Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  One: When the van arrived, it arrived aggressively. During one interview, Dustin said the van “really came flying in there.” Two: All three girls got out of the van at the same time—in fact, they came “flying out of the car”—which touched upon the very crux of Hebert’s argument. Rachel had been jumped by a gang and had a right to arm herself in self-defense. Also, Dustin agreed that Sarah had had an opportunity to move toward the front of the van before she and Rachel came together.

  Hebert asked Dustin if he knew on that night which girl was Janet Camacho. The witness said he did now, but not then. That night had been the first time he’d ever laid eyes on either Janet or Jilica.

  Would the van have hit the Saturn if it hadn’t come to a sudden stop? Dustin wasn’t ready to commit to that completely, but he did say that “it could have” struck Rachel’s car. When the van arrived, Rachel was not standing next to her car but rather was leaning on it. Leaning on the hood? No, it “was more on the driver’s side.”

  Hebert wanted the jury to consider this contrast in passive and aggressive: three girls stampeding out of a van; one girl leaning back against a car.

  “I want to make sure a couple of things are crystal clear about your testimony today. You never saw Rachel attack Sarah as she was sitting behind the wheel of the minivan, did you?”

  “No.”

  Dustin didn’t know if the van’s engine was still running. The fight happened near the front driver’s side of the van, “halfway between” the van and the Saturn. Sarah grabbed Rachel by the hair; although he couldn’t say for sure that she pulled Rachel’s hair, or that she pulled Rachel’s head down by her hair. Sarah landed three or four punches to Rachel’s head.

  Hebert took Dustin, step-by-step, to the second altercation, the one between Janet and Rachel. He asked the witness if he saw Janet Camacho “beating Rachel down,” beating Rachel “profusely.” Dustin said he did. And yes, the beating lasted upward to a minute.

  “It was apparent, in your opinion, when that van pulled up, that there was going to be a catfight, that there was going to be a beat down that night, wasn’t it?”

  “I didn’t actually think there was going to be a fight. I thought they were just going to start yelling at each other, and then just leave.”

  “And then all hell broke loose?”

  “Yes.”

  Hebert understood that the witness did not know Jilica Smith, but he knew which girl she was. At the time, did Dustin think Jilica was going to be part of the fight? Dustin admitted that he had no clue.

  “Jilica could have been part of the gang that was going to be involved with the fight, right?” the defense attorney asked.

  “Right,” the witness said.

  Dustin said he didn’t remember Jilica physically holding Janet back and trying to keep her out of the fight, but he did remember Jilica hollering at Janet. It was something about not getting hurt for the sake of her child.

  Hebert wanted to emphasize the one-sidedness of the fight between Rachel and Janet. Janet was “cleaning Rachel’s clock.” Wasn’t it true that Janet attacked Rachel before Jilica called out that Sarah had been stabbed? That was true. The Janet-Rachel fight, in fact, “immediately” followed the Rachel-Sarah fight. It was while Janet was beating down Rachel that Jilica cried out that Sarah had been stabbed.

  “No further questions,” Hebert said.

  On redirect Lisset Hanewicz returned to the swerving car. Had either Dustin or Javier pulled Rachel out of the way to keep her from getting hit?

  Dustin said they had not, and they were not even in a position to do so, as they were still over by his car, not with Rachel down by the street. But Rachel did have to move to avoid being hit by the swerving car.

  Hanewicz had been paying close attention to Hebert’s word games. When he said that Rachel and Sarah first came together near the front driver’s side of the van, this wasn’t halfway between the van and the Saturn at all, was it? It was closer to the van than it was to the Saturn. Rachel traveled farther than Sarah to get to the point of the altercation.

  Hanewicz concluded by having the witness identify Rachel in the courtroom, which he did.

  The DVD ended, the TV was turned off, and the courtroom lights were brightened to normal.

  That concluded the testimony for the day. Judge Joseph Bulone admonished the jury: No TV news. If they looked at a newspaper, skip the local section. No discussing the case, no research online, no news sites online. He told the jurors to be back by ten the next morning and dismissed them for the day.

  With the jury gone, Hebert briefed the court as to what his game plan was: His case was going to involve a text message from Joshua to Sarah, two days before the incident, in which he advised her to put the gun in her backpack. Joshua denied ever sending any such text message. Hebert said that he didn’t know if the prosecution was going to call Joshua as a witness. If they chose not to, he would call him as a hostile witness.

  Hebert said he planned to discuss the gun during his opening statement because it went to his client’s state of mind during the buildup to the incident. Hebert gave a quick rundown on the many ways in which Joshua’s story regarding the gun had changed with time. He’d denied having the gun; he had claimed that he didn’t recognize the text he sent to Sarah regarding the gun; he’d said Rachel had no way of knowing about the gun. He was all over the place.

  When she testified, Rachel was going to say that not only did she know about the gun, but she had been threatened by the gun as well. Her friends could vouch for her because she told them about it at the time. Joshua pointed the gun at her and said, “You’ll never leave me. You’ll never leave me.” The implications were clear. He’d blow her brains out if she tried. And all of that led to Rachel’s heightened state of mind.

