Читать книгу A Knife in the Heart - Michael Benson - Страница 10

Media efforts to tell this story in shorthand have framed Sarah Ludemann and Rachel Wade as two girls with a lot in common. But was that really the case? Sure, both had once dreamed of being a veterinarian. Beyond that, though, they came from very different places.

Sarah’s mom, Gay, was a surgical nurse. Her dad, Charlie, drove a cab. They were from New York but migrated southward to be “warm and safe.” They’d been married sixteen years when they had their only child, tomboy Sarah. Sarah lived her whole life in the same house, a single-level lime-colored stucco home.

She liked to hang out with her dad, riding beside him sometimes in his taxi, blasting the radio and singing Keith Urban songs. According to Sarah’s friend since preschool, Danielle Eyermann, “Sarah loved to sing and dance.” The friends would work out their own Britney Spears–style choreography. Sarah attended John Hopkins Middle School in St. Petersburg. Danielle said that when other girls her age already had real boyfriends, Sarah was still crushing on country singers and Tampa Bay Rays baseball players.

Sarah started high school at Tarpon Springs because it had a veterinary medicine program. But the school was more than an hour bus ride away, and she had to get up when it was still dark.

In tenth grade, Sarah and friend Amber Malinchock hung out a lot and ate at Chick-fil-A. It was there that Sarah met Joshua Camacho, who used to come out and talk to the girls when he was on break.

Joshua told them he was starting his senior year at Pinellas Park High School. Amber remembered he always reeked of French fries. One time he winked at Sarah, and that was that. She was giddy in love; her face was frozen into a dreamy smile.

Sarah decided soon thereafter to replace one dream with another. She didn’t want to be a veterinarian anymore. She wanted to get close to Joshua Camacho—so she disregarded just about everybody’s advice and transferred to Pinellas Park High.

Sarah was upset that fall when she showed up at her new school and Joshua gave her the cold shoulder. She had to prove her love for him before he would pay attention to her.

As Sarah’s friend Amber later put it, “Most people have their first love when they’re younger. She loved him. She really, really loved him.”

They say that opposites attract. That was certainly the case here. The good girl was attracted to a bad boy. He sent her photos on her cell phone: flexing, smoking fat doobs, brandishing his CAMACHO tattoo in large letters across his back.

But he wasn’t just a gangsta. He could sweet-talk, too. Sarah’s mother didn’t like it, but she understood the appeal. Was he good? Was he bad?

Sarah had been yanked off the straight and narrow, and Gay Ludemann wondered if she’d ever get back on track. Her friends said it was stupid to be attracted to a boy like that; it was like climbing out on the ledge and wondering what it would feel like to fall.

As Charlie put it, they did everything to get Sarah to “see the light.” They warned her that she’d never been with a boy before. She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know about the pitfalls of relationships. But it didn’t matter what they said. Parents were so yesterday. Joshua was now.

Everything would be fine, if only it weren’t for that thorn in Sarah’s side—the little firecracker called Rachel Wade. Something was going to have to give with her.

It had been months of insults back and forth, stalking, harassment, and domestic violence. Dealing with Rachel was nerve-racking. For friends and foe alike. Rachel came off sometimes as, well, not quite stable. Her history demonstrated that….

Rachel didn’t come from a visibly broken home. Rachel’s mom, Janet, was an assistant teacher at an elementary school. Her dad, Barry, was a food-distributor truck driver.

Her seemingly normal upbringing occurred in a suburban home, painted brown, with an aboveground pool in the backyard. The youngest of two children, she’d been a happy little girl, reading about, drawing, and pretending to be a Disney princess. She had so many friends and loved attention.

Rachel’s friend Egle Nakaite said, “People sometimes thought she was prissy, but she wasn’t, once you got to know her.” Rachel was still in elementary school when she met Joshua Camacho, whose family—parents, six brothers, and a sister—had just moved to Florida from the Dominican Republic.

By high school, Rachel had no desire to be one of the goody-goody girls. She saw life as one big party. Studying was cutting into her fun time. By the time she was sixteen, she was a rebel, defying her parents’ attempts to keep her home.

“I don’t need your rules,” she hissed, eyes squinted.

“I kept telling her that nothing good ever happens after midnight,” her father, Barry, sadly recalled.

On March 9, 2005, less than two weeks after her fifteenth birthday, Rachel started a long and painful habit of running away from home. The first time, it scared her parents half to death. She had been punished, grounded. But instead of coming home after school and staying inside as she was supposed to, she didn’t come home at all. Rachel’s parents called her friends, who agreed that they’d seen Rachel at school, but not since. She didn’t go home, but she did go to school the next day, and that was where cops nabbed her, taking her right out of class and into the Juvenile Assessment Center.

Rachel pulled a switcheroo on May 27, 2005. She called 911 on her parents.

Ha! That would show them.

When the dispatcher asked what her emergency was, Rachel said her parents wouldn’t let her go out at night with her boyfriend and her friends. It was about ten o’clock when Officer John Coleman pulled up in front of the Wade household. Rachel complained to him that her parents didn’t like the guy she was dating. They thought he was too old for her, and that she wasn’t allowed to see him anymore. They said that she had to stay in her room. She was frustrated that her parents couldn’t communicate with her.

After finishing with Rachel, Officer Coleman spoke with her dad. Barry Wade said that earlier in the day, he’d gone to one of Rachel’s friends’ houses to pick her up, and he saw her walking down the street with an older boy whom they didn’t like.

Coleman tried to calm the situation down. He suggested family counseling, and recommended that another family member mediate the next time Barry and Rachel spoke.

Rachel’s parents were away and her grandmother was babysitting on July 1, 2005, when Rachel snuck out her bedroom window. Her grandma called the police, suggesting they look for her at a guy named Jake’s house. Rachel came home before she could be listed as missing; and when police spoke to Jake, he said he had not seen or heard from Rachel.

On October 12, Rachel fought with her mom and left the house. Janet called the police, who arrived to find Rachel had only gotten as far as the next block, where she’d stopped and cried. The cop took her home.

On November 17, 2005, a woman named Gail Kish called Detective Adam Geissenberger. Kish was the secretary of the freshman department at Pinellas Park High School, and Geissenberger was the PPPD investigator who normally worked the PPHS beat. Kish said there was a problem regarding a student there named Rachel Wade.

Geissenberger said he was familiar with Ms. Wade and would be right over. On the way, he recalled that he had seen Rachel just that morning in the parking lot outside school. She was with an older male, whom he recognized as Rachel’s boyfriend, Jose Hernandez (pseudonym). It had been almost nine o’clock, and school had started at 7:05 A.M., but he took no action because the couple was walking toward the school rather than away from it, and perhaps they were just late.

At Kish’s office, Geissenberger learned that Rachel had been in school but left when Hernandez called her from outside. Hernandez did not have permission to take her out of school, and she did not have permission to leave.

Kish was particularly wary about this situation because she knew Rachel’s parents and knew that a few days earlier they had caught Rachel in Hernandez’s car engaging in sexual activity. Since he was nineteen—although still a student at PPHS—and she was fifteen, they were very worried about the situation and threatened to have the young man prosecuted if it didn’t stop. She would say she was going to walk the dog, but then she’d disappear. This morning’s movements near the high school led Kish to believe that Jose and Rachel hadn’t stopped having sex.

Geissenberger called the Wades, reported the new information, and asked if they still wanted Hernandez prosecuted. They said they did. The officer had an office in the high school and went there. He summoned Rachel Wade, who reported to him, appearing somewhat sheepish.

He explained that he was there because of her ongoing, inappropriate, and illegal relationship with Hernandez, and he was going to have to ask her a series of pretty personal questions.

Rachel was quiet for a few moments and then asked Geissenberger how much he already knew. He told her, and then asked her how long she’d been seeing Hernandez. She said it started right at the beginning of the school year, which that year had been August 3.

“You have been seeing him the whole time since the beginning of school?” the cop asked.

“No, our relationship has been off and on,” Rachel replied.

“Are you sexually active with him?”

“Yes.”

“How many times have you had sex with him?”

Pause. “Two or three,” she said. All of the sex had been vaginal intercourse; all of it was consensual.

“Oral sex?”

“No.”

“Why did you have sex with him, Rachel?”

“He pressured me to do it with him,” she said. She held out for a while, but they kept getting closer and closer to doing it; then one day “it just happened.”

