Rachel Wade has been on TV a lot lately, says the St. Petersburg Times. Dateline, 20/20. The Discovery Channel flew in a crew from Australia to interview the girl who stabbed her rival in the heart. Media from around the world have run the story about the teenage love triangle and showed the faces of the two pretty blonds who fought over a boy. Sarah Ludemann was 18, about to graduate from high school, when she bled to death in the street. Rachel Wade was 19, as waitress, when she plunged a steak knife into Sarah.
The fight happened two years ago this week: April 15, 2009. “Feels like 20 years to me,” said Sarah’s dad, Charlie Ludemann. Yesterday, he filed a wrongful death suit seeking at least $15,000 compensation for medical bills, burial costs, pain and suffering. He doesn’t want any money but he doesn’t want the girl who killed his daughter to profit from her death. “I’m tired of seeing her face on TV,” said Ludemann, who drives a cab. “I just want to make sure she don’t make nothing off all this.” In the fall, a producer for 20/20 paid Ludemann and his wife an undisclosed sum so they would agree not to talk to any other media for six months. He supposes maybe someone paid Wade, too. He knows Wade can’t earn much in the prison where she is serving 27 years. “My wife is just tired of her getting all this attention,” he said. “Of everyone looking at her in prison and going, ‘poor little girl.’ “