194: Trapped and Betrayed: The Murder of Cherica Adams

Cherica Adams was joyful and magnetic. She was a beautiful 24-year-old who had worked as an exotic dancer and was establishing a career in real estate. She had done some acting, too, and appeared briefly in the movie House Party 3. Cherica became pregnant and appeared to have accepted that she would be a single mother. The father of her baby, professional football player Rae Carruth, was not happy about the baby to be and wanted her to get an abortion. With Cherica, as with his first child’s mother, Carruth did not embrace his role as a parent. Carruth’s aversion to having children was no secret. In fact, he was very vocal about it. He reportedly joked about killing his children so he wouldn’t have to pay the mothers any money for their support.   The moments following the shooting that took Cherica’s life are immortalized in her 911 call. She’d been shot four times. She was crying, struggling to speak with the 911 operator, with her life leaving her body as she bled from her wounds.   The facts are shocking. This was a murder for hire, a plan by a cold-blooded man to kill his girlfriend and his unborn son. Cherica would speak for herself in court, through the 911 call recording and notes she wrote in the hospital. But justice in this case came with more difficulty than you might expect.