  Judge Bulone looked at Hebert with a skeptical raised eyebrow. The thing that amazed him, he said, was that this was such a pivotal thing; yet Hebert had failed to mention it during earlier court hearings. The judge wanted to get this straight. Hebert was not suggesting that the defendant knew about a gun because it was mentioned in a text message from Joshua to Sarah. Hebert conceded that. The text message was important in that it corroborated that the gun existed, a gun that Rachel already knew about and would testify that she’d been threatened with. Rachel would testify that the gun was part of her mind-set when she chose to arm herself on the night of the incident.

  The judge became irritated. If the defense was saying that Rachel stabbed Sarah because she thought she might have a gun, Hebert certainly could have asked Rachel that question at the immunity hearing. However, he had not.

  Hebert said that wasn’t quite what Rachel was going to say. She didn’t know who was going to show up that night to attack her. For all she knew, Joshua was coming to get her. Joshua might have given his gun to his older sister, Janet. Rachel didn’t so much think Sarah had a gun, as she feared that a gun would be brought into the picture at some point during the night, and that was why she felt justified in arming herself.

  Judge Bulone characterized that argument as “pretty speculative,” but he saw no reason she couldn’t testify to that, if that was what her mind-set was. He ruled that if Hebert wanted to corroborate Rachel’s story that Joshua had a gun and had threatened her with it, he should have Joshua testify to that, but he didn’t see how the text message from Joshua to Sarah was relevant, since Rachel couldn’t have known about it and therefore it couldn’t have affected her mind-set.

  Hebert said, yeah, but in his legal opinion, Joshua had lied during every step of the process.

  The judge replied that Joshua was not on trial—and thus the first day concluded.

  Chapter 11

  DAY TWO

  At ten o’clock the following morning, July 22, as all parties waited for Judge Bulone to enter the courtroom, Rachel Wade was already busy, writing in her yellow legal pad. She looked a little better than she had during day one, as this was the day she was scheduled to testify on her own behalf. She had
been allowed to wear some eye makeup.

  At three minutes past ten, the bailiff called out the “All rise!” and Judge Joseph Bulone strode purposefully into the courtroom with a Styrofoam cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in his hand. He took the bench and asked if there was any business that needed to be tended to before he brought the jury in.

  Defense attorney Jay Hebert said he had made copies of Joshua Camacho’s October 27, 2009, deposition, the one that dealt with the gun issue. During that deposition, Joshua said that he had no gun, was familiar with no gun, and had no access to a gun in his household. Did he have a gun at the time of the incident? No. However, during a deposition dated January 21, 2010, Joshua was asked if he had a gun, and he responded, “I had one.”

  While trying to sort this out, speaking aloud, Judge Bulone repeatedly referred to Rachel as Sarah, and twice had to be corrected.

  Hebert said that it would have been nice if, at the various times Joshua was deposed, the defense had had access to the phone photos of Joshua with the gun, so that Joshua would have been unable to deny having one. The defense, however, had not gotten a copy of the photo of Joshua with the gun until two weeks before the trial.

  Judge Bulone noted that the key factor, as far as he was concerned, was that Joshua had at least admitted that he had a gun at the time of the incident during the second deposition. That, in itself, was still not relevant. The only potentially relevant factor was: did Rachel know about the gun and have reason to believe it would come into play on the night of the incident? The judge said that they had a lot of things to get through before Joshua took the stand and they would deal with the subject more when the time came. He called for the jurors to be brought in.

  The prosecution called PPPD patrol officer Benjamin Simpkins. After a brief pause, Officer Simpkins entered in uniform, a burly man with close-cropped hair and a round face. He took the oath and was seated.

  Under Wesley Dicus’s questioning, Simpkins identified himself as a six-year veteran of the force, who worked the midnight shift. He had worked continuously for those six-plus years, and had some experience in corrections prior to that. He’d graduated from the police academy, of course. In addition to that, he’d received radar laser training and courses in vehicular homicide. He was also an instructor for the department in first aid and CPR. He was a fieldtraining officer, who worked with new recruits to get them road ready.

  Simpkins testified that he was trained in being a first responder at the scene of a crime and had previously been the first responder at scenes of crimes that involved great bodily injury.

  How many times?

  Simpkins chuckled and replied, “Numerous.”

  During the early-morning hours of April 15, 2009, Simpkins was called to the scene of a stabbing. The precise time he received the call was “zero zero fifty-three hours,” that is, at 12:53 A.M. He was on the scene within minutes, only a few minutes after the stabbing occurred—not the first responder, but among the first responders. The scene was “chaotic”: green van in the street, bleeding young lady down, paramedics. Other police officers were already there, busy trying to quell a disturbance between unruly bystanders.

  “As one of the first responders, what were your duties?”

  The first priority was to save life and limb. Secondly, to make sure that no one at the scene was armed and that there was no immediate further threat to the victim or any of the bystanders. That done, the parties were separated. Once apart, police began to establish who everyone was and what their roles were in the incident.

