

- Danielle Belton -


Places Where Rae Carruth Can Go, Starting With Hell

Rae Carruth (Jeff Siner/AP Images)
Rae Carruth (Jeff Siner/AP Images)

Rae Carruth could cure cancer, reduce the price of cable to under $20 a month, end homelessness and discover an ancient vibranium shield proving that Wakanda is real, and it will now and forever be fuck Rae Carruth.


For those too young to know, or those too old to care to remember how Carruth earned a special place in hell, let’s back up to Nov. 16, 1999. Carruth was a wide receiver with the Carolina Panthers and was casually dating Cherica Adams, who was seven months pregnant with Carruth’s child, which he wanted her to abort. Adams refused. So Carruth smooth-talked her into going to see The Bone Collector. Adams didn’t feel right. She called her mother, who told her not to go. She went anyway.

After the movie, Carruth wanted to go back to Adams’ place. So off they went, Carruth in his white Ford Expedition and Adams following in her black BMW. Carruth came to an abrupt halt on an abandoned road when the hit men whom he hired pulled up alongside Adams and opened fire. Adams survived long enough to tell police that Carruth set the whole thing up. She died and her son, Chancellor Lee Adams, lived, but not without difficulties. For some time he didn’t get enough oxygen and blood to his brain and was born with cerebral palsy.


Carruth was sentenced to 18-24 years in prison for his role in Adams’ death. Adams’ mother, Saundra Adams, was given custody of her grandson and has raised him, taken him to endless doctor’s appointments, stayed up countless hours watching him sleep.

Chancellor Lee Adams turned 18 in November. And his father, the father who wanted him dead, is set to get out of prison in October 2018.

And now, after the role that he played in the murder of his son’s mother, after the endless bills and constant worry that comes with raising a son with special needs, Rae Carruth, the same man who pulled off shortly after watching the men he hired dumping bullets into his baby mama’s car, has written a letter to his son’s grandmother, the mother of the woman he had killed, claiming that she is soiling his name.




Carruth writes:

Ms. Adams, the story of how you lost your daughter; how Chancellor came into this world; and the way that he has gone on to endure, thrive and overachieve with you by his side is so heart wrenching and inspiring on its own, that there isn’t any need for embellishment or lies.


Umm, Rae Carruth, if Ms. Adams wants to make up all the lies in Lieville about you, guess what? You earned it! You triple-earned it. You deserve it [the Weeknd voice]. You don’t have a truth anymore. You gave that up on Nov. 16, 1999. In fact, inmates shouldn’t be allowed to write their victims or have their pleas for understanding publicized.

According to Yahoo! Sports, Carruth has grown so frustrated with the stories about his character and statements made by Saundra Adams that he sent a letter to news stations so that he could point out that he has tried to reach out to her.


You can read his letter here, but I suggest that you don’t bother. It starts with self-deprecating humility, only to be usurped by his inability to understand that he killed Adams’ daughter and inflicted irreversible damage on his son. The letter alone should be grounds to hold him in prison. Some people aren’t redeemable, and Rae Carruth still doesn’t get it.

And if you haven’t put your fist through your computer yet, just know that Carruth actually believes not only that he should be able to have a relationship with his son but that he’s entitled to it.


I want Rae Carruth to become the first inmate who refuses to leave prison for the good of us all. I want him to just volunteer to stay in prison for the good of his son. I want him to take a long walk off a short pier and never come back. I believe in rehabilitation, but this letter proves that Carruth hasn’t changed; he’s still the self-involved, narcissistic shit heel that thought he could orchestrate the murder of his child’s mother and get away with it.

Carruth son’s lives on despite Carruth’s best efforts to take his life, and he’s doing just fine with his grandmother. Hopefully, Carruth realizes that the best thing he could do for his son is to never come around him. Ever. He lost that privilege on Nov. 16, 1999.


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I don’t get why anyone involved in an actively planned murder ever needs to be allowed to walk free again.

I’m not saying they should be killed or mistreated, and I’m not saying exonerating evidence should be ignored if it ever appears, but how do you pay the debt of a life?

If we don’t want the state executing people for a variety of reasons, isn’t the only other thing you can take of roughly equivalent value their freedom for good?

I can understand 18-24 years (his sentence) for a crime of passion or gross negligence. That’s enough time that this person pays a meaningful price and the crime will stick with them for their entire lives.

But can you ever be reasonably sure you rehabilitated a person who, not in a fit of rage or depression, but in a cold blooded, calm manner, tracked down and hired a hit man to shoot someone else?

Even if you can, why does that matter?