Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle

by Michael Benson

  Rachel Wade was a sex addict. Judging from the intensely prurient nature of her jailhouse correspondence, she probably still is. Her behavior from age fourteen on—a precocious reliance on sex as a balm for her feelings—was much like what one might expect from an abuse victim.

  What made this situation blossom into tragic violence? For one thing, according to New Jersey psychological counselor Kathy Morelli, there is a change in brain chemistry that happens to people when they have sex. A biological attachment forms. Brain changes that come from having orgasms together produced potent emotions, causing normally mild people to resort to violence. Teenagers weren’t adults, so it was a strong yet immature attachment. Passion stirred up primal possessiveness.

  Morelli agreed that there was a strong chance that Rachel had problems at home. Most teen girls did not drop out of school or run away from home because of an unwanted curfew. This wasn’t to say that Barry and Janet Wade were bad parents, but there might have been a disconnect of some sort in the parent-child relationship. Perhaps there was an underlying and undiagnosed depression in Rachel or in the family (as this is usually hereditary). The parental relationship was strained for some reason. It is clear that Rachel was a difficult child with whom to cope, and there was a mismatch in temperaments between parents and child. (Pregnancy during the teenaged years was a common trigger.) Date rape and promiscuity could also be part of a constellation of behaviors that included shoplifting. It was clear that Rachel had very low self-esteem, beginning for whatever reason (temperamental, underlying learning disability, underlying depression, a not-so-overt disconnect with her parents) and then reinforced by poor decision making. Extreme anger usually masked fear, depression, and helplessness.

  Joshua Camacho, on the other hand, was narcissistic. He had an inflated sense of self-importance and an exaggerated need for admiration. As was true of many narcissists, he appeared arrogantly self-assured and confident, although this may not have been the actual case. Case watchers could see by observing Joshua’s behavior that he reacted poorly when things weren’t going his way. He punched Sarah, pulled a gun on Rachel. His work history demonstrated a lack of ambition, perhaps because he feared competitive situations. He might be living his life avoiding the risk of failure.

  Narcissists, with their intrinsic lack of regard for other’s feelings, preyed on people with dependent personalities. They fed off others and enjoyed being fought over, enjoyed manipulating their sexual partners, and didn’t have a well-developed sense of self. They were often abused (at least emotionally), so they got their feelings of efficacy by surrounding themselves with subservient others. Sarah, Rachel, Erin, and no doubt others were all prey for the opportunist narcissist, who was drawn to those with low self-esteem like a shark to blood.

  As for the cyber bullying, Morelli believed all parents of teens should have a monitor on their child’s smart phones and computers, access to his or her online social network accounts as silent friends, and they should check in to see what was being said in their minor child’s world. Parents were woefully uninformed about how to parent in the cyber age and needed a presence online as silent friends. They needed to know where their teen was going in the virtual world, which was a real place, not imaginary. Cyber threats were real threats, and these needed to be reported. Sarah’s friends served as the virtual bully gang egging her and Rachel on. In teenaged naivete, the Sarah camp thought it wasn’t real, and no violence would occur. But it did.

  The fact that the Internet played such a key role in this case was interesting to psychology professionals because the phenomenon was still so new. There was a researched and documented “online disinhibition effect” in the virtual world, a world where people were more apt to express the unedited id, for they felt protected by their online avatar.

  Education regarding Internet practices was the best way to bring awareness about this effect. Those with underdeveloped identities (teens, for instance) took on avatars and railed against the world. They thought they were somehow veiled and empowered by their avatars. So adolescents who didn’t have fully developed self-identities could easily get lost in their avatars, become intoxicated by their feeling of power, and allow unedited violent feelings to come to the forefront.

  That point was again made through tragedy in March 2011 when there was another battle of teen tweets, this time in Brooklyn, New York. It turned out there didn’t have to be a boy at the center of Internet violence. Tweeting about money could also be incendiary.

  Eighteen-year-old Kayla Henriques was arrested and charged with second-degree murder for the fatal stabbing of twenty-two-year-old Kamisha Richards. The young women were friends. Kamisha gave Kayla $20 for diapers for Kayla’s eleven-month-old baby; then Kamisha learned Kayla had spent the money on something else. Three days before the stabbing, the young women began a war of words on an Internet social network site, which escalated without restraint.

  Kamisha Richards concluded the word portion of the war with the phrase: Ima have the last laugh. She went to Kayla Henriques’s apartment and demanded her money back. The argument started in the kitchen, and finished in the bedroom, where Richards was stabbed.

  Henriques stayed calm, she said, and tried to save her friend. An ambulance was called immediately and she applied pressure to the wound, but it wasn’t enough to save Kamisha Richards, who made it into the apartment’s hallway before collapsing and dying.

  Insults were hurled in public, which meant each girl had to be both angry and embarrassed, a volatile mix even in the most mature egos.

  This was more evidence that the Internet could take a little disagreement and turn it into a big one, the social network providing mob mentality.

  Maybe so, but Jamie Severino had another explanation. She believed the secret villain in this story was drugs. She felt Rachel was taking them, and they were affecting her decision-making process.

