SARAH W.: There was a lot of cattiness
between women at the beach.
We were flaunting our bodies more
just to get that extra attention.
Girls can be competitive. Body shaming.
Who looks the best in that bathing suit?
SARAH W. There was definitely a rating.
Oh, she's a two, she's a three, she's a one.
SARINA: That was the beginning of when the mean girls
started coming out with the both of them.
It is a holy [bleep] moment.
Everybody was just in a state of shock.
This only happens in movies.
[theme music playing]
[distant sirens wailing]
TAICHIANG: When I arrived on scene, I saw
a crowd of people that seemed
to be, like, on top of somebody in the roadway.
I didn't know what was going on.
It was dark, and I was by myself.
As I approached them, I could see a group of people
that were trying to render aid
to a female that was on the ground.
At that time, I radioed to the rest of the officers
responding on scene that I had a female on the ground that
was stabbed, and I needed assistance.
There's a saying in the state of Florida that you come here
on vacation and leave on probation.
And that happens, unfortunately, for some folks.
Can you imagine growing up in Pinellas Park, Florida?
It's like you're on vacation. It's the beach life.
It is a number one destination for so many kids to come
for Spring Break.
[crowd noise]
Spring Break could get very wild, and it was always
such a high energy.
There was always something to do, somewhere to go,
always people to meet, it was very wild.
There is a girls gone wild aspect.
And when you have hundreds of kids on the beach,
there's something bound to happen.
NARRATOR: And for the local teenage girls,
it's Spring Break all year long,
and the battle to be queen of the beach is fierce.
SARAH W.: We were pressured a little more than others to
look better because the beach culture was so high here.
MICHAEL: They are showing their bodies off.
It's almost a competition at times of who's wearing
the smallest bathing suit or who's wearing
the most fashionable one.
And it certainly plays an important role in those
young ladies' lives.
SARINA: These young girls are gorgeous,
blonde hair, very Barbie-esque.
And they have everything at their fingertips.
SARAH W.: There was a lot of cattiness between women.
There was definitely a rating.
Oh, she's a two, she's a three.
Look at those shoes. Now she's a one.
NARRATOR: And in the real-life world
of who's hot and who's not,
18-year-old Rachel Wade knows she's a ten.
Rachel Wade was the picture of what you would see
in and around the area.
She was a young, attractive girl.
LANE: I think Rachel knew from when she was a little girl
that she was pretty.
And I think that gave her attention,
which then turned into confidence,
which then turned into power.
SARAH W. Rachel was fun, and everybody just liked
hanging out with her, and she was a wild child.
She was going to those parties that everybody wanted to go to,
because we were all in such a rush to get older.
Rachel did have a large group of friends, and Rachel had
a lot of confidence about her.
That's the vibe she definitely gave off.
Rachel was pretty much the leader of her little
clique of friends.
She had minions, and they were willing to do her bidding for
whatever she was seeking.
SARAH W. You didn't want to really cross her,
because she could make you feel bad.
That's the feeling I got from her.
NARRATOR: At 16, Rachel decided
she'd had enough of high school.
She dropped out of school as a sophomore
and wanted her own life.
She wanted to prove to the world that she could
do it on her own.
So she went out there, she got
the job at the restaurant, she bought the car,
and she was living her life.
[distant laughter]
NARRATOR: But there's someone else
walking the sands who rules her own group of girls.
And she couldn't be any more different from Rachel.
MICHAEL: Within just a few blocks away,
we have Sarah Ludemann,
an 18-year-old young lady who was the epitome of,
you know, a good student. She was what a parent wanted.
LANE: Her parents are from New York,
and they'd always had this dream of moving to Florida.
And they moved to Florida after they'd been married
about 20 years, and that's
when they had Sarah.
She was their only child, and she was
their whole entire world.
MICHAEL: Sarah had a different vibe to her.
She had a little bit of
a different background with her family being from
out of state.
They had a little bit of a New York vibe to them,
and she stood out.
Sarah actually was going to a different high school.
She was going to Tarpon Springs High School,
and then she transferred to Pinellas Park High School
her senior year.
