Football Star Turned MURDEROUS MONSTER

rare caruth was a very talented footballer at the start of a promising career in the nfl but all of that would come crashing down around him when he was accused of the most blood-chilling murder so today's video is going to be another solved true crime kiss today we're going to be talking about the murder of sharika adams but before we get into it i do just want to thank our sponsors for making this video possible blue land as soon as i heard about this company i absolutely fell in love with the concept because they're all about sustainability and cutting down waste when it comes to your household cleaning products obviously when you buy a bottle of cleaning product from the store you use it all up and then you throw away that bottle and go and buy another one which i've always hated i hate single-use plastics but i've never really known what to do about that until i found blue land they don't use any single-use plastics at all not in their wrappers not in their products not even in the packaging that they send it in basically the idea is you buy your forever bottle and you'll keep this believe it or not forever and you make up your own cleaning product to go inside there so that you can just refill that one bottle over and over again when you run out and you're not constantly buying and throwing away new bottles how it works is you fill your bottle with warm water and then you pop in one of these tablets that will dissolve and fizzle away to create the perfect cleaning product and once it's done dissolving you just pop the nozzle back on and you're good to go you're good to start cleaning your house you've got everything you need i've nearly run out look i need to get some more i've been using their products around my house for about six months at this point and honestly i love them they do an amazing job at cleaning and i'm never gonna go back to buying new bottles every time it just makes me feel like i'm doing something good for the environment you know what i mean their products are super effective super convenient and they're all vegan and cruelty free as well and they're made with only clean ingredients they're made without ammonia without voc soy or nuts chlorine bleach or parabens and they're epa certified which means scientists have evaluated all of the ingredients to make sure that they meet the safer choice criteria not only are they better for the environment but they're also gonna save you money in the long run as well because instead of spending three four sometimes even five pounds on a bottle of cleaner blue lens refill tablets work out at about two pound each i got the clean essentials kit which comes with a multi-surface cleaner a bathroom spray a glass and mirror cleaner and a hand soap if you buy a kit you actually end up saving money per product and if you use the link down below in the description of this video you'll get 20 off of your first kit so click the link down below to start saving money and the environment blue land currently shipped to the us canada the uk australia and new zealand thanks again to blue land for sponsoring this video now before we get into it i do just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video there's only one content warning for this video and that is that there'll be mentions of abortion throughout this video it's quite a prevalent theme so if you don't want to hear about that right now i completely understand click out of the video now hopefully i'll catch you another time with another case all that being said let's get into it so today's case takes place in north carolina in 1999 where 24 year old sharika adams was born and raised she was born on june 30th 1975 in king's mountain and her mother sandra spent a lot of time trying to figure out what she was going to name her because sharika actually wasn't originally gonna be called sharika but her mother knew that she needed a very unique name because she just knew that her baby girl was gonna be a unique person she knew that sharika was gonna grow up to be something special and so she needed a special name so at first she actually thought about naming her daughter eureka which was actually after a vacuum cleaner brand but she just liked the name eureka but in her words in her mother's words she said she didn't want her daughter to be associated with dirt and cleaning and stuff which i found funny so her mother sandra got thinking about how she could make this name even more unique and that was when she decided right her mother was a big fan of cher really big fan and she loved the name eureka so what if she put them both together sharika a very unique name for a very unique girl and she grew up to suit it very well and everyone loved sharika she was a very very sweet girl everyone always said that she was one of the kindest most polite women they'd ever met her mother raised her very very well she was confident but not in an egotistical way in fact that was something that a lot of people said about sharika was that she was completely unaware of just how beautiful she was like she was a complete knockout people described her as beautiful inside and out she was just so stunning but also just such a wonderful woman she had a heart of gold she never wanted to hurt anyone she had serious strength serious integrity she was loyal she was just just a great woman by the sounds of things she worked as a real estate agent and she was a very social woman she had a lot of friend groups she was always going out doing different things one of the things that she did quite often in her youth was entering beauty pageants because like i said she was blooming gorgeous and when she was 22 years old actually right before her 23rd birthday in june of 1999 sharika was invited to a pool party so sharika and one of her friends arrived at this pool party and they had no idea that this night was gonna change the trajectory of sharika's life forever because there at that party sharika was introduced to a man named ray karuth who was an up-and-coming football player nfl like american football and as soon