Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Ashley agreed that the Sarah/Rachel drama was a two-way street.

  Hebert asked Ashley if it was true that she once said about Sarah: “There was no stopping her that night.”

  The witness agreed that she had said that.

  When she was first interviewed, wasn’t it true she had not admitted telling Sarah how to find Rachel, the very point that had earlier made the witness cry because it made her feel responsible for her best friend’s death?

  The question brought a quick objection, stating that it was redundant and that the question had already been asked and answered during direct examination.

  Judge Bulone overruled the objection, and Ashley agreed that she had indeed lied to the detective about her role in the night’s activities. There were no tears this time when she said it. Instead, her chin tilted upward and she gave the defense attorney her best look of defiance.

  Attempting to chip away at her strength whenever he could, Hebert pretended he didn’t hear her answer. He made her repeat it—which she did in a manner sure to be heard in the back row of the courtroom, perhaps in the hallway.

  Wasn’t it true that five months later she called Detective Lynch and told him a different story?

  “I called Detective Lynch the next day,” Ashley said firmly. Hebert’s attempts to fluster her weren’t working. She had her shoulders square to him and was ready for anything he could dish out.

  Hebert tried some rapid-fire questioning, getting Ashley to reiterate the events at Janet’s house, dropping off the phone, seeing the girls come out of the house just as she was about to leave.

  But Ashley answered in rapid-fire fashion as well, and Hebert’s attempt to make her contradict herself backfired. He asked her if she got out of the car when she got to Janet’s house. She said no, she stayed in the car; Jay came outside to get his phone. She put space between her words as she might when talking to a mentally slow person.

  She didn’t talk to the girls when she was at the house. She did not talk to the girls until they were at the end of the block, at the four-way stop sign.

  Yes, it was Janet Camacho who asked where Rachel was.

  Hebert was scoring some points here. Ashley was expecting the jury to believe that just as it was a coincidence that she had driven past Javier’s house in the first place, it was coincidence that Janet had asked her if she knew where Rachel was, and—what do you know?—she’d just seen her just a few moments before.

  Ashley explained that when the two cars stopped, they were both pointed in the same direction. Sarah rolled down her window and Ashley leaned across and rolled down her passenger-side window so they could talk. Was this brief conversation at the stop sign the only time she spoke to those girls that night? Ashley said it was.

  Hebert showed the witness defense exhibit number three, an aerial photo of the pertinent Pinellas Park neighborhood, and he asked if she recognized it. After a long pause, Ashley said she did not.

  The defense attorney pointed out Javier’s house on the photo and asked if this helped her to orient herself to what the photo showed. She said it did. He tried to show her which direction she was going when she passed Javier’s house, but she corrected him and said she’d been headed in the opposite direction.

  Hebert asked to introduce the photo into evidence, but before he could do that, Dicus requested that he first be allowed to ask the witness a few questions in voir dire. Judge Bulone said okay.

  Dicus held up the same photo for Ashley and asked her if she could tell which way was north. She said she could not. Despite that, she tentatively acknowledged that the photo accurately depicted Javier’s neighborhood.

  Because there was no compass on the photo, wasn’t it true that she couldn’t tell which direction she was headed when she passed Javier’s house? Ashley very softly said that was true.

  Of course, she had already testified as to which way she’d been driving when she passed the house, and matters of east-west, north-south, had nothing to do with it. She knew which side of her car Javier’s house had been on when she passed.

  Hebert placed the photo on an easel facing the jury, and Ashley was allowed to get down from the witness stand to get a close-up look.

  Rachel’s lawyer stood off to one side, a few feet, with his arms crossed over his chest. He tried to get the witness to figure out where on the photo Jay’s house was, based on him pointing out where Javier’s house was. She reiterated that she just knew how to get from one place to the other, not the names of streets or anything.

  She also couldn’t find Janet’s house on the photo. She was, however, able to show Hebert which direction she was headed when she passed Javier’s house, and at which corner she had made the wide turn that might have been mistaken for swerving.