Sarah and I had economics class at Pinellas Park High,
and she tried to always dress up and make herself look good.
She was a thick, curvy girl, but it was really
just mostly muscle.
I mean, she wasn't a fat girl by any means, but people would
put her down because she wasn't stick thin.
Sarah didn't have her own car.
If she wanted to go do stuff with her friends,
she had to borrow her mom's minivan, get permission from
them, and then she'd be back by 11 o'clock.
And she was really wanting to make this commitment to pursue
her dream of becoming a veterinarian.
Sarah was the leader of her group.
You could see that she wanted to be confident,
but she wasn't truly that confident person.
There was an underlying
insecurity underneath her personality.
NARRATOR: In this beach town, where everyone knows everyone,
Rachel and Sarah definitely run in different circles.
Rachel's friends were more from Applebee's,
waitresses, and other girls she'd gone to school with.
And Sarah's friends were from when she was a kid, mostly.
So I don't think they knew each other.
But they did have one connection,
which was Myspace at the time.
They were utilizing it to communicate to their friends
and to the world of who they were
and what they were about at the time.
They would post pictures like, "This is me at the beach
"with my friends. This is me in my bikini.
This is me at the mall, at the movies, whatever."
I don't know if anybody remembers, but you would
rate your friends.
It was definitely a popularity contest outside of
school, for sure.
And it was another way of judging other people.
SARINA: Girls could bully on Myspace.
They could attack each other.
They could compete with each other on Myspace.
All of this happening without the parents even knowing.
SARAH W.: Sarah had this air of haughtiness and cockiness,
where she kind of had a Regina George personality,
where she would be like, "Oh, really?
Okay, you're not part of our group, bye."
LANE: And Rachel was not the type of girl
who was gonna accept everybody into her world.
So, you know what I mean, then she could be a bitch.
SARAH. W.: With social media, it was a lot easier for
cyber bullying, private messages, comments on photos.
"Oh, you're fat, you're this, or you're that."
It was easy to be mean, because you could hide
behind that keyboard.
NARRATOR: Being an anonymous mean girl
online is only half the fun.
Online attention is a full-time occupation.
And you can't win unless you can post a photo of
the prize that matters most, a boyfriend.
LANE: Rachel's been out of school for a couple years,
and she started dating this guy that she'd known
from middle school.
This guy's name is Josh Camacho.
He's a senior in high school.
SARAH W.: Josh Camacho was one of the hot guys
at Pinellas Park High School.
He always had friends, always had girls around him.
His personality is rough around the edges, and he comes
across as a kid who has this kind of bad boy image.
And that seemed to be what all the girls wanted.
Josh had his own social media, where he'd pose with guns
and weed and showing off his tattoos and trying to put
that image out there of that great thug life,
you know, and I think that was probably something that drew
Rachel to him.
Like, she thinks of herself as a bad girl, here's a bad guy.
NARRATOR: The connection is electric,
and Rachel goes from beach queen to full-on badass.
Josh was one of those bad boy types that would whisper
sweet nothings and give those attentions to the people that
really wanted those attentions.
SARINA: And she got a lot of attention.
Rachel Wade is so proud of her boyfriend,
calling him her boo.
She's bragging about Josh on Myspace, and she got
the message out there that she had a boyfriend,
her boo, and he's mine.
LANE: Rachel's on her Myspace,
and she finds a picture of Josh with another girl.
That set her off.
To Rachel's mind, the girl was not attractive.
NARRATOR: The name tagged on the picture,
Sarah Ludemann.
It was equal amount of outrage that Josh was with somebody
else and that this somebody else wasn't nearly as
attractive as she was.
So how dare he, and how dare she?
And I think that made it even worse.
Like, why would Josh be with this woman
who was no rival for Rachel?
It didn't feel like it would ever end in the tragedy that
it ended in, with two girls losing their lives
in one night.
[distant shouting]
[distant sirens, radio chatter]
SARINA: Rachel saw this girl she doesn't even know named
Sarah Ludemann as mousy.
And what in the world, in Rachel's mind,
is her hot boyfriend, her boyfriend,
doing with this girl?