as these two got talking sparks were flying it was like an instant connection they laughed at each other's jokes they just understood each other in a way that sharika had never really found before and at the end of the night when the party was coming to an end and they had to say goodbye the two of them found themselves not wanting to leave each other and so sharika decided at the end of the night and this wasn't like her at all her friends said she'd never done anything like this before but she decided at the end of the night to invite ray carruth back to her father's house so that the two of them could continue talking and so ray carruth actually met sharika's father the same night that he met her which is kind of unheard of to meet the parents the same night that you meet your romantic interest but you know they got on well and sharika's mother said that this in itself spoke volumes about how sharika felt about rey she must have felt that this was some special guy to bring him home to her family the first night she ever met him like it must have been like a gut feeling that she just knew that this guy was a part of her life now even though she'd only known him a few hours so it just made sense to her to bring him back home introduce him to the family and sharika was right the two of them got on like a house on fire and within a few weeks of meeting the two of them were an official couple so let me tell you a bit more about ray carruth he was just over a year older than sharika when the two of them met he was 24 he was from california and like i said a very promising nfl player at the start of his career ray had always been insanely talented at football literally ever since he was in high school and in fact he was so good that he earned himself a scholarship for the university of colorado so that he could play football for them he played four seasons with the colorado buffaloes and he did so well that at the end of that he actually secured a contract with the carolina panthers for when he left university but before i carry on telling you about his football career i think it's quite important to run back to his university days and let you know that ray actually got a girl pregnant her name was michelle wright and i think the two of them had been in quite a brief relationship they hadn't been together very long when she fell pregnant and she decided that she wanted to keep it and so the two of them ended up having a son named rylonda however ray carruth turned out to be quite a deadbeat dad he was not involved in that kid's life and he refused to pay child support actually for quite a while so much so that michelle actually had to take him to court and sue him and caught orders from that point on he had to pay her five thousand dollars a month it wouldn't have been that much if he had just agreed to pay it in the first place but i suppose he gets what he deserves the reason that was so high because five thousand dollars a month on child support that's kind of insane but in america it well i don't know if it's like this everywhere but basically it goes on how much the individual earns goes on how much the father earns and obviously at this point in time he was playing for the carolina panthers or he was just about her and he was on serious money so he did himself in there he wouldn't have had to pay 5000 a month if he'd have just agreed to pay whatever the original figure was in the first place at this point he'd actually just signed his contract with the carolina panthers which was a four million dollar contract right and he got 1.3 million just as an off the back payment an initial down payment so this is a college kid that had gone from just your average college kid to a millionaire overnight and obviously that that does some things to a person doesn't it and he did what i think most 20 something year olds would do if they became an overnight millionaire he spent it like he spent spent he was living it up he was partying buying all these luxury things he was really treating himself with that money for sure but he was still a great footballer he didn't let his party lifestyle get in the way of his career and his performance he was still really really talented at what he did he was number 89 on his on his shirt with the carolina panthers and he ended up absolutely smashing his first year with them everyone loved him that was until the opening game of the season in 1998 when ray karuth fell and broke his ankle mid-game and that pretty much ruined the rest of the season for him he was pretty much out for the rest of it it took him a while to recover from this broken ankle and eventually when he did he was never the same again he'd kind of lost a lot of his confidence and his agility he just never played the same again after that and it was around this time in his life that ray was invited to that pool party where he met sharika adams and sharika was exactly what he needed at that point in his life he needed a pick-me-up and he got that in the form of a beautiful young woman to to dirt on until now until me in sharika ray had been quite a player as i'm sure you can imagine young millionaire he's famous he's a footballer he's you know he's living the life he's not interested in commitment he's having new girls every week like he was that kind of guy but sharika was different like there was something about her that made him want to text her he didn't want to ghost her after one night he wanted to keep this woman in his life and he did you know after a few weeks they were an official couple and they were super super happy according to all their friends they were just like the perfect couple or so it seemed because in march of 1999 the two of them had been together about seven months at this point and they hit a bump in the road when sharika adams found out she was pregnant it was unplanned um but sharika was happy she was very surprised but she was happy she was excited but rare was quite the opposite he seemed disappointed when she told him sharika remembered him just being quite upset and rather quickly that upset turned into anger he