Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Lynch recalled: “Since the phone was both in Sarah’s and her parents’ names, Charlie Ludemann tried different passwords to see if he could help us get to the voice mails.”

  Sarah’s dad even contacted the phone company in hopes that they would know the code, but they couldn’t help. Finally, after many tries, Charlie hit upon the right combination, a four-digit code, and the voice mails became available.

  The messages were from Rachel Wade at her “mean girl” best. When investigators heard the messages, they were surprised at the level of hostility and violence in Rachel’s verbiage.

  “I’m going to … murder you,” she said. Not “kill” but “murder.” Rachel’s prosecution, already under preparation, had just received an essential component. The voice mail system also supplied investigators with the precise date and time of each call.

  At two in the afternoon, April 16, Javier Laboy joined Detective Michael Lynch in the criminal investigations section of the PPPD for a follow-up interview.

  Laboy had already given a written statement from the crime scene. There were inconsistencies in Javier’s story. Lynch insisted that Javier write and sign a second statement.

  Now, in a small, windowless interrogation room, Lynch wanted to focus on Laboy and get into more detail.

  “My first question is—why did you leave some things out of your story when you first wrote it down, and why did you later add things to your story?” Lynch said.

  “The first one was written just as everything had happened, and I was trying to get everything in there and I was all bundled up and I couldn’t. It was the first one that I’d ever done,” Javier replied. “I kept asking the officer, ‘Should I add this? Should I add that?’ That explains why I started the same paragraph over three times on my first statement.”

  “You’ve never filled out a Witness Statement form before?”

  “No. This is the first time anything like this happened….”

  “The second statement is longer and more detailed. Was it written after you’d had a chance to sit and reflect on what happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “In addition to inexperience and lack of time to reflect, is it possible you left some things out of your first statement to protect your friend Rachel?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  Lynch went over the chronology of Javier’s tale. Getting a call from Rachel was the first thing. She was upset, crying. She’d found out Joshua was cheating on her. Again. It was nothing new, but it upset her as much as ever. Rachel thought she was supposed to spend the night with her man, but she learned that Joshua was at his sister’s house with that Sarah.

  According to Javier, Rachel and Joshua were boyfriend and girlfriend for a period of time in 2008. They broke up because of Joshua’s cheating. But they got back together again recently, and she had just found out that Joshua was still playing her, so it was déjà vu for Rachel. Javier invited Rachel over. A few minutes after the first call, Rachel called back. She was lost, driving around, trying to find Javier’s house. Javier gave her directions. Five minutes later, his friend Dustin Grimes unexpectedly showed up, stopping off on his way home from his girlfriend’s house. Rachel arrived at 10:45 P.M. and parked her red Saturn on the street. Rachel, Dustin, and Javier hung out in the driveway. Javier’s mom was asleep in the house. Rachel told Javier that she’d been fighting with Sarah and Joshua all night on the phone. That seemingly continued after Rachel arrived at Javier’s. Javier heard her yelling into the phone during the time she hung out in front of Javier’s. Rachel said Sarah wanted to fight her over Joshua.

  “Did you hear the contents of any of those conversations?” Lynch asked.

  “No, she walked away when she was on the phone, once all the way to the end of the street. Usually, when she had a phone call, she stood down by the street and leaned on the hood of her car. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but I could hear her yelling.”

  Each phone call lasted two or three minutes and they continued for upward of an hour. Javier was under the impression that “most of the phone calls were from Joshua. Just a couple of them were from Sarah.”

  Javier explained to Lynch that he told Rachel not to fight Sarah, that Joshua wasn’t worth fighting over. Not that Javier wasn’t biased. He had feelings for Rachel. He and Joshua had their troubles in the past.

  Actually, Rachel had two modes while on the phone that night: yelling at Sarah and crying at Joshua. Sarah wanted to come over and fight. Joshua said everyone should chill, and they would talk about it tomorrow.

  “He’s cheating on you. He obviously doesn’t care about you. You have too much to lose,” Javier told Rachel between phone calls.

  “Did Rachel tell you about any threats she might have received?” Lynch asked.

  Rachel talked about threats from the past, but she didn’t mention new ones. Those girls had gone to her house and threatened to beat her. Rachel knew Sarah was with Janet Camacho, who had wanted to beat her up for some time.

  “I know Sarah said she wanted to fight Rachel. Did Rachel say she wanted to fight Sarah, too?” Lynch asked.

  “Yes,” Javier replied. “She said she was tired of crying all the time and being afraid that those girls were going to beat her. This time Rachel said, ‘If they want to fight, I’ll fight.’ She was tired of them thinking she was scared. She was tired of them blowing up her phone every night. She just wanted to get everything over with.”

  “Did she say anything about Joshua encouraging her to fight?”

  “She did. She said Joshua told her that if she really loved him, she would fight for him. I’m pretty sure he told the same thing to Sarah.”

  “Kind of pitting the two of them against each other?”

  “Correct.”

  “At what point did you first see the knife that Rachel had?”

  “I never actually saw the knife. I knew she always carried it.”

  “Wait, she always carried it?”

  “Yes, she always carried a knife on her for protection.”

