October 16, 2018 • 36 mins
Cherica Adams, a former model and dancer from Charlotte, meets NFL player Rae Carruth at a party. Carruth, a Sacramento native, has looks and a magnetic charm. Soon Cherica is pregnant—but the trail of women in Carruth's past suggest the Carolina Panthers first-round draft pick is struggling with adult responsibility in the face of adulation lavished upon a star athlete.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A listener. Note this story contains adult language and some
graphic descriptions of violence. So this is the letter I
received from Ray Caruth. This is the first time I've
heard from him in almost twenty years. This was in February,
(00:22):
and it just showed up at the office, more or
less out of the blue. He writes, In every great
piece of literature, there's always a protagonist and an antagonist,
and unfortunately, in this very real life saga, the latter
applies to me, my one. Thank you need to leave.
(00:42):
Even where are you at? Pastime? Come on, listen to me.
You're on a wireless plan. I don't know where you are.
To tell me where you are, man. The letter continues,
with everyone so heavily entrenched in the past and the
tragedy that led us to this chapter, there's nothing I
could ever say or do to write my wrongs or
to no longer be quote the bad guy. Okay, where
(01:04):
are you shot at? Ma'am? I don't know. I was riving,
you were driving and someone shot you? Yeah? Did you
see the person that shot you? Okay, ma'm I'm a
connected tomatic. Continue to talk to the Caruth also said
in the letter, there are times in life, when no
matter how well intentioned the person may be, some things
just can't ever be fixed or made right. Player He
(01:38):
concludes by writing, this will be the very last time
I make any comments concerning the situation for my character.
This is regrettably where the story ends. It's time to
move on, and that was it. As many times as
I reached out to him, we haven't had an on
the record interview since the late and chinies. And as
(02:01):
far as Ray Carruth himself, I think a lot of
people kind of forgot about him. That's just how these
things go. I'll tell you what though. I've been at
the Charlotte Observer since nineteen four. That was a year
before North Carolina even had an NFL team. I had
covered a lot of things before that night in nineteen
and a whole lot of them since, but I have
(02:21):
never covered any other story like this. I'm Scott Fowler,
a reporter for the Observer, and for much of my
career I've covered a miracle that began just after midnight
on November sixteenth, nineteen nine, when twenty four year old
Sharika Adams was shot four times. It was a crime
(02:42):
that shocked the sports world and in the years since
that night, Panther's wide receiver, Ray Carruth, her on again
off again boyfriend, has become one of the most infamous
villains and sports history. Sharick Adams and his own son dead.
But like any story, the reality is far more complicated.
(03:03):
Some maintained Ruth has always been innocent, an NFL player
chasing starting whose career was cut short by a wrongful
imprisonment that has gone on for nearly twenty years. I
know others believe he should already have been put to death.
You know, I was like, the son of a bitch,
was what I wanted. For the past year, I've conducted
dozens of exclusive interviews, reviewed thousands of pages of documents,
(03:25):
and uncovered startling new revelations made public for the first
time here about the most notorious crime in Charlotte history.
I've talked to the families. She's telling me I'm gonna
be a grandma. The lawyers. I don't know if he
was innocent in the sense that he never did anything wrong,
but he hadn't hired these people to kill Sharrika Adam.
(03:47):
The police officers or warrant questions was do you think
Ray was involved, and she just made a question mark
the friends. They portrayed all the women in his life
as if he was some big player and the killer excreaming.
She was drowned and blood and we have to find
out where you are. What I found was a murder mystery,
a love story, the legacy of Karuth. This is chapter one,
(04:14):
Ray and Sharika, Ladies and gentlemen, Sunny and Share. I
was a really big fan of Sunny and Share. So
(04:35):
when I was thinking of a name for Sharika, I
wanted it to be unique because I knew she would
just be a very unique, really vibrant type of person.
This is Sandra Adams, Sharika's mother. For simplicity's sake, will
use their first name. She was almost about to be
named after the vacuum cleaner Eureka, and I thought, now,
(04:56):
I don't want her to be associated with dirt and
in and stuff, so I said, I'm gonna name her Share.
She was a v a m P vamp. You know,
she held her own and so I said, well, I
put the two together, the Share part and not Eureka,
but the Eco part. And so that's how she got
the name Shaika from Sunny and chair. For much of
(05:25):
the past two decades, those who didn't know Sharika personally
have known her only as a victim, the dying mother
of an unborn son, and the moaning but determined voice
from Money Forward. Is Your First Baby Today? That original
twelve minute recording lives on an old cassette tape inside
(05:48):
a dned box stashed deep in the basement of a
Charlotte courthouse. As far as I know, it's the only
recording of Sharika's voice that's ever been made public, and
it doesn't come close to encompassing a woman who, for
twenty four years dazzled almost everyone she met. It's like
when someone enters the room and you know that they're there.
(06:09):
She would command the room with her presence. Sonia Melton
met Sharika when they were both freshmen at Winston Salem
State University back in the fall of She just knew
instinctively what she wanted and what she was worth and
and to speak to the impact that she had on
(06:29):
my life. I remember we were sitting in a Wendy's
we It was a group of us had had gone
out to eat, and she was sitting to my right
and she looked at me and she was like, Wow,
you are so beautiful, And it just hit me in
such a way because she really was a beautiful inside
(06:51):
in our person and so when she said that to me,
I believed it. She knew everybody was gonna know who
she is. She knew that people were going to know
her name. Sharika grew up surrounded by family members and
friends who loved her. She had an unremarkable childhood, but
(07:12):
her appearance always stood out. She was petite with big
brown eyes. She often wore dresses to high school, and
her interest in fashion made her un natural for modeling
as a teenager. She had the looks that rival Halle Berry, Beyonce,
all the beautiful women out there. Sharika was really pretty,
(07:33):
but she wasn't aware of how pretty she was. This
is Valerie Brooks, who became fast friends with Sharika in
the nineteen nineties, despite a nearly twenty year age difference
between the two. They met while working in Charlotte's real
estate scene, and what Brooks remembers goes far beyond the
superficial descriptions of Sharika that filled news coverage at the time. Now,
(07:54):
I met Sharika about six months after I moved here.
On one of my autings, I was with my husband.
She was representing a builder at that time, and I
walked into the model home and she was sitting there
and she's like a breath of fresh air. And we
had great conversation and she said, I will show you
the city of Charlotte, and I said, okay, well that's great,
(08:17):
and we connected right then and there determination is a
theme that comes through in every conversation I've ever had
about Sharika. It was there from the moment she was
born in nineteen and King's Mountain, North Carolina, some thirty
miles west of Charlotte. I had Sharika over the summer
before my senior year in high school. Sharika's father was
(08:38):
Jeff Mooney, and we actually met because he was a
bus driver and I was a bus driver back in
the day the students, the students could drive the buses years.
Sharika very nearly arrived in the back of her grandfather's
light blue Chevy and Paula because my dad was farming.
We farmed and Dad had taking the tractor out to
(09:02):
dig up the field for planting. We told Dad it
was time to get me to the hospital. Well, he
was not gonna leave his tractor in the field, and
meanwhile I'm at home. I'm like, I really gotta go.