was angry that she was pregnant and he started blaming her for it and he was saying i'm already paying five thousand dollars in child support every month i don't want to be paying any more like his immediate response to finding out that his girlfriend that he loves is pregnant was not to you know support her emotionally as you might expect as you would hope his first reaction was to stress about the money that it would cost him rea knew that his career was at an all-time low at this point and he wasn't convinced that he was gonna be on good money forever and it was really kind of stressing him out and he just straight up refused to have another child which you know would have been okay if he'd have communicated it in a nice way but he didn't he wasn't empathetic he wasn't respectful at all not once instead he demanded that sharika go and get an abortion as soon as humanly possible and she had no say in the matter she couldn't even like chill on the decision for a while and make sure that that was what she wanted to do he said she had to get that abortion now and he was just going about this in the most awful of ways but sharika actually stood her ground here and she said no this baby is mine too i want to keep it and she even told him look if you don't want to be in this baby's life you don't have to be you don't have to be a father figure but i want to keep my baby she said that she was willing to be a single mother if that's what she had to do and ray said okay then you keep that baby but i'm not gonna be in your life and with that they split up and ray didn't want anything to do with sharika or that baby and that was just how things were gonna be and actually sharika was glad that this had happened so soon into their relationship they'd only been together seven months but this spoke volumes about rick ruth this really showed her the kind of man that he was and this made her realize that she didn't want to be with a man that acted like that she wasn't really missing out on much here like good riddance so sharika went through this entire pregnancy alone well no not exactly alone because she did have a really good support network around her her friends were there her family was there everyone was very supportive she just didn't have the baby's father in november of 1999 she was eight months pregnant and everything was great she was healthy the baby was healthy she was one month away from giving birth and she was so excited but then on november 16 1999 police received the following phone call [Music] continue to talk to them because man we have to [Music] [Music] at eight months pregnant had been shot and as you heard her say there in the phone call ray carruth was at the scene she'd been driving behind him he was in his car in front and she was in her car and at one point he slurred and came to a stop so obviously her behind him she had to stop as well and when she stopped that was when another car came up beside her she didn't see who was in it and they shot her through the window four times the car then sped away and so did rio carruth in front leaving sharika adams alone bleeding out in her car so police and paramedics rushed to where sharika was and when they arrived she was in a really bad way but she was still conscious and so they were hopeful that they might be able to save her so she was sped off to hospital for urgent treatment and by the time she actually arrived there she was categorized as being in critical condition she actually fell into a coma literally within minutes of arriving at the hospital she was unconscious and doctors had so much to worry about here on so many different levels not only was this woman bleeding out she was also in a coma but she was also eight months pregnant they had a baby to save as well there was the potential to lose two people here not just one not just sharika but also her baby and so doctors made the decision now while sharika was in a coma to take her in for emergency surgery and try and give her a c-section to save her baby they did keep trying to save sharika as well all the way through this emergency c-section they still had her hooked up to all these different things and they were operating on her as well but at this point they'd kind of assessed the situation and they realized that they might lose sharika and there was the possibility here to be able to save the baby even though they might lose her it was better to save one person instead of neither of them as this was going on in the operating room sandra sharika's mother had arrived at the hospital and she'd been told everything that the hospital knew at least and now that they were trying to deliver her daughter's baby she felt that rick ruth needed to be there he needed to be there for the birth of his child at this point i don't think sandra knew the circumstances of sharika's shooting i don't think she knew that she was with ray when she was shot and so she tried to call ray but he wasn't picking up the phone she's calling and calling even texting she even paged him remember pages and again he just wasn't responding to any of it meanwhile in the operating theater doctors were trying to monitor this baby's health as they were trying to do this emergency c-section and honestly it wasn't looking very good because this baby had been deprived of oxygen for quite a while at this point but after seventy seven zero long minutes without oxygen and through a very difficult delivery the baby was born it was a little boy and he was he was healthy everything was okay he survived but not without complications because due to the lack of oxygen as the baby was being delivered he actually had cerebral palsy and brain damage he had to be put on a neonatal intensive care unit for weeks after this he was hooked up to a bunch of machines that were all just trying to keep him alive and monitor his condition because not only did he have cerebral palsy and brain damage but he was also premature as well he was a month early which comes with complications in itself and because he was premature he was just so so tiny sandra remembered seeing her grandson