Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (81 page)

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:

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: