Former Carolina Panther Rae Carruth has broken nearly two decades of silence over the murder he was sent to jail for in 2001, by sending a 16-page letter apologizing for orchestrating the crime.

Carruth sent the long apology letter to the news department at WBTV in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was addressed to Saundra Adams, the mother of Cherica Adams, the woman Carruth was convicted of murdering, according to the New York Post.

In 1999, police accused Carruth of arranging for a hitman to murder Adams, who was pregnant with his child. The young woman was shot four times and soon died of her wounds. Carruth was later convicted of conspiracy to murder Adams and was sentenced to 18 to 24 years in prison.

The 1997 first-round Panthers pick insists that he is a changed man and wanted to get the admission off his chest.

“I’m apologizing for the loss of her daughter,” Carruth said in the letter. “I’m apologizing for the impairment of my son. I feel responsible for everything that happened. And I just want her to know that truly I am sorry for everything.

“If I say publicly, ‘Ms. Adams, I apologize, Ms. Adams, I take responsibility for what happened,’ that she can no longer get on television and do an interview and say Rae has never apologized to me,” Carruth added.

For her part, Saundra Adams said that no matter what Carruth says she will never allow the ex-NFL player to come into his son’s life.

“But I can say definitively he’s not ever going to have custody of Chancellor,” she said. “Chancellor will be raised either by me or, after I’m gone, by someone else who loves him and who knows him. He will never be raised by a stranger — someone he doesn’t know and who tried to kill him.”

Carruth insisted that he wished he could change the past.

“If I could change anything, I’d change the whole situation,” the former Panther player said. “[Chancellor’s] mother would still be here, and I wouldn’t be where I’m at. So that’s what I’d want to change. I want the incident to never have happened at all.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.