and she was just so worried for him because he was this tiny tiny little thing hooked up to all these machines it was so scary at this point sharika was still in her coma and actually they'd put her on life support so the baby is hooked up to all these different monitors trying to keep him alive so is sharika and sandra is just panicking she's still desperately trying to get hold of ray karuth because that's the father of the baby that is her daughter's ex-boyfriend she needed someone to go through this with she needed someone to understand this and besides she wanted ray to meet his son that had just been born so she's still calling and calling and calling and eventually ray picked up the phone and he learnt of the very sudden birth of his son and so he said right okay i'll come and eventually after quite a while actually he wasn't in any kind of rush to get to the hospital he arrived with a friend and his new girlfriend when he came into the hospital he barely even acknowledged sandra sharika's mother his child's grandmother he seemed not worried in the slightest either he was very very calm even though both his son and sharika were in very concerning states he didn't seem to ever worry in the whole entire world it almost seemed like he was in a rush like he just wanted to get this over and done with so that he could leave the hospital with with his mate and his new girlfriend so anyway the nurses took him to the icu where his son was hooked up to all these monitors when he was there ree got out his camera snapped a picture of his baby who was like i say hooked up to all these monitors in a really really bad way snapped a picture the nurse said oh do you want to hold him we can we can like make it work and you can hold your baby and he was like no don't worry about it and he left he took a picture of his baby and then left the hospital he didn't care about sharika he didn't he didn't care to stick around the baby either and sandra remembered thinking as soon as ray left that hospital that he had to have something to do with the shooting he had to have something to do with this just the way that he was acting was so odd and he didn't care at all she'd never seen him act like this before and him being involved seemed like the only explanation so police had obviously been involved in this whole thing ever since they received sharika's phone call letting them know about the shooting and they'd spoken to everyone that they could they'd already spoken to sandra at this point but after this interaction with ray she decided to go back to the police and tell them that something wasn't right here and police agreed that the way that he'd acted at the hospital was just downright suspicious especially given that he was at the scene of the shooting he was literally in the car in front of sharika when she was shot so police immediately tracked ray karuth down and arrested him and he was put on a 3 million dollar bail but remember he himself was a millionaire and so he actually managed to pay off his own bail and get released he was actually only in police custody for less than 24 hours before he managed to get that money pay the bail and get set free but this was on one condition and that was that if either sharika or the baby died at any point you know if their conditions worsened and they actually ended up passing away ricker ruth would be rearrested in connection with this because at that point this is a murder case not just a shooting and this was just devastating to everyone that knew and loved sharika that the person that seemed like the biggest suspect in her shooting had managed to pay his own bail and now he was just back out there in the world partying living it up going on dates with his girlfriend as if nothing was happening as if sharika wasn't dying in hospital literally on life support and this went on for weeks by the way sharika and her baby boy were both still in hospital for weeks hooked up to all these monitors sharika was still in her coma and she wasn't showing any signs of progress at all her baby on the other hand was making progress he was getting better day by day and soon he wasn't going to need all these monitors he was going to be able to you know go home and be a normal baby but with sharika all they could do was wait i mean they'd done pretty much everything that they could think to do and now they just had to hope and pray that she did get better and that she would regain consciousness two weeks after the shooting on november 30th a man walked into the police station and he said he wanted to speak with officers because he had some information relating to this case his name was michael kennedy he told police that he was a friend of ray carruths and he claimed he knew exactly what had happened to sharika adams so he sat down for an interview with police and he told them everything that he knew starting from the morning of the shooting rick ruth had gone to michael kennedy's house to ask for a very specific favor rare asked michael if he could borrow a car that wasn't too flashy which immediately was a bit weird because ray carruth was literally known for being flashy he spent money on things and he showed that off like he had the most expensive of everything it wasn't like him to want to be understated but also saying that he had a lot of money i mean he literally just paid his three million dollar bail he had money so why couldn't he buy his own non-flashy car because those are the less expensive ones anyway why have you bought yourself a million flashy cars but you don't want to buy your own non-flashy car regardless michael kennedy agreed he was like yeah sure you can borrow one of my cars i mean he was thinking all these different things in his head like this is a bit weird but still he he agreed and later that day michael drove this less flashy car to rare carruth's house and while he was there he was like hang on why do you want this like why do you need this car and rare carruth proceeded to tell michael kennedy his whole plan for that night and he gave like backstory as well he was going into this story