Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (103 page)

Javier said he and Dustin were up on the lawn in front of his mother’s house when the van arrived, not in a position to stop either Sarah or Rachel. “When we saw the van, we ran, but it was too late by the time we got there. The van came to a very quick stop.”

All three girls got out almost at the same time. Sarah came around straight for Rachel. Sarah grabbed Rachel by the hair and started punching. Using his own arms to pantomime the action, Javier indicated that Sarah grabbed with her right and punched with her left.

“Rachel began to flail up with her arms.”

Again he mimicked the action, and his limp-wristed impression of Rachel’s flailing appeared defensive and harmless. Nowhere in his motions was there anything that resembled the stabbing of a knife twice into Sarah’s chest.

“Meanwhile, Dustin and me ran up. The other two girls were standing to the side.”

“When Sarah got out of the vehicle, who was the aggressor?”

“Sarah.”

“Who was the first one to throw a punch?”

“Sarah.”

“How many punches did you see Sarah throw?”

“She threw a lot, but I think she landed two or three.”

“Punches to the head?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know if Sarah had a weapon?”

“I didn’t.”

Immediately following the five-second confrontation, Rachel took two steps back. Sarah got back into her car and Janet began hitting Rachel in the back of her head with her shoe. Yes,
immediately.
Between the altercations, no more than half a second had passed. They were “continuous events.”

Like Sarah before her, Janet Camacho was the clear aggressor. Javier saw no knife, not during the Rachel/Sarah fight or the Rachel/Janet fight. He didn’t, at that point, know Sarah had been seriously injured. No one did. There did come a time when he realized it, but that wasn’t until after Janet had already started beating down Rachel.

“And, if you will, please be very specific. Please show me where the confrontation took place.”

On the photo, Laboy pointed to a spot between the vehicles, about midway between the van’s headlights. Since, according to his testimony, Rachel had been leaning against the front of her car when the van pulled up, it was clear that Sarah had to travel farther than Rachel to reach the spot.

Janet had been furious, cursing, first in English, then in Spanish. She was hitting Rachel with her shoe the whole time. At no time did Javier see Jilica Smith pulling Janet back.

“Did you see Rachel’s shirt get torn off?”

“Her shirt got torn later.”

“There was a second fight with Janet a little bit later?”

“Yes, there was.”

“There was an interval when the fighting stopped?”

“Yes, the fighting stopped when we realized that Sarah had been hurt. After two, three seconds it started up again.”

“When it started up again, who was the aggressor?”

“Janet.”

Hebert asked the witness to describe what had happened.

“When we realized that Sarah was hurt, Janet went to check. Then me and Dustin went to check. Janet ran back, so I never made it to her. I took my shirt off, and when I turned around, I saw Rachel on the floor and Janet was dragging her across my mom’s lawn by her hair.”

“Rachel had been hit, struck, beaten down?”

“I guess so. I’m not sure. It was chaos.”

“Don’t guess. The only thing you saw was the hair pulling and the dragging across the lawn?”

“Yes.”

He never saw Rachel laughing or smirking. She just had a blank look on her face.

At some point in time, the police arrived. Javier and Dustin were separated by the police, put on opposite sides of the street, and were instructed not to talk to each other, not to touch their phones, and to wait for further instructions.

“Since this incident happened, you have visited Rachel Wade?”

Javier said he had. He’d talked to her on the phone and sent her letters. Everything he’d said on the stand was the truth. He was not there to lie on Rachel Wade’s behalf.

“You are merely telling the jury what you saw on April fifteenth?”

“I am.”

“No further questions.”

On cross-examination, Lisset Hanewicz smiled as she said to Javier Laboy, “Good afternoon.”

“Hi, how ya doin’?” Javier replied.

That would be it for the niceties.

Javier testified that he had dated the defendant from some time in November 2008 until maybe the first couple weeks of January 2009, and then for a couple of months, but that Javier and Rachel were not boyfriend and girlfriend at the time of the incident. Then they had a relationship once again after the fatal Ludemann encounter.