  Hebert asked whose car she was driving, and she said it was a gold Camry, which belonged to her boyfriend’s mom. Her boyfriend wasn’t Jay at that time, but rather a guy named Jeremy.

  Under rapid-fire questioning, Ashley maintained that when she saw Rachel, Javier, and the other guy standing in the driveway, she neither swerved nor sped.

  “If somebody said that happened, they lied, correct?”

  “I didn’t see it happen,” Ashley said. It was not a wholly satisfying response.

  “Are you saying that you drove past that location fast?”

  “I’m saying I drove by at a normal speed.”

  “Okay,” Hebert said, removing the photo and the easel.

  Ashley was allowed to return to the witness stand. Hebert made her acknowledge once again that Sarah was looking for Rachel that night. Ashley said this was true, repeating that it was because Rachel was sending her threatening texts.

  “Would you agree with me that when Sarah is mad, she’s mad.”

  “Yeah, she’s mad. She’s upset. Yeah.”

  “And, in fact, there was no stopping her that night.”

  “No, she … no.”

  Hebert used this response to return to the discrepancy between Ashley’s defense deposition and today’s testimony, wherein she had withdrawn the phrase “in a rage” from her description of the victim’s demeanor.

  Ashley now said that she had originally used the term to describe Sarah’s angry and frustrated demeanor. She did not want to imply that “her head was about to pop off, or anything.”

  When she said Sarah was in a rage, that was also the time when she said there was “no stopping her”?

  Yes, she agreed.

  With that established, defense attorney Jay Hebert sat.

  Wesley Dicus had a few questions on redirect. He wanted to make sure that the jury understood it was normal for someone to look at an aerial photo of a neighborhood and have difficulty determining directions.

  The prosecutor asked Ashley if she had ever seen the neighborhood from an aerial perspective. Had she ever flown over Javier’s house in a helicopter, or anything like that?

  The witness said she had not, and repeated that she couldn’t tell for sure from that photo which streets she had driven on or in what direction.

  She then described the route she had taken for ASA Dicus in her own terms, again sometimes not even saying “left” or “right,” but using her hands to gesture.

  In his cross-examination, Jay Hebert repeatedly used the phrase “no stopping her.” Three or four times. He used it as a way to describe Miss Ludemann’s demeanor.

  Did she remember that?

  She said she did.

  He asked if that phrase, when she used it, had anything to do with fighting.

  Ashley said no, it just meant that she was going to do what she wanted to do, and no one was going to talk her out of it.

  On his recross, Jay Hebert sounded sick of the semantics and had a “let’s get real” tone to his questioning.

  Wasn’t it true that Ashley knew that Sarah wanted to find Rachel and “end the drama?” And what could that phrase mean if it didn’t mean she was going to fight her?

  “Not to fight, to confront,” Ashle
y said. “Not to have it end the way it ended, no. I didn’t think they were going to fight. They had never fought before.”

  “You knew she was going there to fight.”

  “No! I didn’t!”

  And with that, Ashley Lovelady was allowed to step down from the witness stand and exit the courtroom, using the same shoulder-rolling strut with which she had entered.

  Sitting in the spectator section of the courtroom, glaring at Ashley as she testified, was Jamie Severino. The two young women had long been enemies because both laid claim to Jay Camacho.

  Jamie said it had nothing to do with them being enemies, of course, but she knew for a fact that many of the things Ashley had testified to were complete bullshit.

  “She said that night she went to Janet’s house to give Jay a phone,” Jamie later said. “That was completely false. I had just bought him a phone. This was around tax time, so I had just bought him a brand-new phone, brand-new clothes, everything. She didn’t come by to give him a phone. I was over there that day and she came by to see what he was doing, to be crazy! She was stalking—kind of like what Rachel was doing. She didn’t talk to Jay. She didn’t come in the house. She didn’t even get out of her car. She drove by, and that was it. She parked outside for a second.”

