Rae Carruth and the Murder of Cherica Adams

 

(photo source: atlantablackstar.com) 

The Murder

It was Tuesday, November 16, 1999 in Charlotte, North Carolina.  The 911 call came in shortly before 12:30 a.m.  The operator asked the caller whether police, fire, or a medic was needed.  The caller, a woman, responded with, "Police.  I've been shot.  I've been shot."

The caller was Cherica Adams, 24 years old and eight months pregnant.  She informed the 911 operator that she was at Wessex Square and had been shot in the neck and the back while driving but managed to pull her car into a driveway.  What she said next, though, would be a bombshell.

OPERATOR:  "Okay.  How did this happen?"

CHERICA:    "I was following my baby's daddy, Rae Carruth, the football player."

OPERATOR:    "So you think he did it?"

CHERICA:    "He was in the car in front of me and he slowed down and somebody pulled up beside me and did this."

OPERATOR:    "And then where'd he go?"

CHERICA:    "He just left.  I think he did it.  I don't know what to think."

Emergency services pulled up to the house of Farrell Blalock, who owned the driveway on Rea Road that Cherica managec to pull into, within 12 minutes of her 911 call.  Taken to Carolinas Medical Center, it was determined that Cherica had been shot four times.  Her baby was delivered by emergency caesarean section at 1:42 a.m., just over an hour after his mother was shot.  The baby, named Chancellor Lee Adams, did not have a good prognosis as doctors did not expect him to live.  

Newborn Chancellor (photo source: raecarruthcase.com)

Seven hours after her son was born, Cherica regained consciousness and began communication with detectives and answering their questions by scribbling notes.  She wrote to them Carruth had been driving in front of her and stopped in the road, blocking her, at which point another car pulled up and opened fire on her.  After the shooting, he had taken off, not to return.  When asked if Carruth was involved, she drew a question mark.  She then went to sleep and never awakened.

Rae Carruth was royalty in North Carolina.  A First-Team All American (in 1996) with the Colorado Buffaloes, where he played all four years of his college career, he had wanted to be a professional football player from the time he was young.  He was a first round draft pick to the Carolina Panthers in 1997 and 27th overall pick.  He signed a four-year, $3.7 million contract with the Panthers which included a $1.3 million signing bonus.  In his first professional season, he led all rookie receivers in completed passes and yards (44 and 545, respectively.)  He also caught four touchdown passes, tying him for first among rookie receivers.  He was not a big guy by football standards, only five-foot-eleven and 190 pounds but he gained a reputation for himself due to his speed.  He finished his rookie season by earning a place on the NFL's All-Rookie Team for 1997, joining such future football luminaries as Tony Gonzalez, Walter Jones, and Jason Taylor.

(photo source: USA Today)   

Injuries, however, would plague Carruth after he broke his foot during the 1998 season opener.  He caught four passes during that game but would not catch any others that season.  At the time that Cherica Adams was shot in November of 1999, he had played in six games that season, with 14 catches for 200 yards.

The Investigation

Detectives left Cherica Adams' bedside, not realizing they would not have another opportunity to speak with her.  They began investigating Rae Carruth.

They found that Carruth had met Cherica at a pool party in June of 1998.  The beautiful and bubbly Cherica, who worked in both real estate and as an exotic dancer, had tried her hand at acting, making a brief appearance in House Party 3.  She and Carruth saw each other sporadically throughout the summer but both were seeing other people.  They fell out of touch until November, when he attended a birthday party for a teammate that was held at the strip club where Cherica worked.

According to Carruth, he and Cherica had a no-strings attached sexual relationship only, where they hooked up approximately five times.  He said that there was never any talk of anything serious between them, they never dated, never spoke on the phone for any extended periods or visited at one another's homes.

A radiant Cherica (photo source: raecarruthcase.com) 

Cherica's friends said it was always her plan to have children and that she planned on having a family with Carruth.  An earlier abortion, with an ex-boyfriend, weighed heavily on her conscience and so, when she discovered she was pregnant by Carruth, an abortion was out of the question for her.  

Carruth felt differently.  Very, very differently.  As a sophomore at the University of Colorado, his girlfriend, Michelle Wright, had given birth to their son and he was grudgingly paying child support (although he was paying only half of what he was ordered, on his promise that he would be an involved father to the boy, which he did not do).  Carruth's senior-year girlfriend, Amber Turner, who had moved with him from Colorado to North Carolina, had become pregnant in 1998.  According to Turner, Carruth ordered her to get an abortion, saying that he was not going to have kids with someone he wasn't going to be with and threatened her, saying that he could send someone to kill her.  He also mentioned to Turner that he could arrange to have someone kill Wright, so that he wouldn't have to pay her any more child support.  Turner terminated the pregnancy.

