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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder The Most Shocking
Speaker 3: Killers in True Crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 4: Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 4: program True Murder, The most Shocking Killers in True Crime
Speaker 4: History and the authors that have written about them. Sarah
Speaker 4: Ludeman was new to love the panelas Florida seventeen year
Speaker 4: old was a late bloomer. When she fell for a boy,
Speaker 4: she was blind to the world of sex, drugs, and
Speaker 4: drama s whirling around her. Soon, Sarah had a bitter
Speaker 4: enemy and eighteen year old waitress Rachel Wade. Both girls
Speaker 4: were head over heels with a cocky two timer named
Speaker 4: Joshua Camacho. On a warm spring night, their passions erupted
Speaker 4: into violence. A knife flashed under the street lights. When
Speaker 4: the fight was over, one girl was dead and the
Speaker 4: other charged with murder. In an emotion packed courtroom, the
Speaker 4: whole story took shape, a troubling tale of conflicting lives,
Speaker 4: tangled sexual affairs, and the high price of having the
Speaker 4: right feelings for the wrong guy. The book this feature
Speaker 4: this evening is called A Knife in the Heart by
Speaker 4: my special guest journalist and author and returned guest, Michael Benson.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the program, and thank you to agreeing this interview.
Speaker 4: Michael Benson.
Speaker 2: Good, good evening, Dan thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: Good evening. Thank you. Now let's maybe set the stage
Speaker 4: with this Panela's Park here, what type of community is
Speaker 4: and tell us be because both of these young women
Speaker 4: grew up in these grew up in this neighborhood. So
Speaker 4: tell us about the Danella's, Florida neighborhood.
Speaker 2: That was a really good well. Panella's Park, Florida is
Speaker 2: a working class town. It's between Tampa Bay and the
Speaker 2: Gulf of Mexico. It's landlocked, even though it's near the
Speaker 2: Florida Shore, the east shore the west shore rather and
Speaker 2: it's an industrial city. Most folks have blue collar jobs.
Speaker 2: And although most people are getting by, it's not a
Speaker 2: place of much upward mobility or ambition. I don't want
Speaker 2: to paint the entire city, it's too broad a brush,
Speaker 2: but it certainly seems like it's the case in this
Speaker 2: particular pack of people, that there's a segment of the
Speaker 2: population that gets stuck in place, casting kind of a
Speaker 2: malaise of an onn we of a cloud of depression
Speaker 2: that affected both the grown ups and if by chain reaction.
Speaker 2: You know, they're teenage children, right, you know, And the
Speaker 2: book takes place in kind of a mean Girl's Gone wild,
Speaker 2: world's second drugs and unfortunately, in this case murder. It
Speaker 2: was the early morning hours of April fifteenth, tax Day,
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, just about exactly four years ago,
Speaker 2: and it was between an eighteen year old high school
Speaker 2: senior and nineteen year old waitress. She had dropped out
Speaker 2: of school and had her own apartment, and the feud
Speaker 2: was between the young woman had been building up for
Speaker 2: many months over a boy, and it was inflamed by
Speaker 2: social networking. They taunted each other on my Space, and
Speaker 2: with each new tweet or whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 2: there were great escalations of fury and cattiness. The fight
Speaker 2: took place in the middle of a quiet residential street.
Speaker 2: Sarah Ludeman, who was the younger girl, is a student.
Speaker 2: She brought along two friends and the nineteen year old
Speaker 2: who was Rachel Wade, considerably smaller than Sarah. She didn't
Speaker 2: bring any friends with her, but she did bring a
Speaker 2: knife and the fight lasted no more than five seconds,
Speaker 2: and when it was over, Sarah lay in the street,
Speaker 2: mortally wounded by a stab wound to the heart. There
Speaker 2: was no more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So what precipitated this though, because you talk about
Speaker 4: she was she came with the kitchen knife. So explain
Speaker 4: how it was that Sarah and her friends came to
Speaker 4: be at Rachel Wade's apartment or home. Tell us tell
Speaker 4: us the scenario.
Speaker 2: And Yeah. During the during the evening that this occurred,
Speaker 2: hostilities had been growing. Rachel wanted to spend the night
Speaker 2: with the boyfriend, Joshua, but Joshua had Sarah over and
Speaker 2: Joshua was staying at the time with his sister and uh.
Speaker 2: Insults went back and forth, and they had driven past
Speaker 2: each other's houses. They were shouting things.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 2: Rachel had reason to believe that she was going to
Speaker 2: be jumped by more than one girl and armed herself
Speaker 2: and to protect herself with a kitchen knife, with with
Speaker 2: with a kitchen knife. She grabbed the kitchen knife and
Speaker 2: put in her purse on her way out the door,
Speaker 2: and then she went over to a friend's house where
Speaker 2: she thought that she would be safe. So the go ahead.
Speaker 4: Now, why wasn't she safe at this location? How did
Speaker 4: how did Sarah?
Speaker 2: Well, you know what happened. She she goes over to
Speaker 2: her friend Javier's house. And Javier, the boy was an
Speaker 2: ex boyfriend and then a polsonic friend at the time.
Speaker 2: And uh, Javier has a friend over named Dustin Grinds
Speaker 2: and they're hanging out in the front yard and Javier's
Speaker 2: mom is asleep in the house. So instead of taking
Speaker 2: Rachel fear who fears that she's going to be jumped
Speaker 2: into the house where she wouldn't be seen, fell hanging
Speaker 2: out in front of the house. And when a friend
Speaker 2: of Sarah's drives by and spots them, that word travels
Speaker 2: fast and everything, you know, there's you know, there's a
Speaker 2: rumble in the middle of the street.
Speaker 4: What was no Now you're saying it's someone that Rachel
Speaker 4: thought she might be jumped by more than one person.
Speaker 4: And they had this long or at least in terms
Speaker 4: of teenage life, a long standing feud that was getting
Speaker 4: escalated and gone on for months.
Speaker 2: There had been a break, there was it was, it
Speaker 2: was really bad for a while, and then there was
Speaker 2: a break and then it it started up again.
Speaker 4: Now, how soon was the actual threat where she actually
Speaker 4: apparently said I will kill you.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the one thing that we'll get into
Speaker 2: is that Rachel is a victim of her own big mouth.
Speaker 2: She was a She's a diminutive, blonde, kind of sweet looking,
Speaker 2: but when she felt threatened, she really could let loose
Speaker 2: with you know. She was she was a barker, not
Speaker 2: a bier, was her reputation. She was. She she could
Speaker 2: just go into a tirade of insults and you vulgarity,
Speaker 2: and she used that as a way to keep people away,
Speaker 2: right and and to and to hurt back when she
Speaker 2: felt that she had been hurt. But I think the
Speaker 2: fascinating thing about this case, and I don't know if
Speaker 2: you agree, but it's that there are eyewitnesses, and the
Speaker 2: eyewitnesses coming to jams. There's Sarah's witnesses, and there are
Speaker 2: Rachel's witnesses, and they don't agree on much. You know,
Speaker 2: Rachel's friends all spoke of a small woman defending herself
Speaker 2: against three larger women who had jumped her, and Sarah's
Speaker 2: friends folk, of Rachel charging at Sarah and immediately plunging
Speaker 2: the kitchen knife into Sarah's chest. Yeah, so yeah, I
Speaker 2: just should also say that by the time this happens,
Speaker 2: the News Park Police Department is really sick of these
Speaker 2: kids there, They've been a problem for years. There's drug dealers,
Speaker 2: there's uh and every every move, every social move, seems
Speaker 2: to be dramatized into something straight out of West Side Story.