“You were planning to marry her, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Are you still planning to marry her?”

“No.”

“You were planning to have kids, correct?”

“Correct.”

“You had the names of the kids picked out?”

Hebert interrupted and asked for a sidebar.

While the attorneys gathered near Judge Bulone’s bench, Javier looked down, and his chest heaved with a deep sigh.

When the sidebar concluded, Hanewicz asked Javier if he remembered giving a deposition on October 21, 2009, during the time when he and the defendant were boyfriend and girlfriend. Javier said he remembered.

“And you were asked a question at that deposition about your relationship with Rachel. Isn’t that true?”

“Yes.” Javier already looked beaten down by the prosecutor’s questions.

“You were there. I was there. And you took an oath that day, just as you did today, and that day you denied having a relationship with her, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So why should we believe that you don’t have a relationship with her anymore?”

“We stopped talking, broke things off a couple of months ago. Now I’m in a new relationship, and we plan, after this is all over, on moving away from here.”

“You made this decision after a hearing at which I confronted you with the same issue, correct?”

“Correct.”

Javier had now admitted twice to lying about his relationship with Rachel during the preliminary hearing. That was enough for Hanewicz, so she moved on to her next point.

“Let’s talk a little bit about what happened that evening. On direct you talked about how you did not see a knife. But you did see the knife before the fight, correct?”

“No.”

“You never saw the knife, and told Rachel to put the knife away?”

“She told me about it. I didn’t see it,” Javier said, wiping his palm across his brow and then placing it over his mouth. He grimaced, as if his stomach hurt.

“You knew she had a knife?”

“I knew she had a knife.”

“But you never saw it at any time that evening?”

“Not until the police found it.”

“And at the hearing, you said the same thing, that you never saw the knife, right?”

“Yes.”

“Have you listened to the tape of your 911 call?”

“No.”

“Would it surprise you that you talk about the knife you saw in her hand during the 911 call?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, well let’s play it.”

After a brief pause for the audio equipment to be set up, the court listened to Javier’s 911 call, the one in which he said, “We have someone on the floor who has been stabbed. We need an ambulance. Please help.”

Further on in the tape, the dispatcher asked the caller where the knife was. He replied, “It’s in her hand. You better hurry up and get here quick.”

Despite the fact that the point the prosecutor was trying to make was specific—had or had not the witness seen the knife—the
entire
tape was played. So the jury also got to hear Javier say, “They tried to jump her” and “She pulled out her pocketknife trying to defend herself.”

At one point during the playing of the tape, the defendant coolly examined her nails. At another she used a tissue to wipe away invisible tears.

When the tape finished, Hanewicz started in again: “You just testified that you never saw a knife. You heard that tape. You did see a knife, didn’t you?”

Javier replied, “They asked me what happened. Dustin told me she had the knife, so I told them she had the knife.”

“‘She pulled out a pocketknife! She pulled out a pocketknife!’” Hanewicz held up the murder weapon. “Does that look like a pocketknife to you?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“That’s what you heard? That’s not what you told her!”

Hanewicz was yelling, and her questions, if you could call them questions, were losing their focus. For example, she ignored the obvious conclusion that if the witness gave a faulty description of the knife, it was a further indication that he’d never seen it. Hebert objected to this “question” on the grounds that it was argumentative and Judge Bulone sustained.

Hanewicz used that break in her rhythm to her advantage and freshly attacked the witness’s credibility.

“You are here because you have feelings for Rachel and you don’t want to see her get in trouble, right? You are lying for her.”

“I am
not
lying for her,” the witness replied firmly.

“You’re not lying for her? You admitted that you lied about your relationship with her. You lied about the knife….” Hanewicz paused, but the witness just stared at her. “Is there an answer?” she asked.

“Could you repeat the question?”

“Didn’t you just lie about the knife?”

“No. You asked me if I saw the knife. I never saw the knife. Dustin told me she still had the knife.”