Although Carruth denied requesting that Cherica abort their child, her friends and family say that he did and that he was insistent that his finances, already potentially impacted by his injuries, not be any further diminished by any other children.  Cherica refused any suggestion of ending her pregnancy and prepared to be a single parent.

The detectives' investigation led to a local drug dealer named Michael Kennedy, whom Carruth had met at a car accessory shop, as well as Kennedy's best friend, Stanley Abraham.  Kennedy's statements led to them a strip club security guard by the name of Van Brett Watkins.  Watkins had a criminal record, had served time in prison, and had claimed to have murdered four people, all hits.  Authorities arrested Kennedy, Abraham, and Watkins in connection with the shooting of Cherica Adams.  On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, Rae Carruth was arrested.  Carruth posted a $3 million bail with the provisions that he could not leave Mecklenberg County and should Cherica or Chancellor Adams die, he would turn himself in.

Carruth's accomplices (photo source: raecarruthcase.com) 

On December 14, 1999, after almost a month in a coma, Cherica Adams died at 12:43 p.m.  Knowing he was facing a first-degree murder charge, Carruth convinced beauty salon owner Wendy Cole, who was heading to his native California for cosmetology school, to allow him to accompany her.  On the night of December 14, only hours after Cherica died, he hid in the trunk of her Toyota Camry as she headed west, stopping at a Best Western in Wildersville, Tennessee.  It was Carruth's mother, fearing for his safety, that informed authorities and the bail bondsman where he was.

Apprehended (photo source: The Charlotte Observer) 

While Carruth was being apprehended in Tennessee, the Carolina Panthers organization cut him from the team and the NFL suspended him indefinitely.

Football would be the least of his concerns as one of the most high-profile criminal cases in North Carolina began in November of 2000.

The Trial

Carruth's defense was that Cherica's murder was not premeditated and it was the result of a drug deal he had with Van Brett Watkins that went bad.  He cited a statement that Watkins reportedly told a jailer:  "If he had just given us the money, none of this would have happened.  It was Rae's fault."  The theory put forth by the defense was that Carruth and Watkins had a falling out over a drug deal that Carruth was supposed to finance but backed out of.  The defense called several of Carruth's former NFL teammates to testify on his behalf.  

The prosecution, though, had a solid case.  They had testimony from Michelle Wright, his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his elder son; from Amber Turner, the ex-girlfriend who aborted a pregnancy under his threats; and a stripper he had also been seeing.  The most explosive witnesses, however, were Michael Kennedy and Van Brett Watkins.

Kennedy, the driver that night in November of 1999, testified that Carruth had commissioned Watkins for the hit on Cherica and had threatened to kill Kennedy if he (Kennedy) refused to assist with the murder plot.

Watkins, the triggerman, testified that he had met Carruth in 1999 through a mutual friend and began doing odd jobs for him.  Roughly three weeks after meeting, Carruth asked Watkins how much he would charge to beat up Cherica, causing her to lose her baby.  Watkins responded with a cold, and dark, "I don't beat up a girl.  I kill people."

According to Watkins, the two came to a mutual deal:  Carruth would pay $3,000 up front for the hit on Cherica and then another $3,000 once the task had been accomplished.  Watkins testified that he did not like the idea of harming or killing a woman, especially a pregnant one, but he continued with the murderous plan.

He began stalking Cherica in the months leading up to her murder.  Carruth actively participated in suggestions for how Cherica and his unborn child would be obliterated, including killing her while he was at the Panthers' training camp, giving him a supposedly perfect alibi.  Watkins nixed that idea, as well as Carruth's suggestion that he kill Cherica when Carruth took her to Lamaze class.  By November of 1999, with Cherica eight months pregnant, Carruth was impatient and frustrated.

When the plan finally did come together, it was hasty.  Carruth set up a date with Cherica, arranging to take her to see a movie, The Bone Collector, in the south part of Charlotte.  Cherica very nearly called the movie date off, which would have ruined their plans, but ultimately agreed to go along.

Kennedy, who had acquired the murder weapon, Abraham, and Watkins spent several hours driving around, waiting for Carruth and Cherica to leave the theater and head toward Cherica's house, as Carruth told her he wanted to spend the night at her home.  Carruth, in Kennedy's Nissan Maxima, led the way with Cherica, in her black BMW, following -- and Kennedy following Cherica.  

The three cars traveled along Rea Road in the dark until they reached a section just before MacAndrew Drive, where the road dipped.  Carruth stopped his car in front of Cherica's and Kennedy pulled his car alongside her, effectively boxing her in.  That's when Watkins opened fire with the .38 caliber gun, hitting Cherica four times.  He claimed he couldn't bear the thought of hitting the baby and so aimed at the top of the car and not through the door.  Carruth sped away.

