Michael Benson's True Crime Bundle (96 page)

“There was no stopping Sarah at that point. Isn’t that correct?”

“She was angry. I don’t think we would have been able to stop her.”

“Sarah wasn’t going to stop?”

“No.”

“And at that point, you knew you weren’t going to McDonald’s anymore.”

“Yes.”

Getting out of the van was not an option then. Sarah was clipping around corners.

Hebert changed the subject to the “Mexican boy friend” statement. Had Sarah’s phone been on speakerphone?

Now aware that Hebert was using her earlier statement to make it seem as if she were changing her story, Jilica admitted she probably
said
it was on speakerphone at one time because she had heard it so clearly—but now looking back on it, she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t remember Sarah turning the phone to speakerphone.

“Miss Smith, you spoke with an officer that night.”

“I spoke to a couple of officers.”

“You spoke to an Officer Simpkins and you gave him a statement. Is that correct?”

“I don’t remember the officer’s name, but yes, sir, I gave a statement.”

“Do you remember if during that statement, you mentioned this ‘I’m going to stab you’ phone call?”

“I’m not sure what was mentioned and what wasn’t mentioned,” Jilica replied.

Hebert tried again, but Jilica repeated that she didn’t know.

“Okay, would you admit that Janet was mad that night, pretty fired up about the situation?”

“She was mad.” Jilica didn’t have a good feeling about things as Sarah screeched to a halt in front of Javier’s house. In fact, she was pretty sure something bad was going to happen.

In order to ask the witness which direction the minivan was headed when it stopped in front of Javier’s house, Hebert showed Jilica a large blowup of the aerial photo taken by the Pinellas Park police of the neighborhood.

Jilica looked at it and saw nothing she recognized. “I don’t really know Pinellas Park,” she said. “Is this Javier’s house?”

Hebert said it was, and Hanewicz objected, pointing out that Hebert was now the one testifying. After some discussion, it was stipulated which house was Javier’s, so Hebert could finally get to his question regarding which direction the van was headed.

The photo was admitted into evidence as defense exhibit number six. Still, there were problems. Jilica said she wasn’t sure from which direction Sarah pulled into the neighborhood, but she recalled that she stopped “on the right side of the street.”

Hebert tried again. Jilica was allowed to step down from the witness stand and look at the photos as they were set up on the easel. This time Jilica thought about it for a while and she looked at the photo carefully.

“No, I don’t remember which way,” she said.

Hebert gave up on the aerial photo, and showed the witness the ground-level police photos taken of the crime scene, which depicted the vehicles in question. Jilica recognized the scene and testified that Sarah was driving fast, and came to an abrupt stop, and that Sarah and Rachel’s cars were pointed in opposite directions. Even then she wasn’t enthusiastic about it.

“I was in the backseat. This looks right to me,” she said.

Hebert tried to get Jilica to say when Janet got out of the car. Jilica wasn’t sure. Hebert asked if the car was running when they got out. Jilica didn’t know. She knew Sarah stopped but couldn’t recall if she took out the keys.

“Was it dark that night?”

Hebert showed her two police photos, one taken with a flash and one without. Jilica acknowledged that the one without was darker. Jilica realized at one point that she was standing so that the jury couldn’t see the photos and apologized as she moved to one side. Jilica acknowledged that, according to the photos, Sarah stopped her van “somewhat in the middle” of the street, rather than on the right side, as she’d earlier testified.

Hebert asked Jilica to repeat where the tragic confrontation had taken place. She pointed to a spot near the left front of the minivan. Again she added that she’d been in the backseat, so she couldn’t be certain.

That opened a door that Hebert charged through. Jilica was in the backseat and had a poor view of the action; yet she had testified that she’d seen Rachel walk across the front of the van with a knife in her right hand. Hebert asked Jilica to show the jury, using a pen, how Rachel was holding the knife. Jilica assumed a position that had the tip of the pen pointing downward.

“It was kind of down,” she said, a phrase that Hebert liked so much that he had her repeat it.

“Do you know if Janet saw the knife?”

Jilica didn’t think so. “I don’t think she would have tried to go at her if she did,” Jilica said.

Hebert asked how the girls held their hands as the confrontation began.