Speaker 2: There's car chases, all kinds of reckless driving. And you know,
Speaker 2: just just a few days before the murder, several local
Speaker 2: high school kids have been killed in a car crash. Right,
Speaker 2: and now you've got you know, Sarah screaming to Havre
Speaker 2: the boy's house in her in her parents minivan, almost
Speaker 2: going up on two wheels to make the turn, and
Speaker 2: screeching to a halt three feet away from the nose
Speaker 2: of Rachel's car.
Speaker 4: So it's.
Speaker 2: But the other thing is that Joshua Camacho, who's the
Speaker 2: boy the warring party's share. He is an instigator, and
Speaker 2: he has told them both, you know, if you love
Speaker 2: me enough, you will fight for me. He's been there.
Speaker 4: And describe this guy too, because he talked about diminutives,
Speaker 4: like tell me what, because we got photos of this
Speaker 4: guy posing. You know, he's got tattoos, he's a gangst
Speaker 4: that kind of guy. So, but describe who he really
Speaker 4: what he is like a statute, really right.
Speaker 2: I mean, if if you had a guess what he
Speaker 2: looked like, based just on the behavior of his women,
Speaker 2: you would guess that he was a tall, dark and
Speaker 2: handsome The truth was really different and in a way
Speaker 2: more interesting. He was an undersized pretty boy who didn't
Speaker 2: work for a living but instead leeched from his girlfriend.
Speaker 2: There's a guy who made playing women into a science.
Speaker 2: He had a baby with one teen girlfriend. He lived
Speaker 2: for a time in Rachel Wade's apartment for free, and
Speaker 2: he took Sarah Ludman's virginity at Rachel's trial. He described
Speaker 2: this relationship with all of these women as friends with benefits.
Speaker 2: The no emotion at all, His controlling nature, his need
Speaker 2: to play puppet master came through loud and clear. I
Speaker 2: thought when you learned that he had instructed Sarah not
Speaker 2: to wear shorts in public, no matter how high it
Speaker 2: was outside, because he decided that he wanted to be
Speaker 2: the only one who got to see her legs. And
Speaker 2: Sarah didn't even question it. She wore long pants.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Well they're young though, and and I mean
Speaker 4: a lot of this stuff, I mean, controlling people is
Speaker 4: nothing new. I mean there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 4: of jealous controlling people both sexes ques true. But it's
Speaker 4: interesting what I would what you did talk about, and
Speaker 4: what I was going to ask, because we want to
Speaker 4: make sure that this wasn't out of character for these
Speaker 4: young girls. They lived in this sort of world, and
Speaker 4: you did describe this over exaggerated sort of world they
Speaker 4: thought they were living in, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right, And it was it was a promiscu permission
Speaker 2: us crowd, a warning to readers with you gentle sensibilities.
Speaker 2: That quite a bit of sex talk going on. As
Speaker 2: one cop put it immediately following the murder, it wasn't
Speaker 2: over a love triangle as much as it was around
Speaker 2: a love hexagon. Rachel Wade discovered sex at a very
Speaker 2: tender age. She was a classic example of too much
Speaker 2: too soon. And Sarah Luna, on the other hand, was
Speaker 2: an overweight girl, large teased by friends and a late
Speaker 2: bloomer with boys, and Joshua Camacho was her one and only.
Speaker 2: In terms of scheduling, Josh's girlfriends were perfectly complementary to
Speaker 2: each other. You know, Sarah was a high school girl
Speaker 2: with a curfew and had to be home early, and
Speaker 2: Rachel was a restaurant waitress who wasn't available until late,
Speaker 2: so he could see both every night, and they never
Speaker 2: ran into each other until if this night, Rachel has
Speaker 2: the night off and I'll help breaks us. So Camacho
Speaker 2: is the consonant player.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 2: You know he uh, he gives, no, really gives, not
Speaker 2: that he convinces each girl that they are his one
Speaker 2: and only, although anybody from the outside looking in can
Speaker 2: tell immediately what sort of person he is, you know,
Speaker 2: not just scheduling, but I think the two girls were
Speaker 2: complementary as well in terms of their uh personalities, sexual
Speaker 2: and otherwise. You know, Rachel's shoot applebeasts, waitress with a
Speaker 2: wild lifestyle. She's a sexual experimenter, and she's unfortunately just
Speaker 2: as intense out of the sack as she is in.
Speaker 2: And Sarah she's she switched schools so she could be
Speaker 2: closer to Joshua Camacho. She adores him completely, you know that.
Speaker 4: Why excuse me, why is it that Rachel is living
Speaker 4: with a friend, or why is she not living with
Speaker 4: her parents?
Speaker 2: Well, that's you know, that's Rachel's only fifteen. When troubles start,
Speaker 2: she lives at home with her with her parents, but
Speaker 2: she gets busted for skipping school in order to have
Speaker 2: sex with her older, technically adult boyfriend, and Rachel's parents
Speaker 2: had the boy arrested and charged with statutory rape. That
Speaker 2: incident for Rachel begins a pattern of running away from home.
Speaker 2: She disappears for a couple of days, and she returns
Speaker 2: home with it, you know, sometimes with a detailed explanation,
Speaker 2: sometimes with a vague explanation. Each time, Rachel's parents called
Speaker 2: the police and follow the report, and the police, in
Speaker 2: quite a few cases, they just went to the house
Speaker 2: of whoever her boyfriend was, found her and brought her home. Now,
Speaker 2: sometimes Rachel ran away simply because she had a better
Speaker 2: offer than to sleep at home with her parents, whom
Speaker 2: other times she ran off because of violent argument she had,
Speaker 2: most with their mother. Once Rachel threw a knife in
Speaker 2: her mother before running out the door, asked why the
Speaker 2: Waves continued calling the police even though they knew where
Speaker 2: Rachel probably was Bury Wade. The dad said that he'd
Speaker 2: been advised by the police to keep a paper trail
Speaker 2: of everything because all that documentation, all that documentation would
Speaker 2: come in handy when it came time to take further
Speaker 2: action regarding Rachel's behavior. Now, I should mention that a
Speaker 2: large contributor to this entire tragedy as drugs. Yes, they're
Speaker 2: all smoking pot and there's a frightening number of the
Speaker 2: city's young people who are addicted to an opiate pain killer.
Speaker 2: They call them roxies. The brand name I guess was
Speaker 2: roxy Codon. There are blue pills and some kids called
Speaker 2: them blues. There's been a major most likely Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's very similar, just maybe a different manufacturer.
Speaker 2: But there's been a major theft at the pharmaceutical warehouse
Speaker 2: and one hundreds of thousand of these pills were stolen,
Speaker 2: and it causes a tragic wave of serious drug addictions
Speaker 2: throughout Florida. Kids are taking the pills unaware that they're
Speaker 2: becoming addicted to the same active substance that's in herod. Sure,
Speaker 2: so there's a tendency anyway for young people to feel immortal.