Frustrated that she had not won this point, Hanewicz began yelling her next question before Javier could finish his answer, so she was shouting over him.

Judge Bulone decided he’d had enough.

“All right. Let’s just calm down,” the judge said in a soothing tone. “Let’s ask nice, calm questions and nice, calm answers.”

Hanewicz was quieter, but she wasn’t happy about it. And, instead of moving on to a point she might win, she continued to beat the dead horse, just more softly: “You heard on the 911 call that you said the knife was in her hand. Yes?”

The witness stared at her.

“You want me to play it again?” the prosecutor asked.

“No, I was just waiting for more of a question,” Javier said.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes, that is what I said.”

Despite the fact that the jury had twice heard Javier give his explanation for why he mentioned the knife during the 911 call—even though he hadn’t actually seen it—and the reason why he called it a pocketknife, when it was actually a kitchen knife, Hanewicz’s next question was “How can we believe anything you say? You lied!”

“Objection.”

“Sustained.”

Finally the prosecutor got the idea. She’d lost. So she quickly tried to change the subject, although it wasn’t clear what the new subject was. Hanewicz asked, “You said that she took a step back?”

This presumably referred to Rachel stepping back, but who could be certain? It was also uncertain when “she” stepped back, or when the witness was supposed to have said “she” stepped back.

Javier gave the prosecutor a big break when he simply replied, “Yes.”

“Did you tell that to the detective?”

“I honestly don’t remember.”

Again frustrated, Hanewicz resorted to a hypothetical question: “Is that something you would have told the detective when you met with the detective that night, that she took a step back?”

Javier said he didn’t remember. It had been a hectic night and he had no clue what he told the detective.

Hanewicz put the “step back” line of questioning behind her. She finally moved to a subject where she had a shot at scoring points.

“Isn’t it true that you testified earlier that Janet was still in the van when the incident happened between Sarah and Rachel?”

“Yes.”

“And when they separated, that was the point when Janet got out of the van?”

“No, she got out before that. I’m going to try to explain it, to make it more clear. Sarah came up from the side and grabbed Rachel by the hair. As soon as she grabbed the hair, the other two girls came out, and as soon as Rachel and Sarah separated, Janet came in contact with Rachel.”

“Do you remember your deposition on October 27, 2009?”

“Somewhat, yes.”

“Somewhat? All right. I am going to show you page twenty-nine of the deposition and see if this refreshes your memory. Start reading from line eight through fourteen…. Does that refresh your memory?”

“Yes.”

“The question was where was Janet at that point in time, and you said she was still in the passenger side of the vehicle, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then you went on to say she got out after they began to separate a bit. That was when she got out.”

“Yes, after they separated a bit, after she started hitting her, after they started flailing around.”

On redirect Jay Hebert freshly established that the witness and defendant were not currently dating; the witness was in a relationship, but not with the defendant; and from the time of the deposition until the present, Rachel Wade had been in custody. The implication was that a relationship with a woman who was in jail was a lot like no relationship at all.

As Rachel listened, she leaned her head on her hand, her eyelids heavy.

“You have not been physically with Rachel, face-to-face, since April 14, 2009, have you?”

“Correct.”

Hebert asked Javier to explain for the jury what he was trying to say earlier about the tape of the 911 call.

“Everything was so crazy. The operator was asking me questions. I was asking Dustin, and anybody else who was listening, questions, trying to answer the operator’s questions. Dustin told me she still had the knife in her hand, and that was what I told the operator.”

“Did you ever see the knife?”

“I did not. I thought it was a pocketknife until the detectives pulled it off the roof.”

Javier emphasized that he was not lying to the operator. It was obvious when he called that Sarah had been stabbed, and he was describing to the operator what was going on in real time. Up until he heard the tape, moments before, however, he had not remembered telling the operator that Rachel was defending herself. Everything he’d said was the truth, and he wouldn’t lie to get Rachel out of trouble.