Geissenberger asked about contraception. Rachel said they had used protection every time. Condoms at first, but she eventually went to the health department and got birth control pills, without telling her parents. Rachel said she and Hernandez had not had sex since they were caught. They’d only done it three times—once in his car and twice at his house.

He asked her about that morning. She said she hadn’t been feeling good; and besides, she wanted to talk to Jose, so she left school, met him, and they drove around for an hour or so. Then she came back, and that was when Geissenberger saw her.

The officer put Rachel in a separate office with the door shut. He didn’t want Rachel socializing and potentially interfering with the investigation.

Geissenberger found out which classroom Hernandez was in and pulled him out of class personally. In the cop’s office, Geissenberger advised Hernandez that he was conducting a criminal investigation and read him his Miranda rights.

“This is about Rachel Wade, isn’t it?” Hernandez asked.

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s because she’s a minor, right?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You want to talk to me because I’m having sex with a minor, right?”

Geissenberger said that was precisely right. “I’m going to ask you very direct questions about your relationship, and it would be in your best interests to tell me the whole and absolute truth.”

“I understand. I’ll tell the truth.”

His answers jibed with Rachel’s, at first. They’d had sex only two or three times. Always consensual. Always vaginal. Then his answers diverged from hers.

“Have you ever performed oral sex on one another?” the detective asked.

“Yes.”

“Who does it to who?”

“In most cases, I do it to her, but she has done it to me as well, yes.”

Hernandez told the cop about that morning. He said it was he, rather than she, who hadn’t felt okay. Rachel came out of school and got in his car. They drove to his house, but they just talked there. No sex.

“You know, I’ve already talked to Rachel, and I think you are lying,” Geissenberger bluffed.

Hernandez bit, and fessed up that he and Rachel had had vaginal intercourse that morning. He had also performed oral sex on her.

“Tell me again how many times you and Rachel have had sex?”

“Um, about twenty or thirty times,” Hernandez said, although he maintained that it was always consensual, and usually took place either at his house or in his car.

Hernandez interrupted the interview and asked if he could call his boss at work and tell him that he was running late. The cop would not allow him to use his cell phone, but said it was okay to use the office phone.

He then asked if he could get his lunch from the cafeteria, and again Geissenberger said that was okay. The detective waited, and Hernandez returned with his lunch and ate as he answered further questions. The detective gave him a form to fill out, and then he went to talk to Rachel again.

“You lied to me about the number of times you had sex with Jose,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“And you lied about oral sex, too.”

“It’s embarrassing to talk about that stuff. I wanted to tell you the truth, but I’ve never been able to talk about that with anyone,” she said.

“You have performed oral sex on Jose?”

“Yes.”

“And he has performed oral sex on you?”

“Yes.”

“And you and he had sex this morning, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you have had sex between twenty and thirty times with him?”

“No!”

“How often?”

“Maybe fifteen times.”

Rachel got a ride home from Ms. Kish. Hernandez was arrested by Detective Geissenberger and charged with lewd and lascivious battery in connection with unlawful sexual activity with a child.

Rachel was home only a matter of minutes when her mother called the police. Rachel came home spitting mad that her parents had told her school that she’d been caught having sex. It was humiliating beyond words. An officer came to the house and stayed long enough to make sure everyone had calmed down; then the cop left.

On November 20, 2005, Rachel’s mom called the police. Detective Geissenberger responded. Janet said Rachel was out again with Jose Hernandez, the adult ephebophile who was illegally having relations with her daughter.

Police officers took all crime seriously, but some didn’t feel Janet’s plans to prosecute Jose were promising. The adult-having-sex-with-a-child thing seemed less perverted when one considered that Rachel and Jose attended the same school. Jose might have been an adult, technically, but he wasn’t forty, either. The trick here, they suspected, was getting Rachel to keep her pants on. If it wasn’t Jose, it was going to be someone else.

While the officer was questioning Rachel’s mom, Rachel called, said it was no big deal, and she was on her way home.

“I still would appreciate it if you could fill out a report for me, anyway,” Janet said. Paperwork was desirable because, in addition to the lewd and lascivious charges Hernandez was facing, Janet Wade was seeking an injunction against Hernandez.

The cop remained at the Wade house until Rachel did come home. Rachel explained that she’d been out with friends at a pool hall in Seminole.

With the cop still present, Janet noticed a red welt on Rachel’s leg. She asked what had happened. Rachel said she got burned when she accidentally put her leg on a motorcycle’s exhaust pipe.

Janet affirmed that she intended to do what she could to stop Jose. The officer reminded the Wades that the police were not in existence to play games with a fifteen-year-old girl every time she ran off. Then the officers said to be sure and call if there were future problems.

On November 22, 2005, Rachel and her mother argued anew. Janet told Rachel that from then on every time she left the house without permission, or failed to come home when she was supposed to, the cops would be called.

Rachel didn’t like that. At first, Rachel punched inanimate things: the wall, a door. Then she fixed her hostility on her mom. The fight became physical. Rachel attacked her mother and threw objects at her.

Janet called 911.

“What objects did she throw?” the dispatch operator asked.

“Well, a hairbrush, for one thing. Hit me. Hit me in the lower thigh.”

After that, Rachel, a little hellion now, ran into the kitchen and threw open cabinet doors. She found the place where the good knives were kept. She quickly chose one knife, which she liked; it was a knife sheathed in a white Pampered Chef knife carrier. Rachel slid the knife from its sheath and threw it at her mother, bouncing it off Janet’s abdomen. Rachel scooped up the knife, quick like a cat, and locked herself in the bathroom.

Janet told 911 that Rachel had blades on her mind. There were “shaving razors” in that bathroom, and she didn’t trust Rachel not to hurt herself.

Officer Shaun Grantham reported to the Wades’ home and found Janet Wade waiting in front of the house. Grantham asked if Rachel was still around. Janet shook her head no.

Janet explained that right after she hung up with the operator, she screamed into the bathroom that Rachel better get out and give up the knife. Soon thereafter, Rachel exited the bathroom, put the knife back in its sheath and into its cabinet, hurriedly packed a bag of things, and stormed out the door, announcing that this time no one was ever going to find her! She disappeared into the night. Janet came outside, but she couldn’t even tell which direction Rachel was headed.

The officer later noted that this was not his first time visiting the Wades’ home, and a lot of fellow officers were familiar with the Wades and their problems as well. It had become a regular pattern for Rachel: run away from home in the evening, stay out all night, and return the following afternoon. For a while, she had been packing up her things and taking them with her at night, like she thought she was moving out on the sly.

Theft entered the mix. Janet caught Rachel in her purse, looking for something, probably money. When Janet tried to call 911, Rachel attacked and tried to wrestle the cell phone away from her mother. In the process, Rachel dug her nails into Janet’s forearm.

“Has Rachel been suicidal before?” the cop asked.

“Yes,” Janet Wade said, exhibiting long-suffering eyes.

Grantham checked out the bathroom, the one that Rachel had locked herself in, and found nothing suspicious, no evidence she had done anything to hurt herself.

He radioed in that he needed a search team, and a canine unit was assigned to the case. A police search dog named Dax was given a sniff of a piece of Rachel’s unlaundered apparel. The dog was then sent out to find Rachel.

A photographer reported to the scene and took photos of the knife, its sheath, and the fingernail wounds on Janet Wade’s forearm.

Grantham wanted to confiscate the hairbrush that Rachel threw at her mother, but the hairbrush could not be located.

The canine search was unsuccessful. It got off to a bad start when Officer M. Turner, the human half of the canine team, reported to the wrong address. Even after communications were repaired, conditions for tracking were less than desirable. There was a cool, strong wind from the northwest—and the search bore no fruit. Dax sniffed around the residential streets for eight minutes and gave up. Dax perked up for a time on one stretch of nearby street—then, nothing. Rachel might not have gone far on foot before she got into a car.

Rachel returned home at ten-thirty, the following night. Asked where she’d been, Rachel explained that she had been upset. She ended up sleeping on a chaise longue next to the Plantation Gardens Apartments pool. When she woke up in the morning, she just walked around before returning home.

On February 2, 2006, Barry Wade called cops to report his runaway daughter. The next day, Rachel was located at her friend Heather’s house. Rachel said she spent the night with Heather, sitting outside the house and talking.