So he got out the good car and manytime, I'm like,
(09:23):
we need to really be getting on our way, and
Dad stops at all the red lights and I'm telling him,
I'm in the back seat, the baby is coming, and um,
I'm scared because I'm like, we're in a good car.
I cannot have this baby in the good car and
mess up his car. So I was holding Sharika in
(09:45):
so much so that when we got to the hospital,
they didn't even have time to call the doctor. She
just came out. She just came and she had a
spot in the crown of her head where I had
been holding her end so much. Hair would never grow
on that one little thumb spot right in the middle
(10:07):
of her hair, and it was mash dead. Sharika was
raised primarily by three people. In her early years, it
was Sandra's parents, Jack and Virginia Adams, and then it
was Sandra herself once Sharika moved to Charlotte before starting
the third grade. Growing up, one of Sharika's closest friends
was Kim Lark. She had even lived with Sandra and
(10:27):
Sharika for a while when the two girls were teenagers.
Best friends forever, and it's true we are best friends
and sisters were absolutely ever. As we talked, Lark reached
into her purse and pulled out an old photo. It
was March Friday, March thirty one, n nine and I
wrote spring break on the bottom of it. I don't
know where we were going. I don't think we were
(10:48):
going anywhere. We just shows the two of them at home,
playing dress up, with Sharika deciding what both of them
should wear, dreaming about a future of limitless promise. She
always thought Charlotte was us small, a small place, and
um Sharika loved butterflies. In my mind, I think that
she thought the butterfly as a way of I'm gonna
get out of here one day. I'm gonna go and
(11:08):
do the things that I want to do, and I
think flying would help her do that. At least two
people hit when gunfire breaks out in the South Sacrato
parking lot. As Sharika grew up in North Carolina, a
young man on the other side of the country was
making a name for himself as well, Ray Lamar Theotis Wiggins,
(11:32):
with the last name courtesy of his biological father, but
as he grew up in Sacramento, raised by his mother,
Theodrey and his stepfather, Samuel Kruth, Ray soon took the
last name of Kruth instead. The fourth Homa started in
oak Park this year. The cities Karuth grew up surrounded
by crime and the Oak Park section on the south
side of Sacramento. These arrests are part of a larger
(11:54):
effort to make the Oak Park neighborhood save, a new
urgency for city leaders to do something about the ongoing
violence in Oak Park. But he never had problems with
the law. The Audrey Caruth his mother was a dominant
force in his life, who once described herself as the
quote piranha protecting her young guppy, and maybe that's still
true today. The Audrey declined to participate in this project,
(12:17):
but earlier this year, when I wrote about that letter
her son had sent me, I did receive this voicemail
from her. Mr fought this, Theodre crup and I just
called to tell you, thank you. Pretty story that you did.
It was so much more softer than us seen in
the town. I just want to say, think I appreciate. Okay,
(12:38):
I might disagree with her assessment of the article, but
I can't argue with a mother's unconditional love for her child.
Towards the end of high school, as his mom came
to me and says, tell me what to do to
get Ray to the next level. This is Dave Hoskins,
who's coached high school football in the Sacramento area for
more than fifty years. He was Caruth's head coach for
(13:00):
three seasons at Valley High. I only let his dad
one time. The dad walked out on the practice field
and he said, will you take care of my son
and make sure that he gets him to college. I
said yeah, I said that's part of my job. He said,
thank you very much. She turned around and disappeared on
the field. Karuth's performance spoke for itself enough for Hoskins
(13:23):
to promote Keruth to the varsity as a sophomore. I've
never coached a kid as fast as he is. He
was only a sophomore, and so I brought him up
to the varsity. And this poor little kid was covering
red and rage just blew by him so fast, and
the kid was shaking his head. So we through the
(13:45):
kid from the schools. Eh, don't feel bad. There's not
many people who are going to stay with this kid.
And he goes Really, I said, really. Karuth didn't smoke, drink,
or use drugs. That made him a shining star in
his neighborhood, matched only by his growing stardom on the
football field. Oak Park has devoured in plain far too
(14:09):
many promising young lives, temptations of the streets and drugs
and no way to get out. But there are success stories,
and for a long time, Ray Kruth was a success
story at Oak Park. Joe Davidson is in his thirtieth
year as a sports reporter for the Sacramento b But
I saw him play a couple of games. I thought, Wow,
you know there's Gonda may be an NFL guy. I mean,
just one of those wild performers. You know. The coaches
(14:32):
that played against them said, this is as good guys
we've ever seen around here. Now, just can't handle his speed.
In high school, Caruth never excelled the same way academically,
but Hoskin says the Audrey knew how to keep her
son on track. She worked at Costco. She had Ray
collecting carts out in the heat. I remember her telling him,
(14:52):
if you don't take care of your grades, this is
what we're gonna do for the rest of your life.
With that incentive, Davidson remembers Kruth taking every lost personally
on the field and off. Ray always had a chip
on his shoulder against the Sacramon Walby. When he felt
like he should have been the Sacramono By Player of
the Year as a senior year, we gave it instead
to James Kidd of a rival program at Glow High School.
(15:14):
He was still an All Mental first team player All
City got two years in a row, but that was
kind of a driving force. He took things personal and
he was upset about it. As local accolades piled up,
national college recruiting trips followed. I was a volunteer coach
and a recruiting weekend and Ray came up and he
(15:35):
had a suit in a briefcase. John Embree, then an
assistant coach at the University of Colorado, remembers the first
time he met Caru and Uh. I remember thinking that's odd,
you know, because guys when they come unto recruiting trips,
you know they want to have fun. They do all
this stuff and here to him, he said it was
a business trip. So he's dressing accordingly. And then whenever
(15:59):
he had meetings with people on campus, could be the academics,
could be in the weight room. He had a list
of questions and he had checklists and things he wanted
to know about, and he wrote down the answers. I
mean he was very meticulous about it, pulling papers out
of that briefcase. And yeah, he had a little notepad
and added all of me. It was it really was impressive.
(16:19):
It made you want to get him even more. Ruth's
life had always revolved around football. A preschool teacher had
once assigned him to draw what he wanted to be
when he grew up. Kruth sketched himself between two goal posts,
wearing a football helmet with his arms raised in trying
so touchdown. But unlike many big time players, Caruth wasn't
(16:42):
particularly big. He was listed at only five ft eleven
and a d nine pounds, but he was extremely fast.
So we've got the rules that could fly, and you've
got which helped convince Colorado to offer him a full
ride scholarship. Let's it come in nine to put him
on the field during one of the most memorable plays
(17:04):
in college football history. He's got three people down there.
The miracle in Michigan down incredible. Kruth enjoyed his celebrity
on campus, but that's not unusual for an athlete. What's
more memorable to his coaches is the way he was
also capable of using it for good. You know, there
was a time we found out after the fact. Uh,
(17:26):
during one of the spring games, this kid came up
to him. Here's Embrie again, and so they had a
little autograph session or something, and and the kid says,
you're my favorite player. He goes something about how it
was his birthday and how excited was he got to
meet Ray, and Ray found out the kid had a
party the next weekend, and he showed up with a
(17:50):
present for the kid. Caruth became an All Conference wide
receiver at Colorado and even earned some All America notice too.