  “The same one?”

  “I don’t know if it’s the same one or not. Her old knife was one of those flip-open pocketknives. She told me hers got stolen. I don’t know what kind of knife she had after that. As far as I knew, it was on the floor in the back of her car. When everything started, I never saw her go to her car to get the knife.”

  “Did the knife come up in conversation that night?”

  Javier said it did. After learning Janet was with Sarah, Rachel told Javier that it was a good thing she had her knife with her, in case those girls “tried anything funny.” Rachel believed those girls were capable of bringing weapons to a fight; they’d been known to have brass knuckles. Javier told Rachel she didn’t need the knife and to leave it where it was. “Nothing is going to happen. We are just going to leave,” Javier had said.

  “How did those girls know where to look for Rachel?”

  “That’s what we were trying to figure out. They know I’m friends with her, and that we used to date. They know that if she has a problem, she’ll either go see her parents or call me.”

  Then there was the swerving car. That happened during one of the last phone calls to Rachel.

  “Was it a white Corolla?”

  “I don’t remember what color it was. It was a light-colored Corolla. It came down the street, saw us, moved to the left side of the road, and sped up. I had to pull Rachel out of the road so she wouldn’t get hit.” He had no idea whose car it was. “I never saw it before,” Javier said. There were no phone calls after that. It was just two or three minutes between the swerving-car incident and when “Sarah and Janet showed up.”

  Javier described the violent sequence. He drew a diagram to show how the vehicles were positioned, and where Rachel was—first when the van arrived, and then when she fought Sarah. Javier said Rachel didn’t move toward the van until Sarah was already out and the two combatants walked toward one another. They met between cars: Sarah in the headlig
ht beam of her own vehicle, Rachel just outside that beam. There was no talking. The girls immediately fought with a quick frenzy of movements, a “frantic flailing.” Sarah grabbed Rachel’s hair with one hand and pummeled her head with the other. Rachel fought back. Janet got out of the car. Rachel and Sarah separated after Janet jumped in.

  Javier figured the whole thing took less than ten seconds. He and Dustin had only been fifteen, twenty yards away, but Sarah and Rachel were finished by the time they got there.

  Lynch read aloud for Javier excerpts from statements made by Janet and Jilica as to the positioning of Rachel and Sarah as they fought. Those girls said Rachel rushed toward Sarah, stabbed her right by the driver’s door to the van, and walked away. Javier said it wasn’t like that at all.

  Lynch said the evidence, the blood, seemed to indicate that the girls were telling the truth and Javier wasn’t. All of the blood was either in the van or right next to the driver’s door.

  Javier said that when Janet jumped in, Sarah returned to the front seat of her car. “Rachel walked away and headed for the back of my car.” According to Javier, Sarah was able to yell at that moment: “Get back in the car. We’ve got to go!” Janet and Rachel began to fight, and the third girl in the van—Javier didn’t know her name—screamed that Sarah just fell and was bleeding.

  Javier called 911. At the same time, he took off his shirt, handed it to Dustin, and said to use it to put pressure on Sarah’s wound.

  Later, when the police were there and everyone was getting chilly, Javier’s mother brought out jackets for Rachel, Javier, and Dustin.

  Soon after finishing with Javier, now about five-thirty on the afternoon of April 16, Joshua Camacho tentatively entered Detective Michael Lynch’s interrogation room. Joshua might have had a cold. He sniffled and sounded congested.

  “How long have you known Rachel Wade?” Lynch asked.

  “Fourth grade. We had class together in fourth grade, and then we didn’t see each other again, until two years ago,” Joshua replied. He and Rachel had only dated for two months. That was about a year ago. “I moved in with her for two months,” he added.

  “She told me June of last year. Does that sound about right?”

  “No.”

  “When was that?”

  “It was …” Joshua’s mind seemed to drift off. “I don’t remember.” He sounded a little sleepy. Lynch pressed him twice for an answer. “Maybe August,” Joshua said. They went very fast from seeing each other to living together. That was right at the beginning of their relationship.

  “You moved in August-ish and moved out Octoberish?” Lynch asked.

  “Yes,” Joshua said. He lived in her Shadow Run apartment. “I moved in with her and her roommate, and there was a problem with the roommate. We broke up, and after that we were just friends.”

  “Would it be fair to say that you and Rachel frequently talk on the phone, texting, leaving messages?”

  “Yeah. She texts. She would text me, but I wouldn’t text her.”

  “But you would call her and talk to her every day?”

  “I would not.”

  “How did you come to talk to her on the phone, then?”

  “When I did talk to her, it was always about me having a question about something she said, about what someone might have said about me, or whatever. You know, confronting her with a question. That was the only time I would talk to her.”

  “You make it seem pretty simple. You went out for a while and then you broke up and you’ve been friends since then. According to her, it’s a lot more deeply involved,” Lynch said. “She says that you and she have been together, off and on, and it was a volatile off and on. We’ve got a lot of background here, and I would like to clear some of this up. You make it sound like you never spoke to her. You know, it’s not going to get you in trouble. It just lets me know her mind-set, and it also gives me insight into the mind-set of Sarah because Sarah is not innocent in this thing, either. I understand that she ended up dead over this, but her going over there is a problem.”