Ten days later, Barry called again, but this time the paperwork for a missing juvenile was still being filled out—“four earrings in right ear, five earrings in left ear, no tattoos”—when Rachel returned home.

On March 13, Barry called again, and Rachel came home on March 14, telling cops that she had spent the night with her friend Brittany. She didn’t know her address, and didn’t attend school that day because she feared she would be arrested for being a runaway.

Rachel left behind a note on March 23 when she split, wrote that she would be with friends and back in the morning. The cops were called, nonetheless. Barry Wade reiterated that his insistence on the documentation of each of Rachel’s escapes was to create a paper trail in support of future court action that would, in turn, enable him to “help Rachel.”

When Rachel returned, as she always did, she told her father and a cop that she’d been with her friend Sierra. She didn’t know the last name. She went to St. Pete Beach, and slept in an unknown male’s car.

Four days later, Rachel took off again. This time Rachel put on music in her room, just before sneaking out the window. It was mother Janet’s turn to call police. Janet said that Rachel had no access to money. She didn’t think Rachel’s welfare was endangered, and she didn’t think she had a substance abuse problem—but she did think Rachel was spending the night with a man.

On June 11, the police responded to reports of a fight at the Wades’ place, Rachel and her father. She’d been away without leave, and to punish her, Barry took her cell phone away. Barry told the cop he was planning to seek the help of “mental-health physicians” for Rachel in the near future.

The next 911 call came in six days later, with Rachel returning right on schedule. A week after that, Rachel didn’t come home from work. Barry verified that she’d been at work that day, but she just didn’t come home afterward.

Rachel’s attitude when answering grown-up questions grew increasingly belligerent. When Rachel came back now, she didn’t care enough to make up a lie.

She told cops she didn’t remember what she did or whom she was with.

One cop gave her a steady gaze and determined she was in good health. Uninjured, he wrote. More paperwork for Barry Wade’s pile.

When they told her she should get a job and focus her attention on something constructive, she said she had a job. She had a telemarketing job at Vici Financial, located in the Winn-Dixie Shopping Mall.

Rachel was now in possession of her learner’s permit to drive a car. Rachel’s runaway problem intensified a notch during the weekend of July 22 and 23. She called home a few times to say she was with friends. She didn’t have her cell phone with her and the Wades’ caller ID failed to determine from which number she was calling.

“She must have done something to block the number,” Barry said to the cop.

Then, disturbingly, Rachel did something she hadn’t done before. She called and said she was on her way home—and then failed to show up. It was as if she wanted them to think something bad had happened to her—and who knew? Maybe it had. Rachel stayed away for the entire weekend before returning.

“Why do you keep running away?” a cop asked.

“Because I’m fed up with my parents,” Rachel replied, scowling.

On August 6, now sporting a nose piercing in addition to her nine earrings, Rachel took off with her friend Natasha—no surname given—and didn’t come back. When she returned the following day, she said she’d been at Natasha’s house in St. Pete. No, she didn’t know Natasha’s last name. A week later, she was missing again, and the brevity of the resulting police reports demonstrated how routine it was getting to be. She did it again. Said it all.

Janet said next time she was going to have the cop take her straight to juvenile detention.

But she did take off again, on August 19, this time explaining that she went to the Countryside Mall in Clearwater with an unnamed friend. Rachel was not taken to juvie.

Rachel next disappeared on September 9, this time perhaps because she feared an upcoming court date from when she attacked her mother. Janet suggested cops pick her up at her telemarketing job in the Winn-Dixie Mall. Police did go there, but they discovered Vici Financial had moved to another unknown location.

Police located her on September 10, at a party where alcohol was served. So in addition to being a runaway, Rachel was picked up for underage drinking. Barry came and got her, but she was upset and gone again the next day, calling home to tell her dad that she was in Tampa. Barry Wade told police that contrary to anything his wife might have said, he did not want his daughter taken to juvenile detention. She was to be brought home to him, and a report was to be filed.

The battery charge against Rachel for the fingernails to her mother’s forearm was eventually dropped. Janet showed no inclination to help with her daughter’s prosecution, which caused the state attorney’s office to drop the matter.

Even when Rachel wasn’t in trouble, she lingered in trouble’s vicinity. Done with Jose and looking forward to bigger and better things, Rachel moved on with her life. On September 16, 2006, at ten o’clock at night, Pinellas Park police responded to a call that someone had been jumped in the street. By the time police arrived, the crowd of young people had dispersed, but four young pedestrians—two guys, two gals—in the area were stopped and questioned. One of them was Rachel Wade.

Why was Rachel in such a hurry to grow up? A lot of fifteen-year-old girls wanted to have boyfriends, but they understood that the security of living with parents outweighed the advantages of being without a safety net. No one could figure out what the unscratchable itch was. Was it just normal adolescent chemistry?

It was a proven scientific fact that a “normal” teenaged brain, with its still-developing frontal cortex and immature neural structure, came replete with impulsivity, social anxiety, and poor judgment.

Although it was true that adults also felt anxiety, teens and adults grew nervous over different things. The immature brain did not grow as anxious when encountering physical dangers (which is why teenagers tend to be reckless drivers) but became much more anxious over feelings of being left out and not being a part of things.

So maybe it was a simple matter of chemistry, making Rachel unwilling to be a normal teenager who had to (at least pretend to) obey her parents’ rules.

Still, teens were responsible for their actions. Everyone’s behavior wasn’t influenced by social and environmental factors. Rachel’s behavior should have been maturing.

On November 11, 2006, after a few months off, she ran away again. She dropped out of school as soon as she turned sixteen. She told friends her badass boyfriend was expelled, so she didn’t want to go to school, either. Her parents tried taking her to counseling and got her a job at Paws of Paradise, a doggie day care business.

On January 26, 2007, Rachel took off, and Janet notified the authorities. Rachel returned, although not until January 28. A police officer spoke to Rachel to try to figure out what was up. Rachel was back to giving elaborate yet unhelpful explanations of her whereabouts. She said she didn’t know what the big deal was. She’d left a note for her mother before leaving. Who was she with? Rachel said she was with a friend named Hiram. She didn’t know his last name, and they’d gone together to Lakeland, Florida, to see a football game. She’d planned to come home the previous night, but Hiram had car trouble and they spent the night in the car “somewhere in Polk County.” She made it home on January 28, only after Hiram got gas.

Somewhere in this time frame, Rachel acquired a new beau, a guy named Nick Reynolds (pseudonym). He had his own place, a great place to hang out. There was a lot of sex and drugs going on.

On March 6, at 2:30 A.M., Rachel was a passenger in a car Nick was driving. According to their story, the car in front of them stopped abruptly, as if to purposefully cause an accident. Nick’s car rear-ended the guy so hard that although they were not injured, Nick’s car suffered extensive frontal damage, so bad he needed a tow. Nick and Rachel told police they’d gotten a pretty good look at the guy who’d done it to them: white male, sixteen to eighteen years old, with “bushy hair.” They didn’t know the make of the car. Police ended the investigation after it was discovered that surveillance cameras in the area had failed to capture the car accident.

On March 26, Officer John Lagasse responded to yet another call from Janet Wade. Rachel ran away again. This time Janet offered the authorities a key piece of intelligence. She gave Nick Reynolds’s address to Officer Lagasse. Sure enough, Rachel was there, and the cop went and got her.

On April 14, Rachel told her mom on her way out the door that she would be home by early evening. Instead, she had not come home all night, and wasn’t answering her cell phone. Rachel was again listed as a missing person. Lagasse found Rachel and spoke with her. Rachel said she had been out with friends, but she refused to give names.

“I was in East Lake, near Oldsmar. I didn’t have phone reception and no one would give me a ride home,” Rachel explained.

Not that Rachel ever had a relationship with a boy that went smoothly, her relationship with Nick was particularly rocky. She still loved him and all, but … she no longer felt it was necessary to keep her blinkers on when it came to looking at other boys. Rachel liked to think of herself as an open person, a girl who always had her heart open for new romance.

Rachel ran into Joshua Camacho at a party. She hadn’t talked to him in a long time and was instantly smitten.

On November 9, 2007, cops were called, responding to a domestic dispute at Nick’s apartment. Nick and Rachel apologized for the noise, stated that they had been arguing about a relationship problem, but they were through, and the fight was not physical.