  The process of separating and identifying witnesses was called “initial contact.” During this process, he would create a “crime roster,” which was a list of everyone at the scene. Next he sorted out the facts, which he referred to as the “Reader’s Digest version of the investigation.” Once he had the basic story, he would pass that information on to a responding detective, who could then fill in the details. The detective’s investigation was far more detail-and history-oriented. They separated witnesses so they could be interviewed separately without influencing each other.

  The officer remembered two women at the scene named Janet and Jilica. They were “at the south end of the scene,” near another vehicle. When Simpkins first saw the women, they were standing with another officer. Simpkins said that the two women were separated; but when he was asked how far apart they actually were, he said, “Maybe a couple of yards.” Simpkins admitted that at a couple of yards apart, the two women could easily converse. The key was that they could not talk to one another discreetly at that distance. A police officer could hear what was said. The chance of secret messages between the two was further hindered by the surrounding chaos. In that dry cacophony, whispers evaporated.

  During cross-examination, Officer Simpkins said he was aware at the scene that the incident was the result of a “long-term dispute going on between the girls.”

  Had he seen any blood inside the van?

  Yes, on the driver’s seat, on the floor in front of that seat, and on the interior paneling.

  Jay Hebert wanted to know more about the “Mexican boyfriend” statement.

  Janet, the officer said, had made it clear that Sarah had put her phone on speaker so that everyone in the van would be able to hear what Rachel was saying and know what was going on.

  Wasn’t it true that Jilica told him that she had been shown a text message by Sarah, and that the text was from Rachel and said that she was going to wait by Sarah’s house and stab her?

  Simpkins said that was true.

  At that time, Jilica had not said anything about Rachel’s voice on speaker or the “Mexican boyfriend” statement.

  The prosecution called PPPD sergeant Tina Trehy, with Lisset Hanewicz questioning. Trehy said she was in charge of the day shift’s patrol section.

  Trehy came from a family of police. Her dad, David Cline, was a police detective in Cleveland, Ohio. Her uncle Andrew Zatik was a PPPD veteran. Her husband, James, retired from the PPPD, and took a job with the Florida Department of Insurance Fraud.

  Trehy ran the police records bureau; and because of her artistic skill, she was the PPPD sketch artist, drawing perps based on witness’s descriptions. She began her career in law enforcement as a police dispatcher and “meter maid” in St. Petersburg. When she joined the PPPD in 1988, she was the third-ever female patrol officer.

  Sergeant Trehy had arrived at the scene of Sarah Ludemann’s stabbing just a few minutes before one o’clock in the morning, on April 15, 2009. There were several vehicles in the street, among them police cruisers. People were all over the place; teenagers and adults milling about, all very upset. Screaming, crying. She got out of her car and noticed the van in the middle of the street. Next to it, a young girl was lying on the ground.

  Trehy’s voice shook with emotion as she described how two officers from her shift were attending to the girl in the road. The ambulance and fire department had not yet arrived. She was subsequently informed that the girl had been stabbed.

  Hanewicz asked if there came a time that night when the witness came in contact with Rachel Wade. Trehy said she had, and was about to identify her as the defendant when Jay Hebert interrupted and stipulated that the defendant was Rachel Wade, noting that the identity of the defendant was not an issue in this case.

  Trehy testified that while at the scene she was in contact with Rachel Wade for approximately forty-five minutes—although it could have been an hour or longer. She was not keeping close track of time. The thing about the defendant’s behavior that caught Trehy’s attention was her calmness—her “lack of concern” regarding everything that was going on.

  Hebert objected, noting that the witness, unless she could read minds, was speculating.

  Judge Joseph Bulone sustained the objection and instructed the witness that she could testify to the defendant’s demeanor, but not to her thoughts.

  So ASA Hanewicz helped the witness show rather than tell. Rachel had not cried or appeared upset.
She had not inquired as to the victim’s condition. All she wanted was a cigarette.

  “No further questions,” the fiery prosecutor said.

  Hebert saw nothing to gain by cross-examining this witness, so Trehy was allowed to step down.

  “The state calls Detective Kenneth Blessing,” Dicus announced. The call went outside the courtroom for Detective Blessing, but there was no response. Wesley Dicus furiously typed on a laptop, and Lisset Hanewicz stomped out of the room to see what the problem was. She returned in less than a minute and informed the judge that Detective Blessing was not ready to testify and that the state would instead call PPPD detective Michael Lynch.

  Detective Lynch, in a black suit, strode briskly into the courtroom, took the oath, and had a seat.

  “On April 15, 2009, were you designated the lead detective on this case?” Hanewicz asked.

  “I was. Yes, ma’am.”

  “As the lead detective, could you explain to the jury briefly what your responsibilities are?”

  Lynch explained that during the active investigation, it was his responsibility to follow up on any leads in the case, to interview witnesses and suspects, and to gather any evidence or potential evidence that might exist. He was first contacted regarding the stabbing at approximately 1:00 A.M. on April 15. At that time, he was summoned to the house where Javier Laboy resided in Pinellas Park.

  When he arrived at Javier’s home, PPPD patrol and forensic units were already there. The first officer with whom Lynch spoke after his arrival was Simpkins, who briefed him as to what he had learned during initial contact interviews. That info was very helpful, especially when Lynch later interviewed the eyewitnesses and suspect more thoroughly.