he told michael about how he already had one kid that he was paying five thousand dollars child support a month for and now sharika was pregnant and he didn't want to be doing that again it was only a matter of time until she was probably gonna take him to court and make him pay another five thousand dollars a month for another child that's now ten thousand dollars a month and ray wasn't having that he wasn't gonna let it get to that point actually his exact words to michael was that sharika was trying to juice him for his money and he had a plan on how he was gonna put a stop to this along with one of his associates named van brett watkins now i don't know too much about van brett watkins other than the fact that he was a very very dodgy guy i think he was a criminal for hire and he was willing to do just about anything if the money was right a few days before the shooting ray carruth had approached his associate watkins and simply asked him how much would it take to beat up a girl and make her abort her baby to which watkins replied i don't beat up no girl i kill people so ray carruth was left with two options here he either did nothing sharika went ahead and had the baby and he would have to pay another five thousand dollars in child support every month or he could pay van brett watkins to murder sharika and the problem would be solved he wouldn't have to pay and it didn't take reiker ruth very long to make a decision here and straight away he asked watkins how soon he could do it to which watkins said he was going to need a gun first for obvious reasons watkins didn't have his own gun he didn't have like one gun that he used for all his different crimes for hire because it's easily gonna get traced back to him that way he was gonna need a different weapon for each job that he was hired for and that was ray's job ray had to go out and find the gun for watkins and actually by the morning of the shooting the day that they'd planned to do the shooting race still hadn't found a gun and he was running out of time and so when michael kennedy came to drop off this less flashy car rare asked him if he could borrow a gun and at this point as soon as ray asks that michael starts freaking out like he can tell what the plan is here although ray hadn't said it explicitly it's obvious what he's trying to do here he has hired a hitman to murder his pregnant ex-girlfriend and michael didn't want any part in this and so he actually tried to take his car back with him because he didn't want rey to be able to use it but rare wasn't gonna let that happen in fact he started threatening michael saying that if he didn't just go through with this plan then he would be next rare also pointed out that michael knew the whole plan now because he told him everything and so if they were to go ahead with it and get caught michael would also get in trouble because he's kind of implicated in it isn't it he essentially blackmailed michael kennedy into submission and so out of fear he agreed to be part of this plan but now that ray knew that he could scare michael like this things just went from bad to worse not only did he want to borrow michael kennedy's less flashy car now he was asking him to drive it too he wanted him to be the getaway driver for watkins who was gonna be the hitman caruth and watkins had formulated a whole plan by this point and it started with ray asking sharika out on a date now i don't know what the context was here i don't know why he did this maybe he used the excuse of like oh the baby's going to be here in a month like maybe we should see each other anyway sharika agreed she voluntarily came out on this date so the plan was basically that he was gonna go on this date as normal have a few hours with sharika where she has no idea what is about to happen the whole time he knows that he's gonna try and kill her that night his plan was to have this day as normal and then at the end of the day he was gonna get in his car she was gonna get in hers and he was gonna ask her to follow him he was gonna drive her out to a more isolated area and then he was gonna call michael kennedy his new getaway driver and let him know where they were once he'd done that ray knew that he had to stall for a little bit of time because it was going to be a while until michael kennedy and watkins got there and so rare just kind of slowly meandered around the nearby roads you know staying in that kind of area but you know stalling really until eventually michael kennedy would catch up in the getaway car with van brett watkins in the driver's seat gun in hand ready for them to slow down next to sharika's car and for watkins to shoot at her and kill her the plan was to make sure that both sharika and her baby died and watkins knew that plan as well so he made sure to shoot four times not just once not just twice he was trying to kill both her and her unborn baby and the shooting went exactly to plan as we know that is exactly what happened and ever since that shooting michael kennedy had not been able to live with himself he didn't want to do it he never once wanted to do it as soon as he found out what the plan was he tried to get away but he had to take part in it because he feared for his life and police believed michael kennedy this this man that just randomly walked into the police station and given them all this information they believed him they they didn't doubt his story at all this case was very quickly just solving itself in front of their eyes but right now they didn't know if sharika adams was gonna pull through was this case gonna be an attempted murder a first degree murder they didn't know they weren't gonna know until until sharika either recovered or passed away and for two weeks even after this so now it's been about a month sharika is still in her coma she is still on life support and she has still not shown a single sign of progress and at this point it was looking unlikely that she ever was gonna recover and that was when her mother sandra made the heartbreaking decision to turn off her daughter's life support and sharika adams passed away peacefully