Speaker 2: They don't feel anxiety about danger the same way older
Speaker 2: adults do. They're careless, they're reckless, and the natural tendency
Speaker 2: was exacerbated by the roxies, which further removed in additions
Speaker 2: and created a pain free illusion of euphoria. Too. Many
Speaker 2: of Penel's Park's teenage girls were skipping school, hanging out
Speaker 2: with older boyfriends who had apartments of their own. They're
Speaker 2: taking drugs, having sex, and making babies. But our insight
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Speaker 2: Those years is a beautiful young woman named Lisa la France,
Speaker 2: and she is also interesting from my point of view
Speaker 2: because she was the only witness I had who can
Speaker 2: honestly claim to be friends with both Sarah and Rachel.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: Alisa and Rachel had boyfriends who were roommates when they
Speaker 2: were teenagers, and they spent a lot of time together
Speaker 2: having sex and taught taking drugs in close proximity. And
Speaker 2: while our best info is that Rachel, for all of
Speaker 2: romantic behavior, was no longer doing drugs, Lisa developed a
Speaker 2: severe paink addiction. You know, Roxy's took over my life,
Speaker 2: is what she told me. And that long before the murder,
Speaker 2: Lisa was visiting Rachel at Rachel's apartment and they had
Speaker 2: a fight. There was the way's final way of taking
Speaker 2: care of the runaway problem, as they allowed Rachel to
Speaker 2: quit school and get her own apartment, and that it
Speaker 2: was almost working, you know, she had a job, she'd
Speaker 2: gotten her ged. But Lisa and Rachel are together in
Speaker 2: Rachel's apartment not long before the murder, and Lisa's slurring
Speaker 2: her words and acting out of it, and Rachel gave
Speaker 2: her an ultimatum, you know, quit the pills or they
Speaker 2: couldn't be friends anymore, and Lisa chose the pills. She
Speaker 2: said she was high all the time, She was high
Speaker 2: the night that Sarah died. And I'm personally happy to
Speaker 2: report that Lisa's since gotten off drugs and she seems
Speaker 2: cheerful enough, gainfully employed and taking it one day at
Speaker 2: a time. Right, So let's talk about the voicemails.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's evidence, as it turns.
Speaker 2: Out, business months before the murder, during the first few
Speaker 2: between Sarah and Rachel over Joshua, Rachel left a series
Speaker 2: of voicemails on Sarah's phone, and as it turns out,
Speaker 2: these tapes were one of the most psychologically effective pieces
Speaker 2: of evidence for the prosecution. They're threatening, they're obscene, and
Speaker 2: even though they occurred months before the murder, so that
Speaker 2: in terms legal terms the relevance was diminished, their emotional
Speaker 2: power remained very strong. I mean, they were so spary
Speaker 2: that Sarah called the cops who recommended she saved the
Speaker 2: recording that she did, and that's how they ended up
Speaker 2: being evidence against Rachel at the trial. So Rachel, whose
Speaker 2: voices on those tapes is just monstrous. She delivered a
Speaker 2: profanity strewn, manic monologue of insults and threats. She sounded
Speaker 2: pretty flashly, like the type of person who would stab
Speaker 2: someone in the chest in cold blood. Every time I
Speaker 2: listen to those voicemails, I get the distinct impression that
Speaker 2: there's something wrong with Rachel, something organic, some synapse in
Speaker 2: her brain that isn't firing correctly. She sounds for all
Speaker 2: the world as if she's written out a speech ahead
Speaker 2: of time and then is reading it as fast as
Speaker 2: she could.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: So, I mean later on, I think it becomes important
Speaker 2: because her defense attorney has no choice but to put
Speaker 2: her on the stand because he can't allow those tapes
Speaker 2: to be her testimony.
Speaker 4: Well, plus she's bleeding self defense, so she has to
Speaker 4: take the stand.
Speaker 2: That too. Yeah, So let's go through the witnesses. The eyewitnesses.
Speaker 2: There are two girls in the minivan with Sarah. Sarah's
Speaker 2: driving her father's minivan. Sitting in the front seat with her.
Speaker 2: First and foremost is Janet Kamacha. She's Joshua's sister and
Speaker 2: she is the original tough girl. You know. She's both
Speaker 2: friends with Sarah and she hates Rachel's guts because she
Speaker 2: thought Rachel was a bad influence on her own After
Speaker 2: Rachel Wade had stabbed Sarah. It was Janet Camacha who
Speaker 2: grabbed Rachel and gave her a good beating. First, at first,
Speaker 2: Janet takes off one of her sandals and starts smacking
Speaker 2: try to get the knife out of her hands, smacks
Speaker 2: Rachel over the head with it. And later Janet had
Speaker 2: Rachel by the hair and she's dragging her around the
Speaker 2: Javier the Boy's front lawn, and Rachel makes no attempt
Speaker 2: to use her knife on Janet, you know. Somehow during
Speaker 2: this altercation, Rachel manages to free herself for long enough
Speaker 2: to run away and throw the knife away as far
Speaker 2: as she can, and the flagger found on a neighbor's
Speaker 2: roof right, and the prosecution claimed that Rachel was trying
Speaker 2: to hide the weapon, while the defense made the also
Speaker 2: reasonable claim that she got rid of the knife and
Speaker 2: self defense that she was afraid Janet was going to
Speaker 2: take it away from her and use it on her.
Speaker 2: And in court, Janet was very, very pregnant and nonetheless
Speaker 2: had a tough girl strut as she entered and exited
Speaker 2: the courtroom, and while on the stand, she kept staring
Speaker 2: at Rachel high beings on, almost licking her chops, obviously
Speaker 2: thinking about what she would do if she could just
Speaker 2: have five minutes alone in her room with Rachel Wade
Speaker 2: sitting in the double seat of the Vand.
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask one thing, though, wasn't she stabbed twice? Like?
Speaker 4: Where exactly was she stabbed? And then? And was she
Speaker 4: stabbed twice in this very specific spot in the chest?
Speaker 4: You say the chest?
Speaker 2: But she was like the first wound, uh is up
Speaker 2: in the shoulder and it's just a flesh woe. It
Speaker 2: would have been it would have been a matter of stitches, right.
Speaker 2: The second the second stamp, which is a fraction of
Speaker 2: a second later, goes through the skin, through the muscle
Speaker 2: between the ribs, through the plural sack, and into the
Speaker 2: heart itself.
Speaker 4: Right, And.
Speaker 2: So she had mustered up a considered amount of strength
Speaker 2: in her anger in order.
Speaker 4: Did she did Sarah die right away? How long? Was it?
Speaker 2: Pretty quickly she managed. She manages to get her cell
Speaker 2: phone out, and she calls Joshua and she says it hurts,
Speaker 2: and then collapses on the street right next to her van.
Speaker 2: The driver door is still open. Yeah. Uh, And you
Speaker 2: know what what happens at that point, of course, dependent
Speaker 2: which eye witness what sting to. So, yeah, as I said,
Speaker 2: there were the wors. Sarah had two friends with her,
Speaker 2: and sitting in the back seat is Julisa Smith, who
Speaker 2: is another a larger girl. She's gonbe five eight something
Speaker 2: like that, and she's related to the father of Janet
Speaker 2: Camacho's babies, so they're related by marriage, and Jalsa sometimes
Speaker 2: comes over to babysit, and naturally Julica's memories support the prosecution,
Speaker 2: but she has elements of her story that aren't in
Speaker 2: anyone else's version. She says she missed key action because
Speaker 2: she dropped her phone and the back popped off, and
Speaker 2: she was picking that up and putting the phone back
Speaker 2: together as things were going on, and she remembered holding
Speaker 2: Janet back physically so she couldn't attack Rachel when everyone
Speaker 2: else remember Janet beating the Tara out of Rachel, with
Speaker 2: Julisa doing nothing to stop her. But still, it was
Speaker 2: Julisa first realized that Sarah had been stabbed and had
Speaker 2: collapsed to the pavement. It was Julia's screams that Sarah
Speaker 2: Sarah's been stabbed then that alerted the others that there
Speaker 2: was a medical emergency. Uh Julisa, when she did get
Speaker 2: her phone back in one piece, also successfully called nine
Speaker 2: one one and reported the stabbing. Now over on Rachel's
Speaker 2: side of the eyewitnesses, you have Javier, la boy and
Speaker 2: he is gonna be her best friend. He's decided that
Speaker 2: he has seen it. He's the only the only eyewitness
Speaker 2: was sees things exactly the way that Rachel herself sees them.