  Jamie didn’t even believe that Ashley was telling the truth about driving by Javier’s house and then relaying Rachel’s location to Sarah. Her theory was that Rachel told Sarah herself where she was.

  This theory, however, failed to explain the car that sped down Javier’s block and, according to some witnesses, swerved in an attempt to intimidate Rachel.

  The jury was hearing a story that made events seem so accidental, random, as if coincidence and fate had brought Sarah and Rachel together in front of Javier’s house.

  Jamie didn’t believe it was that way at all. She thought it was all planned. Sarah and Rachel agreed to meet at that time, at that spot. Coincidence had nothing to do with it.

  Jamie claimed the very premise—that Ashley was Sarah’s friend, and that was why she snitched out Rachel’s location—was faulty.

  Ashley and Sarah were not buddies, Jamie insisted. In fact, Ashley had done some serious shit to Sarah, not just to Sarah but to the Ludemann family. They were never going to be friends.

  Jamie had a theory: “Ashley was just pretending to be Sarah’s friend so she could get close to Jay.”

  You would’ve thought that things would smooth out, become significantly less dramatic, after Sarah’s death, but that hadn’t been the case. Ashley had continued to bother Jamie, and a senior relative of Ashley’s even got into the act, saw Jamie at the store in November 2009, and chased her in her car. They both were pulled over. They both had to go to court. Charges against Jamie were dropped, but Ashley’s relative was nailed for reckless driving.

  “The state calls Jilica Smith.”

  Jilica was a black woman who wore part of her hair in a ponytail, and had a cascade of hair falling down the right side of her face. She wore tight white pants, a pink shirt, large hoop earrings, and had her voluminous black purse slung over her left shoulder.

  Lisset Hanewicz did the questioning.

  Jilica said she was twenty-one years old, and had been twenty at the time of the incident. She knew Janet Camacho because Janet was the mother of her cousin’s children. With a deep and musical voice, Jilica came off as far more mature than the previous witness. She explained that she knew Joshua because he was Janet’s brother, and she’d known Sarah through Joshua.

  She did not know Rachel Wade. Not then, not now. On the night of April 14, 2009, Jilica had been at Janet’s house on 59th Street in Pinellas Park. She was living with Janet at the time. She didn’t live with Janet anymore. There were four people there that night: she and Janet, Joshua and Sarah. At some point, Jilica was outside with a friend, sitting in a car for about thirty minutes. Janet was outside, too, at some point. “She was in a green van, I think.” Janet was in a car parked “in her yard,” and the witness was sitting in a car “parked across the street.”

  ASA Hanewicz asked if a vehicle caught her attention as she was sitting.

  Yes, it did, Jilica replied. She saw a red car pass by. It caught her attention because it was speeding. She didn’t recognize the driver, but she saw blond hair.

  “I couldn’t really make out if it was a boy or a girl,” Jilica testified. The car came to a halt at a stop sign at the end of the block, and maybe “she” drove past a second time.

  “I don’t know. It was just driving by,” Jilica said.

  When the vehicle was approaching, she was facing it. After it passed, Jilica had to turn around to see it. The vehicle Janet was in was facing in the opposite direction, so she could more comfortably watch what the car did after it passed.

  At some point during the evening, Jilica was standing outside the house “texting or something,” when Janet and Sarah came out of the house and announced they were going to McDonald’s. That sounded good, so Jilica decided to ride along with them. The three young women got into Sarah’s green minivan.

  Hanewicz asked the witness to whom did the car belong. Jilica said she didn’t know—just that Sarah was always driving it.

  From the witness stand, Jilica snuck a quick peek at Rachel, sitting at the defense table. This slightly unnerved Jilica, who crossed her arms across her chest, suddenly chilly, and stared downward for a moment.

  “At some point, when you were in the vehicle, did you overhear a conversation?” Hanewicz queried.