  “Why else would she decide to do something stupid like killing somebody?” Jamie asked.

  Ah, but Jamie Severino was not Rachel’s friend. Lisa Lafrance was, and she insisted that drugs had nothing to do with Rachel’s actions.

  According to Lisa, Rachel’s fear was what made her lash out. Rachel wasn’t innocent, her longtime friend said after the trial, but she was being way overpunished. It was those nasty voice mails. Rachel’s fear caused her to commit the crime, and it was her big mouth that earned her the long stint in prison.

  Lisa attended the trial and watched that jury. She could tell they didn’t get it. They were all older, and there was only one woman! When those jurors listened to the tapes, they took everything Rachel said literally.

  A different kind of “wisdom” came from a blog called Chateau Heartiste, and its controversial column “Chicks Dig Jerks” set forth the premise that what girls want was very different from what they said they wanted. His argument was that women were subconsciously seeking the alpha male, and the guy who seemed most in charge was rarely the most likeable fellow.

  One symptom of this was that the alpha male often attracted more than one woman; while the beta male struggled for companionship. Being a beta male, it followed, was an ugly virus of being second best, which consumed a man’s soul. Extrapolating from this theory, Heartiste believed there was a part of girls’ minds—with “all girls” being a constant, identical to one another in his world—that understood that being the alpha man’s old lady, though full of prestige, was not always going to be the smoothest ride.

  They would gripe and cry and be miserable. “I’m so over him,” they would say, and that meant they were never more into him. That’s why girls were a mystery to most men. A girl’s perception of her own behavior was skewed.

  There was a certain caveman sense to the theory, but the trouble in this case was convincing his readership that Joshua Camacho was in any way alpha. Real playas replaced compassion with instinct, he wrote. They knew what girls really wanted, and paid no attention to what girls said.

  Alpha males didn’t say, “O
kay, baby, I want to see you, too.”

  They said, “Bring the movies.”

  Joshua had game, intense game: he was the puppet master, pulling strings, making girls cry.

  Fathers of daughters should be warned, Heartiste believed. Men worried about predators in the weeds, when the real enemy for a man was his daughter’s desire for bad-boy sex.

  Rachel gave away her freedom. Sarah lost her life. That was the power Joshua had. Rachel still believed Joshua wanted her, even when Joshua was texting: I don’t like you no more. Why are you down this street? Go home.

  Long before Sarah lost her life, she lost her grip on a promising future. Veterinary plans replaced by Joshua plans.

  So the tawdry world of youthful Pinellas Park in 2009 wasn’t anything new. It was a typical community with the most intense misogynists being other females. It was just human nature, played out by grown-up kids trolling in cars—kids whose perceived lack of options spawned a reckless ennui.

  Heartiste pointed out that Joshua Camacho’s sexuality was his only source of power. He lived off the women he dated. He either worked at Chick-fil-A or not at all. No money, no size—Joshua’s status in society came from the powerful fact that he had girls fighting over him.

  Killing over him.

  Epilogue

  On September 8, 2010, Rachel Wade was moved to the Lowell Annex, a facility for women prisoners in Ocala, where she was known as Florida Department of Corrections Number R67662, and scheduled for release April 7, 2036, when she was forty-six years old.

  There was a “Free Rachel Wade” page on Facebook, dedicated to the proposition that although Rachel was hardly an innocent bystander that night, her life was in danger at the “exact moment” she lashed out. The same social media that stoked the flames of hostility leading to Rachel’s incarceration, were now being used in an attempt to set her free.

  As of Halloween, 2011, the “Free Rachel Wade” page had 349 “likes.”

  In 2011, Detective Michael Lynch was a member of the PPPD’s Community Redevelopment Policing Unit (CRPU). The unit focused on a blighted two-square-mile area of Pinellas Park’s downtown, where there was an epidemic of crime. The idea was to saturate the area with police officers who worked in that area, and in that area only. Lynch conducted follow-up investigations, worked with crime analysis systems, assisted officers with day-to-day operations, and conducted training sessions for businesses and residents. The unit tried to rally businesses and residents to help clean up the community—painting, picking up the garbage, etc. The CRPU also used surplus tax revenues to help out the designated area in other ways, such as a major drainage project.

  During that same year, defense attorney Jay Hebert went on a consciousness-raising campaign, lecturing at schools and elsewhere about the potential effects of the Internet social networks on youth crime.

  Erin Slothower graduated from Everest University in 2009 with a degree in medical assistance and nursing. The degree enabled her to cut down from two jobs to one. She gained employment as a medical assistant at a dermatology office in St. Petersburg. That meant she could spend more time with her and Joshua’s son, who stayed with her parents and her brother when she was working.

  She got back with Joshua briefly, but “he wasn’t the same.” She didn’t talk to Joshua anymore, and she was content with her “new life.” She used to let herself get caught up in the social drama, but she’d grown up and had no use for that lifestyle any longer.

  Erin Slothower would always have a connection to Joshua Camacho in the form of their son. As for that horrible night, and the press attention it brought her, she just wanted to be left alone.

  Erin explained, “I mean, I could say a lot, but what good would it do? I just wish I had a do-over button so I could change this terrible outcome. Sarah really did love Joshua. I also know he loved her also, despite everything.”