People don't cheat on Rachel Wade.
NARRATOR: And Rachel's no fool.
She goes public with her disgust, where everyone
can see and everyone can judge.
Rachel kind of takes her upset and anger to Myspace.
And she starts typing things to Josh that, you know,
in the past people would have said in private or whatever,
but she's saying publicly, like, what are you doing?
You know, how dare you?
MICHAEL: Rachel sees this as a betrayal.
She's angry and breaks up with Josh.
LANE: Sarah and her friends are hanging out
at this fast food place, and this guy comes
from out of the back in the kitchen on his break.
And he walks by Sarah, and he looks her up and down,
and he gives her the eye, and he gives her a wink.
Sarah is taken by the fact that he's flirting with her.
Then she was attracted to him.
And it was the first guy who'd ever paid attention to her.
NARRATOR: And this boy's name is Josh Camacho.
MICHAEL: Sarah was new to dating.
She's coming from a strict household where her upbringing
was focused on family and her school.
And he offered things that she got excited about that
she didn't have or had never seen before.
And she let her parents know, hey, I'm trying to abide by
your rules, but I'm also dating this guy.
I also think there was a bit of the danger element in there,
that she had not been with anybody before.
And all of a sudden, this thuggy, would-be bad guy
player likes her and then all of a sudden, upped her status.
And I think he realized the power that he had over her.
He made her feel sexy and beautiful.
And she was willing to do whatever he wanted,
because she wanted to be his, she wanted to be someone's.
NARRATOR: It isn't long before Sarah
sheds her good girl image for a more alpha one.
SARAH W. At school, Sarah definitely flaunted the fact
that she was with Josh Camacho
and wanted everybody to know that she had
staked her territory on him.
Hang out by the lockers or at lunchtime, they would try to
be with each other at all times.
There was the constant flirting, and it was very well known
that Sarah was with Josh at school.
NARRATOR: But like Rachel, Sarah has no idea that Josh
is not only having his cake, he's eating it too.
MICHAEL: Sarah thought she had this bad boy, edgy kid in
Josh that she liked.
But Josh was a self-described player.
They had no idea that either one of them were being shared
or that they were sharing him.
NARRATOR: But now, that's no longer the case.
So both relationships have now been exposed.
Sarah is aware of Rachel, and Rachel is aware of Sarah.
And the attacks started on Sarah.
SARAH W.: Rachel started hurling insults and body shaming her.
Sarah, seeing this, takes a shot at Rachel
by saying he did find something better.
SARINA: That's basically an F you to Rachel Wade.
And that's when the mean girls started coming out
with the both of them.
NARRATOR: A vicious war of words begins, and both girls
call in their backup.
Sarah's friends were definitely encouraging her to
tell this bitch to back off, this is your man.
Don't let her take him from you.
SARINA: Rachel also has her friends that take her side.
Now there's friend groups involved.
MICHAEL: You had the Sarah camp,
and then you had the Rachel camp,
each one drawing a line of friendship,
saying, you know, "I'm on Sarah's side"
or "I'm on Rachel's side." -SARAH W.: It was high tensions.
It was almost as if embers in a fire,
getting ready to ignite.
It just seemed like any other night.
Rachel stops by Taco Bell late night in the drive-thru.
And this other car pulls up that she doesn't recognize.
SARINA: It is filled with girls.
The window is rolled down.
And something is pointed at Rachel's face.
What is happening? Is that a gun?
It is a holy [bleep] moment.
This other car rolls in.
And something is pointed at Rachel's face.
She realizes it's Sarah Ludemann, her arch enemy.
LANE: Rachel wasn't sure what was gonna happen.
I mean, I can't imagine what she must have been thinking.
And then all of a sudden...
She gets squirted with silly string.
SARINA: And you know what silly string is like.
You can't see, you're taken aback.
It really is an attack, and it's also humiliating.
I think Sarah's message to her was like,
"I'm not gonna back down.
This is my posse of friends, and you better watch out."
You didn't wanna think that Sarah had the ability to do
these things, but Sarah was the aggressor.
