From First-Round Pick to Murder Conspiracy: The Fall of Rae Carruth
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe
4.9 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In November 1999, Charlotte real estate agent Cherica Adams was shot four times in an ambush on Rea Road orchestrated by her boyfriend, Carolina Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth, who faced mounting child support obligations and refused to accept her pregnancy. The investigation revealed a murder-for-hire conspiracy involving career criminal Van Brett Watkins, drug dealer Michael Kennedy, and Stanley Abraham, with forensic evidence including Adams' 12-minute 911 call and handwritten hospital notes identifying Carruth before her death 28 days later.This is the story of a first-round NFL draft pick who recruited criminals from Charlotte's underworld to eliminate the mother of his unborn child, a woman who spent her final moments ensuring her son would survive and her killer would be identified. We're talking about a movie date that ended in gunfire, a grandmother's forgiveness that defies understanding, and a boy born into trauma who became living proof that some miracles happen in the darkest moments.
#RaeCarruth #ChericaAdams #TrueCrime #NFLScandal #CarolinaPanthers #MurderConspiracy #ChancellorLeeAdams
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | November 15th, 1999, Shurika Adams goes to see a serial killer movie with her boyfriend, |
| 0:10.0 | an NFL wide receiver. |
| 0:12.0 | Hours later, she's making a 12-minute 911 call, bleeding out in her BMW, naming the man who orchestrated her murder. |
| 0:20.0 | This is the story of a woman who refused to let her kill her escape, |
| 0:23.6 | and the son born from tragedy who proved every doctor wrong. |
| 0:27.6 | The Ray Carruth was born Ray Lamar Wiggins on January 20th, 1974 in Sacramento. |
| 0:56.5 | By the time he was 23, the Carolina Panthers selected him as the 27th overall pick |
| 1:01.7 | in the first round of the 1997 NFL draft. |
| 1:05.9 | His contract was worth $3.7 million over four years. |
| 1:09.8 | He was making roughly $650,000 annually, |
| 1:13.7 | wide receiver for an NFL team, The American Dream in Cleats. His teammates saw a quiet, |
| 1:20.8 | reserved guy. What they didn't see was the pattern in his personal life. Ray already had a six-year-old son in California. The child |
| 1:29.5 | support payments were between $3,000 and $5,000 per month. When you're pulling in over $50,000 |
| 1:35.4 | a month before taxes, that might not sound devastating. But to Ray, it felt like his money |
| 1:40.9 | and his freedom were being drained away. He decided that he was never going |
| 1:44.7 | to let that happen again. Cherika Adams came into his life in 1998 at a summer pool party in |
| 1:51.2 | Charlotte. She was 23, a former model and dancer who transitioned into real estate, |
| 1:57.2 | beautiful, driven, building a career in a competitive market. Her relationship with Ray was inconsistent. |
| 2:02.6 | They were together, then they weren't, then they were again. |
| 2:06.6 | In the spring of 1999, Shariqa became pregnant. |
| 2:09.6 | She was happy about it. |
| 2:11.6 | Ray saw the complete destruction of the life that he'd built. |
... |
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