After fighting the good battle for many long months, after dealing with police on at least fourteen occasions when Rachel ran away, the Wades stopped calling.

Rachel had Nick, and the Wades understood that she was going to be there, with him, most of the time. You could see the defeat in their shoulders.

That didn’t mean, however, that the PPPD was through with Rachel Wade—or her friends. Or her enemies.

It was also at about this time that one small subsection of the Pinellas Park population—young people who knew Rachel Wade—did its best to keep the PPPD busy all by themselves.

The instant Sarah Ludemann had received her driver’s license, she demonstrated no fear of speed. Her father was a cabdriver, so it only made sense she’d drive like a pro, and that meant fast. She enjoyed playing road tag with her friends, weaving in and out of traffic, playing games of pursuit, playing chicken at high speeds.

At two in the afternoon on November 29, 2007, Sarah was burned by her own carelessness. She and three other drivers were allegedly using the roads as their personal playground. When the reckless parade of young people encountered a car accident on the road, the front car slowed down abruptly, starting a chain reaction that injured no one but caused medium to severe damage to all of the cars.

On December 6, 2007, cops were again called to Nick’s apartment, and this time it was Rachel complaining. She explained her live-in boyfriend got pissed because she was babysitting for a friend instead of being with him. She wanted to move out and return to her parents’ home. Nick threatened to throw all of her belongings in the lake. Rachel and Nick again agreed the argument was only verbal.

On December 21, with the holidays approaching, the kids of Pinellas Park were out in force. Officer Richard Bynum responded to a complaint of two cars full of kids fighting near the corner of 102^nd Avenue and Sixty-third Lane. The incident involved many familiar names, as well as names that would later become recognizable. Jay and Joshua Camacho, Sarah Ludemann, and Ashley Lovelady were in one car. Erin Slothower and three of her girlfriends were in the other. Police questioned all eight of them, and everyone agreed no blows had been thrown. During the questioning, cops confiscated a set of brass knuckles from an unnamed occupant.

Rachel’s on-again, off-again relationship with Nick was off again. During the evening of February 3, 2008, Rachel’s mom heard a commotion in front of the house. When she opened the front door, she saw a young man urinating on her lawn. Ten minutes later, Janet heard a noise again and went to investigate—now she found a young man urinating on her front door. The kid ran off and climbed into a waiting car, but Janet Wade got the license number.

“Ma’am, did you see genitals?”

“No.”

“Neither time?”

“No genitals either time.”

“Have any idea why young men are urinating on your property?”

“I’m pretty sure it has something to do with my daughter, Rachel.”

Rachel broke up with Nick Reynolds a week before, and things had been going poorly. The officer talked to Rachel, who said that she’d gotten a call from one of Nick’s friends, a guy named Eric, who said he’d been there earlier in the night, but he had nothing to do with any pissing. Sure enough, the license plate number belonged to Eric’s car. While looking for Eric, the cop encountered Nick’s dad, who explained that Nick was a friend of Eric’s, and he was the ex-boyfriend of Rachel Wade. Nick’s dad called Rachel’s mom and apologized for his son’s behavior. Janet Wade said she did not want to press any charges because there had been no property damage, but she did want a police report written up about it “in case they returned.”

Jamie Severino was not Rachel’s friend—heaven forbid—but she knew the Camacho family well. She was a hot chick and had dated Joshua’s brother Jay—and had had his baby, a daughter named Alliana. Jamie was with Jay when Erin was with Joshua, so the four of them hung out at the Camacho house.

Jay was older than the others, born in the spring of 1986. He wasn’t a big man, but—at five-foot-seven, 165 pounds—he was bigger than Joshua. Jamie met him through her cousin when she was in middle school.

“Met him a long time ago, probably in like ’04,” Jamie said in 2011.

Jay was well inked, sporting eleven tattoos. On his back were prayer hands with the words ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE; on his left arm was M.O.B. JUANA, and on the left side of his chest was ASHLEY. He had LOVE on his left hand, and HATE on his right. On his left shoulder was a five-point star; on his neck was CLOWN NY. There were two clowns on his right arm, with GOOD TIMES, SAD TIMES and RAMON; and on his left leg was JC JAMIE S.

Jamie Severino knew Rachel because Rachel’s ex, Nick, was Jay Camacho’s best friend, and for a time Jay and Nick lived together. For a time Rachel lived with Nick as well, even though she was just a kid. All of Rachel’s subsequent boyfriends would get to see Rachel’s intimate NICK tattoo.

Predictably, Rachel’s relationship with Jamie was stormy. The two had almost come to blows on several occasions. The first time came in high school when Jamie and Jay were first dating. Jamie heard from Rachel’s ex-boyfriend Jose, the one Rachel’s parents had arrested for having sex with Rachel when she was only fifteen, that Rachel was trying to “get with Jay.” That led to altercations at the mall and in school, with insults hurled back and forth—but no violence. According to Jamie, Rachel started the hostilities, and the two didn’t talk after that. Tensions eased somewhat when Rachel began dating Nick. Jamie felt that Nick was a bad influence on Jay.

Jamie said Nick was on pills at that time, and he got Jay on them also—but despite that, there were times when Rachel and Nick and Jamie and Jay would hang out together.

The girls still weren’t exactly best buddies, but they could be in the same room without a shouting match breaking out. Rachel was always careful that someone had her back if hostilities were about to erupt. When she was alone, she could be quiet—almost scared. But when she was with a guy or a group of girls—or on the computer—she’d get “all tough.”

“She used to say that Nick hit her,” Jamie recalled, searching for an explanation. “But every time I was around them, it was the other way around. I think she just did things to get attention.”

In high school, Jamie claimed, Rachel was always the one who was doing something to stand out. She wanted—maybe needed—to be the center of attention.

Jamie had no idea what made Rachel so angry. There was a lot of anger around, and maybe Rachel fed off it. Maybe something happened to her to make her that way.

One night—the end of 2007, maybe the beginning of ’08—Jamie, Jay, and Nick went out; Rachel stayed behind at Nick’s house. While they were gone, Rachel was “blowing up the phone,” trying to determine their location.

“We had just gone to the mall,” Jamie recalled. “I guess she figured that Nick was hanging out with one of my girlfriends. That was her style, not mine.”

Rachel would not be ignored. She texted Nick, saying she was going to kill herself. That brought the trio home. At Nick’s house, they discovered Rachel lying, passed-out, on the floor. There was a bunch of pills next to her. They had to take her to the hospital and have her stomach pumped.

Later on, when the media was paying Rachel a lot of attention, she would claim that she’d never done any drugs—but Jamie knew for a fact that that wasn’t true.

When Rachel lived with Nick, she definitely did coke, pills as well: “Roxies.” They were Roxicodone, a prescription painkiller containing codeine. In Pinellas Park, they were sometimes called “Blues.”

The peacefulness between Jamie and Rachel only lasted until Jamie learned that Rachel was hooking her friends up with Jay. One day Jamie learned for a fact that Rachel’s friend Lisa Lafrance had “been with” Jay.

Lisa wrote to Jamie on Myspace. The message went into graphic detail, explaining that Rachel had gotten them together and that Lisa and Jay had been “hanging out” every day.

Lisa remembered the incident well, although she didn’t think it was fair to say that Rachel had put them together. Jay and Nick were friends. They hung out all of the time, and Rachel and Lisa hung out at Nick’s. When Rachel was with Nick, Lisa was with Jay. Rachel had nothing to do with fixing them up. They had not needed fixing up.

When Jamie read what Lisa wrote on Myspace, she was pissed. Jamie and a seven-month-pregnant Erin Slothower were at the mall when they received a phone call, informing them that Lisa and Sarah wanted to fight them.

“There were maybe fifteen people hanging out, outside Nick’s house,” Jamie recalled.

According to Lisa, Jamie brought another friend with her: brass knuckles. “There was such animosity that I ended up fighting her, even though she had the brass knuckles on,” Lisa recalled.

“Lisa and me had an actual physical fight,” Jamie said. “And Rachel tried to jump in. Jay pulled her off. Afterward, Ashley and Sarah were like, ‘We want to fight you.’ And all this while Erin was, like, seven months pregnant. There was a lot of fighting going on, leading up to what happened.”

Jamie started in with Jay; and before long, Jay and Jamie were having a brawl, screaming and hitting each other. Rachel wanted part of this action.