Bullet holes in Cherica's car (photo source: The Charlotte Observer) 

Watkins testified that he had an opportunity then to exit the vehicle to make sure that Cherica was dead but Kennedy had fled the scene quickly after the shooting had stopped.  Watkins also seriously considered the thought of killing both Kennedy and Abraham, so as not to leave any witnesses, but he had already gotten rid of his extra bullets and there were none left in teh gun.

Cherica, unbeknownst to Kennedy, Abraham, Watkins or Carruth, was still alive but bleeding profusely.  The cell phone she called for help on was given to her as a gift by Carruth.

During his testimony, Watkins openly sobbed while recounting his part in Cherica's death.  Through his tears, he directed anger toward the defense table and Carruth.  "Are you happy now?"  he shouted as his former friend as he stood up in the witness box.

The prosecutors played Cherica's 911 call and pointed out that she had to wait 12 agonizing, painful, frightening minutes alone in the car, bleeding and worrying about her baby, until the police and paramedics arrived.  They also called the detectives to the stand who had shared written conversations with Cherica in the hospital shortly before she slipped into a coma.

Carruth in court (photo source: Yahoo Sports) 

Carruth did not take the stand in his own defense.

On Tuesday, January 16, 2001, the jury, composed of seven men and five women, began its deliberations on the four counts that had been set by the judge:  first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, using an instrument with intent to destroy an unborn child, and discharging a firearm into occupied property.  

On Friday, January 19, the jury, after many votes and even sending a note to the judge that they were at an impasse (at which point the judge asked them to continue deliberations), acknowledged they had reached a unanimous verdict.  It was the day before Carruth's twenty-seventh birthday.

Unlike fellow footballer O.J. Simpson, who had managed to avoid being convicted in the brutal 1994 murders of his ex-wife Nicole and Ron Goldman, Carruth did not skate.  The jury found him guilty of all charges but the first-degree murder charge.  As the jury foreperson would later say, they all agreed that Carruth was involved in the murder "up to his eyeballs" but they couldn't in good conscience convict him of first-degree murder as he did not pull the trigger.

On Monday, January 22, the sentence was handed down to Carruth.  He was sentenced to prison for no less than 18 years and 11 months and no more than 24 years and four months.  Carruth was then immediately transported to the Central Prison in Raleigh.  

The Aftermath

Carruth's three other co-defendants, Kennedy, Abraham, and Watkins, had all made plea deals and so the only trial in the case was Carruth's.  Abraham was released in 2001, after serving less than two years.  Kennedy was released in 2011, after serving 11 years.  Watkins took a second-degree murder plea and is eligible for parole in 2046.

Carruth released from prison (photo source: USA Today) 

After being a model inmate and becoming a licensed barber while in prison, Carruth was paroled on October 22, 2018 -- almost 19 years after Cherica's murder.  He reportedly lives in Philadelphia.  Shortly before his release, his attorney claimed that Carruth fled the scene of Cherica's shooting because he felt the shooter was after him, as he had backed out of a drug deal earlier that day.

Saundra Adams, Cherica's mother, chose to forgive the four men who participated in the terrible plan to kill her daughter.  She sent Van Brett Watkins a letter in 2003, one he reportedly has kept all these years, in which Saundra told him that despite the hole in her heart from the loss of her daughter, she was keeping him in her thoughts and prayers and wished him peace.  

Saundra and Chancellor (photo source: The Charlotte Observer) 

Chancellor Lee Adams, the baby boy that survived the shooting that took his mother's life, suffered permanent brain damage as a result of blood and oxygen deprivation he endured before he was delivered by an emergency caesarean section, as well as cerebral palsy.  But Saundra was always quick to say that Chancellor was abled differently, not disabled.  Blessed from birth with the beautiful and contagious smile he shared with his mother, Chancellor has brought joy to his grandmother and exceeded what doctors thought he would accomplish in his life.  He learned to talk and walk, he made straight As in the programs designed for him at school (he was scheduled to graduate high school this past May), he participated in a dance program and he has a fondness for horseback riding.  In 2009, he was gifted with a football by Panthers fullback Brad Hoover before a game after performing pregame activities.  In 2018, the Panthers welcomed him and Saundra on the field before a game.  In 2019, the Panthers' Roaring Riot fan club took Chancellor and Saundra on an all-expenses paid trip to London to watch Carolina play.

Chancellor reportedly wants to meet his father, although Carruth as yet has no relationship with him.  Carruth did send Saundra a check and has apologized for the death of her daughter.

Chancellor will be 21 years old in November of 2020. 

Cherica's final resting place (photo source: Find a Grave)