Speaker 2: Yeah he yeah, he uh. He sees three girls piling
Speaker 2: out of the van at once, whereas Sarah's friends say
Speaker 2: they don't get out of the van until after the stabbing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's pretty one on one fight, but yeah, Dan, Javier
Speaker 2: says that all three girls get out of the van
Speaker 2: at once and charge it at Rachel, who then has
Speaker 2: to defend herself. Now, during the first few months that
Speaker 2: Rachel's in jail, it's Javier who becomes her boyfriend, and
Speaker 2: he's we have tapes with him on the phone reassuring
Speaker 2: her that that this is all temporary and everything's gonna
Speaker 2: be okay once the jury realizes the truth. You hear
Speaker 2: them daydreaming about their life together. They're gonna get married,
Speaker 2: have children. They talk about what they're gonna name their
Speaker 2: children after Rachel as he quitted and Vire's Javier's friend.
Speaker 2: Dustin grimes, he's he's just happens to be over visiting Javier.
Speaker 2: He doesn't he doesn't have he doesn't have a dog
Speaker 2: in this fight. But he so probably I would think
Speaker 2: that he has the least biased viewpoint. And but yeah,
Speaker 2: and he's the closest as close as we get to.
Speaker 4: An impartial witness and potentially potentially.
Speaker 2: Potentially Yeah, and he does say things that please both signs.
Speaker 2: He he says that Rachel moved forward away from her
Speaker 2: own car and towards Sarah's with a knife in her hand,
Speaker 2: not a girl on the defensive. But he also says,
Speaker 2: and this was, you know, absolutely thrilled the defense attorney.
Speaker 2: He says that all three girls in the van get
Speaker 2: out at the same time and come charging towards Rachel
Speaker 2: and the other. The other interesting thing about Dustin is
Speaker 2: that he enlisted in the military actually murder, and he
Speaker 2: knew that he was going to be overseas during the trial.
Speaker 2: So his testimony was recorded earlier in the same courtroom
Speaker 2: with all the same parties president except for the jury,
Speaker 2: and then the TV tape was played for the jury
Speaker 2: and they had a synchronized things that the jury would
Speaker 2: be seeing pieces of evidence as they were introduced on
Speaker 2: the tape, and it was his courtroom procedure. It was
Speaker 2: it was a little odd.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he knew that there was no cross denomination. So
Speaker 4: it's a whole lot less strenuous than obviously going to court.
Speaker 2: They're right exactly, And it's just interesting that you tend
Speaker 2: to think of a of a trial that is being
Speaker 2: at libbed, that it's being played out sort of off
Speaker 2: the cuff, and when you go back to a tape
Speaker 2: that was made months before and you play it and
Speaker 2: it fits in perfectly, you realize that this trials are
Speaker 2: pretty well scripted.
Speaker 4: What I wanted to ask you is that because you've written,
Speaker 4: you know what, over forty books, and true crime is
Speaker 4: not the only thing you've written about, but definitely you've
Speaker 4: written you understand the legal process in your mind. When
Speaker 4: you were looking at this case before the trial, and
Speaker 4: when I'm looking at it too, did you have your
Speaker 4: did you have an idea of what technically is self defense?
Speaker 4: She came out of the home with a knife in
Speaker 4: the purse was really not The definition of self defense
Speaker 4: doesn't mean a jury won't take it that way. But
Speaker 4: that's a little bit of a stretch of self defense,
Speaker 4: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Well. I think I think that there's there's a standard rule.
Speaker 2: You don't bring a knife to a fist fight. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: the other thing that complicates matters is that Florida has
Speaker 2: a new stand your ground rule, right or you know
Speaker 2: many states. Yeah, and they say that if you can,
Speaker 2: you should run. But Florida, it's it's too sissy, and
Speaker 2: they're having they're having a lot of they're having a
Speaker 2: lot of acquittals uh with self defense uh defenses because
Speaker 2: it says you are allowed to stand your ground even
Speaker 2: though you are being attacked, which you know is the
Speaker 2: case here, and you.
Speaker 4: Can want and you're supposed to be able to use
Speaker 4: force plus one. And if you have three people, you
Speaker 4: you know, bringing your fist to a fist fight and
Speaker 4: still doesn't work out with three people.
Speaker 2: You know, it's assuming that three people are actually attacking her,
Speaker 2: that's right, you know. I think there's there's strong evidence
Speaker 2: that the girls attacked that Julisa never hurt anybody, and
Speaker 2: the Janet and Sarah attacked Rachel one at a time.
Speaker 2: I think it's it was an interesting case in that
Speaker 2: I didn't know what the verdict was going to be, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean unless there is a you know, unless there's
Speaker 2: a strong legal ending, chances are it doesn't become a
Speaker 2: book because you don't want to put the word allegedly
Speaker 2: in five thousand times you're writing a book. Yes, But
Speaker 2: the question afterwards was, you know, was she charged properly
Speaker 2: the charge? She was arrested that night and charged with
Speaker 2: second degree murder? Right, and what's that correct? Was?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: Second degree murder means that Rachel deliberately killed Sarah with
Speaker 2: that knife, but she decided that she decided to do
Speaker 2: it on the spur of the moment. Uh. And some
Speaker 2: something thought that Rachel was undercharged because really, premeditation only
Speaker 2: takes a matter of seconds, and wasn't the fact that
Speaker 2: she had the knife with her in the first place
Speaker 2: evidence of premeditation. And then there were others who thought
Speaker 2: that Rachel was overcharged, that she should have been charged
Speaker 2: with manslaughter, that she had a reckless disregard for Sarah's safety.
Speaker 2: It was true, but she had not intentionally killed her,
Speaker 2: That she didn't have the skills to purposely do the
Speaker 2: damage that she did. She was just flailing.
Speaker 4: Was there a question of that she had stabbed her once,
Speaker 4: like you say, a surface wound, but then went in
Speaker 4: for the not for the kill, but the lethal stab
Speaker 4: wound that went right to the heart quickly, you know,
Speaker 4: I mean this was lethal. Was there a question of that?
Speaker 4: And she was just defending herself. Wouldn't have the stab itself.
Speaker 4: Most people, whether they're stabbed fatally or not, are not
Speaker 4: going to keep attacking. So was there any question about
Speaker 4: that incident?
Speaker 2: So you know, there was not an eyewitness who could
Speaker 2: identify when the stabbing took place. Two girls. It all
Speaker 2: happens so fast. The girls come together in the middle
Speaker 2: of the street and there is just, you know, a
Speaker 2: mad flurry of motion, hair and arms and screaming, and
Speaker 2: then they separate and at first everything's, you know, everything
Speaker 2: just the okay. Sarah walks back to her van, standing up,
Speaker 2: and Rachel backs off and moves away, and it looks
Speaker 2: like it's over, and it's not until Sarah goes down.
Speaker 2: She's believes most of her bleeding is internal. Chaos erupts again,
Speaker 2: but there's you know, we don't have anybody who says, yes,
Speaker 2: she stabbed her once and that wasn't good enough. She
Speaker 2: stabbed her again. The two stamps were were yeah, part
Speaker 2: part of a flurry of motion that nobody on either
Speaker 2: side could distinguish. Mm hmm yeah, so.