Rachel went outside and screamed to Jamie: “Come on outside and I’m going to beat your ass. You’re a psycho! Let’s get away from the house and I’ll beat your ass.”

The cops were called. After being given a blow-by-blow description of events, Jay was arrested for abusing Jamie, his “underage girlfriend.” According to the police report, Jay grabbed Jamie by the neck and forced her to the ground. The girl was treated at the scene for minor injuries, bruises on her arms and neck, and declined a trip to the hospital. The fight, Jamie claimed at the time, started when Jay swiped the girl’s cell phone and her bottle of Roxies. When cops searched Jay, they found a pair of black brass knuckles in his back pocket.

Rachel Wade was eager to tell police how she saw the events. She expressed her opinion that the girl got what she deserved and had struck Jay before he retaliated.

A neutral passerby, who saw the incident, told police that it didn’t look to her like Jay was beating Jamie as much as he was trying to “fend her off.”

With Jay’s permission, cops searched his room and found two bottles of prescription medication—methylphenidate (generic form of Ritalin) and acyclovir (a generic medication for herpes)—which were confiscated.

As Sarah Ludemann would later learn, when Rachel had an enemy on speed dial, Rachel could be relentless. After the fight at Nick’s house, Jamie received phone call after phone call from Rachel, constantly challenging Jamie to a fight.

“If you come anywhere near me, I am going to beat your ass,” Rachel would say.

The night of the fight outside of Nick’s had historical importance because among the kids gathered, watching the action, was Sarah, who had come in support of Lisa with her best friend, Ashley Lovelady, and Joshua Camacho.

Why did Rachel react so strongly to the fight between Jay and Jamie? Jamie had a theory: “I think she was having sex with Jay when Nick wasn’t home. I’ve long thought they had a relationship going on. If so, that’s funny. I mean, that’s pretty nasty! Having sex with Jay and then going out with Joshua? Seems pretty nasty to me.”

After that, it was never a good thing when Jamie ran into Rachel. Jamie went to Applebee’s with friends, and Rachel told Jamie right in front of everyone that Alliana wasn’t Jay Camacho’s baby. This was apparently a standard riff for Rachel, who also liked to tell Erin that her baby wasn’t Joshua’s.

When it came to harassment, Rachel was a tenacious master. If you were on her shit list, she could completely tie up your cell phone, calling every minute for hours, leaving voice mails and sending texts. After a while, friends and recipients both had to wonder why she didn’t have something better to do. And the messages were disturbingly violent.

These young women lived in an “I’m gonna kick your ass” world, but Rachel kicked it up a notch:

I’m gonna slit your throat, she texted Jamie.

I’m going to kill you, she told Erin.

Sadly, Rachel’s bloody threats had a desensitizing effect. She was a barker, not a biter—a mouthy bitch. When she started in with that crap with Sarah, nobody blinked. It was just Rachel being Rachel.

Jamie’s opinion of Joshua had changed over the years. At first, she thought he was pretty cool. Quiet and shy. He was a guy who “didn’t do nothing.” He stayed inside.

The Camachos were a religious family. The parents were strict with their kids, who practically weren’t even allowed out of the house until they turned eighteen. As soon as Joshua came of age and was let out, “he took after his brother and became a player.”

But now, Jamie didn’t think much of Joshua. He was a pint-sized mooch: “I don’t think he is good-looking,” she said of the bantamweight ladies’ man.

What he did have, she conceded, was a seductive banter. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, he had his women believing they were each his one and only.

Jamie did not believe that Joshua’s list of girlfriends stopped at three. Sure, there was Sarah, Rachel, and Erin, but she believed the list was longer than that, and that he took gifts from all of them. Like a small-time gigolo, he lived off his “friends.” They paid his bills and bought his clothes. That’s why he didn’t need to get a job.

“His brother used to do that to me,” Jamie recalled. “He would be with the girl who had the most to give him.”

For a busy guy like Joshua, the schedules of Sarah and Rachel were perfectly complementary. Sarah was available only during the early evening. She had a curfew and had to be home by eleven. Rachel was a waitress and worked at night, getting off work only after Sarah was back home.

People thought Joshua enjoyed the fact that “his friends” were fighting over him. “He was just like every dude,” Jamie said. Well, not every dude, but most young guys. “He was a cheater. He cheated on girls. That was pretty much it.”

And a beater. The brothers disciplined their women. Jay hit Jamie, and Jamie had seen Joshua hit Erin.

Janet Wade called police about her daughter one more time, on December 11, 2007. She and Rachel had gotten into a fight, and Rachel had stormed out and gotten into a car with friends. Officer Benjamin Simpkins, who would later testify at Rachel Wade’s murder trial, answered the call. While he was talking to Janet, Rachel called her mom’s cell phone; Janet put Officer Simpkins on the line. Janet and Rachel decided that Rachel should stay with friends for a “cooling-off period,” after which they should try again to resolve their differences.

On February 21, 2008, Sarah and Joshua were leaving a Pinellas Park movie theater, located on U.S. 19, when Erin Slothower and Jamie Severino accosted them. There was screaming, and Erin pushed Joshua. Cops were called.

Years later, Erin remembered it this way: “I was up getting food at my job with Jamie. I was [eight months] pregnant and I saw them walking out of the movie theater and we started arguing because he said he was somewhere else. It was stupid.”

Joshua was so upset about the way he’d been treated, he called the cops. He told Officer Scott Martin that his pregnant ex-girlfriend used “an open hand to push me backward.” After he was attacked, Joshua said, Erin and Jamie got into their car and left. Joshua had no visible injuries. In a separate interview, Sarah told Officer Martin a story that matched Joshua’s precisely. Joshua announced that he intended to get an injunction, preventing Erin from getting inside his personal space.

Martin had heard of more impressive assaults, but Joshua pressed the matter and the incident would eventually be referred to the state attorney’s office.

After taking the statements from Joshua and Sarah, Martin visited Erin and promptly read her Miranda rights to her. Erin said she understood and wanted to talk.

“Joshua has been telling me that after the baby is born, he is going to take the baby away,” Erin explained. That was the issue she was confronting him with in the parking lot that evening. He was not getting the baby. She wanted to make sure that was clear.

Lastly the cop interviewed Jamie Severino, who said that Erin really had no choice. Joshua was right in her face and screaming at her. She put her hand on his face and pushed him away. Joshua was lucky he didn’t get punched in the face. It wasn’t an attack at all, Severino explained. Erin was simply attempting to “create some space between the two of them.”

Martin recommended that Erin be the one to file the injunction. He warned her to avoid contact with Joshua and to “refrain from future confrontations.”

The state attorney’s office gave this a glance and decided not to prosecute Erin Slothower for the assault on Joshua Camacho.

Erin didn’t care if it was over. There was a bond between her and Joshua that could never be broken. She had a great reason to fight over Joshua, with Joshua, or whatever she wanted to do. She’d been Joshua’s girlfriend since 1999, when the two went to elementary school together. He’d written her a note in class. It asked: Do you like me? She wrote yes. Now it was nine years later—and a difficult time for Erin. She was facing social ridicule.

“I was harassed constantly” was how she put it—because she was having his baby. Plus she knew that being a mother was going to be expensive; and even though it was hard, she continued to work during the final trimester of her pregnancy—indeed right up until her due date.

Predictably enough, life became even more complicated for Erin Slothower after Joshua’s baby was born: “After I had Jeremiah, my schedule was very hard. I got up and went to school at seven and got out at eleven. Then I went to my first job till five, then to my second till nine. Then I got to go home to my little man and study and play with him.”

On the rainy afternoon of March 14, 2008, Sarah Ludemann was out with Joshua in her mom’s car on Forty-ninth Street in the southbound curb lane. Streets were wet and slippery, and they were rear-ended hard. It was Sarah’s second car accident in four months.

The driver of the other car was David C. Tracy, who was cited by the responding officer with “careless driving.” Both Joshua and Sarah were taken to Bayfront Medical Center, complaining of neck injuries. They were checked out and released.

On April 1, 2008, Officer Dean LoBianco, who would win that year’s PPPD Officer of the Year Award, answered a complaint of domestic disturbance. A couple sounded like they were beating the crap out of one another on Sixty-third Lane.

