Former Panther Rae Carruth is turning 50. An update on the murder that rocked Charlotte

Rae Carruth, the former Carolina Panther who became a convicted felon and served nearly 19 years in prison, turns 50 years old Saturday.

Hard to believe, isn’t it? Carruth, the Panthers’ first-round draft choice in 1997, is now old enough to qualify for some senior discounts. The murder of his pregnant girlfriend Cherica Adams, which Carruth was convicted of masterminding by a Charlotte jury, literally occurred half a lifetime ago for the former wide receiver.

A hitman who said in court that he was hired by Carruth shot Adams four times on Nov. 16, 1999, attempting to kill both her and her unborn child in a drive-by ambush. Adams died four weeks later in the hospital, unable to recover from her grievous wounds. But the baby — named Chancellor Lee Adams — lived.

Here’s an update on four of the key figures in the nationally televised murder trial.

Van Brett Watkins

The admitted hitman in the case died at age 63 on Dec. 3, 2023, in a North Carolina prison. An N.C. prison official said the death was from natural causes.

Of the four men convicted of conspiring to murder Cherica Adams and sent to prison, Watkins was the only one who never got out. As the triggerman he received the stiffest sentence, one that was exacerbated by his frequent offenses in prison for fighting and threatening prison staff.

Watkins always claimed that Carruth, the father of Cherica Adams’ unborn baby, had orchestrated the murder-for-hire hit in 1999 because he didn’t want to pay child support for another child (at the time, Carruth already had a son with another woman and was paying $3,000 a month in child support).

Carruth, who was from Sacramento, Calif., went to the University of Colorado and was the Panthers’ No. 1 draft choice in 1997, disputed this theory in court through his attorney. But a Charlotte jury found the idea believable enough that Carruth spent nearly 19 years in prison, for conspiracy to commit murder, before being released in October 2018. Watkins never forgave Carruth and told me once in a three-hour jailhouse interview about the former Panther: “I want him dead.”

Saundra Adams

The mother of Cherica and the grandmother of Chancellor Lee, Saundra Adams recently turned 66. She still lives in the Charlotte area and is the primary caregiver for her grandson, Chancellor Lee, who has permanent brain damage and cerebral palsy. That’s because his brain was deprived of oxygen during the traumatic circumstances of his premature birth.

Adams has forgiven the four men involved in her daughter’s death. She kept up a sporadic correspondence with Watkins. The hitman wrote her numerous letters from prison apologizing for his role in Cherica Adams’ death and Chancellor Lee’s injuries. He occasionally sent Saundra Adams $10 or $20 to contribute to her grandson’s care.

“I do feel like Watkins was totally and truthfully remorseful for what he did,” Adams told The Charlotte Observer in a recent phone interview. “Chancellor and I believe in heaven and hell, and I don’t want Watkins to go to hell and be forever doomed. We’re praying that he had his soul right with God.”

Instead of Watkins, Adams has always believed that Carruth was the one at fault for her daughter’s death because he had allegedly cooked up the murderous plot.

“Watkins was just paid to do a job,” Adams said. “He just wanted some money. And he didn’t care who he was killing, you know? He didn’t have a personal relationship with Cherica. If there’s anyone that I blame for Cherica’s death, it’s Rae. He had the personal relationship with her and he conspired (to plan) this whole thing.”

Chancellor Lee Adams

Although many predicted he wouldn’t survive for more than a week after being born, Chancellor Lee Adams is now 24 years old.

That’s the same age his mother, Cherica, was when she was murdered. She saved her unborn baby’s life on the night she was shot by managing to call “911” and stay on the line for 12 minutes, both identifying her location and giving details about the attack.

Chancellor Lee will always need a caregiver due to his disabilities. But he graduated from high school in Charlotte in 2021, and continues to light up the world with a grin so contagious that his grandmother calls it the “smile ministry.”

Although he generally speaks only 1-2 words at a time, Chancellor Lee was an honor roll student in high school. He has learned how to order his own food at a restaurant, understands the concept behind a credit card and has ridden horses with supervision. Because of his cerebral palsy, tasks such as buttoning up a shirt remain a challenge, but he has also improved in those areas considerably.

The Roaring Riot fan group, which follows the Panthers, took Chancellor Lee and Saundra Adams in 2019 on an all-expenses-paid trip to London to watch Carolina play.

Rae Carruth

Since he became a free man in 2018, Carruth has sent his son Chancellor Lee a few thousand dollars through the court system (he owes the Adamses millions in damages). However, he has had no face-to-face contact with his son since Chancellor Lee was a baby.

In late 2018, shortly after he was released from prison, I found an address where I thought Carruth could be living and showed up at his door in Pennsylvania. He was surprised but not overly so. I had been pursuing an interview with him for years and had written a serialized series of stories on the case, one that also was turned into the eight-part “Carruth” podcast.

“I had a feeling you might pop up sometime,” he said after opening the door.

Carruth ultimately invited me in where we sat at the kitchen table (it included, among other things, 10 neatly stacked boxes of Cheerios). But he didn’t let me record our 30-minute conversation. He wouldn’t talk in detail about Cherica Adams’ murder. He said in prison he had become a Muslim and a pescatarian.

Carruth wore a bracelet given to him by his mother on that day that showed the dates of his incarceration on one side — Dec. 15, 1999 to Oct. 22, 2018 — and the words “Never Forget” on the other side.

I asked him later what that bracelet meant to him.

“It simply reminds me not to take my freedom for granted,” Carruth wrote in a text, “to make the most of the second chance that I have been given. And that no matter how bad things get for me out here, it will never be as bad (as) those 18 years and 11 months.”

Later that year, we exchanged several emails and texts. He once texted me a picture of himself, grinning broadly, after he had gotten a driver’s license for the first time in 20 years.

Eventually, we fell out of touch. He changed his email addresses and his phone number. Carruth has long wished for anonymity.

And, at the moment, on the verge of turning 50, he mostly seems to have it. I’ve heard from some people who are sure they have seen him working in Pennsylvania and others who are positive they’ve seen him hanging out in California, where he’s from, but it’s unclear where he is living now.

Carruth told me in 2018 he was going to try to quietly rebuild his life. And in one of his lengthy emails, he asked me a question I still consider today.

As Carruth wrote: “Do you think it’s possible for a generally good person to get him/herself involved in a situation as heart-wrenchingly horrible as the one I was in, or is it your belief that such a person could only be cut from the worst of molds?”