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Speaker 2: But I mean her Her defense believed that her actions
Speaker 2: were protected under floor's right to stand your ground law
Speaker 2: and that she'd been jumped three on one and that
Speaker 2: rendered the use of the knife justifiable. I had, you know,
Speaker 2: I had no idea what the jury was going to
Speaker 2: do with this case. You look at Rachel at the
Speaker 2: opening of your program, the most notorious and shocking killers.
Speaker 2: The shocking thing about Rachel Wade being a killer is
Speaker 2: that she looks completely harmless, you know, moments after the murders,
Speaker 2: over sitting on a bench in front of Javier's house,
Speaker 2: and she has a cop, she can bum a cigarette.
Speaker 2: She looks like a sullen cheerleader.
Speaker 4: What was her actions like after her arrest in terms
Speaker 4: of now you get a lot of cases in this one,
Speaker 4: obviously they look very closely at the person's behavior after
Speaker 4: and if there's any visits, phone calls. So what was
Speaker 4: the behavior right after that? How was she was still cocky?
Speaker 4: I mean, what was she like?
Speaker 2: No, no, she was she was quiet. She seemed a
Speaker 2: little dazed. She sat there and watched as the ambulance
Speaker 2: pulled up, and she lied. I mean, this was the thing.
Speaker 2: She lies. She said she hadn't know, she didn't know
Speaker 2: Sarah got stabbed. No, no clue. Yeah, she remembered everything
Speaker 2: except stabbing Sarah, which is probably not the way to
Speaker 2: go because it seemed phony. Bologni. Sure, we talked for
Speaker 2: a second about about the families, because the two families
Speaker 2: in this case are they're really heartbreaking. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I know it's it's harder to lose a daughter to
Speaker 2: death than than to lose her to prison. Maybe, but
Speaker 2: she just can't fix sides. So yeah, with the right
Speaker 2: but the lutemants. Anyway, This is what the eighth or
Speaker 2: ninth true crime book I've written. And the families the
Speaker 2: victims always make my heart go out. They that never changes.
Speaker 2: They they want to do their best to protect their
Speaker 2: child's legacy, and yet they want private. They sometimes treat
Speaker 2: writers like me like unwanted traveling salesmen, and others treat
Speaker 2: me like others treat me like free of charge therapist.
Speaker 2: I'm using my shoulder to cry on and that's fine.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm injecting myself into their lives. The Ludmans
Speaker 2: were of the latter group, although I didn't do me
Speaker 2: any good because by the time I got to them,
Speaker 2: they had already participated in the national TV show dealing
Speaker 2: with their daughter's death and had signed an exclusivity agreement
Speaker 2: to not give interviews to anyone else. So our discussions
Speaker 2: were brief, but they did. There were plenty of things.
Speaker 4: That I did know.
Speaker 2: I knew that their despair knew no bounds of intensity.
Speaker 2: Charlie Ludeman was a large man with bad knees, a
Speaker 2: cab driver who, along with his wife and only daughter,
Speaker 2: only child had moved to Florida from New York City
Speaker 2: because they wanted to be where it was safe. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and when Sarah died, Charlie repeatedly dialed Sarah's cell phone
Speaker 2: so he could listen to her recorded voice saying Hi,
Speaker 2: wake for the beef. He realized that was the only
Speaker 2: chance he was going to have to hear her voice
Speaker 2: from then on. He had some with Sarah's ashes injected
Speaker 2: under his skin as part of a tattoo, so he'd
Speaker 2: carry a little of her around with him forever. On
Speaker 2: the other side, Rachel's mom had a long suffering mother.
Speaker 2: She had an older son. There was a Rachel had
Speaker 2: an older brother and he no longer lived at home.
Speaker 2: You know, he was estranged from the family for reasons
Speaker 2: that are never spoken out loud, and we just know
Speaker 2: that Rachel can't stand him. And then came Rachel after
Speaker 2: the brother had moved out, and she caused even more grief.
Speaker 2: She ran away again and again. As Rachel's mom would
Speaker 2: put it, she had the hotsy taxis. She had taste
Speaker 2: her grown men, and she wanted more. And it was
Speaker 2: it was Rachel's mom who really freaked out the most
Speaker 2: when she heard that Rachel was being charged with murder.
Speaker 2: It was the last straw she just broke, you know,
Speaker 2: she just when she thought she couldn't be hurt even
Speaker 2: more about her children, Rachel went and did it. It
Speaker 2: was as if she stabbed her own mother in the heart.
Speaker 2: The woman withdrew into a shell and seemed in a
Speaker 2: deep state of shock both during the days after Rachel's
Speaker 2: arrest and culminating in court where at one point during
Speaker 2: the proceedings, you know, mom buried her face in her
Speaker 2: husband's chest and just violently shudders for you know, seemingly forever.
Speaker 2: And Rachel's dad, also in a state of shock, was
Speaker 2: physically trying to keep his wife inside her skin. She
Speaker 2: was shaking so hard. It's really very rough to watch.
Speaker 4: Well, Rachel had a lot of friends, high school friends
Speaker 4: as well, that attended the child, didn't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. The place was packed with young people, and
Speaker 2: one of the true TV reporters who was covering the
Speaker 2: trial in person, said that during the breaks, the hallway
Speaker 2: outside the courtroom sounded like a high school cafeteria with
Speaker 2: all the chatter going on this extremely young crowd. Rachel
Speaker 2: of France was there, and a lot, a lot of
Speaker 2: Rachel's waitress friends.
Speaker 4: Of a lot of Rachel's friends and a lot of
Speaker 4: Sarah's friends had really their best friends, had advised both
Speaker 4: these women or counsels these women, or especially in Sarah's case,
Speaker 4: had actually spoken to him and said, that's it. I'm
Speaker 4: off this guy. This guy's done it again. So there
Speaker 4: was a lot of advice from their friends and a
Speaker 4: lot of friends to say, listen, you guys deserve better
Speaker 4: of this guy.
Speaker 2: Well, that's true, and of course they did. But if
Speaker 2: it has to do with the social networking, you're when
Speaker 2: you put something to a social network that embarrasses somebody,
Speaker 2: it's not private. It's as if you're doing it with
Speaker 2: everybody standing around watching. And I mean one of Sarah's
Speaker 2: most interesting friends was was Ashley love Lady, and she
Speaker 2: was important to the evening's events because, if we believe
Speaker 2: the official version of the story, it was Ashley who
Speaker 2: spotted Rachel hanging out in front of Javier's house and
Speaker 2: told Sarah then her two friends where Rachel could be found.
Speaker 2: When first interviewed by the police, actually denied a role,
Speaker 2: and after a day's thought, she realized that this was
Speaker 2: too important for her to lie. About She just not
Speaker 2: been sure how much trouble she'd be and if she
Speaker 2: admitted to what she'd done. Ashley was the trial's first
Speaker 2: witness and got the emotional ball rolling when she burst
Speaker 2: into tears as she discussed the way that Panela's Park
Speaker 2: girls were abused by their men. Actually had dated Joshua's
Speaker 2: older brother.
Speaker 4: Now what what was what was Joshua doing like after
Speaker 4: the during this trial? Was he posting anything on his
Speaker 4: Facebook account or pardon me is MySpace account? What was
Speaker 4: was there any activity like that from this Joshua?
Speaker 2: Now? You know, he he drops out of the situation.
Speaker 2: He refuses to go with Sarah's father to see her
Speaker 2: body in the hospital. He is not allowed to attend
Speaker 2: her funeral. He only appears at the trial in order
Speaker 2: to testify.
Speaker 4: And he.
Speaker 2: She's you know, he's lost his he's lost one girlfriend
Speaker 2: to death and the other one to jail. And the
Speaker 2: third Aaron Slothauer, who is the mother of his child.