in hospital on december 15 1999. sandra took great comfort in knowing that her daughter was no longer suffering she was now at rest and in fact sandra said that she looked as peaceful when they turned off the life support machine as she had the day that she was born sharika adam's official cause of death was noted as multi-organ system failure due to gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen it was really a miracle that her baby boy had survived this ordeal with the gunshot wounds being literally so close to him it really is a wonder that he survived and by now this baby boy was a month old and he still didn't have a name because i mean they'd really been hoping that sharika was gonna come around from her coma and be able to name her baby herself but obviously now that wasn't gonna happen and so his grandmother sandra took on that responsibility herself and she named her grandson chancellor lee adams and he was actually released from hospital around the same time that sharika passed away and he was healthy he was he was perfectly happy and healthy i mean he did have the complications due to the lack of oxygen but other than that he was a normal baby boy now and he was being cared for at home by his grandmother so now this case is officially a murder case now that sharika has passed away this is murder and so police rushed to try and track down rare carruth but it wasn't going to be that easy rear had somehow found out that sharika had passed away in hospital and remember the terms of his bail by the way the the rules were that if sharika or the baby passed away he would be rearrested in connection with this and he knew that and he panicked not only that actually i think he'd also caught wind of the fact that michael kennedy had gone to the police and told them everything so at this point he knew he was screwed he knew that his only other option if he didn't want to get arrested was to go on the run was to flee at 10 p.m that evening ray carruth called one of his friends named wendy cole and he begged her to drive him to california and at first she was reluctant to her she didn't wanna i don't know if she knew about all of this that was going on but she didn't want to drive him eventually he persuaded her and she went and picked him up and they set off to california by this point the fbi had issued a nationwide arrest warrant for breaker ruth and so there were eyes everywhere looking for him and it wasn't long until he was spotted the fbi got a tip off that ray was staying with wendy cole in a motel in tennessee and so they rushed down there to this specific motel and they went and spoke to the staff and they said that a man matching rare caruth's description had been staying in that motel with a lady but they couldn't remember which room he was in and i don't know why the police couldn't just like go and knock on the doors and see because i mean you are the police you do have like the the authority to do that do you not but anyway they couldn't do that for some reason and so they had to come up with a more elaborate plan instead they decided to do like a stakeout mission they were gonna sit in their cars in the car park and just stare at these motel rooms until they saw either ray carruth or wendy cole coming out of one of them i don't know charlie it would be easier to just go and knock on anywhere so anyway after a couple of hours of this stay count mission police eventually saw wendy cole leaving one of the motel rooms and she was completely unaware that she was being watched and so police jump out of their cars well it's the fbi in it but they jump out of their cars they run over to her and they ask her to step back inside that motel room with them once they got inside police officers start like raiding this motel room looking for rare carruth everywhere but they can't find him and so they literally just said to her where is he wendy was completely silent she did not say a single thing to those officers she didn't even really make eye contact with them actually but one of these officers was very very smart and they noticed that as soon as they asked her where is he her eyes darted towards the car keys that were just on the table in the motel room wendy probably hadn't even realized that she'd done this but the fbi are well trained in this kind of thing like the psychology of this kind of stuff she had subconsciously looked at those keys because she knew where ray karuth was he was in a car somewhere so police grabbed these keys off the side and they ran out into the car park to go and find wendy's car it was actually literally just a few cars away from where the fbi had been parked the whole time during the stakeout mission so they got to this car and they're looking through all the windows but they can't see anything inside there's no one inside and so they decided to go and open the trunk at this point police were like 90 sure that ray karuth was in the trunk of that car and so they start acting accordingly and they stood outside that car and they started shouting to him inside basically telling him the situation like look it's the fbi we know you're in there we're about to pop up in this trunk put your hands up all that kind of stuff and so they opened the trunk of this car and there curled up in a little ball with his hands up was rare carruth he knew that this was all over now and so he went very easily with police he did everything they asked of him he had his hands up the whole time he knew that there was no point even trying to fight this so police drove him all the way back to north carolina while tennessee police came out to that motel just to kind of search it i mean it was their jurisdiction so it was their problem i guess um and they were searching this motel room but it really didn't seem like there was any sign that ray carruth had even lived in there and the theory is that wendy cole had been living in this motel room for a couple of days maybe and rick ruth had been living in the trunk of that car because he was too scared to even get out of there and go into the motel room and the reason they