Rachel was shamed and humiliated.
At that point, it dawned on Rachel, there's no coming back
from this now -- she was gonna fight back.
SARINA: She's thinking, are you kidding me?
Well, look out, because we're just getting started, girl.
NARRATOR: Although Rachel's first impulse was to ditch Josh
when she learned he was two-timing her with Sarah,
she's now willing to do anything to keep him.
Rachel almost reverts back to that high school mentality of,
wait a minute, I'm not gonna lose out to something that
I had, first of all.
And secondly, I'm not gonna lose out to somebody that
doesn't look as good as I do.
[phone ringing]
NARRATOR The two girls continue to battle it out for the title
of baddest Barbie on the beach, with their very own Ken loving
every minute of it.
Josh is living in between these two girls
and is actually reveling in it.
He's enjoying the fact that these two girls are biting for
his attention and that he has them both on a hook.
He can spend time with one and spend time with
the other at will.
SARAH W.: Josh was definitely the type of guy that got high
off of women fighting over him.
I think it was for the validation on himself,
and he enjoyed putting Sarah and Rachel against each other.
LANE: I think Sarah's parents knew something was up
because she was crying all the time.
Mood swings where she'd always been pretty content.
She's angry, her grades are slipping.
She's not as interested in school.
But I think that they didn't know there was specifically
another woman who was a rival.
I don't think they knew about the Myspace.
I don't think they knew about the voicemails.
They had no idea of this sort of alternate universe that
she was existing in.
NARRATOR: Rachel lives rent-free in Sarah's head.
And this 18-year-old has even more cards to play.
Rachel had her own place, her own apartment.
She did not have a curfew.
She had her own money and independence.
And so I think Rachel felt like she could get the upper hand
in this situation was by having Josh physically with her.
SARINA: She and her boyfriend could be alone.
And you know what he does? He moved in with Rachel.
Josh moving in with Rachel is the ultimate move and a slap
in the face to Sarah.
That is something that she didn't have
a counter move for.
There was nothing that she could have done that would
have topped that at all.
NARRATOR: Rachel has drawn a line in the sand,
and she has Josh under lock and key.
All Sarah can do is regroup with her besties.
SARAH W.: Sarah was a leader of her group.
Her friends all had her back.
The girls were rallying around her
and egging her on to go for it.
Like, tell that bitch that he's yours.
Sarah became very aggressive.
Instead of staying in her own silo,
she went into Rachel's world.
And she took her friends into Rachel's world.
So Rachel is living her life. She's working at Applebee's.
She has her very own apartment.
And Josh is living with her.
She seems to have everything going for her.
NARRATOR: Rachel may think she has the upper hand,
but she's about to get schooled.
MICHAEL: Sarah shows up with her friends.
Then they specifically sit in Rachel's area that
she's working in.
SARAH W.: Sarah wasn't scared of Rachel.
She had everybody she knew behind her.
Those were her friends
who said that she shouldn't back down and do this.
So she was feeling powerful, and she was confident in
herself in that moment.
LANE: It was the busiest night of Applebee's,
and they would try to, like, bump into her
or hip check her when she was carrying trays of food
to try to make her spill something.
Say snide comments not under their breath, out loud,
about her, taunting her, making her look bad as a server,
and making her engage publicly in yelling and taunting
and unprofessional behavior.
Sarah didn't have anything to lose.
NARRATOR: Sarah's not hiding behind a keyboard anymore
or humiliating Rachel with silly string.
This enters the real world.
Rachel is on her own, has her own apartment,
so she needs to make ends meet.
It was just one more step in a dangerous escalation.
[distant, indistinct shouting]
I think Rachel was trying really hard to hold her stuff
together in Applebee's, but she was getting in trouble
for yelling things at Sarah.
I can't imagine what the other patrons thought.
NARRATOR: Sarah may have won this round,
but Rachel is determined to win the war.
When she was not at work, she was lashing back
out at Sarah.
She wasn't gonna let her get the upper hand.
And she started leaving more voicemails.
The taunts were getting meaner.
There were more people involved.