Back then, he was still several years away from meeting Sharika,
but he once told an interviewer while at Colorado something
that made Ray and Shaika seemed like a natural fit.
No matter what I do, Karuth said, I've decided I
(18:11):
want to be famous. With the first pick in the
draft n the Carolina Panthers, coming off at twelve and
fourth season and a deep run in the playoffs, drafted
Caruth in the first round seven overall. His potential also
seemed limitless. Fast man he was. He was a track guy.
(18:32):
I feel like he was a track guy playing football.
Mike Mentor was a safety who played against kruthin college
Asler's passed and Mentor redit fucked in. Mike Mentor and
then was taken by the Panthers in the second round
of that same nineteen draft. You know, both of these
small guys, we're like, we're both big guys, and so
(18:53):
all these similarities kind of gravitated us too to hang out,
and so we spent a lot of time together. In
the first year, Caruth was signed to a four year,
three point seven million dollar contract that included a one
point three million dollars signing bonus, shocking them toward two
and he made the NFL's All Rookie team, catching forty
(19:13):
four passes for five hundred and forty five yards and
four touchdowns. He says called into the amazone touchdown Ray Carol.
The Panthers made him a starter Carol at the fort
the first round. They finished the season seven and nine.
But we're excited to pair Carruth with Mousin Mohammed, another
young receiver everyone called Moose as their primary pass catchers
(19:36):
for years to come. We saw the talent and you're like, oh,
this guy is gonna be good. That's how you get
respect in the locker room. It's it's not about what
you say, it's about what you do. And and this
guy was producing. And so you have Moose on on
one side, and he was the young emerging right receiver
and now you got to speak out on the other side.
(19:57):
I mean, that's the dream of the NFL offensive coordinator,
right is. I got these two guys. So are you
like we're building something? That rookie year was Kruth's best
in the NFL. A broken right foot at the start
of sidelined and for the year. He returned for the
(20:17):
first five games of the nine season before getting hurt again.
He never scored another touchdown in the league. First of all,
I think it's it messes with you personally, you know, psychologically,
how you deal with that because you've been a men
in college. We had a great rookie year and you
have a injury that set you back. How do you
deal with that when you've never had to deal with
anything like that? Well? Was it was a pretty complex guy.
(20:43):
You know. This is Steve Burwin. He was Carolina's starting
quarterback during most of Kruth's time with the team. Steve
throws a car I wanted to get his thoughts on
Kruth because Burline has been one of the few Panthers
players in or in all the years since who gave
me more than a no comment. Even when this saga
(21:04):
was hardest to talk about. He really kept to himself
most of the time. He didn't have what I would
consider a real outgoing personality. He wasn't a troublemaker, he
wasn't a a distraction, He wasn't a negative influence, you know,
on anybody. But he just kind of did his own thing,
you know. Covering Kruth back then, I found him eloquent,
(21:26):
but very guarded. Caruth's guarded nature made him conscious of appearances,
and I found of the story he wanted told. That
became clear in the longest conversation I ever had with
him while he was still playing for a piece that
I wrote about how players choose their jersey numbers. I
told him that most NFL players just learned to love
whatever number they are assigned as rookies, but Caruth said
(21:48):
he had given his jersey a lot of thought. He
said he was convinced that unless one of his numerals
was a one, the uniform made him look fat. By
his third season, he was on his fifth different number,
finally settling on eighty nine. It didn't have a one
in it, but he told me it had something even better.
No association with any other well known panther. Caru said
(22:10):
he wanted to make the number eighty nine famous all
on his own. By however, Caruth wasn't performing on the field,
and he wasn't impressing his teammates anymore either. Mentor remembers
the time. Soon after, Carolina hired former San Francisco head
coached George Seafort, who had won two Super Bowls with
the forty Niners. So Sefer comes in right new coats,
(22:34):
and he wanted to make Ray a part returning because
he saw the explosive ability of Array. Let's get the
ball in his hand, and and Ray wasn't about that
right because Ray didn't liked the physical part of the game. Okay,
you're asking me to have a whole lot of faith
and me catching his ball, and nobody's gonna knocked me
in my tin. And so he was a thinker. It's
(22:55):
too smart to say I want to go back. Small
wide receivers like Caruth and notorious for avoiding contact. But
Caruth's reluctance to get back on the field and help
the team, however, he could turn some heads in the
locker room. Man, see like you're doing it. Like I'm
not doing it, And so he put him back there,
toy man. He wouldn't even try to catch the ball.
Man it involved and follow down. That was the first
(23:17):
time I saw him come out of the shale of
hold of If I won't do that, I'm not doing this.
Even as his playing time decreased, Caruth was paid more
than thirty seven thousand dollars a game, but the money
didn't go as far as you might expect. He was
lavish with his relatives. He lost money in an investment scheme.
He had bought a two d forty thousand dollar house
in Charlotte, and he kept two cars, a white Ford
(23:39):
Expedition and a red Mercedes Bins. Most NFL contracts aren't
guaranteed beyond the signing bonus, so Caruth struggling on the
field cast doubt on his long term financial security. And
there was something else in n As a college student,
Carruth had fathered a son with his former high school
girlfriend in calif Conia, Michelle Wright. Here's what she told
(24:03):
A and E TV about the relationship back in two
thousand one. You know, we had a lot of breakups.
He show two sides. It's like one minute he would
let me on Tuesday hate, now Wednesday right had full
custody of their son, Ray Jr. Kruth had wanted the
baby to have his name, but he wasn't there for
the birth. It took a lawsuit to compel Kruth to
pay three thousand dollars a month in child support. He
(24:24):
was mad, He was very upset. He trying to fight
the suit. In my time covering Kruth, I felt like
much of his life was about sustaining a kind of adolescence.
He was in his early twenties, after all, and spent
entire days playing in video game tournaments with teammates. He
was handsome, polite, flirtatious, and very rich for his age,
(24:45):
and a parade of women followed him around. And see
that's the thing about it. Like what I watched shows
that tell his story. They portray all the women in
his life as if he was some big player running
through women and what not. This is Monique Young, who's
been a friend of Caruth's for the past twenty years.
He just had that type of personality that attracted cool people.
(25:09):
It wasn't a lot of female friends, just female friends.
You know, he had a lot of guy friends too. Well. Um, yeah,
I think he just has a much broader perspective on life. Um.
This is David Rudolph, who would later become the lead
defense lawyer for Ray Kruth. And if his voice sounds familiar,
it might be because soon after representing Carruth, Rudolph also
(25:31):
defended the writer Michael Peterson in a case that was
recently made into the Netflix series The Staircase. His focus
was pretty much on sports and football and women back
in the day. Uh. Caruth declined repeated invitations to speak
with me on the record for this project, but he
did authorize Rudolph to speak on his behalf. I think
(25:52):
he's learned a lot about himself. I think he's gotten
much more introspective, and you know, I think just general,
he has a has a healthy perspective on life. The
Panthers harnessed that charm, making him a guest speaker at
their annual football one oh one camp in the late
(26:13):
nineteen nineties, an artifact of the decade that many NFL
teams held at the time. It was basically man splaining
football to women. Regardless of how you might feel about
that marketing tactic, the events were popular. We have had
tickets from the very beginning season ticket holders. First time
they went to the Super Bowl, I couldn't stand it
(26:33):
and we had to go. One woman who attended Caruth's
class was a local doctor and Panthers fan named Dosha Hickey,
a name that will become important later in this story.
