Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This NFL Football Player Is In Prison Now - The Rae Carruth story

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Rae Carruth, an NFL football player for the Carolina Panthers, murdered his girlfriend Cherica Adams

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After three months, plan auto renews and 1299 a month, terms apply. The way this guy fumbled, a $3.7 million bag is insane. Now his name is Ray, and he's 23, and he's a really good football player in college. And one day, the Carolina Panthers draft him, and he signs a $3.7 million contract with them, and bro is suddenly on fire. So he moves to North Carolina, and he starts playing for the Panthers, and the dude is blowing up. He's finally making money.

The man is on trading cards. It doesn't get much cooler than that. Plus, he's semi-famous now, so he's catching the attention of a lot of single women. The ladies love Ray. But one day, he meets this real estate agent, her name's Sharika. And Ray thinks Sharika is foin, and she thinks he's foin. So they flirt and they hit it off, and eventually they start dating.

And they date for a while, and from the outside, everything appears to be going, pretty well. But then, one day, Sharika drops a bomb on Ray. She's pregnant. And despite how Ray may be acting on the outside, on the inside, he's panicking. He is not ready for this. I mean, he already has one kid with another woman and he doesn't want yet another one. Plus, child support is really expensive. For him, it's like $3,000 a month. He doesn't want to pay that. So clearly he has a lot of feelings about this. Now, I'm not sure if he communicates these concerns to Sharika or not, I assume he does. I assume he goes to her and he's like, yay, you're pregnant. Do you need me to like drive you to the clinic or something? But I have no proof of what their conversation was actually like. Regardless,

Sharika is keeping the baby. She's talking to people around her about it. She's going to her doctor's appointments. She's attending birthing classes. And to his credit, Ray goes with her to some of these birthing classes. So it seems like he's trying to be involved, and maybe he's trying to make this all work. Until. One day, Ray decides, actually, this isn't going to work for him. He doesn't want another baby. So secretly, he comes up with a plan to take care of this problem for good. He's going to hire a hitman to unalive Sharika so that she can't have the baby. Here's the problem with that, though, other than it's murder. Ray doesn't really know. know any hit men? I mean, he's a professional football player. Why would he know any hit men?

But he does happen to know a guy who might be willing to do it. This guy, Watkins. And Watkins is a nightclub manager, and he's kind of a shady dude, so he seems like he would be just the kind of guy who would unalive a pregnant woman for money. So Ray goes to Watkins, and he's like, hey, will you help me assassinate my pregnant girlfriend? And Watkins is like, uh, I don't know. And Ray's like, I'll pay you $5,000, and Watkins is like, I. Which, $5,000 for a hitman seems really inexpensive. Like, I feel like they normally charge way more than that.

So anyway, Ray continues pretending to be a supportive partner when he's around Sharika. He's like being all attentive, and he's buying clothes for the baby and stuff like that. Meanwhile, on the side, he and Watkins are trying to figure out exactly how this hit is going to go down. And so, some time passes. And at this point in the story, Sharika is eight months pregnant. Here's actually a photo of her pregnant. And one night, Ray decides to take Sharika out on a date. He's going to take her to the movie theater to see a movie.

They're going to see The Bone Collector with Denzel Washington. So they go there and for whatever reason, they meet up in separate cars. And so they watch the Bone Collector and once the movie's over, she gets in her car to drive home and he gets in his car to drive home. And so Sharika's in her car and she's driving behind. Ray's car. When suddenly Ray starts to slow down and this forces her to slow down. And that is when boom, a car full of goons pulls up next to her right along the side of her, boxing her in. And Watkins is in the back seat of that car. And they're all still driving like this is all happening while in motion. And so Watkins, he pulls out a pew-phew and he points it out the window right at Sharika's

head and he pulls the trigger. Blam! Blam! And the bullets fly and they hit Sharika four times. And then that car speeds away. Now, Sharika's hit, and she looks up to Ray's car for help. But Ray, he doesn't stop and help at all. He speeds away, too. And so she's like, what the fuck? Because why would he just suddenly leave her there after she was shot? And that's when she realizes that Ray must have been in on it.

And so she pulls her car over to a nearby lawn, and she calls 911. And she's like, I've been shot, and I'm eight months pregnant. Ma'am, can you give me any information about what kind of car it was? No. Where's your husband? I don't have one. Or your boyfriend, the one you said that was with him. He was in the car in front of me and he closed down and somebody put up and said, I can't do this.

And then where did he go? He did what? Okay. All right. What's his name? Blakelinson. And yeah, on this call, she's very clear with 911 that Ray was with her and that he fled the scene when she got shot. And by the way, here's a picture of the crime scene.

If you want to see it, you can see the four bullet holes in the glass here. Yeah, that's crazy. And so anyway, minutes later, paramedics show up and an ambulance rushes Sharika to the hospital. And there, she's still alive, but she's in critical condition. And at some point, one of the nurses taken care of her, she asks her what happened with the shooting. Now, Sharika, she can't really talk because she's got tubes in her mouth. So the nurse gives her a pen and paper to write on, and Sharika starts writing notes about the shooting. And these notes not only describe what happened, they implicate her a pen and

Ray in the crime as well. But then, sometime after writing the notes, unfortunately, she falls into a coma. And doctors have to perform an emergency C-section on her to deliver her baby, because remember, she's still pregnant. And so anyway, based on the 911 call and the notes Sharika wrote, Ray is now a suspect in the shooting. And so, bam, police go and they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And later, bam, they also arrest Watkins. Here's his mugshot. And they also arrest the two Other guys that were in the car with Watkins here are their mug shots, but no one really gives a fuck about them. Anyway, so about a month later, Shariqa, she's still in a coma. And unfortunately, sadly, she ends up passing away. Meanwhile, Ray is not in jail anymore. He's

actually out on bail and he's waiting for his trial. And when the time comes that he's supposed to turn himself back in, he doesn't do that. Instead, he's like, fuck the police. And he flees, and he goes on the run. And he actually flees from North Carolina over to West Memphis, Tennessee. But now that he's crossed state lines, the FBI has got to get involved in all this. And it doesn't take much work

because about four days later, the FBI tracks Ray to a motel in West Memphis and he's not checked into a motel room. Instead, the FBI finds him in the parking lot hiding in the trunk of a car and bam, they arrest him again. Here's his mugshot again. And so he goes to try to try,

and he's found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and he's sentenced to a minimum of 18 years in prison. While Watkins takes a plea deal and he gets 50 years in prison. And in case you were wondering, Sharika's baby that they had to deliver via C-section, he was born prematurely and had been deprived of oxygen because his mom was in critical condition. And he ends up having cerebral palsy

and was only expected to live a few weeks. This is actually a photo of him. But luckily, he ends up. up living much longer than that. Sharika's mother actually took him in and she raised him and he went on to graduate high school and he's now alive and well in his 20s. And here he is in real life next to Sharika's mom.