For the first time in nearly two decades, Rae Carruth is speaking publicly. And he wants to say sorry to the mother of the woman whose death he orchestrated.
Rae Carruth (AP)
Carruth, a former Carolina Panthers wide receiver, sent a handwritten, 16-page letter to a news station and granted an interview because it’s the only way he thinks he can apologize, the only way he thinks he has a chance to have a relationship with his son.
Carruth has not been heard from since 2001, when he was convicted of conspiring to murder his seven-months-pregnant girlfriend, Cherica Adams, and was sentenced to 18 to 24 years in prison.
Seventeen years later, the now-44-year-old is scheduled to be released in the fall. His son, Chancellor Lee Adams, was born with cerebral palsy and is being taken care of by Cherica’s mother, Saundra Adams. Carruth said he has written to Saundra before and received no response. So he released the open letter to WBTV in Charlotte.
“I’m apologizing for the loss of her daughter,” Carruth told the station, not going into detail but taking some responsibility. “I’m apologizing for the impairment of my son. I feel responsible for everything that happened. And I just want her to know that truly I am sorry for everything.”
Everything, police say, is arranging a murder in which he hired a hitman to shoot Cherica, pregnant with Chancellor, to get out of paying child support. Cherica was shot four times on Nov. 16, 1999, and rushed to the hospital, where she would later die. Chancellor was born via an emergency Caesarean section, and is now 18.
Carruth says he’s a changed man and wants custody — or, at least, a relationship with Chancellor. The two have met only twice, Carruth told the station, and early in the child’s life. But Carruth has followed him through media clippings.
“I feel like if I did it in the open, it would put an end to the lies,” Carruth said from Sampson Correctional Institution in Clinton, North Carolina. “If I say publicly, ‘Ms. Adams, I apologize, Ms. Adams, I take responsibility for what happened,’ that she can no longer get on television and do an interview and say Rae has never apologized to me.”
Saundra Adams told the Charlotte Observer that his open apology is a step in the right direction, but that he will never raise Chancellor.
“I’ve forgiven Rae already, but to have any type of relationship with him, there does have to be some repentance,” Saundra Adams said. “And I think this opens the door. But I can say definitively he’s not ever going to have custody of Chancellor. Chancellor will be raised either by me or, after I’m gone, by someone else who loves him and who knows him. He will never be raised by a stranger — someone he doesn’t know and who tried to kill him.”
Carruth was a 1997 first-round pick out of Colorado and played three seasons with the Panthers, catching four touchdowns for 804 yards in 20 games.
“If I could change anything, I’d change the whole situation,” Carruth said. “[Chancellor’s] mother would still be here and I wouldn’t be where I’m at. So that’s what I’d want to change. I want the incident to never have happened at all.”
By MARK W. SANCHEZ
Source: NY Post