It was early for this sort of call, only six-thirty in the evening. On his way to the address, Officer LoBianco was informed by dispatch that the woman involved, Rachel Wade, had left the residence on foot. The cop found her only a couple of blocks away, upset and crying, explaining that she and her off-and-on boyfriend, Nick, had just had a fight.

“Why did you go see Nick today?” LoBianco asked.

Rachel explained she wanted to discuss some ongoing difficulties that she and Nick were having with their relationship. They were in the bedroom when the argument started.

“What was the argument about?”

“Nick said he didn’t like some of the people I’d been hanging out with.” Rachel admitted that she was the first to get physical. She pushed him and hit him. He pushed her back.

Nick grabbed Rachel’s cell phone and walked right out of the house with it. She followed, right outside and into the street, where she grabbed him by the back of his shirt and ripped it. Once the shirt started ripping, she couldn’t stop ripping it, and she didn’t stop until the shirt ripped off Nick’s back.

“The only reason I even touched his shirt was to get my cell phone back!” Rachel said.

Nick called 911 and she split.

That brought LoBianco up to date. The officer took some pictures of Rachel’s injuries.

Rachel waited in the cop car while the cop spoke to Nick, who gave the same story: Rachel struck first, and she tore his shirt. Since Rachel was the aggressor, the cop arrested Rachel and transported her to the Pinellas County Jail.

The case was promptly sent to the state attorney’s office, which rapidly ruled that charges against Rachel be dropped because there was “no reasonable likelihood of a successful prosecution.”

At seven-thirty in the evening, on June 13, 2008, Officer Shaun Grantham answered a call from Ashley Lovelady. Her car had been vandalized. Ashley said her best friend, Sarah Ludemann, had borrowed her car, a 1995 blue Honda Accord. Sarah needed the car to go to the Camacho house and talk with Joshua. While she was there, the side mirrors had been kicked off the Accord. Sarah said Jay Camacho did it—Jay being Ashley’s ex-boyfriend.

Officer Grantham located and interviewed Sarah, who said she’d gone to visit Joshua because she needed to have a talk about their relationship. What she got was a visit with both Joshua and Jay on the front lawn. An argument ensued, and Jay was already feeling hostile when he noticed that it was Ashley’s car parked in his driveway. He went over to the car to see if Ashley was in it. When he found it empty, he kicked off the mirrors, allowing them to hang.

“Who else saw this?” Officer Grantham asked.

“Joshua Camacho and his mother,” Sarah replied.

The cop returned to Ashley Lovelady.

“What do you want to do about this?” he asked.

“I want to file charges and get my mirrors fixed,” Ashley replied.

The cop handed Ashley a booklet entitled “Victims’ Rights.” He advised her to halt all contact with the brothers Camacho. She said she would.

Grantham’s next stop was the Camacho house, where Joshua remained, but Jay had split. As a police photographer snapped images of the dangling mirrors, Grantham wanted to know where Jay was.

Joshua shrugged. “He moves from place to place,” he said.

Grantham was a little persistent and Joshua admitted he’d seen Jay kick the mirrors.

Joshua explained that Jay was pissed at Ashley because she bitched about Jay doing other girls, like Ashley was his girlfriend, when “she wasn’t nothing and had no right to complain about nothing.”

Grantham handed Joshua a business card.

“Have Jay call me,” the cop said.

Joshua said he would be sure to do that.

Even without Joshua’s assistance, Jay was eventually located, but he escaped serious trouble when the state attorney’s office, after its own investigation, concluded that the “facts and the circumstance as presented do not warrant prosecution.”

By June 17, Rachel was again in a new phase of her life, taking a great step sideways in life, going from an on-and-off relationship with Nick Reynolds, to having a stormy on-and-off relationship with Joshua Camacho.

She wrote to Joshua on Myspace. In a blog entitled “Over You,” she accused him again of hitting her, insulting her, cheating on her. Each time she caught him, he would say, “I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again!” He lied, until it just got old; finally she looked at reality, and, well, reality said she deserved so much better! He was a boy. She needed a man! He had nothing to offer her. He was irresponsible, unreliable, unstable, immature, and nothing special to look at. And, most important, he didn’t have the love and affection or the respect for her that she wanted! And since she left him, she saw that there were plenty of other guys who would offer her “at least 90 percent” of that!

So sorry buddy but you can take your bullshit somewhere else! she posted.

Sarah could do math. Ninety percent wasn’t as good as 100 percent.

Sarah sat at the computer and attached a statement: And you think you found better?

At just past midnight, in the early morning of July 2, Officer Scott Galley answered a call from a female.

“I’ve been assaulted in a parking lot,” reported the alleged victim.

When the cop arrived at the scene, he observed two vehicles in the parking lot. A young woman sat on the hood of a car, and two were sitting in a minivan.

Sarah Ludemann told Officer Galley, “I was parked in my parents’ 2000 Mercury minivan, sitting in the northwest corner of a parking lot off U.S. Route 19. My window was rolled down.” Erin Slothower was in the car with her.

“We were following my ex-boyfriend, Joshua Camacho, around because we’re mad at him because he was sleeping with us both at the same time without us knowing about each other,” Sarah explained.

Ludemann said they were arguing back and forth, and then Camacho reached in the window and punched the left side of her face. She was uninjured, however, and required no medical attention. She didn’t want to press charges; but since she was a minor, that call wasn’t hers.

“What did Joshua do after he punched you?” Galley inquired.

“He went to the other side of the van and started yelling at Erin.” Erin, unafraid, got out of the van and the argument continued, face-to-face.

Galley talked to Erin next, whose baby was in an infant seat in the back of Sarah’s minivan. Erin said she saw Joshua reach in the driver’s window, but she didn’t exactly see Sarah being punched. Still, the incident angered her, and she confronted Joshua. They argued but were not physical.

The officer located Joshua, read him his Miranda rights, made sure he understood them, and asked for his version of the incident. Joshua said the girls didn’t approve of his lifestyle, which involved as many women as possible, and they had been following him around. He’d been a passenger, at the time, in a car being driven by his friend Daniel McAndrews. Joshua admitted to hitting Sarah without being asked.

“I got so mad I hit her,” he said.

His story jibed perfectly with Erin and Sarah’s version—which didn’t happen often in disputes of this nature. Joshua agreed that Erin had argued in Sarah’s defense, but that he and Erin did not get physical.

Last, Galley spoke to Josh’s friend McAndrews, who said he stayed in the car and didn’t see anybody hit anybody. While Galley was still in the parking lot asking questions, Sarah’s mom arrived.

Gay Ludemann said she did not want to press charges, but she wanted to know how to keep Joshua Camacho away from Ludemann. The cop gave her a copy of the “Victims’ Rights” booklet and explained to her how to get an injunction for protection.

On Myspace there was a section called “About Me,” in which the account holder described herself. That July, on her page, Rachel described herself as:

Independent Girl, pretty simple with the occasional complicated thought. It really didn’t take much to make me smile.

She knew she sometimes came off as a bitch or intimidating, but the moment that folks started to get to know her, they could tell it was a “total misconception.” She really wished her laziness wouldn’t get the best of her, but it was something she was still trying to fight her way through. She had just recently noticed that she was a hopeless romantic and she dreamed of love like she saw in the chick flicks. A surefire way to win her over was to buy her Chinese food, Red Bull, or Starbucks. She liked to have a good time; and if it just happened to include a pocket filled with money and some alcohol, people shouldn’t be surprised if she took advantage of it. She loved her life and everyone in it. She wrote how she was:

Always down to meet new people, so be my friend. I swear I’m nice most of the time. J So go ahead and say hiiiyeee to me. Anything else, you can find out for yourself!;)

During the evening of July 28, Sarah drove by Rachel’s apartment on Belcher Road in Largo and shouted out, “Come fight me.” For all of the fuss, Sarah and Rachel had still only met face-to-face once, and that was back when Rachel was still with Nick.

A few hours later, on July 29 at three thirty-six in the morning, Rachel called Sarah’s phone and left a voice mail: “Why don’t you act your age, Sarah? Seriously, answer your fucking phone and don’t be a fucking pussy. You want to come through my fucking neighborhood and be a psycho bitch just like fucking Erin. Fuck with Josh’s car, and you are fucking with me when you fuck with his shit. Seriously, I’m letting you know now you are either going to get fucked up or something of yours is, so watch the fuck out or answer your fucking phone and stop being a bitch.”