He was a nice, pleasant young man who's caught up
with the women and seemed to be having a good time. Talked,
you know, to everyone, answered the questions, joked around. In
(27:00):
June of Ray met Sharika at a pool party in
Charlotte that a number of pro athletes attended, and she
was pretty smitten with Ray. Carup when she met him
here sounder again. I think they must have had pretty
good conversation and wanted to continue the conversation a little
more privately. So for whatever reason, she decided she wanted
(27:22):
to go by her dad's house with him. So he
got to meet Ray the first day that Shaika actually
met him. Yeah, and uh, I think that was pretty
unusual because Dad's don't like anybody. So for everything Sharika
had going for her, she decided that higher education wasn't
(27:45):
the right fit. She had dropped out of Winston Salem State.
For the next several years, she worked mostly in real estate,
often inside the model homes and subdivisions, giving tours to
prospective buyers. She dreamed of one day owning her own
home and filling it with a husband and several children.
Sharika was a nurturer. Here's Valerie Brooks again. When I
(28:06):
first moved here, I became very ill and my family
lived in Atlanta. She literally moved in my house for
two weeks and it was around Christmas time, put my
Christmas tree up, cooked dinner. She literally kicked my husband
out of the bed and slept at that with me.
She said, I need to beat nearly in the middle
(28:27):
of the night in case something goes on Ray and
Sharika saw each other several times after that pool party,
but then fell out of touch. It wasn't until Sharika
relocated for a time to Atlanta that Gruth seemed to
sharpen his interest in her. It was like, when Sharika
was in Charlotte, Ray didn't really have time for her
because he was dating other people. Then all of a sudden,
(28:50):
once she came back to Charlotte for a visit, he
was interested again. So when she got back to Atlanta,
he was pursuing her just all the time, all the time.
And I do recall because Errika had just a little
page er when she was here, and all of a
sudden she had a sale phone, and that in was
(29:12):
a big deal. And it was like, well, you know,
Ray wants to be able to contact me when I'm
out of town. So I thought, wow, that's that was
awfully nice of him, you know, to do that. In
the years since, Kruth has downplayed their relationship. In a
fiery fifteen page letter he sent to Charlotte news station
(29:33):
w BTV this year, he made that clear. According to him,
they hooked up multiple times, but we're never in a relationship.
This is from w BtVS report. He writes, lust was
the tie that bound us, not like or love, and
neither one of us was ever guilty of believing anything
contrary to this. In November, Caruth reconnected with Sharika at
(29:55):
a teammate's birthday party held at a local strip club.
That's another part of this story that often hasn't made
the news coverage. Yes, he ended up seeing her at
the club, and he was very upset that she was dancing.
He was very upset that she was dancing. And well,
(30:18):
I was you know, this was in the nineties and
we're comes from a Christian perspective, and I'm like, this
is just not what you want to see your daughter do.
And it was so stigmatized and and associated with prostitution.
And she was like, Mom, you know, it's not like
on the other side of town where the guys are
(30:38):
all up grabbing you and whatever. She was like, let
me tell you my plan now. The plan is I
can make this much money and this much time, and
I can put down on my condom. And I knew
who who she was in her character, and in all honesty,
if I must say, when she started depositing all this money,
(31:01):
I was like, do they need uh mom for the dancers.
Do they have like a mom for them that can
kind of be there to oversee you and give you
a little positive energy before you go. I could be
I'm I'm good encourage her and she she's like, Mom, no,
you can't come down there. So we used to laugh
(31:24):
about that. Even at a strip club. However, familiar themes emerged.
I would like to add that some of the girls
were dancing to get drug money or to hook up
with guys and whatever. And this one particular girl had
a son and she was not able to give as
(31:45):
much attention to her son as she could have. Sharika
brought the girl and her son into her home to
live so she could keep an eye on the sun,
so I could keep an eye on the sun. So
I they sickly kept this little boy. And this girl
ended up turning her life around because Sharika just kept
(32:09):
feeding her positive things about her and she encouraged the girl.
And I still keep in contact with her. She's been
completely clear of drugs for probably ten years now, and
her son has grown and you know, she still tells
me of the inspiration that Sharika was to her. So
(32:33):
it wasn't all bad. Ray and Sharika saw each other
more and more after that night, and by April of nine,
she was pregnant. I later learned that soon after he
had arrived in Charlotte in Kruth had gotten another woman
named Amber Turner pregnant. At his insistence, Turner had aborted
(32:55):
that pregnancy, the fact that would loom large soon enough.
But we're at the time wasn't exactly shocking in a
pro sports locker room. But Sharika would do no such thing,
in part because she too had once made the wrenching
decision to have an abortion. I believe she did. No,
that that's not that's not she didn't speak of them together,
(33:18):
that that's why she was so adamant. But I I
know that's why she was very adamant for wanting to
keep this baby and wanting to have a family, to
be settled. She wanted to marry someone and have a child.
Sharika wanted that with Kruth. Perhaps she believed she saw
(33:42):
things in him no one else did, or maybe just
that she could change him. And in May of n
Sharika took her mother out to breakfast. She wanted to celebrate.
She was like, mom, I've got the best gift ever
for you for Mother's Day. She loved the original Pancake
House over at South Park, so we went there for breakfast.
(34:06):
And I still have the card she gave me. And
she's telling me that I'm gonna be a grandma, and
I'm like, I know your kid, and she was like,
no mom she had. She had taken about ten pregnancy tests,
and she and Ray had gone to the doctor together
(34:26):
to take another one to make sure that it was
so that she was pregnant. Just six months later, five
shots rang out in a dark Charlotte night. Only one
of those missed, and Sharika reached for the cell phone
Caruth had given her and identified him, in part by
the number eighty nine he had sought to make famous. Sam,
(34:54):
are your boyfriend the one you said that? What's their name? Okay,
what's the name. But Caruth didn't actually fire those shots.
And the man who did, I stood up for mine.
(35:16):
I said I did it because he made me do
it is angrier than ever? What did you feel about rate, Caruth? Now?
I'm Scott Fowler and this podcast is produced by Jeff
Signer and Rachel Wise and Davin Coburn at McClatchy Studios.