think he'd literally been living in this tiny little trunk of the car was because of the things that they found in there they found four thousand dollars in cash in there they found like snacks and drinks spare changes of clothes and loads of bottles of his own urine because obviously he couldn't get out and go to the toilet he'd been peeing in bottles and and living amongst them for days oh and there was also a bernathon in there can't believe i forgot about that that same day ray carruth was charged with first-degree murder and as soon as his football team found out about this because he was still on contract with the carolina panthers let me tell you they have never gotten rid of a player faster that same evening that he was charged the carolina panthers revoked his contract and by the next morning he'd been suspended from the nfl altogether and then came the murder trial and this was actually quite a unique murder trial mainly due to the phone call that sharika had managed to make after she'd been shot because a lot of the things that she was saying to the 9-1-1 operator could be used in court she was essentially like a witness to her own murder the phone call was played out loud in court where she literally said ray carruth's name multiple times said that he worked for the carolina panthers worked for played for the carolina panthers she even said the number on the back of his jersey she said that he was in the car in front of her like she'd literally given the whole version of events through this phone call there was absolutely no mistaking who she was talking about in this phone call because she had she'd really thought about this she'd really given them as much as she possibly could even though she was in such a dreadful state she was bleeding out but she knew she had to get that information across because if she didn't make it she was the only one that that knew what happened the prosecution even pointed out that it would be practically impossible for her to have like made all of this up on the phone to the operator while she was like drastically bleeding out from these gunshot wounds like it wasn't even in the question that she lied about this michael kennedy also stood up in court as a witness and told the whole story about how ray carruth had literally hired a hitman to murder his ex-girlfriend and his unborn baby just to avoid paying child support and the courts actually agreed that michael kennedy had acted under duress here like he'd been blackmailed to be a part of this plan and they could tell that he didn't want to be a part of it but he was literally told that he would be next if he didn't join in he was doing this to save his own life but just because they agreed that he was acting under duress doesn't mean he got off completely scot-free but we'll get he had his own trial actually but we'll get back to that in a minute so rick ruth and van brett watkins defense teams came together and decided to argue that this hitman for hire plan couldn't possibly be true for a number of reasons one of these reasons was that there was no record of a monetary exchange for this rare hadn't paid watkins anything which like obviously not if he is a hitman for hire a professional criminal he's not gonna just do things by bank transfer they have like ways that they go about that kind of thing obviously i'm sure he knows by now if he's like a professional criminal i'm sure he knows how to get paid without it being traceable like that's the whole point of it is it not in fact watkins team specifically tried to argue that he couldn't possibly be a criminal for hire because he didn't have his own gun they had to source the gun that was used to shoot sharika the same day so like they were basically saying if he's a hitman for hire why wouldn't he own his own gun and i don't know probably one that doesn't want to be traced we said this earlier like there's a reason he doesn't have his own gun so that they can argue this in court but that's exactly why he would get the client to source the gun for him so that it wouldn't be traced back to him so yeah both guys legal teams were trying to deny this murder for hire plot and actually they suggested another um reason why this had happened rare carruth's legal team said that he'd actually got himself involved in a drug deal gone wrong they said that ray had been buying drugs off these people and it must have been kind of a long-term thing he was like a regular customer um and they must have gotten into some beef like an argument some sort of disagreement and this drug gang wanted to shoot rare caruth and so they tracked him down that night went to where his car was shot at who they believed to be rare but it actually turned out to be sharika she'd just gotten caught up in what should have been these guys shooting at rare so essentially they were saying that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time those shots weren't meant for her but she got caught in the crossfire of rare doing dodgy business with these drug gangs which like even if that was believable it's not but even if it was it really didn't take long for these men to ruin their own case especially van brett watkins he took the stand and the prosecution was asking him all these different questions and he was just laughing and smirking and giggling all the way through it he was acting like he was above everyone in that courtroom which is not a good look when you're up there for murder at one point the prosecution described him as a hitman with no weapons to which watkins responded if that's what you want to call me i could kill you with my hands you're really not helping yourself there right literally admitting that you're a hitman in your own murder trial like that's really not a good look to threaten to murder someone in your own murder trial when you're trying to say i'm not a murderer where's the logic where is it basically it seemed that watkins was very volatile he was very quick to anger like they could tell that they were pushing his buttons with the things that they were saying like hitman with no weapon it had it