The words were rapid-fire and almost sounded as if they were being read. The message lasted a mere twenty-two seconds.

Less than a day later, at 2:30 A.M., July 30, Rachel was driving through Pinellas Park with then-roommate Courtney Richards. During that drive, she called police, explaining they were in a white Chevy being chased and harassed by the occupants of a white Nissan. At that moment, they were in the vicinity of Seventy-eighth Avenue and Sixty-sixth Street. By the time police arrived, the two vehicles had moved four blocks up and two over. The Chevy stopped voluntarily. The Nissan was subjected to a traffic stop.

Responding to the call were Officers John Coleman and Scott Galley, along with Sergeant Anthony Motley. Coleman spoke first to Rachel, the person who had called. She said she was a passenger and her friend Courtney was driving. They were going home together after work at Applebee’s. They stopped at Taco Bell, and a car pulled in aggressively and followed them out of the parking lot. Rachel didn’t recognize the car, which followed them almost all of the way home. She did, however, recognize the driver, her archenemy Sarah Ludemann, with whom there was an ongoing dispute over a boy.

“I’m dating her ex-boyfriend,” Rachel said.

The chase grew scarier. Sarah pulled alongside Courtney, and then in front of her, cutting her off so that Courtney had to swerve. It finally got to the point where Courtney had to pull off the road. It was too dangerous. And what did Sarah do? Rachel said Sarah rear-ended her. Six angry people piled out of Sarah’s car. Rachel’s car was attacked with Silly String. Rachel and Courtney tried to lock all doors and windows. Courtney didn’t get the window closed fast enough. Two of the girls in the other car—Tiffany Mitchell and Danielle Larson—struck Courtney and kicked her car. They smashed an exterior passenger-side mirror, Rachel said.

Courtney repeated the story, but she left out the part about being rear-ended. In fact, in Courtney’s version, the cars pulled over to the side of the road together, and the Nissan was in front. She said she didn’t know the girls who attacked; and no, she did not want to prosecute.

The police made a list of the six girls in the Nissan. In addition to Ludemann, Mitchell, and Larson, Ashley Lovelady, Magen [sic] Fitzgerald, and Autumn Seville were also along for the ride.

Interestingly, Sarah said that it was Courtney who had rear-ended her vehicle, not the other way around, and the contact had been made in the Taco Bell parking lot. That was why they were chasing: they’d been rammed.

The police closely inspected the front and rear of both vehicles, and neither showed any evidence of a crash.

Determining that there was a probable cause to search the cars, both vehicles were searched. One of the cars yielded two seeds and part of a stem that might have come from a marijuana plant. But since nothing else was found, the stem and seeds were disposed of without analysis.

Parents were called. The Nissan belonged to Fitzgerald’s mom, and she admitted that she was using it without permission. In fact, Fitzgerald confessed, her parents thought she was home. She’d snuck out. Fitzgerald’s father did not want to press charges for theft, and Ashley Lovelady’s mother agreed to drive the Nissan back to the Fitzgerald house.

The next day, Sarah and Rachel formally accused each other of road rage. Rachel said she was chased. Sarah said she was rear-ended. Sarah told police that she chased the other car, only after it had bumped hers. Sarah said Rachel had once called her twenty times in two hours. Rachel said Sarah was sending her threatening e-mails.

During that summer, Sarah and Joshua were in New York City together for a few days. Joshua was visiting his relatives up there, and Sarah later joined him. Pictures of the two of them together were posted online, and—to make sure her rival saw them—Sarah sent Rachel taunting messages. Rachel looked at the photos and grabbed for her phone.

At 8:30 P.M., August 28, Pinellas Park police were called by Ramon Camacho—father of Jay and Joshua—complaining that his son Joshua’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, Javier Laboy, was harassing him and his family.

“Tonight, he threw an egg at my house,” Mr. Camacho said. In addition, Laboy drove by the house repeatedly, before and after the egg, yelling things, disturbing Ramon and his neighbors. Police contacted Laboy and “encouraged a peaceful resolution.”

At five o’clock on Friday evening, August 29, the players proved that they had shifting allegiances and could get into fights in any combination. Erin Slothower was the victim this time, and she was complaining about the tag team of Joshua Camacho and Sarah Ludemann. Erin was at her job as a server at American Pie Pizza. Trouble started when Joshua called Erin repeatedly and was insistent on starting an argument. Erin explained it wasn’t a good time, since she was working. She had to hang up on Joshua.

Next, Sarah showed up at the pizza place in person. Sarah started to verbally abuse Erin in front of customers, and the restaurant’s manager had to ask Sarah to leave. A police officer arrived, took statements, and made a short-lived attempt to get in touch with Joshua and Sarah. Since no battery was alleged, the matter was dropped.

A few hours later, still on August 29, Rachel called Sarah and left this message: “Please tell me, Sarah, why you would be a dumb-ass cunt to fucking put a brand-new picture of you and Josh at the beach on your Myspace. Seriously, I told you to watch your fucking back and not to fucking chill with him. Now your ass is mine, and I’m guaranteeing you I’m going to fucking murder you. I’m letting you know that right now because you know what? Josh might have played me, but, bitch, I’m going to play your ass out, too, so watch. You are a fucking fat bitch and I’m going to fucking kill you, I swear on my life. Watch your fucking window when I get off of work tonight, you dumb bitch.”

This recording was a tad less manic than the recorded call of July 29, and lasted for thirty-four seconds.

On Sunday, August 31, at 10:44 P.M., Rachel called Sarah again and left this voice mail: “It’s so funny that you want to talk shit and you sit there and say that my man was over to your house. Well, tell me what he was wearing tonight, Sarah, because you are a dumb bitch for real, and if you’re fuckin’ lying, I’m going to find you and I’m going to beat your ass. And if you’re not lying, I’m going to find you and beat your ass, okay? You can play your fucking games. You are a pathetic little bitch. You are a little fucking girl. Honestly, what do you have going for you that Josh wants you over me for? I’ve got a job, have my own place. What the fuck! Seriously? He can get anything he wants from me, any fuckin’ thing, not to mention that I probably fuckin’ look fuckin’ ten times better than you. And you fuckin’ run your mouth. You’ve still got your mommy and daddy’s curfew, bitch. For God’s sake, why the fuck do you run your fuckin’ mouth, and why the fuck are you so pathetic? Please do leave the shirt under my face, because that’s old news, just like you and him are. So keep talking shit, Sarah. You don’t know when to stop. You haven’t learned your lesson yet, and I’m the fuckin’ teacher. I’m warning you now, keep fucking with me, Sarah, and you and Erin both are dumb psychotic bitches. I’m warning you now, I am going to show you psycho! So stop fucking with me. You are fucking with the wrong person, and you’re fucking with the wrong thing that I care about. So keep it up, keep playing your motherfucking game and I am going to teach you how to grow up real motherfucking quick.”

This one lasted one minute and fourteen seconds.

Forty-one minutes later, Rachel left another brief message: “Why don’t you come outside now, Sarah? I’m outside your house. Come on out, I fucking dare you.”

Rachel called again and again.

The annoyance pushed Sarah to the brink; at 11:15 P.M., she called the cops.

Officer Christopher Boyce located Rachel outside Joshua’s home. Boyce said Rachel appeared “visibly upset,” and complained that it was Sarah’s fault. She started it by sending Rachel threatening e-mails.

Officer Boyce’s report stated: Ludemann advised that Wade was threatening her during some of the phone calls and just wanted Wade to stop calling her. Wade advised that she would stop calling Ludemann, but requested that I ask Ludemann to stop threatening her via e-mail. Camacho said that he does see Ludemann behind Wade’s back and that Ludemann was just trying to antagonize Wade into a fight. [Author’s emphasis]

Sarah had to promise that she would neither call nor e-mail Rachel. She prophetically told police that she taped the messages because she “wanted it documented in case Wade followed through on her threats.”

On September 12, Rachel wrote on her Myspace page:

I’m an independent chick! Yeah, I got a man. But I’m not one of those spoiled little girls who expects the world from her man. So y’all hoes can just stop hatin’.

On October 8, 2008, the Pinellas Park 911 operator received a call from Rachel Wade’s phone. When police arrived at Rachel’s apartment, she was there alone. She had gotten into an argument with Joshua, who had broken into the apartment.

“He pushed the door in and broke the dead bolt chain,” Rachel complained.