  In December 2010, Lisa Lafrance took the bold step of cleaning up her act. As of this writing, she remained clean of painkillers, and was taking it one day at a time.

  By 2011, Jamie Severino was out of jail, but her legal woes weren’t completely over. Her daughter with Jay Camacho was three years old. Alliana Camacho had been staying in day care for a while; but in 2011, Jamie’s mom, who no longer worked, babysat. Jamie was gainfully employed as a customer service representative over the phone. She was allowed to go to school, but she wasn’t allowed to operate a motor vehicle. She had to wear an ankle monitor at all times.

  According to police, Joshua Camacho left Florida and was living for a time in New York City with relatives. Joshua’s mother refused to give Joshua’s new contact information, claiming that the media had been distorting the image of her boy.

  “Everyone already put his reputation down so bad, told so many lies about my boy. I don’t have nothing to say,” she said.

  As of 2011, Joshua had returned to Florida.

  During the summer of 2010, not long after Rachel Wade was convicted of murder, Jay Camacho pleaded guilty of possession of crack cocaine. As he was in violation of probation on charges of stolen goods, he was sentenced to nine months in the Gulf Correctional Institute Annex. He was released on April 21, 2011.

  Charlie Ludemann has three tattoos of Sarah on the inside of his right arm: one was made when Sarah was a year old; a second, when she was ten; and a third after her death, at age eighteen.

  After his daughter was cremated, Charlie had Sarah’s ashes mixed with the tattoo ink so he would carry her around with him forever.

  When Charlie drove his cab, he would sometimes stop at the spot where she lost her life. It was there that he felt closest to her.

  He asked her why: Why did she go? Why did she leave? Why didn’t she listen to him?

  He’d tried so hard to protect her.

  Over the years, at night, Gay Ludemann tried to soothe the ache in her heart by standing in her backyard and gazing at the sky.

  She believed Sarah was a star “as bright as a diamond.”

  In the dark, she can be heard to say, “Good night, honey. I love you.”

  In March 2011, Rachel Wade wrote a letter to the author in which she apologized for not getting in touch sooner, explaining that, obviously, she “had a lot going on.”

  Despite her predicament, Rachel described herself much as she might’ve before her freedom was taken away: I’m laid-back, carefree, fun-loving, silly, outgoing, hardworking [and] very family oriented. She loved music, work, the beach, and animals. Her interests were art, music, and fashion.

  I’m very creative, she wrote.

  Her flaw was her own trusting nature. She said she always looked for the good in people, even when it wasn’t there.

  She also smoked way too many cigarettes.

  According to Jamie Severino (pictured), Rachel Wade once threatened to “slit her throat.” Sadly, Rachel’s bloody threats had a desensitizing effect. She was a barker, not a biter. When she started in with Sarah, nobody blinked. It was Rachel being Rachel. (Photo courtesy Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)

  Jamie Severino didn’t think Rachel Wade premeditated Sarah Ludemann’s murder: “I think she brought the knife just to let everyone know, ‘Don’t f*** with me.’” (Photo courtesy Florida Department of Corrections)

  Sarah Ludemann’s shirt, slit over the left breast by Rachel Wade’s kitchen knife. (Photo courtesy Pinellas Park Police Department)

  A forlorn Rachel Wade stands in front of Javier’s house only minutes after the stabbing, not a drop of blood on her. (Photo courtesy Pinellas Park Police Department)

  Blissfully unaware of any future irony, Rachel Wade posed for this joke photo. She is sitting on a bar in torn stockings, wearing a bonnet, holding a handgun, and the caption reads, Wanted!

  The victim was a big girl, five-nine, and had struggled with a weight problem. Once she had a man, though, she went on a crash diet and lost thirty pounds. (Photo courtesy Lisa Marie Lafrance)

  A late bloomer, Sarah Ludemann was a senior in high school when s
he had her first boyfriend. Her willingness to fight for him proved fatal. (Yearbook photo)

  Sarah Ludemann died in the street, a gaping stab wound in her left breast. The first cop on the scene called it “the biggest puncture wound” he’d ever seen. (Yearbook photo)

  Rachel’s friend Egle Nakaite said, “People sometimes thought Rachel was prissy, but she wasn’t, once you got to know her.” (Photo courtesy Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)

  Javier Laboy’s house. The street in front of the house is well marked with rubber patches, laid down by cars entering or exiting the scene hurriedly. (Photo courtesy Pinellas Park Police Department)

  Rachel Wade was thoroughly interrogated, only hours after the stabbing. At first, she said she had no idea how Sarah was stabbed. (Photo courtesy Pinellas Park Police Department)

  When she was informed that Sarah was dead, Rachel Wade burst into tears and admitted that she was the one who’d wielded the knife. (Photo courtesy Pinellas Park Police Department)

  Journalist Lane DeGregory was covering Sarah Ludemann’s death for the St. Petersburg Times when she learned she’d won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. (Photo by Tucker DeGregory)

  Rachel Wade (right) dropped out of high school and left home so she could spend more time hanging out and hooking up. (Photo courtesy Lisa Marie Lafrance)