Speaker 2: You know, she's always going to be around. She's she's
Speaker 2: an interesting character too. She refused to give to give interviews,
Speaker 2: but she did talk a little bit with me. She
Speaker 2: was Joshua's first girlfriend. They'd met in grammar school and
Speaker 2: they had a child together, and once she got pregnant,
Speaker 2: of course he lost interest. And for her part, she
Speaker 2: was a real life teen mom, and she understood that
Speaker 2: Joshua was useless and she was going to have to
Speaker 2: step up and be the responsible one. You know. She
Speaker 2: went back to school, she earned a college degree, she
Speaker 2: was pregnant. While she was pregnant, she was working full time.
Speaker 2: She had her life together, and by the time Rachel
Speaker 2: killed Sarah, she was out of that world.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: She didn't hear anything about it until the next day.
Speaker 2: And when I finally got her to make a comment,
Speaker 2: what she said was, you know, the whole thing is
Speaker 2: just so sad, crazy teens, so caught up in their
Speaker 2: own drama that someone had to die.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is interesting. It is interesting. Yeah, it is
Speaker 4: interesting too that josh did not I mean, he couldn't go,
Speaker 4: He couldn't attend the trial as being a witness. But
Speaker 4: after he did appear as a witness, he could appear
Speaker 4: at the trial. So I thought it kind of odd
Speaker 4: that he didn't, that he just I mean, despite the advice,
Speaker 4: I mean, this kid really turned as much as he had,
Speaker 4: this tough guy persona that he was presenting. He took
Speaker 4: the advice of I guess that you know the prosecutor
Speaker 4: and his parents or whatever, and he really did not
Speaker 4: act like the character is portrayed it earlier in your account.
Speaker 2: Of absolutely not. He In fact, he ran away. He
Speaker 2: went to New York. I think he's now returned to Florida,
Speaker 2: but he went into hiding. He's an interesting sidebar. The
Speaker 2: first journalist to interview Rachel's parents after the murder was
Speaker 2: a woman named Laine did Gregory, and she was a
Speaker 2: features writer for the Tampa Bay Times, and it was
Speaker 2: during her first days of covering the case that she
Speaker 2: learned that she had won a Pulitzer Prize. And she
Speaker 2: turned out to be a tremendous asset to my book
Speaker 2: because she offered me a lead that led to a
Speaker 2: whole new mind of information, that being the Rachel prison tapes.
Speaker 2: When Rachel was first thrown in jail, she thought that
Speaker 2: it was a temporary thing and soon enough everyone would
Speaker 2: calm down to figure out that she was just defending
Speaker 2: herself and she'd be a free woman once again. So
Speaker 2: she used up a lot of her phone time having
Speaker 2: phone sex with boys. She seemed to think that it
Speaker 2: was the only way for her to keep their attention
Speaker 2: interestingly enough. When she wandered to more serious subjects, they
Speaker 2: seemed to their interest flagged, so she kept talking about sex,
Speaker 2: and apparently prisoner phone sex is not that uncommon, despite
Speaker 2: the fact that everyone knows all conversations are being recorded
Speaker 2: by the authorities and anything they say can be used
Speaker 2: against them. Rachel's dad warned her early not to discuss
Speaker 2: the stabbing, but he didn't say, you don't have phone
Speaker 2: sex with your boyfriends. And the recordings of those conversations
Speaker 2: are very revealing as we try to figure out, you know,
Speaker 2: what makes Rachel tick. She asked one guy what was
Speaker 2: the first thing he was going to do when he
Speaker 2: saw her, And he says he's going to grab her
Speaker 2: and squeeze her and kiss her neck. And she said
Speaker 2: the first thing when she saw him, she was going
Speaker 2: to become his little head monster and she was going
Speaker 2: to take care of business. This guy wasn't as good
Speaker 2: at phone sex as she was, and he kept trying
Speaker 2: to put the action inside the jail with Rachel and
Speaker 2: her cellmates, and she wasn't going to go for that.
Speaker 2: So it's the tapes start out with hot chat with
Speaker 2: this boy named Jeremy, and then he loses interest when
Speaker 2: he realizes that she's not gonna be home next week.
Speaker 2: And then she starts in with Javier, little boy, and
Speaker 2: she's smart enough to cut out the porn and move
Speaker 2: to more romantic things with Javier. He's a little bit
Speaker 2: classier guy. And Daniel, as I said, they talk about
Speaker 2: their their life together and how they're gonna get married.
Speaker 2: And now, unfortunately, you know, this is all being taped,
Speaker 2: and the prosecutors the uses the tape later on to attack,
Speaker 2: you know, the boy's credibility. On the stand, you'd say
Speaker 2: anything you want to marry her. But as you said that,
Speaker 2: the trial is both shocking and spectacular. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: just high drama. The jury had to decide if Rachel
Speaker 2: had murdered Sarah Ludemant because it was three on one,
Speaker 2: or if she had a right to defend herself with
Speaker 2: deadly force, and the presentation of the eyewitnesses formed a
Speaker 2: perfect framework for the telling of the story, which was
Speaker 2: made things relatively easy for me. The wildly different ways
Speaker 2: that the eyewitnesses saw things. It proves once and for
Speaker 2: all that memory is a vague thing that we argue
Speaker 2: to support our beliefs rather than the truth. And how
Speaker 2: easily influenced you know it we are, how imagination joins
Speaker 2: hands with memory so easily, especially during a shocking moment
Speaker 2: and the most dramatic moment of the trials, when Rachel
Speaker 2: Wade takes the stand in her own defense. It's a
Speaker 2: risky move for defense attorney Jabor, but like you said,
Speaker 2: in a self defense case, have to put her on
Speaker 2: and in the you know, ultimately doesn't doesn't really pay off.
Speaker 2: It goes well during direct examination. He rather stringently controls
Speaker 2: her words through carefully constructed sentences. You know, they worked
Speaker 2: as a team, describing for the jury the fear Rachel
Speaker 2: felt and how she was jumped by multiple girls, and
Speaker 2: how she feared she was gonna be beaten to a pulp.
Speaker 2: And she thought, me, maybe Joshua had a gun, maybe
Speaker 2: his sister had the gun, maybe he'd lent the gun
Speaker 2: to Sarah. She felt she had a very good reason
Speaker 2: to armed herself that night. But the purpose of the
Speaker 2: knife was never to use it. It was just to
Speaker 2: show it. And the sight of that blade was going
Speaker 2: to cause the gang to back down and there would
Speaker 2: be peace in the world. That was the plan and
Speaker 2: he's gone horribly wrong. It was so tragic and whoo who.
Speaker 4: So gunn goes okay, so go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Direct examination goes well. But then Rachel's turned over to
Speaker 2: prosecutor sus Hannahwiz, who lights into her like a wolverine.
Speaker 2: So Hannah Wiz speaks very fast. She interrupts Rachel's answers.
Speaker 2: She yelled, and Rachel did not take it well. She
Speaker 2: lost control of her emotions that began to babble and
Speaker 2: words filled out, completely out of her attorney's control at
Speaker 2: this point, and she said stuff. It was damaging. Yes,
Speaker 2: she threatened to murder Sarah. Yes, she carried out that threat.
Speaker 2: Oh boy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But you know, as I said before, before we get
Speaker 2: too critical of you know, mister Abert, he's got to
Speaker 2: put her on not only because of the self defense
Speaker 2: but because of those you know, those damn tapes of
Speaker 2: of her threatening Sarah and the voicemails.
