Nick who Sarah was.

  She knew immediately that Sarah and the others were the aggressors. She recalled the physical fight she’d had with Rachel years before, and she remembered how Rachel was all mouth. She had to really be provoked, punched in that case, before she would become physically violent.

  “She just wasn’t the type to go after someone,” Lisa recalled.

  Rachel would go down in history as a very angry girl, which struck Lisa as ironic. Rachel wasn’t angry at all. She was the type of girl who didn’t let things get to her. Obviously, matters involving guys were the exception to that rule. She had been spoiled by her own popularity.

  Every guy fell head over heels in love with her, twisted around her little finger, and she had grown accustomed to having the upper hand when it came to boyfriends. Then came Joshua, who saw other women, frightened her, and made her feel wonderful. She so wasn’t in charge. Joshua was every bit as much of a control freak as she was, and he was winning the game of control. She was challenged in a way she wasn’t used to, and that frustrated and angered her.

  “Every girl likes a challenge,” Lisa said, “but Rachel took it to the extreme.” Sarah was aggressive when it came to her dibs on Joshua Camacho, further aggravating Rachel.

  Lisa remembered hanging out with Rachel at her apartment and was there when Sarah would call, hurling insults and asserting her right to Joshua. And Joshua was no help. Instead of smoothing things out, according to Lisa, he was “feeding into it.”

  As the news of Sarah’s death and Rachel’s arrest sank in, Lisa felt more than just grief. She felt guilt. She had abandoned her best friend. It was the damn Roxies. If she hadn’t been so strung out on drugs, she would have been with Rachel that night. She would have talked her out of bringing the knife with her. Sarah would still be alive and Rachel would be a free woman. They would be free to drive around in Lisa’s car like they used to, listening to Rachel’s favorite performer, Trina, on CD.

  Rachel had always been loyal to Lisa. Their relationship had started with a fight, and there was something about that, forging a friendship that way, that made the bond stronger. The thought made the Mugs ’N Jugs waitress burst into tears all over again.

  During the early daylight hours of April 15, 2009, Lane DeGregory reported for work at the St. Petersburg Times, unaware that it was going to be a very busy day.

  DeGregory was a native Floridian, born in Gainesville, but she grew up in Rockville, Maryland, suburban Washington, D.C. Since she was four years old, she knew that she wanted to be a journalist.

  “That was all I ever wanted to do. When I was little, my dad would read Watergate stories to me,” DeGregory said. She was the editor of her high-school newspaper. She attended the University of Virginia, edited the newspaper there, and graduated with a double major of English and communications studies. She later earned a master’s degree at UV. After graduation she worked a series of newspaper jobs, including one at a small paper in Charlottes ville, Virginia, ten years with the Virginian Pilot in Norfolk, and since October 2000 with the St. Petersburg Times, where she started as a general-assignment feature writer.

  DeGregory was best known for a feature story that ran in the Times on July 31, 2008, called “The Girl in the Window.” The excruciating tale—of a child neglected and abused into a feral state, then saved—was a devastatingly effective piece of reporting and writing. Everyone who read it blubbered, and DeGregory was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for it.

  On that Wednesday morning, DeGregory was working out of the newsroom. She hadn’t even had a chance for a cup of coffee when she and photographer Lara Cerri were sent out to Javier Laboy’s house to cover the death of Sarah Ludemann. When they arrived, there was still blood in the street. A small memorial to Sarah Ludemann had been built already at the side of the street.

  DeGregory knocked on the door to Javier’s house, but no one answered. Rachel Wade’s car had been moved into the driveway. She looked in the windows, saw nothing noteworthy, so they left. First they went to Sarah’s house, and then to Joshua Camacho’s house, searching for someone willing to talk about that morning’s tragedy.

  “We were unsuccessful,” DeGregory recalled. “At the Ludemann house, there was a sign on the lawn reading ‘No Media, Please.’ I ended up getting Sarah’s mom on the phone. Police were still there questioning them.”

  Rachel’s parents didn’t want to talk, either. “The mom had broken down and the dad just seemed confused—like he wanted to talk, but he couldn’t quite grasp what had happened,” DeGregory recalled.

  Joshua Camacho remained elusive. He was in hiding, at a series of friends’ houses, briefly at his parents’ home, then somewhere else. DeGregory and her photographer were always a step or two behind. The reporter managed to get Joshua’s mom on the phone, but she was not helpful.

  So DeGregory spent most of the morning leaving notes on the back of her card at different houses. It wasn’t until that afternoon that she got her first interview. Ashley Lovelady agreed to talk about the incident, and limited her responses to what a great kid Sarah was.

  The reporter eventually discovered a stark contrast between researching
Sarah Ludemann’s background, and digging into Rachel Wade’s past.

  “With Sarah,” DeGregory said, “I found friends that dated back to preschool—girls who had been friends with her most of her life. Rachel’s friends were comparatively brand-new. Most of the ones I spoke with were the Applebee’s girls that she only had been working with for a year or two.”

  One of those Applebee’s girls was Ashley DeCosta, who remembered girls coming into the restaurant and “harassing Rachel. Rachel is just a sweet, sweet girl. She was so in love with that guy. And she put up with so much.”

  DeCosta had just spoken to Rachel, who called her from jail. “She told me she just wanted to come home and take a bubble bath.”

  Lane DeGregory remembered the case well. The players were so young and emotions were so high. She remembered covering the death of Sarah Ludemann for another reason as well. It was while writing her first article on the subject that she learned she’d won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for “The Girl in the Window.”

  On the Wednesday afternoon after the stabbing, Sarah’s friends gathered at the scene of her death. They added to the small memorial already on Javier’s lawn, now placing at that spot a white cross with roses, carnations, and alstroemeria lilies.

  One friend, eighteen-year-old Dani O’Leary, said, “I knew that it was just a big mess. I knew that it was all stupid to begin with. But I didn’t know it was going to go this far.”

  A statuette of an angel rested on a table, along with a plaque that read: Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory that no one can steal.

  Sarah’s tearful friends remembered her as a girl who enjoyed life, who enjoyed painting her nails the color of the season.

  Detective Lynch, in his attempt to understand the backstory, confiscated all available cell phones. Text messages were read. At first, he couldn’t access Sarah’s voice mails. There was a password involved.