had triggered him it had evoked a reaction from him and so the prosecution started using this against him they were like this is working let's keep going they wanted to show just how easy it was to make this man aggressive and violent so that they could show the jury how likely it was that he was a violent man and at one point he even threatened his own lawyer his own team the guy that is trying to stop you from getting into prison he turned around and said to his lawyer i'm 286 pounds i could rip you like a ragdoll literally just making things worse for himself by the minute at the end of this trial of course the jury found both rear carruth and van brett watkins both guilty but of different things rare carruth was found guilty of conspiracy to murder shooting into an occupied vehicle and using an instrument to destroy an unborn child he was found not guilty of first-degree murder and that was simply because he was not the one that pulled the trigger if he had he possibly would have got the death penalty but for that reason he was spared the death penalty and instead he was sentenced to 18 to 24 years in prison van brett watkins on the other hand was found guilty of all of the above everything that ray carruth was found guilty of plus first-degree murder because he was the one that pulled the trigger but for some reason he too was spared the death penalty instead he was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 40 years for zero michael kennedy pled guilty to second-degree murder for his part in the murder since obviously he was the getaway driver he like it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't done his part and so for that he was sentenced to 11 to 14 years in prison and then curveball there was a fourth guy named stanley abraham and he was sentenced to 90 days in prison for some level of involvement in this but i really couldn't find like anything on this guy supposedly he was just sat in the getaway car at the time that the murder happened he was just in one of the back seats but the courts agreed that he actually didn't know that the murder was gonna happen he happened to be in that car when when sharika was shot but the reason he got those 90 days i think was because he didn't tell the police afterwards so he wasn't a willing participant in this he had no idea it was even gonna happen but from that point on once he had witnessed it he should have gone straight to police but he didn't and i think that was the issue and right now only one of those four men is actually still in prison and that's van brett watkins ray carruth along with the other ones is a free man he's just out there in the world after after all of this after literally planning to murder his ex-girlfriend and his unborn baby over what money over five grand a month when you're a multi-millionaire rare caruth was released from prison in 2018 and he was pictured with a big smile on his face as he left and there was actually a group of fans waiting outside for him so he did like a meet and greet outside of prison after coming out of his murder murder sentence murder after coming out of prison for murder anyway as for sharika's son chancellor lee he is now 22 years old and he has lived his whole life with his grandmother sandra of course chancellor never actually got chance to meet his mother but sandra makes sure that her memory stays well alive in their family she tells him all kinds of stories about sharika and they go and visit her grave very regularly and i just want to end this case talking about sharika's mother sandra she had been an absolute superstar through all of this she took on this baby boy as if he was her own she is an amazing role model to that boy she has displayed such strength and such determination and even so much empathy because she actually ended up forgiving ray karuth for what he did to her daughter for murdering her daughter but it isn't just rage that she forgives she actually forgives all four of the men that were involved and that were sentenced to different things even watkins the one that pulled the trigger he actually wrote to sandra from prison to kind of apologize for what he'd done and i'll just read you her response mr watkins you know i am suffering because of your actions i will never be able to hold my beautiful daughter sharika again because of your actions my grandson chancellor cannot do the simplest things like call me grandmommy or play ball with the other children but despite my grief i want you to know that i have forgiven you i know you are suffering too for the horrible choice you made that day i want you to know that you will always be in my thoughts and prayers and i wish you peace sandra adams and that is the end of this case thank you so so much for watching and thanks again to blue land for sponsoring this video remember when you click the link down below you'll get 20 off of your first kit a huge thank you to all of my channel members for supporting the channel and helping me decide the cases that i cover all of my tier 2 members are on screen right now so thank you so much if you want to become a channel member you can click the join button down below but yeah thank you so so much for watching i really appreciate it if you enjoyed please leave a thumbs up down below or if you want to watch another one of my videos i'll link you one right here or if you want to subscribe to my channel you can click that circle right there okay bye see you in the next one

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 348,167

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, mystery, unsolved, true crime, solved, documentary, serial killer, podcast, true crime podcast, netflix, 2022, rae carruth, rae, carruth, cherica adams, cherica, adams, chancellor, chancellor lee adams, nfl, nfl player, nfl star, hitman, football player, football star, carolina panthers, nfl game, rae carruth documentary, prison, interview, baby, pregnant, carolina, north carolina, football, football game, american football, nfl murderer

Id: s_uRcrFxHGQ

Length: 49min 19sec (2959 seconds)

Published: Sun May 22 2022