Speaker 4: But what did you think of the of the argument
Speaker 4: that he put forth. Anyway, it seems almost on the
Speaker 4: line of not being able to be eligible for self
Speaker 4: defense by saying that, well, she just brought out the
Speaker 4: knife because she thought they may have a gun. Well,
Speaker 4: that's almost the definition of it doesn't matter. You went
Speaker 4: to a robbery, you didn't know that you were going
Speaker 4: to encounter any difficulty, and the guy ends up dead.
Speaker 4: Guess what murder?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think. I don't think anybody bought the
Speaker 2: thing about the gun. It was perfectly the gun. The gun.
Speaker 2: The gun wasn't mentioned during preliminary hearings. It was a
Speaker 2: late entry into the into the story or of a
Speaker 2: desperate less did attempt.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I'm saying, though, what did you think of
Speaker 4: his I mean, he didn't really even have a good
Speaker 4: argument anyway, when you in terms of actual self defense,
Speaker 4: if you were already brought out a weapon in case
Speaker 4: and then something else happens, that's not much of a
Speaker 4: self defense excuse either. And that's this what's wrong as
Speaker 4: he could present, that's.
Speaker 2: Right all he could only use it to address her
Speaker 2: state of mind. Yeah, that that she is and if
Speaker 2: he knew. He never said she was afraid. He always
Speaker 2: said she was in fear if I was a god
Speaker 2: affectation and not quite sure what that was supposed to accomplish,
Speaker 2: But that was that was the reason that he introduced
Speaker 2: the gun. And he even called Joshua Camacho to the
Speaker 2: stand to talk about the gun, and he got him
Speaker 2: to admit that at one time we had a gun,
Speaker 2: but Joshua was not in the mood to cooperate anyway
Speaker 2: and gave yes and no answers and said he didn't
Speaker 2: remember a lot and wasn't on the stand for very
Speaker 2: long at all.
Speaker 4: What was Rachel Wade's demeanor? Like it had they done
Speaker 4: a pretty good job in that direct examination of sort
Speaker 4: of like lots of times it will change almost their
Speaker 4: appearance to look as wholesome and innocent as possible.
Speaker 2: And then she was dressed in white and black, both
Speaker 2: innocent and in mourning. She was allowed to wear I
Speaker 2: make up the day that she testified, but she went
Speaker 2: without I make up. Otherwise she seemed to be very
Speaker 2: well rehearsed, she gave answers. By wrote, she seemed very
Speaker 2: very demure, very soft spoken, tiny little voice, and it's
Speaker 2: it's amazing to watch it all crumble. Second, you know,
Speaker 2: miss Haniwitz lights into her, they start the other. They
Speaker 2: immediately start yelling at each other, and you know, poor
Speaker 2: Jay Avery's sitting there just going a home because the
Speaker 2: jury is hearing the voice they heard on the tape
Speaker 2: start to come out once. Once Rachel gets agitated, you
Speaker 2: start to hear that manic sound that there's something wrong
Speaker 2: with this girl sound to her voice, and yeah.
Speaker 4: So uh, talk about one last question. I want to
Speaker 4: ask for one of the last ones, who were the
Speaker 4: most compelling witnesses and for who did they speak on
Speaker 4: behalf of in your mind?
Speaker 2: I was most impressed, I think with Janet Camancho. Janet
Speaker 2: Camacho had a clear sense of who the good guys
Speaker 2: and the bad guys were and came into that evening
Speaker 2: with that sense. Just the whole fact of I didn't
Speaker 2: like Rachel because I thought she was bad for my
Speaker 2: brother's That's that's strong character assassination right right for the
Speaker 2: cherry to hear. And the way she looked, she was
Speaker 2: stared at the defendant while she testified, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's just very very very very strong, a strong woman
Speaker 2: who made it very clear that she attacked Rachel because
Speaker 2: Rachel had just stabbed her friend. And this whole notion
Speaker 2: of three girls jumping her was was nonsense. They would
Speaker 2: have had a fifth sight, you know, it would have
Speaker 2: been broken up in thirty seconds. Maybe somebody that had
Speaker 2: a bloody lip, and that would have been that except
Speaker 2: Rachel brought a knife, and that was why found compellerve.
Speaker 4: I talked to Detective Local Ahead, Sorry.
Speaker 2: Okay, I talked to the detectives of the lead detective
Speaker 2: Michael Lynch, and I asked him, you know, why do
Speaker 2: the girls in this story have such low self esteem?
Speaker 2: And he told me that he couldn't believe that there
Speaker 2: were so many fathers out there in Panel's Park, and
Speaker 2: he presumed everywhere else as well, who allowed their daughters
Speaker 2: to have such dangerously low opinions of themselves. You know,
Speaker 2: we're worthless without a boyfriend. I have to have a
Speaker 2: boyfriend all the time or else there's something wrong with us.
Speaker 2: And reminded me when they asked Stephen King about the
Speaker 2: difference between Harry Potter books and the Twilight books, since
Speaker 2: the Harry Potter books are about stepping up team work,
Speaker 2: facing your fears, and the Twilight books are about the
Speaker 2: importance of having a boyfriend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is my book.
Speaker 2: A Knife and Heart is the is the anti Twilight books.
Speaker 2: If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that
Speaker 2: it's not at a point important to have a boyfriend
Speaker 2: you grow up, be happy. And he says that he
Speaker 2: has daughters of his own, Detective Lynch, and that he
Speaker 2: is constantly just inflating their egos, and when he is
Speaker 2: girls are older, he wants, you know, he wants them
Speaker 2: to think that no one's good enough for them and
Speaker 2: to demand the very best and how they're treated no
Speaker 2: matter what.
Speaker 4: Well. I think the thing is, I think we forget
Speaker 4: how it was when we were young. I mean, the
Speaker 4: thing is a lot of I think kids have been
Speaker 4: forced to grow up much much younger, and I think
Speaker 4: they look at everything much more seriously. And I don't
Speaker 4: think it's that much of a surprise. I have a
Speaker 4: nineteen year old daughter that is in a serious relationship
Speaker 4: with her boyfriend for the last three years. I mean
Speaker 4: when I was at age, I couldn't even possibly grasp that,
Speaker 4: and I was not that kind of person. But I
Speaker 4: think kids have changed in that respect and they take
Speaker 4: these things much more seriously. But you do add a
Speaker 4: mix of drugs and low self esteem and maybe estrangement
Speaker 4: from their parents, or at least at least there's not
Speaker 4: as close as they could possibly be, and like you say,
Speaker 4: just this confluence of things and you get this sad
Speaker 4: and tragic end result, But there is a fair amount
Speaker 4: of these people posing and making threats. That's what I
Speaker 4: find too, that a lot of younger people make threats
Speaker 4: without understanding that somebody might take those threats that they
Speaker 4: do daily and take them quite seriously.
Speaker 2: Well, I spoke to a psychological counselor named Katy Morelli,
Speaker 2: and she told me that there's a change in brain
Speaker 2: chemistry that happens to people when they have sex. Biologically
Speaker 2: attachment forms and the brain changes from shared experience produced
Speaker 2: potent emotions, causing normally mild people to reserve, to resort
Speaker 2: to violence. Teenagers aren't adults, so it's a strong immature attachment.