Find lots more about this case at Charlotte Observer dot
com slash Carruth, and for just thirty dollars, subscribe now
(35:40):
to a full year of the Observer's award winning sports
coverage at Charlotte Observer dot com slash sports Pass. Leave
us a rating and a review on Apple podcasts, and
you can reach me directly at s Fowler at Charlotte
Observer dot com. In chapter two, a journey into the
mind of a hit man, how much we take to
(36:01):
merible girl and make our board a baby I said,
I don't need a little girl. I killed it so much,
And a stunning new account of break Ruth's actions on
the night Sharika was shocked. That's just not how a
murder for hire takes place and what he says, uh,
and this is sort of new information, I guess is
A listener. Note this story contains adult language and some
graphic descriptions of violence. So this is the letter I
received from Ray Caruth. This is the first time I've
heard from him in almost twenty years. This was in February,
(00:22):
and it just showed up at the office, more or
less out of the blue. He writes, In every great
piece of literature, there's always a protagonist and an antagonist,
and unfortunately, in this very real life saga, the latter
applies to me, my one. Thank you need to leave.
(00:42):
Even where are you at? Pastime? Come on, listen to me.
You're on a wireless plan. I don't know where you are.
To tell me where you are, man. The letter continues,
with everyone so heavily entrenched in the past and the
tragedy that led us to this chapter, there's nothing I
could ever say or do to write my wrongs or
to no longer be quote the bad guy. Okay, where
(01:04):
are you shot at? Ma'am? I don't know. I was riving,
you were driving and someone shot you? Yeah? Did you
see the person that shot you? Okay, ma'm I'm a
connected tomatic. Continue to talk to the Caruth also said
in the letter, there are times in life, when no
matter how well intentioned the person may be, some things
just can't ever be fixed or made right. Player He
(01:38):
concludes by writing, this will be the very last time
I make any comments concerning the situation for my character.
This is regrettably where the story ends. It's time to
move on, and that was it. As many times as
I reached out to him, we haven't had an on
the record interview since the late and chinies. And as
(02:01):
far as Ray Carruth himself, I think a lot of
people kind of forgot about him. That's just how these
things go. I'll tell you what though. I've been at
the Charlotte Observer since nineteen four. That was a year
before North Carolina even had an NFL team. I had
covered a lot of things before that night in nineteen
and a whole lot of them since, but I have
(02:21):
never covered any other story like this. I'm Scott Fowler,
a reporter for the Observer, and for much of my
career I've covered a miracle that began just after midnight
on November sixteenth, nineteen nine, when twenty four year old
Sharika Adams was shot four times. It was a crime
(02:42):
that shocked the sports world and in the years since
that night, Panther's wide receiver, Ray Carruth, her on again
off again boyfriend, has become one of the most infamous
villains and sports history. Sharick Adams and his own son dead.
But like any story, the reality is far more complicated.
(03:03):
Some maintained Ruth has always been innocent, an NFL player
chasing starting whose career was cut short by a wrongful
imprisonment that has gone on for nearly twenty years. I
know others believe he should already have been put to death.
You know, I was like, the son of a bitch,
was what I wanted. For the past year, I've conducted
dozens of exclusive interviews, reviewed thousands of pages of documents,
(03:25):
and uncovered startling new revelations made public for the first
time here about the most notorious crime in Charlotte history.
I've talked to the families. She's telling me I'm gonna
be a grandma. The lawyers. I don't know if he
was innocent in the sense that he never did anything wrong,
but he hadn't hired these people to kill Sharrika Adam.
(03:47):
The police officers or warrant questions was do you think
Ray was involved, and she just made a question mark
the friends. They portrayed all the women in his life
as if he was some big player and the killer excreaming.
She was drowned and blood and we have to find
out where you are. What I found was a murder mystery,
a love story, the legacy of Karuth. This is chapter one,
(04:14):
Ray and Sharika, Ladies and gentlemen, Sunny and Share. I
was a really big fan of Sunny and Share. So
(04:35):
when I was thinking of a name for Sharika, I
wanted it to be unique because I knew she would
just be a very unique, really vibrant type of person.
This is Sandra Adams, Sharika's mother. For simplicity's sake, will
use their first name. She was almost about to be
named after the vacuum cleaner Eureka, and I thought, now,
(04:56):
I don't want her to be associated with dirt and
in and stuff, so I said, I'm gonna name her Share.
She was a v a m P vamp. You know,
she held her own and so I said, well, I
put the two together, the Share part and not Eureka,
but the Eco part. And so that's how she got
the name Shaika from Sunny and chair. For much of
(05:25):
the past two decades, those who didn't know Sharika personally
have known her only as a victim, the dying mother
of an unborn son, and the moaning but determined voice
from Money Forward. Is Your First Baby Today? That original
twelve minute recording lives on an old cassette tape inside
(05:48):
a dned box stashed deep in the basement of a
Charlotte courthouse. As far as I know, it's the only
recording of Sharika's voice that's ever been made public, and
it doesn't come close to encompassing a woman who, for
twenty four years dazzled almost everyone she met. It's like
when someone enters the room and you know that they're there.
(06:09):
She would command the room with her presence. Sonia Melton
met Sharika when they were both freshmen at Winston Salem
State University back in the fall of She just knew
instinctively what she wanted and what she was worth and
and to speak to the impact that she had on
(06:29):
my life. I remember we were sitting in a Wendy's
we It was a group of us had had gone
out to eat, and she was sitting to my right
and she looked at me and she was like, Wow,
you are so beautiful, And it just hit me in
such a way because she really was a beautiful inside
(06:51):
in our person and so when she said that to me,
I believed it. She knew everybody was gonna know who
she is. She knew that people were going to know
her name. Sharika grew up surrounded by family members and
friends who loved her. She had an unremarkable childhood, but
(07:12):
her appearance always stood out. She was petite with big
brown eyes. She often wore dresses to high school, and
her interest in fashion made her un natural for modeling
as a teenager. She had the looks that rival Halle Berry, Beyonce,
all the beautiful women out there. Sharika was really pretty,
(07:33):
but she wasn't aware of how pretty she was. This
is Valerie Brooks, who became fast friends with Sharika in
the nineteen nineties, despite a nearly twenty year age difference
between the two. They met while working in Charlotte's real
estate scene, and what Brooks remembers goes far beyond the
superficial descriptions of Sharika that filled news coverage at the time. Now,
(07:54):
I met Sharika about six months after I moved here.
On one of my autings, I was with my husband.
She was representing a builder at that time, and I
walked into the model home and she was sitting there
and she's like a breath of fresh air. And we
had great conversation and she said, I will show you
the city of Charlotte, and I said, okay, well that's great,
(08:17):
and we connected right then and there determination is a
theme that comes through in every conversation I've ever had
about Sharika. It was there from the moment she was
born in nineteen and King's Mountain, North Carolina, some thirty
miles west of Charlotte. I had Sharika over the summer
before my senior year in high school. Sharika's father was
(08:38):
Jeff Mooney, and we actually met because he was a
bus driver and I was a bus driver back in
the day the students, the students could drive the buses years.
Sharika very nearly arrived in the back of her grandfather's
light blue Chevy and Paula because my dad was farming.
We farmed and Dad had taking the tractor out to
(09:02):
dig up the field for planting. We told Dad it
was time to get me to the hospital. Well, he
was not gonna leave his tractor in the field, and
meanwhile I'm at home. I'm like, I really gotta go.
So he got out the good car and manytime, I'm like,
(09:23):
we need to really be getting on our way, and
Dad stops at all the red lights and I'm telling him,
I'm in the back seat, the baby is coming, and um,
I'm scared because I'm like, we're in a good car.
