Carruth Says He Didn't Know Victim Well

N A S H V I L L E, N.C., Feb. 15, 2001 -- Former NFL player Rae Carruth says in atelevised interview he and the pregnant woman he was convicted ofconspiring to kill were little more than sex partners.

"I didn't even know her last name until we went to Lamazeclass," Carruth said in an interview to air tonight onCNN's Sports Tonight and on CNN/Sports Illustrated.

Carruth, 27, is serving a sentence at the Nash CorrectionalInstitution in Nash County, about 40 miles east of Raleigh. He wasconvicted of conspiring to kill Cherica Adams, the woman who waspregnant with his son when she was fatally shot in November 1999.

Details of the Case

The former Carolina Panther was sentenced in January to at least18 years and 11 months and a maximum of 24 years and four monthsafter being convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, shooting intoan occupied vehicle, and using an instrument with the intent todestroy an unborn child.

He was acquitted of first-degree murder in the November 1999shooting of Adams, who was eight months pregnant, as she drovealong a Charlotte street.

Prosecutors said Carruth used his vehicle to block Adams' car soa hired gunman could shoot her. Adams, 24, was shot four times inthe attack, which prosecutors said Carruth arranged so he couldavoid paying child support.

Adams died a month after the shooting. Her son, delivered byemergency Caesarean section, suffers from cerebral palsy.

While prosecutors portrayed Adams as Carruth's girlfriend, theinmate disputed that.

Carruth: ‘We Never Dated’

"As far as Cherica and I are concerned, we never dated,"Carruth said in the interview. "We were never boyfriend andgirlfriend. … We slept together. … There was no conversation."

Carruth's attorney, David Rudolf, said in a telephone interviewWednesday that the relationship between Carruth and Adams wasalways overstated in the media, but that Carruth misspoke when hesaid he didn't know her last name.

"I think what he meant to say was that he didn't know thespelling of her last name," Rudolf said. "When he was at Lamazeclass, that came up."

During Tuesday's interview, which lasted about an hour, Carruthalso recalled that he turned to Rudolf at one point during thetrial and said, "Dave, they want to kill me."

Rudolf said the statement was made during jury selection asprosecutors sought to impanel a jury that could vote for the deathpenalty.

Hopes to One Day Talk to Son

Asked why he fled Charlotte after Adams died, Carruth, who wasfound hiding in the trunk of a car outside a Tennessee motel, saidhe felt that everyone was against him.

"Who was going to speak up for me?" he said. "You have theguys that did it lying. Cherica was there and she's gone. The mediahad already said, 'This is what happened.' What did I have left?"

According to Rudolf, Carruth also said in the interview that hehoped to sit down one day with his brain-damaged son, Chancellor,"and tell him what really happened; … that he had nothing to dowith it."

As he did throughout the trial, Rudolf maintained that Carruthwas not at the scene of the shooting, but he refused to say whereCarruth was.

Messages left with attorneys for Cherica Adams' parents were notimmediately returned.