The Myspace posts were getting more frequent.
And both of the girls just wouldn't back off.
I'm not sure how much of it was fighting for
their relationship with Josh, as it was winning over
the other girl at that point in time.
Everything was coming to a head.
It's now reached its breaking point.
April 14th of 2009 started out
just like any day in the life of a high school student.
Sarah was not having a very good day that day.
She was sad and upset,
and apparently Josh had been ignoring her all day long.
SARINA: Sarah had been crying a lot over Josh,
feeling that she was losing him.
And she thought she would see him that day, because Josh was
making promises to see her.
LANE: A few blocks away, Rachel's in her apartment,
got the day off, and Josh doesn't show up.
And so she's calling him too and wondering where he is.
While Sarah's crying, Rachel's getting mad.
And these two women, not more than a couple of miles apart,
are both waiting for the same guy.
Sarah seemed really desperate to find Josh.
She's texting, asking where he is and what happened.
And she's telling him, why do we always fight about her?
And where were you? We were supposed to be
hanging out, and I know you're with her.
NARRATOR: But there's no response from Josh.
Though he's still living with Rachel, Josh is hanging out
at his sister's house.
SARINA: Sarah is so desperate to see Josh.
That's all she wants.
After several hours of texting, Josh finally texts back
and says, "All right, come over and bring some movies."
She jumped in her mom's van and hauled ass over there, in
a rush because of the neglect that had happened that day.
NARRATOR: On her way to Josh's sister's house,
Sarah takes a detour.
Sarah is driving by Rachel's apartment,
sees Rachel, and yells out,
"Stay away from my man."
She could have just driven past and not said anything
or gone a different route,
but she knew what she was doing,
and she wanted Rachel to know.
So Rachel swings by Josh's sister's house and sees
Sarah's minivan out there.
And then she realizes that that's what Josh is doing,
and she texts him.
And he finally texts her back and says...
And the whole time Sarah's there,
knowing this is going on.
SARAH W.: I believe Sarah was believing
at this point she's won.
This is her man, her territory, and look where
I'm going, and you're not.
At this point, Rachel's feeling devastated, lonely.
She's hurt and is looking for a source of comfort.
So she goes to her friend Javier's house to try and find
that comfort and to not be alone.
So here's Sarah enjoying her night with Josh
at his sister's house.
Sarah's phone is also blowing up, because her parents are
like, "You need to get home."
NARRATOR: It's well past Sarah's curfew,
and she has to leave.
This all plays out within a few blocks of
each other, right?
Everybody lives pretty close to each other.
And on the way to home, Sarah stops at a stop sign,
and some weird coincidence, fate, caused this other girl
who she knows to pull up at the stop sign and say, "Hey,
did you know Rachel's right up the road?"
SARAH W.: At this point, Sarah is pissed.
She knows Rachel is down the street.
Sarah knows that Josh has broken up with Rachel and is
angry, wondering why she's so close by.
And she decides that she's gonna go confront Rachel.
NARRATOR: After months of insults and social media
posts, threatening voicemails, and public humiliations,
Sarah wants to knock Rachel from her throne for good.
As far as I know, Sarah pulls up in her mom's minivan in
front of Javier's house.
And everyone thought, this is the fist fight.
They're gonna brawl in the front yard.
This is the physical confrontation that everybody
thinks needs to be done.
Sarah was a bigger girl than Rachel was.
She was almost, you know, 5'9", 5'10".
She's high on the fact that she got just chosen by Josh.
LANE: Sarah doesn't even turn the van off.
She jumps out of the van,
and she sees Rachel coming at her.
It happened in seconds.
Going towards each other,
fist fight, fighting it out.
They're gonna end this tonight, one way or another.
[phone ringing]
-[sirens wailing] -[indistinct shout]
As far as everybody knew, this was just a fist fight.
[distant shouting, commotion]
Did she really just get stabbed?
This only happens in movies.
This doesn't happen in real life.
She's gonna be fine.
TAICHIANG: When I arrived on scene, I saw a crowd of people
trying to render aid to a female on the ground.