I cannot have this baby in the good car and
mess up his car. So I was holding Sharika in
(09:45):
so much so that when we got to the hospital,
they didn't even have time to call the doctor. She
just came out. She just came and she had a
spot in the crown of her head where I had
been holding her end so much. Hair would never grow
on that one little thumb spot right in the middle
(10:07):
of her hair, and it was mash dead. Sharika was
raised primarily by three people. In her early years, it
was Sandra's parents, Jack and Virginia Adams, and then it
was Sandra herself once Sharika moved to Charlotte before starting
the third grade. Growing up, one of Sharika's closest friends
was Kim Lark. She had even lived with Sandra and
(10:27):
Sharika for a while when the two girls were teenagers.
Best friends forever, and it's true we are best friends
and sisters were absolutely ever. As we talked, Lark reached
into her purse and pulled out an old photo. It
was March Friday, March thirty one, n nine and I
wrote spring break on the bottom of it. I don't
know where we were going. I don't think we were
(10:48):
going anywhere. We just shows the two of them at home,
playing dress up, with Sharika deciding what both of them
should wear, dreaming about a future of limitless promise. She
always thought Charlotte was us small, a small place, and
um Sharika loved butterflies. In my mind, I think that
she thought the butterfly as a way of I'm gonna
get out of here one day. I'm gonna go and
(11:08):
do the things that I want to do, and I
think flying would help her do that. At least two
people hit when gunfire breaks out in the South Sacrato
parking lot. As Sharika grew up in North Carolina, a
young man on the other side of the country was
making a name for himself as well, Ray Lamar Theotis Wiggins,
(11:32):
with the last name courtesy of his biological father, but
as he grew up in Sacramento, raised by his mother,
Theodrey and his stepfather, Samuel Kruth, Ray soon took the
last name of Kruth instead. The fourth Homa started in
oak Park this year. The cities Karuth grew up surrounded
by crime and the Oak Park section on the south
side of Sacramento. These arrests are part of a larger
(11:54):
effort to make the Oak Park neighborhood save, a new
urgency for city leaders to do something about the ongoing
violence in Oak Park. But he never had problems with
the law. The Audrey Caruth his mother was a dominant
force in his life, who once described herself as the
quote piranha protecting her young guppy, and maybe that's still
true today. The Audrey declined to participate in this project,
(12:17):
but earlier this year, when I wrote about that letter
her son had sent me, I did receive this voicemail
from her. Mr fought this, Theodre crup and I just
called to tell you, thank you. Pretty story that you did.
It was so much more softer than us seen in
the town. I just want to say, think I appreciate. Okay,
(12:38):
I might disagree with her assessment of the article, but
I can't argue with a mother's unconditional love for her child.
Towards the end of high school, as his mom came
to me and says, tell me what to do to
get Ray to the next level. This is Dave Hoskins,
who's coached high school football in the Sacramento area for
more than fifty years. He was Caruth's head coach for
(13:00):
three seasons at Valley High. I only let his dad
one time. The dad walked out on the practice field
and he said, will you take care of my son
and make sure that he gets him to college. I
said yeah, I said that's part of my job. He said,
thank you very much. She turned around and disappeared on
the field. Karuth's performance spoke for itself enough for Hoskins
(13:23):
to promote Keruth to the varsity as a sophomore. I've
never coached a kid as fast as he is. He
was only a sophomore, and so I brought him up
to the varsity. And this poor little kid was covering
red and rage just blew by him so fast, and
the kid was shaking his head. So we through the
(13:45):
kid from the schools. Eh, don't feel bad. There's not
many people who are going to stay with this kid.
And he goes Really, I said, really. Karuth didn't smoke, drink,
or use drugs. That made him a shining star in
his neighborhood, matched only by his growing stardom on the
football field. Oak Park has devoured in plain far too
(14:09):
many promising young lives, temptations of the streets and drugs
and no way to get out. But there are success stories,
and for a long time, Ray Kruth was a success
story at Oak Park. Joe Davidson is in his thirtieth
year as a sports reporter for the Sacramento b But
I saw him play a couple of games. I thought, Wow,
you know there's Gonda may be an NFL guy. I mean,
just one of those wild performers. You know. The coaches
(14:32):
that played against them said, this is as good guys
we've ever seen around here. Now, just can't handle his speed.
In high school, Caruth never excelled the same way academically,
but Hoskin says the Audrey knew how to keep her
son on track. She worked at Costco. She had Ray
collecting carts out in the heat. I remember her telling him,
(14:52):
if you don't take care of your grades, this is
what we're gonna do for the rest of your life.
With that incentive, Davidson remembers Kruth taking every lost personally
on the field and off. Ray always had a chip
on his shoulder against the Sacramon Walby. When he felt
like he should have been the Sacramono By Player of
the Year as a senior year, we gave it instead
to James Kidd of a rival program at Glow High School.
(15:14):
He was still an All Mental first team player All
City got two years in a row, but that was
kind of a driving force. He took things personal and
he was upset about it. As local accolades piled up,
national college recruiting trips followed. I was a volunteer coach
and a recruiting weekend and Ray came up and he
(15:35):
had a suit in a briefcase. John Embree, then an
assistant coach at the University of Colorado, remembers the first
time he met Caru and Uh. I remember thinking that's odd,
you know, because guys when they come unto recruiting trips,
you know they want to have fun. They do all
this stuff and here to him, he said it was
a business trip. So he's dressing accordingly. And then whenever
(15:59):
he had meetings with people on campus, could be the academics,
could be in the weight room. He had a list
of questions and he had checklists and things he wanted
to know about, and he wrote down the answers. I
mean he was very meticulous about it, pulling papers out
of that briefcase. And yeah, he had a little notepad
and added all of me. It was it really was impressive.
(16:19):
It made you want to get him even more. Ruth's
life had always revolved around football. A preschool teacher had
once assigned him to draw what he wanted to be
when he grew up. Kruth sketched himself between two goal posts,
wearing a football helmet with his arms raised in trying
so touchdown. But unlike many big time players, Caruth wasn't
(16:42):
particularly big. He was listed at only five ft eleven
and a d nine pounds, but he was extremely fast.
So we've got the rules that could fly, and you've
got which helped convince Colorado to offer him a full
ride scholarship. Let's it come in nine to put him
on the field during one of the most memorable plays
(17:04):
in college football history. He's got three people down there.
The miracle in Michigan down incredible. Kruth enjoyed his celebrity
on campus, but that's not unusual for an athlete. What's
more memorable to his coaches is the way he was
also capable of using it for good. You know, there
was a time we found out after the fact. Uh,
(17:26):
during one of the spring games, this kid came up
to him. Here's Embrie again, and so they had a
little autograph session or something, and and the kid says,
you're my favorite player. He goes something about how it
was his birthday and how excited was he got to
meet Ray, and Ray found out the kid had a
party the next weekend, and he showed up with a
(17:50):
present for the kid. Caruth became an All Conference wide
receiver at Colorado and even earned some All America notice too.