  “Yeah,” Joshua said. “After Rachel and me broke up, she had a mess of boyfriends, and that was one of the reasons I didn’t want to talk to her.”

  Lynch had the police record showing that Joshua and Javier Laboy—Rachel’s new boyfriend—had gotten into an altercation, and Lynch considered that unlikely unless Joshua and Rachel still had romantic feelings.

  “You fought with Javier and then got back together with Rachel, right?”

  “No, I never went back out with her again after we broke up,” Joshua said. “I never went back out with her after I moved out.”

  “But you did talk to her occasionally on the phone, correct?”

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  “If I say something that is untrue, please correct me and tell me what is true.”

  “All right. And the fight with Javier wasn’t about Rachel. It was about my son. Back before Rachel, me and Erin had a kid, and then she told me it wasn’t mine. During that time, Erin and Javier went out, and she was putting pictures in Myspace and calling Javier ‘the daddy of my son.’ So I had hate toward him because of the kid.”

  “Before yesterday, when was the last time you spoke with Rachel?”

  “It was before I went to New York.” Which was when? “It was the twentieth. Uh, I forgot what month it was. What month is this?”

  “April,” Lynch said, now with an edge of impatience.

  “The third month. What is that? August?”

  “The third month is March!”

  “That’s it. It was March. That’s when I went. The twentieth.”

  “Did you go up there with any of these girls?”

  “I went up there with my brother, but Sarah went up the next week.”

  “I understand there was a problem between Sarah and Rachel about when you were in New York, something Sarah posted on Myspace. That ring a bell?”

  “Yeah. Rachel called me and said Javier was telling her I was in New York with Sarah.”

  “Well, you were in New York with Sarah….”

  “Not when she called,” Joshua said.

  “Where were you?”

  “I was in New York, but Sarah hadn’t gotten there yet.”

  “Rachel called you about you being in New York with Sarah before Sarah got there?”

  “Yes. I said, ‘No, Sarah wasn’t up there, and I didn’t know why people are telling you that.’”

  “Okay, but why would she care, if you had broken up a long time before? Why would Rachel care if Sarah’s there or not?”

  “I know!” Joshua said. “That’s how she is. That night she was texting my phone, driving by my house—I mean, my sister’s house.”

  “Okay, we’ll get to that. I’m not done talking about New York. How did Sarah feel when she found out Rachel had called?”

  “I didn’t tell her anything about that,” Joshua said. “What happened next was that Rachel started putting things up on Myspace.” He didn’t remember the exact words. “Something like, ‘My baby’s in New York.’”

  “‘My baby,’ meaning you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she put your name on Myspace?”

  “No. Just ‘my baby.’”

  Lynch was incredulous: “Somehow this enrages people? Words on a computer screen? This upsets people? Are we being serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “You realize how absolutely ridiculous that is, right?”

  “I know. I have told Sarah plenty of times.”

  “So Sarah sees the mention of ‘my baby’ on the computer. Why does Sarah care enough to look at Rachel’s Myspace page?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “No, you are not. Tell me. Why did Sarah care so much about what Rachel was saying?”

  “Because I don’t know. Because I don’t get what you are trying to say.”

  “If Sarah thinks that you and Rachel aren’t dating, why is she looking on Rachel’s Myspace p
age? I’m not saying that it’s illegal or a problem. I just want to understand. Why in hell does Sarah care what Rachel has to say?”

  “I asked Sarah that question so many times, too!”

  “And what did Sarah say?”

  “She said, ‘Because you’re mine.’ That’s what she always said. That’s what they would do. One would put something about the other on Myspace and they would get mad, even if it’s not true.”

  “Did Sarah tell you that she had called Rachel, that she bitched her out or anything like that?”

  “No, Sarah never told me when she did anything.”

  “But you do know she was upset about something Rachel had posted on there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it normal for Sarah to get upset about things on the Internet?”

  “Yeah, and they knew that. That’s why they did it.” He only knew about Rachel baiting Sarah with online comments. He didn’t know if Sarah retaliated.

  “You said ‘back and forth’ before …,” Lynch pointed out.

  “Yeah, but the texts came from Rachel,” Joshua said.

  Lynch asked if there were any more incidents in the three weeks leading up to the tragic night? Joshua said there were not. The detective said he knew Joshua’s relationship with Rachel was tumultuous, to put it mildly. Lynch had read the police report: Rachel called the cops on him, Joshua Camacho, for kicking in the front door of her apartment. When did all that stuff occur?

  “That was before I went to New York,” Joshua replied.

  “Rachel’s been working at Applebee’s. Have there not been incidents out at Applebee’s involving you or Sarah, or anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “So there were no incidents during the three weeks before. Okay. In that case, what happened yesterday, or maybe the night before yesterday, that led up to all this?”

  Joshua said it was about eleven o’clock on Tuesday night. Joshua and Sarah were playing video games at his sister Janet’s house. Rachel texted his phone.

  “You don’t want to be with me because of Sarah,” Joshua remembered one text reading.

  He texted back: No, I don’t want to be with you because I don’t like you no more.