Despite that, the fight had been verbal only. The responding officer looked for Joshua but couldn’t find him.

“No further action,” he concluded.

Two weeks later, Officer William Holmes answered a complaint from Joshua Camacho’s baby mama, Erin Slothower, who said she’d been receiving threats from Rachel Wade that Wade intended to “slit her fucking throat and to do harmful things to her.”

Officer Holmes added that both Erin Slothower and her friend Jamie Severino had expressed concerns that they were in fear that “Wade will do something to harm them.”

Erin told police that although she had been the target of all the e-mails, some of them had been texted to her friend Jamie Severino’s phone. Jamie had made it clear to Rachel that she and Erin wanted no more harassing messages, but Rachel didn’t stop. Erin explained that Rachel was a girlfriend of her baby daddy, and Jamie had the baby of Joshua’s brother Jay.

On Friday, November 7, 2008, a Pinellas Park grammar school teacher called police and said they had a kid, Isaiah, who complained that his parents had had a bad fight in the home.

The parents in question were Joshua and Jay’s older sister, Janet Camacho, and her baby daddy Robert Williams (pseudonym). Officer Andrea Butson and Child Protection Investigation Division (CPID) investigator Jody Binge handled the complaint.

The allegation, made by their little boy, was that the verbal fight had grown until Janet Camacho grabbed a knife and threatened Robert Williams with it. She “attempted to cut” him. He was trying to take the knife away from her when she was cut. He then got a gun and pointed it at her. Although he “clicked” the gun, it didn’t go off.

“That’s ridiculous,” Janet Camacho told the investigators. “There isn’t even a real gun in my house. There is a BB gun, that’s all.” The BB gun belonged to her brother Joshua, who kept it locked up in his bedroom. The kids had never been allowed to touch it, and it had never been pointed at anyone. She admitted to having a fight with the father of her kids. They didn’t live together anymore because they fought so much. The current conflict stemmed back two weeks earlier when Williams came to the Camacho residence to drop off the kids and there’d been a fight.

The investigators had a question: “You have a bandage on your hand. What happened there?”

“I cut myself on a piece of broken glass from a candle,” she said.

Janet Camacho and Robert Williams’s kids were interviewed separately. Destiny said she knew the difference between the truth and a lie, and she said her mother and father did not fight. It was determined that Isaiah was unable to tell the difference between a truth and a lie, so he was not considered a credible witness.

The kids were given the once-over and showed no signs of abuse.

Officer Butson spoke briefly to Joshua, who vouched for the fact that his BB gun was kept locked inside his bedroom closet. The allegations were untrue, he said.

On Wednesday, November 12, at 7:47 in the evening, Rachel affected a chummy tone at first: “Hey, Sarah, it’s Rachel. I’m in my car and I’m sure you-all are walking because yours are broken or you don’t have cars. You need the exercise. Maybe it’ll thin you out a little bit. I don’t know … I was just wondering where you are, because if you come to my job, you’ll be arrested on the spot. And I’ll spit in your food. I’m sure you won’t mind because you’re not even going to notice because you’re going to scarf it down. You’re like my fucking dog. You probably don’t even chew your food. But do me a favor and meet me there, bitch. Bye.”

Sarah did go to Applebee’s, when she knew Rachel was working, and specifically asked to be seated in Rachel’s section—the better to mess with her. She tripped Rachel while Rachel was carrying beer. She further harassed her rival by complaining to the manager that Rachel had spit in her food.

As the feud escalated, neither girl was having much fun. The only one having fun was Joshua. Friends of both Rachel and Sarah verified that Joshua was amused by the little war between his sex slaves.

One night in November, Rachel was angry with Joshua. She and her friend Lisa Lafrance put their heads together and came up with “the bright idea” to go to Janet’s house, where Joshua’s car was parked.

“We drove by and egged his car,” Lisa said. “Only he didn’t know it was us. At least we didn’t think so, but I think he put two and two together.”

Rachel and Lisa returned to Rachel’s apartment. That same night, someone entered Rachel’s building, ran up the stairs, pounded on her door, and then ran back down.

“They used to torment Rachel,” Lisa observed. Later that night, a car stopped several times out in front of Rachel’s building, honked the horn, and then left.

Lisa slept at Rachel’s that night; and when she went out to drive home the following morning, November 12, she discovered three of her tires were slashed. Lisa called the cops and told Officer Lawrence Kolbicka that she didn’t know for sure who did it, but the tires were still intact at ten o’clock the prior night.

She said her best guess was that the tires had something to do with the recent quarrel between Rachel Wade and Joshua Camacho. Joshua was angry because Rachel hung out with people of whom he did not approve.

Officer Kolbicka spoke to Joshua, who said he knew nothing about slashed tires. Joshua said the police “bothered him” and refused to answer further questions. Due to lack of evidence, the investigation ended there.

Two days later, a little after seven in the morning, police received a call from Charlie Ludemann. Officer Andrew S. Cappa answered the call. Charlie explained that earlier that morning his daughter Sarah and he had gotten into an argument as he was driving her to school. She was in a bad mood because she’d earlier had a fight with her boyfriend, Joshua Camacho. After arguing, Charlie took Sarah’s cell phone from her as a disciplinary action. At the next traffic stop, Sarah got out of the car and walked. Charlie called the cops. The policeman retrieved Sarah, who had yet to reach school. He scolded her for her actions, explaining that until she was eighteen, her father had every right to take her cell phone away from her, especially since he was paying the bills for it. Cappa drove Sarah the rest of the way to school and advised both daughter and father to calm down.

On February 25, 2009, police were called when a gang of young people, maybe fifteen to twenty of them, were circled in the street, surrounding a fight that was about to happen. By the time the police arrived, the crowd was gone, but members were quickly located. They had split into two groups and were milling about, a few blocks apart. Asking questions, police learned that the dispute had been between Joshua Camacho and Javier Laboy.

Javier explained that Joshua was mad at him because he “played baby daddy for five months to his son.” That is, Javier dated Erin Slothower. Joshua, Javier said, was packing a knife and brass knuckles. He knew because earlier a car containing Joshua cruised past him and Joshua waved the weapons out the window.

Police found Joshua in the other group, and his story, of course, differed. He said it was Javier who’d been hanging out of a car holding a knife and shouting, “I want to kill you!” Nobody was arrested, as there had been no actual physical confrontation. Police explained to everyone that there were better ways to solve their differences.

The incident was important because it took place outside Javier Laboy’s house, only a few feet from where Sarah Ludemann would be stabbed six weeks later.

Jamie Severino lent an insider’s expertise to those troubled times. Sarah didn’t do drugs—at least not when Jamie was around. Joshua and Janet Camacho smoked weed—smoked weed a lot—but Jamie never saw Sarah do it.

“I don’t do drugs, either, so me and Sarah would be sitting while they’d be smoking,” Jamie recalled. Not that Sarah was a saint. She was normal enough, unless the subject was Joshua; then she became “crazy, too.”

Jamie, like Lisa Lafrance before her, had her tires slashed. That was in March, and she had always felt Sarah did it. Sarah admitted it. Sarah had a problem with Jamie because Jamie was really good friends with Erin.

“She didn’t like the fact that Joshua was still seeing Erin,” Jamie recalled. Sarah’s thinking was any friend of Erin’s was an enemy of hers.

One thing Jamie noticed: If she met Sarah alone, Sarah was cool with her. But when Sarah was with her friends, it was a different story.

Just two weeks before Sarah was killed, she got into another fight. This one was with Erin. “It was a fistfight. No weapons. Joshua was there. They fought each other, and that was it,” Jamie recalled. “I mean, you shouldn’t fight at all, but it was a fair fight, and when it was over, they stopped messing with each other.”

After the fight, Sarah figured it out. Erin wasn’t going anywhere, so she might as well get over it. She couldn’t get Erin to stop talking to Joshua. They were always going to talk. They were parents, after all.

The young women reconciled with one another—“Let’s put everything aside” was how Sarah put it—and Sarah tried to recruit Erin to fight with her against their common enemy: “She had tried to get me to go with her to fight Rachel.

“That was a couple days before her and Rachel, but I didn’t go,” Erin remembered.

The last time Erin and Rachel spoke, Rachel said foul things about Erin’s son.

Erin explained, “I felt I was never going to get anywhere for my son if I continued fighting over Joshua.”