Back then, he was still several years away from meeting Sharika,
but he once told an interviewer while at Colorado something
that made Ray and Shaika seemed like a natural fit.
No matter what I do, Karuth said, I've decided I
(18:11):
want to be famous. With the first pick in the
draft n the Carolina Panthers, coming off at twelve and
fourth season and a deep run in the playoffs, drafted
Caruth in the first round seven overall. His potential also
seemed limitless. Fast man he was. He was a track guy.
(18:32):
I feel like he was a track guy playing football.
Mike Mentor was a safety who played against kruthin college
Asler's passed and Mentor redit fucked in. Mike Mentor and
then was taken by the Panthers in the second round
of that same nineteen draft. You know, both of these
small guys, we're like, we're both big guys, and so
(18:53):
all these similarities kind of gravitated us too to hang out,
and so we spent a lot of time together. In
the first year, Caruth was signed to a four year,
three point seven million dollar contract that included a one
point three million dollars signing bonus, shocking them toward two
and he made the NFL's All Rookie team, catching forty
(19:13):
four passes for five hundred and forty five yards and
four touchdowns. He says called into the amazone touchdown Ray Carol.
The Panthers made him a starter Carol at the fort
the first round. They finished the season seven and nine.
But we're excited to pair Carruth with Mousin Mohammed, another
young receiver everyone called Moose as their primary pass catchers
(19:36):
for years to come. We saw the talent and you're like, oh,
this guy is gonna be good. That's how you get
respect in the locker room. It's it's not about what
you say, it's about what you do. And and this
guy was producing. And so you have Moose on on
one side, and he was the young emerging right receiver
and now you got to speak out on the other side.
(19:57):
I mean, that's the dream of the NFL offensive coordinator,
right is. I got these two guys. So are you
like we're building something? That rookie year was Kruth's best
in the NFL. A broken right foot at the start
of sidelined and for the year. He returned for the
(20:17):
first five games of the nine season before getting hurt again.
He never scored another touchdown in the league. First of all,
I think it's it messes with you personally, you know, psychologically,
how you deal with that because you've been a men
in college. We had a great rookie year and you
have a injury that set you back. How do you
deal with that when you've never had to deal with
anything like that? Well? Was it was a pretty complex guy.
(20:43):
You know. This is Steve Burwin. He was Carolina's starting
quarterback during most of Kruth's time with the team. Steve
throws a car I wanted to get his thoughts on
Kruth because Burline has been one of the few Panthers
players in or in all the years since who gave
me more than a no comment. Even when this saga
(21:04):
was hardest to talk about. He really kept to himself
most of the time. He didn't have what I would
consider a real outgoing personality. He wasn't a troublemaker, he
wasn't a a distraction, He wasn't a negative influence, you know,
on anybody. But he just kind of did his own thing,
you know. Covering Kruth back then, I found him eloquent,
(21:26):
but very guarded. Caruth's guarded nature made him conscious of appearances,
and I found of the story he wanted told. That
became clear in the longest conversation I ever had with
him while he was still playing for a piece that
I wrote about how players choose their jersey numbers. I
told him that most NFL players just learned to love
whatever number they are assigned as rookies, but Caruth said
(21:48):
he had given his jersey a lot of thought. He
said he was convinced that unless one of his numerals
was a one, the uniform made him look fat. By
his third season, he was on his fifth different number,
finally settling on eighty nine. It didn't have a one
in it, but he told me it had something even better.
No association with any other well known panther. Caru said
(22:10):
he wanted to make the number eighty nine famous all
on his own. By however, Caruth wasn't performing on the field,
and he wasn't impressing his teammates anymore either. Mentor remembers
the time. Soon after, Carolina hired former San Francisco head
coached George Seafort, who had won two Super Bowls with
the forty Niners. So Sefer comes in right new coats,
(22:34):
and he wanted to make Ray a part returning because
he saw the explosive ability of Array. Let's get the
ball in his hand, and and Ray wasn't about that
right because Ray didn't liked the physical part of the game. Okay,
you're asking me to have a whole lot of faith
and me catching his ball, and nobody's gonna knocked me
in my tin. And so he was a thinker. It's
(22:55):
too smart to say I want to go back. Small
wide receivers like Caruth and notorious for avoiding contact. But
Caruth's reluctance to get back on the field and help
the team, however, he could turn some heads in the
locker room. Man, see like you're doing it. Like I'm
not doing it, And so he put him back there,
toy man. He wouldn't even try to catch the ball.
Man it involved and follow down. That was the first
(23:17):
time I saw him come out of the shale of
hold of If I won't do that, I'm not doing this.
Even as his playing time decreased, Caruth was paid more
than thirty seven thousand dollars a game, but the money
didn't go as far as you might expect. He was
lavish with his relatives. He lost money in an investment scheme.
He had bought a two d forty thousand dollar house
in Charlotte, and he kept two cars, a white Ford
(23:39):
Expedition and a red Mercedes Bins. Most NFL contracts aren't
guaranteed beyond the signing bonus, so Caruth struggling on the
field cast doubt on his long term financial security. And
there was something else in n As a college student,
Carruth had fathered a son with his former high school
girlfriend in calif Conia, Michelle Wright. Here's what she told
(24:03):
A and E TV about the relationship back in two
thousand one. You know, we had a lot of breakups.
He show two sides. It's like one minute he would
let me on Tuesday hate, now Wednesday right had full
custody of their son, Ray Jr. Kruth had wanted the
baby to have his name, but he wasn't there for
the birth. It took a lawsuit to compel Kruth to
pay three thousand dollars a month in child support. He
(24:24):
was mad, He was very upset. He trying to fight
the suit. In my time covering Kruth, I felt like
much of his life was about sustaining a kind of adolescence.
He was in his early twenties, after all, and spent
entire days playing in video game tournaments with teammates. He
was handsome, polite, flirtatious, and very rich for his age,
(24:45):
and a parade of women followed him around. And see
that's the thing about it. Like what I watched shows
that tell his story. They portray all the women in
his life as if he was some big player running
through women and what not. This is Monique Young, who's
been a friend of Caruth's for the past twenty years.
He just had that type of personality that attracted cool people.
(25:09):
It wasn't a lot of female friends, just female friends.
You know, he had a lot of guy friends too. Well. Um, yeah,
I think he just has a much broader perspective on life. Um.
This is David Rudolph, who would later become the lead
defense lawyer for Ray Kruth. And if his voice sounds familiar,
it might be because soon after representing Carruth, Rudolph also
(25:31):
defended the writer Michael Peterson in a case that was
recently made into the Netflix series The Staircase. His focus
was pretty much on sports and football and women back
in the day. Uh. Caruth declined repeated invitations to speak
with me on the record for this project, but he
did authorize Rudolph to speak on his behalf. I think
(25:52):
he's learned a lot about himself. I think he's gotten
much more introspective, and you know, I think just general,
he has a has a healthy perspective on life. The
Panthers harnessed that charm, making him a guest speaker at
their annual football one oh one camp in the late
(26:13):
nineteen nineties, an artifact of the decade that many NFL
teams held at the time. It was basically man splaining
football to women. Regardless of how you might feel about
that marketing tactic, the events were popular. We have had
tickets from the very beginning season ticket holders. First time
they went to the Super Bowl, I couldn't stand it
(26:33):
and we had to go. One woman who attended Caruth's
class was a local doctor and Panthers fan named Dosha Hickey,
a name that will become important later in this story.