Jilica put her dukes up and assumed a classic boxing stance.

“Like they were defending themselves?” Hebert asked.

“Like they were fighting,” Jilica replied. She saw them fight, hair being grabbed, hands flailing.

“And you saw that from Sarah? …”

“I saw that from both parties.”

How tall was Sarah? Jilica said that Sarah was taller than she was, and she was five-six, so that would make Sarah five-eight, five-nine.

How much did Sarah weigh? Jilica didn’t know, and wouldn’t hazard a guess.

Was Sarah bigger or smaller than Rachel? Bigger.

Jilica was allowed to return to the witness stand.

Hebert asked the order of events and Jilica was insistent that she and Janet didn’t get out of the car until after Sarah was stabbed. Hebert had to do something about that. His whole case depended on the notion that the girls had ganged up on Rachel, and that she had reasonably needed a weapon to defend herself. Hebert tried to get Jilica to say that Janet attacked Rachel. Jilica responded that Janet couldn’t attack Rachel because she was holding her back.

Hebert repeatedly tried to put words in the witness’s mouth, but she was stubborn.

“At some point in time, Janet did attack Rachel,” Hebert said, once again coming very close to doing the testifying himself.

“Yes,” Jilica said tentatively.

“You didn’t see that?”

“I was with Sarah. I don’t know.”

“You didn’t see Janet grab Rachel by the hair and drag her across the lawn?”

“Oh yes, yes, I saw that,” Jilica said. “They were fighting. You said attacked.”

“Janet was beating Rachel up.”

“They were fighting.”

“You saw Janet grab Rachel by the hair and drag her across the dirt!”

“I was the one dragging. I grabbed Janet and was dragging her away from Rachel. Janet was mad. She’d just stabbed her friend!”

“Did you see Janet take one of her shoes off and beat Rachel with it?”

“She had a shoe, her sandal, in her hand. I didn’t see her hit her with it.”

“You would agree with me that, at that time, that was a pretty chaotic situation. Explosive?”

“Yes.”

Jilica explained that after the situation at Javier’s house was over, she and Janet realized they had no way to get back home, and they had started to walk. Jilica had no idea where she was, but Janet knew the way. They were walking, and a police car pulled up. They got in, and the cops gave them a ride home. While in the car, they answered some more questions.

The prosecution wanted the jury to believe that police had separated the witnesses immediately so that there had been no opportunity for them to put their heads together and come up with a common story they were going to tell.

Hebert now asked if Jilica remembered being sequestered at any time that evening. She didn’t understand the question.

“You were not put in a room and told to stay there, or put in a squad car and told to stay there?”

“No, sir,” Jilica replied.

“You were able to walk around and later walked home with Janet. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all I have, Judge.”

“Redirect?” Judge Bulone asked.

“Yes, sir,” Hanewicz said, and began her questioning of Jilica Smith.

“Jilica, when defense counsel was asking you if you knew that Sarah and Rachel were going to fight, was there any talk of fighting, in the car, on the way to Javier’s house?”

“She was mad. I don’t know what was going through her head.” (Jilica went to the well with that line once too often.)

“Did you talk to Sarah about fighting?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Was there conversation in the car about fighting?”

“Not from me and Sarah.”

“Were there weapons in the vehicle?”

“There were no weapons anywhere in that car,” Jilica said confidently.

“Did you even know why you were going to Javier’s house?”

“No. I kind of put two and two together because Sarah was mad, but I didn’t.”

Hanewicz asked if Sarah was driving with the headlights on or off. With a slight smile, Jilica said that she
hoped
they were on.

Were the headlights on when the van pulled up in front of Javier’s house? Jilica thought about that. She’d seen Rachel and the two boys pretty clearly, so it was possible that the headlights were still on.

“When you talked to a police officer right after this happened, was it a one-on-one conversation between you and the police officer?”

“No, ma’am, it was just everyone standing around.”

She spoke with a number of police officers, in fact.

Hanewicz was done.

Judge Bulone told Jilica that she could leave, but that she was on standby. This meant that if she was called back, she had to come in.

Court recessed for lunch.

After the lunch break, the state called a very pregnant Janet Camacho to the witness stand. Janet had wavy black hair combed back off her forehead that fell to the middle of her back. She wore a pretty, off-the-shoulder aquamarine dress.