So I quickly asked some questions, what happened,
and then some of the witnesses on scene said that this girl
had been stabbed and that the suspect went back to
the house and walked away.
So at that time, I radioed to the rest of the officers
who responded on scene that I needed assistance.
The suspect was in the area.
Once we got her into the ambulance to get
transported to the hospital, the other girl was transported
back to the police department so she could be interviewed.
NARRATOR: Sarah may have been bigger,
but Rachel brought a knife to a fistfight.
She just wanted this to end and be over, and she brought
a knife to do that,
and she told her friends that she's carrying this knife
around because she felt threatened by Sarah
and her friends, and that she feels like she needs
to protect herself.
You would never look at Rachel and say that she was
presenting herself in some manner of which would give
the idea that she was some aggressive,
you know, individual -- she was very respectful.
You can see that she's kind of acting as if it's not,
you know, that big of a deal.
Rachel was absolutely minimizing her actions.
The biggest things that stood out to me was
the lack of empathy.
You have to remember that she, in her own mind,
knew that she had a knife in her hand
and that she used that knife.
And never once during that conversation did she ever ask,
how is Sarah?
Sarah was in critical condition.
She was suffering from two stab wounds to
the upper left chest.
One was more oriented around the area of her shoulder,
and the other one was more directly around the area of
her breast, which ultimately pierced her heart.
MICHAEL: During the interview with Rachel, she gave us
a direction of where she had thrown the knife
in the approximate area.
That information was relayed to the scene detective,
who was with the forensics section able to locate
the knife actually on the roof of the neighbor's house.
And certainly, to us, that kind of leads into
the additional information or additional evidence,
that she was trying to hide the fact
that she used a knife to stab Sarah and then
ultimately took steps to try to get rid of the knife,
to hide the knife.
NARRATOR: Prior to the interrogation,
Detective Lynch received some disturbing news.
They were working on her as best with what
they are presented with, and they're doing everything
they can to save this girl's life.
Eventually, I learned that Sarah has been pronounced
dead at the hospital.
NARRATOR: And he uses this information
to seal Rachel's fate.
Oh. [sobbing]
NARRATOR: At the end of the interview,
Rachel Wade is charged with
second-degree murder for the death of Sarah Ludemann
and remains in jail until trial.
The community is left to pick up the pieces and understand
how it all got out of hand and ended so tragically.
SARAH W.: Sarah's death was very impactful on me personally.
To know that somebody that existed with us no longer did.
They don't -- they just cease to exist.
It's hard to explain.
Every person that was in that school that knew
Sarah is affected.
Every person that Rachel knew has been affected by this.
This isn't some small little thing that was just
swept under the rug -- this was devastating
to the whole community.
I'm not angry at Rachel for what she did or Sarah.
They were both being stupid teenagers.
I would like Sarah to be remembered for how pretty
she was, and she had the biggest smile whenever she did smile,
and she was fun to be around.
Sarah had a lot of energy about her, and you could
feel it whenever she entered a room.
Rachel's trial begins here in Pinellas County.
Ultimately, at the end of the trial,
the jury deliberated and found her guilty
of second-degree murder.
A judge sentenced a Pinellas Park woman today to prison for
more years than she's been alive.
JUDGE: I sentence her to 27 years
in the Department of Corrections.
It's an absolute tragedy.
One person died, a set of parents lost their child,
and another person is spending their adult life in prison.
So it is a tragedy.
NARRATOR: The producers reached out to Rachel,
and she provided this message.
She writes, "If only I could have known my self-worth
"and not entertained the drama or maybe even befriended her
"so that we could both have walked away from him
"and found better.
"Unfortunately, I wasn't mature enough to notice my mistakes
and prevent what happened."
I can't help but cry because
this was such a waste of such two beautiful girls.
And for what?
I truly feel she means it.
And I know Sarah's parents may not believe it.
But everybody lost.
There are no winners in this case.
There are no winners.
NARRATOR: On the next Mean Girl Murders...
MacKenzie did want to be an influencer.
Girls were definitely jealous.
MacKenzie should be watching her back.
MAN: It's like a teenage movie nightmare.