He was a nice, pleasant young man who's caught up
with the women and seemed to be having a good time. Talked,
you know, to everyone, answered the questions, joked around. In
(27:00):
June of Ray met Sharika at a pool party in
Charlotte that a number of pro athletes attended, and she
was pretty smitten with Ray. Carup when she met him
here sounder again. I think they must have had pretty
good conversation and wanted to continue the conversation a little
more privately. So for whatever reason, she decided she wanted
(27:22):
to go by her dad's house with him. So he
got to meet Ray the first day that Shaika actually
met him. Yeah, and uh, I think that was pretty
unusual because Dad's don't like anybody. So for everything Sharika
had going for her, she decided that higher education wasn't
(27:45):
the right fit. She had dropped out of Winston Salem State.
For the next several years, she worked mostly in real estate,
often inside the model homes and subdivisions, giving tours to
prospective buyers. She dreamed of one day owning her own
home and filling it with a husband and several children.
Sharika was a nurturer. Here's Valerie Brooks again. When I
(28:06):
first moved here, I became very ill and my family
lived in Atlanta. She literally moved in my house for
two weeks and it was around Christmas time, put my
Christmas tree up, cooked dinner. She literally kicked my husband
out of the bed and slept at that with me.
She said, I need to beat nearly in the middle
(28:27):
of the night in case something goes on Ray and
Sharika saw each other several times after that pool party,
but then fell out of touch. It wasn't until Sharika
relocated for a time to Atlanta that Gruth seemed to
sharpen his interest in her. It was like, when Sharika
was in Charlotte, Ray didn't really have time for her
because he was dating other people. Then all of a sudden,
(28:50):
once she came back to Charlotte for a visit, he
was interested again. So when she got back to Atlanta,
he was pursuing her just all the time, all the time.
And I do recall because Errika had just a little
page er when she was here, and all of a
sudden she had a sale phone, and that in was
(29:12):
a big deal. And it was like, well, you know,
Ray wants to be able to contact me when I'm
out of town. So I thought, wow, that's that was
awfully nice of him, you know, to do that. In
the years since, Kruth has downplayed their relationship. In a
fiery fifteen page letter he sent to Charlotte news station
(29:33):
w BTV this year, he made that clear. According to him,
they hooked up multiple times, but we're never in a relationship.
This is from w BtVS report. He writes, lust was
the tie that bound us, not like or love, and
neither one of us was ever guilty of believing anything
contrary to this. In November, Caruth reconnected with Sharika at
(29:55):
a teammate's birthday party held at a local strip club.
That's another part of this story that often hasn't made
the news coverage. Yes, he ended up seeing her at
the club, and he was very upset that she was dancing.
He was very upset that she was dancing. And well,
(30:18):
I was you know, this was in the nineties and
we're comes from a Christian perspective, and I'm like, this
is just not what you want to see your daughter do.
And it was so stigmatized and and associated with prostitution.
And she was like, Mom, you know, it's not like
on the other side of town where the guys are
(30:38):
all up grabbing you and whatever. She was like, let
me tell you my plan now. The plan is I
can make this much money and this much time, and
I can put down on my condom. And I knew
who who she was in her character, and in all honesty,
if I must say, when she started depositing all this money,
(31:01):
I was like, do they need uh mom for the dancers.
Do they have like a mom for them that can
kind of be there to oversee you and give you
a little positive energy before you go. I could be
I'm I'm good encourage her and she she's like, Mom, no,
you can't come down there. So we used to laugh
(31:24):
about that. Even at a strip club. However, familiar themes emerged.
I would like to add that some of the girls
were dancing to get drug money or to hook up
with guys and whatever. And this one particular girl had
a son and she was not able to give as
(31:45):
much attention to her son as she could have. Sharika
brought the girl and her son into her home to
live so she could keep an eye on the sun,
so I could keep an eye on the sun. So
I they sickly kept this little boy. And this girl
ended up turning her life around because Sharika just kept
(32:09):
feeding her positive things about her and she encouraged the girl.
And I still keep in contact with her. She's been
completely clear of drugs for probably ten years now, and
her son has grown and you know, she still tells
me of the inspiration that Sharika was to her. So
(32:33):
it wasn't all bad. Ray and Sharika saw each other
more and more after that night, and by April of nine,
she was pregnant. I later learned that soon after he
had arrived in Charlotte in Kruth had gotten another woman
named Amber Turner pregnant. At his insistence, Turner had aborted
(32:55):
that pregnancy, the fact that would loom large soon enough.
But we're at the time wasn't exactly shocking in a
pro sports locker room. But Sharika would do no such thing,
in part because she too had once made the wrenching
decision to have an abortion. I believe she did. No,
that that's not that's not she didn't speak of them together,
(33:18):
that that's why she was so adamant. But I I
know that's why she was very adamant for wanting to
keep this baby and wanting to have a family, to
be settled. She wanted to marry someone and have a child.
Sharika wanted that with Kruth. Perhaps she believed she saw
(33:42):
things in him no one else did, or maybe just
that she could change him. And in May of n
Sharika took her mother out to breakfast. She wanted to celebrate.
She was like, mom, I've got the best gift ever
for you for Mother's Day. She loved the original Pancake
House over at South Park, so we went there for breakfast.
(34:06):
And I still have the card she gave me. And
she's telling me that I'm gonna be a grandma, and
I'm like, I know your kid, and she was like,
no mom she had. She had taken about ten pregnancy tests,
and she and Ray had gone to the doctor together
(34:26):
to take another one to make sure that it was
so that she was pregnant. Just six months later, five
shots rang out in a dark Charlotte night. Only one
of those missed, and Sharika reached for the cell phone
Caruth had given her and identified him, in part by
the number eighty nine he had sought to make famous. Sam,
(34:54):
are your boyfriend the one you said that? What's their name? Okay,
what's the name. But Caruth didn't actually fire those shots.
And the man who did, I stood up for mine.
(35:16):
I said I did it because he made me do
it is angrier than ever? What did you feel about rate, Caruth? Now?
I'm Scott Fowler and this podcast is produced by Jeff
Signer and Rachel Wise and Davin Coburn at McClatchy Studios.
Find lots more about this case at Charlotte Observer dot
com slash Carruth, and for just thirty dollars, subscribe now
(35:40):
to a full year of the Observer's award winning sports
coverage at Charlotte Observer dot com slash sports Pass. Leave
us a rating and a review on Apple podcasts, and
you can reach me directly at s Fowler at Charlotte
Observer dot com. In chapter two, a journey into the
mind of a hit man, how much we take to
(36:01):
merible girl and make our board a baby I said,
I don't need a little girl. I killed it so much,
And a stunning new account of break Ruth's actions on
the night Sharika was shocked. That's just not how a
murder for hire takes place and what he says, uh,
and this is sort of new information, I guess is
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