  Jilica said she did. She heard a girl’s voice on Sarah’s phone, a voice she didn’t recognize, and she clearly heard it say, “I’m going to stab you and your Mexican boyfriend.” She couldn’t hear everything that was said on the other end of the phone connection. In fact, that one sentence was the only thing that caught her attention.

  Hanewicz wondered what made that one sentence stand out. Jilica said it was because of what it said. That would catch anyone’s attention.

  Was Sarah screaming?

  Jilica said, “She was kind of arguing back. They were just two people going at it.” Although the voice wasn’t familiar, it was identifiably female.

  What was Sarah’s reaction to the outrageous threat?

  Sarah didn’t seem to take it seriously. She just said “really,” or something like that.

  Once Sarah started to drive, where did she go?

  Jilica couldn’t be sure. She wasn’t that familiar with Pinellas Park, but they passed a couple of streets and she thought they went by Sarah’s house. She saw a cab parked out front and knew Sarah’s dad was a cabdriver.

  At one point, they did stop; and Sarah talked to another person in a car, a girl, but Jilica didn’t know her. She didn’t overhear much of that conversation. She remembered hearing the name “Javier,” but that was about it. She didn’t know what was going on. She knew Sarah was mad at someone—but she thought they were still going to McDonald’s. It all concerned people she didn’t know, so it didn’t register. Not at first. Slowly it sank in. Sarah’s agenda had shifted. After the conversation with the girl in the other car, Sarah’s driving changed. They “whipped around a couple of corners” and ended up in front of “some guy’s house.”

  Hanewicz produced a large board, upon which were glued nine photographs, which she referred to as state’s composite exhibit 3a through 3i. She asked the witness if she recognized those photos.

  Jilica said she did; they were from “that night.” She pointed out the minivan in which she was sitting, ran through again where she was sitting, and where Janet and Sarah were sitting. Jilica testified that when they arrived at the location, there were two boys and a girl there. The girl was standing in the yard, on the grass, on the driver’s side of the red car between the front tire and the front door. The boys were standing in the yard, closer to the house.

  As soon as Sarah’s minivan came to a stop, she opened her door. The blond-haired girl was walking toward her, “sort of fast,” with her rig
ht hand held up beside her face, something held tightly in that hand. Jilica didn’t recognize the blond girl or the two boys standing in the yard. She had never been at that location or seen any of those people before.

  “What did you see in the girl’s hand?”

  “I saw a knife.”

  Jilica saw the girl with the knife walk right up to Sarah. They “locked heads” in confrontation. For a moment, all Jilica could see was a bunch of hair flying around.

  Hanewicz made the witness spell it out so that it was clear: The blond girl had been the one to close the distance between the two combatants. The blonde walked all the way from the side of the road to the driver’s side of the minivan, while Sarah had barely taken two steps out of her car. Jilica was still in the backseat when she saw the blonde walk right in front of the minivan.

  The witness knew now that the blond girl must have stabbed Sarah, but she didn’t see that. She just saw a flurry of motion, and then the blonde walked away.

  It all happened very fast, “not even ten seconds.” And it was at that point, after the fight, that Janet and Jilica got out of the minivan.

  Jilica had concentrated her efforts on trying to calm Janet Camacho down because Janet had seen what had happened and was very mad. Jilica looked at the blonde and she was just standing there with a smirk on her face. She hadn’t seen the blonde’s face immediately following the confrontation with Sarah because she was walking away, and all she could see was her back. But when the blonde turned around, and they were face-to-face, Jilica saw she was smirking.

  Was Janet upset? Jilica did not remember Janet crying.

  Did Janet want to fight Rachel? Jilica had no idea what was going through Janet’s head.

  “Okay, fair enough. What did you see Janet do?” ASA Hanewicz asked.

  Janet hadn’t been able to do anything. That was because Jilica had her arm. Janet Camacho was trying to get to the blonde.

  “But I didn’t know if the girl still had the knife, so that was why I was holding her,” Jilica testified.

  “Where were the boys at this time?”