Janet told ASA Wesley Dicus that she was twenty-nine years old. She had known Sarah Ludemann through her brother Joshua. She considered herself close to Sarah and had allowed Sarah to babysit her kids.

She said Sarah and Joshua were “inseparable.” They had dated on and off, true; but “romantic” separations didn’t physically separate them. “Even when they weren’t together, they were together,” Janet said.

Janet testified that she knew Rachel also. She’d met her through her brother Jay.

Wesley Dicus asked if Rachel and Sarah got along.

“No,” Janet replied emphatically.

“Do you know Ashley Lovelady?”

“Yes, that’s Sarah’s best friend.”

On the day before the stabbing, Janet got home at four or five in the afternoon. She didn’t remember exactly. It might have been later. She had four children, and they were home that night. Also over at the house were Sarah, Joshua, Jay, and Jilica. Janet knew Jilica because she was family.

The witness explained that at one point that evening she was in a car with her friend Jeremy and they were talking. Sarah and Joshua were playing video games with Janet’s kids. They were also sending out texts to persons unknown while talking to each other.

Two things were occurring simultaneously. Rachel was cruising Janet’s street, looking for trouble, and Sarah’s parents wanted her home because it was a school night.

Dicus asked Sarah how she knew Rachel was on the street, and Janet said she’d seen her. “I saw a car parked near a stop sign. I asked Jeremy to turn on his headlights.”

“Was the car just stopped at the stop sign, or was it actually parked there?” the prosecutor inquired.

“It was stopped.”

“The headlights were not on?”

“Right. Jeremy flashed his lights and I saw Rachel.” The headlights allowed her a clear view into the vehicle. Janet identified the person in the parked car as the defendant.

Dicus asked if she did anything. Janet said yes, she had Jeremy flash his headlights. Rachel flashed back. Janet got out and started walking toward Rachel’s car. Rachel left.

Later that night, Janet and Jilica decided to go to McDonald’s—which wasn’t unusual. They asked Sarah to drive them. Dicus asked why, and the witness replied, “She was the McDonald’s queen. We always go to McDonald’s. I knew she wouldn’t mind taking us.” Janet didn’t recall the exact time—but it was late.

Once Sarah started driving, she stopped texting, but there was a phone call. Janet didn’t know who called whom, but Sarah had Rachel on the speakerphone in the car. Janet recognized Rachel’s angry voice, cussing, yelling. Sarah was yelling back.

One thing in the conversation stood out: Rachel said she was going to stab Sarah and her “Mexican boyfriend.” That pissed Sarah off. Janet sensed they weren’t going to McDonald’s anymore. Instead, the hunt was on; they were looking for Rachel.

Rachel claimed to be at Sarah’s house, so that was the first place they checked. It didn’t take them long to get there. No sign of Rachel. Then they ran into Ashley Lovelady—the one and only person on the road that night who knew where Rachel was.

This, of course, contradicted the testimony of both Ashley Lovelady and Jilica Smith, who said the meet-up between Sarah and Ashley occurred only seconds after they left Janet’s house. Janet recalled the order of events differently: they were headed toward Janet’s house when they ran into Ashley, and the two vehicles were pointed in opposite directions when they stopped for a brief conversation.

Ashley said Rachel was at Javier’s house. Janet didn’t know where Javier lived, but Sarah did—and, zoom, off they went.

Speeding?

“A little bit,” Janet said, but not so much that she felt unsafe. Not reckless. Maybe five miles per hour faster than the speed limit. It was just a few blocks, and they were there.

Janet was allowed to waddle down from the stand so she could testify regarding crime scene photographs, which were placed on an easel so the jury could see.

“When you first arrived at Javier’s house, what did you see as you pulled up?”

She saw Rachel standing to the driver’s side of the car, near the front, close to the grass. Sarah stopped the car in the middle of the street, in front and to the side of Rachel’s car. The photos were accurate.

When Sarah stopped, Janet did not get out of the car. She looked through the windshield and saw Rachel, walking fast, crossing in front of her own car, holding a knife in her hand. Rachel headed for the driver’s side of the van. Sarah was only a step from the driver’s door when the tussle started.