Speaker 2: Passion stirs up primal possessiveness. And you know, there's a
Speaker 2: strong chance that that Rachel had problems at home, that
Speaker 2: she entered entered the world with a certain void, because
Speaker 2: most girls don't drop out of school and run away
Speaker 2: from home just because of an unwanted curfew. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's clear that she was a difficult child with
Speaker 2: whom to cope, and that there was maybe maybe a
Speaker 2: mismatch in temperaments between the parents and the child. You know,
Speaker 2: she for whatever reason, didn't have any faith in herself
Speaker 2: as an individual. She combined that with poor decision making,
Speaker 2: extreme anger management difficulties, and you know, there you go,
Speaker 2: and she's she's down. A boy who's narcissistic. He's got
Speaker 2: an inflated sense of self importance, an exaggerated need for admiration,
Speaker 2: and as it's true with many narcissists, he appeared arrogantly,
Speaker 2: self assured and confident. Although that turned out not to
Speaker 2: be the actual case. We could see by observing his
Speaker 2: behavior that he reacted poorly when things weren't going his way.
Speaker 2: You know, long before the murder, he punched Sarah. At
Speaker 2: one point, he pulled a gun on Rachel. You know,
Speaker 2: his work history demonstrated the lack of ambition, you know,
Speaker 2: perhaps because he feared competitive situations and he lived his
Speaker 2: life avoiding the risk of failure. So, you know, narcissists,
Speaker 2: with their intrinsic lack of regard for others feelings, they
Speaker 2: prey on people with dependent personalities. They feed off of
Speaker 2: others and enjoy being fought over, enjoy manipulating their sexual partners.
Speaker 2: Josh's girls were prayed for the opportunist narcissists and he
Speaker 2: was drawn to them like a shark to blood.
Speaker 4: Do you also think it's somewhat interesting commentary too, that
Speaker 4: it is very quite rare for women to kill in
Speaker 4: comparison to the vast majority of being men. However, there
Speaker 4: seems to be a slight increase, especially in younger younger people,
Speaker 4: in terms of fighting in this kind of context, or
Speaker 4: parents killing their parents or killing siblings. And what I
Speaker 4: thought was interesting is that you talk about Rachel, but
Speaker 4: you know, Sarah did go there with a couple of women,
Speaker 4: a couple other women in a van, and you know,
Speaker 4: to you or I, I'm fifty three years old, so
Speaker 4: I'm saying, man, that just sounds like a bunch of guys,
Speaker 4: and not all guys would have done that. So it
Speaker 4: seems oddly rare, or not rare, but odd odd that
Speaker 4: you do have this nineteen year olds in a van
Speaker 4: over a boyfriend getting out of a van and somebody
Speaker 4: with a knife and somebody spotting someone else. It seems
Speaker 4: high drama and very very serious. It almost seems like
Speaker 4: the kinds of things that boys would do, say over
Speaker 4: a drug debt or something. Sure, it seems seems out
Speaker 4: of place for young women to be acting like thugs.
Speaker 2: It's almost unique. It's uh uh a detective when she
Speaker 2: says that, you know, ninety five percent of all murders
Speaker 2: involve a male, and it's very uncommon for the I mean,
Speaker 2: the remaining five percent girl woman on woman, girl on
Speaker 2: girl crime is very is very rare to begin with,
Speaker 2: and especially in a combative situation like this. You know,
Speaker 2: I said, there is there is an uptick in violence
Speaker 2: among teen girls, but it's the you know, she looked
Speaker 2: at me wrong type of fight. There's hair pulling and scratching,
Speaker 2: and then that it gets broken up and there's a
Speaker 2: lot more cursing at each other, but nobody really gets hurt.
Speaker 2: You know, she's he hopes this is a one of
Speaker 2: a kind kind of incident.
Speaker 4: I want to ask you too, Michael. We've got just
Speaker 4: a few minutes left. We've got about five minutes left,
Speaker 4: But I want to ask you how did you come
Speaker 4: to write visign. I know that you've handled all kinds
Speaker 4: of really heavy, heavy stories that other authors might back
Speaker 4: away from, very very intense. Why what what about this story?
Speaker 4: I want made you want to write about this, this
Speaker 4: case itself?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it had to do with in its
Speaker 2: own way, as I just said, it's it's it's pretty bizarre.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not it's not a serial killer, and
Speaker 2: it's not spooking. It's not a horror story like the
Speaker 2: stories I usually tell. It's it's a it's a it's
Speaker 2: a psychological drama. And the question is, and I'm not
Speaker 2: even sure I answered it adequately, the question is how
Speaker 2: how did these girls get this way? You know, what,
Speaker 2: what is it? What is it about today's society, about
Speaker 2: maybe that region, maybe America, maybe maybe the world? What
Speaker 2: is it about today that allows this to happen? Uh?
Speaker 2: As you said, yeah, they sound like their guys been
Speaker 2: defeminized completely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's the and it's the the scrawny little male
Speaker 2: who wants to be kept yeah like trop.
Speaker 4: Exactly yeah and not yeah, like you said, this a
Speaker 4: little a little guy too, you know, just posing it's right, incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So anyway, uh, my next book, we're going to
Speaker 2: get back to what's more in character. I think for me,
Speaker 2: it's true horror film of a book. I believe it's
Speaker 2: gonna be I believe it's gonna be called Mutilator the
Speaker 2: Art Gallery Butcher. It's the story of Elton Brutus Murphy,
Speaker 2: a former sailor who had once tried out to be
Speaker 2: a navy seal, who claimed to hear voices in his
Speaker 2: head that ordered him to rape and kill women. Uh
Speaker 2: for years, he says, he's been the voices, which also
Speaker 2: told him that he was a special chosen one, perhaps
Speaker 2: a god himself, the Lord Brutus, he called himself. And
Speaker 2: the body of Joyce Wishart was found on Wednesday, January
Speaker 2: twenty one, two thousand and four, on the floor of
Speaker 2: her Palm Avenue art gallery in Sarasota, Florida. She was
Speaker 2: strangled and mutilated. After death, her crotch was surgically removed.
Speaker 2: And the thing that makes this book different for me
Speaker 2: was the killer's willingness to share with me his story.
Speaker 2: And he describes in great detail his slow descent into
Speaker 2: madness and for the first time details and how he
Speaker 2: killed and mutilated his victim.
Speaker 4: Wow, so I can relate. I can relate that problem.
Speaker 4: I'm looking forward to that guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to. My job is to keep ladies
Speaker 2: from going to sleep at night or returned to form
Speaker 2: with that one.
Speaker 4: I've heard that one before. I'm going to read the book.
Speaker 2: But not at night, had me today night, And of
Speaker 2: course I'm still conducting an investigation into a cold case
Speaker 2: double homicide. The hook being that the victims were classmates
Speaker 2: of mine. Two girls fourteen and sixteen, took place near
Speaker 2: my rural home, grewsome sex mers changed that neck of
Speaker 2: the woods forever, certainly changed my world. And I'm working
Speaker 2: with a private detective in Don Tubman up in Scottsville,
Speaker 2: New York, and we're gonna find out who did it.
Speaker 2: It's forty five years later, but we're going to give them,
Speaker 2: the mother one of the victims some closure.
Speaker 4: Very interesting, very interesting, good work. Good luck to with
Speaker 4: that Imperial on Earth something.
Speaker 2: Thank you all. Well, we already have We're getting close.
Speaker 4: Ah, Paul, I hate I'd love to hear about that.
Speaker 4: And of course we'll have you back on the program
Speaker 4: talking about those two very very interesting books that I'm
Speaker 4: sure you'll be pumping out of your incredible book factory
Speaker 4: that you have going on there and where you live.
Speaker 4: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 4: the program. I'm very engaging, another engaging interview and a
Speaker 4: great book. And for those listening, it's been a knife
Speaker 4: in the heart. Michael Benson's latest true crime soon to
Speaker 4: be best selling classic, No Doubt. Thank you very much, Michael,
Speaker 4: have yourself a good evening and talk to you soon.
Speaker 2: Good Night,