Kill For Me (15 page)

Humphrey blinked once. Stared Ashley down coldly. “I don’t know,
honey
! You’re the one answering the
fucking
questions.”

Uh-oh.

With tension mounting, as Ski went to ask another question, Humphrey’s cell phone rang, breaking the moment. He flipped it open. Listened for a beat. Said nothing in response. Then he put the phone up to Ashley’s ear. The phone was now directly between Ski and Ashley. Ski could hear the woman on the other end of the line as clearly as if she was standing in the room.

“Listen, Ashley, just take a deep breath and tell them that you do
not
want to talk anymore.”

It was Humphrey’s attorney, Vanessa Nye. He must have called her on the way over to the apartment.

Ashley looked up at Humphrey. Then turned to Ski: “On the advice of our attorney, I do not want to talk to you anymore.”

Ski stood. He faced both Ashley and her husband.

“Listen, you guys ever want to talk to us with your attorney present, the invitation is always open.”

Ski then signaled to Rozzi that it was time to go. Walking out, Ski gave Humphrey a look of
Gotcha!

They had gotten plenty from Ashley Humphrey before her husband showed up and his attorney got involved.

A new name, for one.

Tobe White.

Number two, an alibi for that night: pizza and Tobe White.

“Ashley
knows
something,” Rozzi said as soon as she and Ski sat down in the car.

Ski was staring back at the apartment door, getting ready to sit down in the car.

“She knows what happened,” Ski said. “She’s protecting him.”

Ashley Laney was nineteen years old in September 2002, a month before her twentieth birthday, when she walked into the Athletic Club in Brandon, to begin a workout routine. According to her, life had not dealt Ashley a good hand of cards up until then. She had come from a broken home and had a mother, Ashley herself later said in court, who liked to drink—a lot—and had turned her on to smoking grass.

“I attended several grade schools,” Ashley said. “We moved around a lot.”

Ashley has those striking blue eyes newborns have—that mesmerizing hue of blue that men can get lost in. For a good portion of her life, Ashley had a body that she didn’t seem to have to work at keeping in shape. Curves as supple and perfect as an hourglass. And long, flowing, curly brunette hair.

When she met Humphrey, Ashley was a knockout.

She joined the Brandon Athletic Club, figuring that working out would help her mind as much as her body. Maybe she would meet a new set of friends and find a fresh path. The gym wasn’t far from her mom’s house in Seffner, where Ashley lived at the time. She worked at Planet Smoothie nearby. She could get off work, grab a workout, and be on her way.

Living with her mom and her mom’s new boyfriend wasn’t working out so well for Ashley.

“It was rough because there wasn’t a room for me,” she said. “It was a very small house. I was sleeping on the couch.”

Ashley had purchased two memberships at the gym, one for her and one for a friend. Not too long after joining the club, Ashley was introduced to Tracey Humphrey, a personal trainer she saw as “all man.” So much so, Ashley later explained, that she was immediately infatuated and impressed with his body. Humphrey was rocking that Mr. Clean shaved head, with the earring, too. A day’s worth of red beard stubble. He was tall and solid, at six foot two, 220 pounds. Hazel eyes. Ashley soon learned that Humphrey lived in Brandon near the gym. He liked the Florida sunshine, the wide variety of pretty women to choose from, and all the perks that came with being a personal trainer. Humphrey was cut. Chiseled, even. However you wanted to say it: he had that bodybuilder physique that many who work out, day in and day out, never seem to achieve.

With good reason.

If Ashley had looked closely, when she first met Humphrey, she would have been able to tell that his body wasn’t all natural. He was jacked up on steroids.

Humphrey had a bit of a pockmarked face.

Strike one.

That latex glove–like, taut skin.

Two.

And then there were the outbursts of rage and anger Ashley would be subjected to in the coming weeks and months.

Strike three.

Still, naïve as she was, young Ashley Laney was taken with Humphrey.

“He showed me how to use the machines. And it was a one-on-one session,” that first time, she later said. “I had an asthma attack,” a condition she’d had since the age of ten, “…so we had to cut the session short.”

Humphrey put the moves on Ashley about two weeks after she joined the gym. He offered to be her personal trainer, same as he had with all the other good-looking women.

“How old are you?” Ashley asked him with that coy, sexy manner she had mastered.

“Twenty-nine,” Humphrey said. (He was thirty-six.)

“Let’s go out?” Humphrey said.

“Yeah,” Ashley agreed eagerly.

It might be safe to note that in Ashley Laney, Tracey Humphrey saw a fractured young woman—maybe even
girl
—who was easy to prey on and manipulate, same as several of the other women Humphrey had dated and was dating at the time. In Ashley, Humphrey sensed a broken human being—someone who had come from a tough upbringing and had a fragile mind to be shaped and molded into anything he needed.

They went out to the movies on that first date and saw
Road to Perdition,
Ashley recalled. As they walked up to the ticket counter, Ashley turned around quickly and caught Humphrey gawking at her body.

“Do you have the audacity to stare at my ass while, you know, on a first date?”

Humphrey laughed. “Oh, sorry…I’m just looking for the place on your back where I’m going to get my named tattooed.”

They both had a good laugh and went in to watch the movie.

When it was over, they went back to Humphrey’s Lincoln and then drove to the gym, where Ashley had parked her VW Beetle, a car she simply adored—the one thing in her life she took pride in. She had left her car at the club because she didn’t want Humphrey to know where she lived.

“I was dating several guys at the time,” Ashley said later, recalling that night, “and I didn’t want them to know, you know, where I lived.”

When they got to the gym, before she got out of Humphrey’s car, he asked, “Is it okay with your mom if we go back to my apartment?”

Ashley took the comment seriously, thinking Humphrey was making fun of her age.

“I’m an adult! I can make my
own
decisions.”

Humphrey was a seasoned con artist. He was playing Ashley. He knew if he called her maturity into question, she would probably do whatever he wanted. And it was clear from the look in his eyes, she later said, that he wanted sex.

Back at Humphrey’s apartment, Ashley said, “We had foreplay.”

The next date, another movie a few days later, she slept with him.

It took Humphrey two weeks. By October 3, 2002, they were not only dating, but they were now an item. Inseparable. Humphrey ladled on the charm, flattering the young woman at every opportunity.

Ashley wasn’t too taken with him at first, she said. Sure, Humphrey seemed nice, even boyfriend material. However, he was a little aggressive, and Ashley was taken aback by that. Yet, as forceful as Humphrey could be, Ashley said in court later on, he was sometimes cordial, polite, and loving. She didn’t know that Humphrey was an expert at talking a great game, that he had spent the better part of his adult life controlling women and manipulating the people around him.

They dated, and as Ashley later described the relationship, “It was on and off…more of a friendship with benefits…until March [2003].”

Ashley was young and willing to try anything. She even asked Humphrey one night if he was interested in “a threesome.” She said she was into it. She was young. What the hell! Willing to try new things. Why not give it a shot?

“I was interested in it,” she recalled, “but he wasn’t.”

“I’ve had a threesome,” Ashley said when Humphrey didn’t jump at the opportunity to bed two women at the same time. “With my first boyfriend [and another girl].”

Later, Ashley told him she did it again, with a few roommates.

This time it was two girls.

Humphrey had a story of his own to tell when Ashley opened up that day and talked about her previous sex life.

“That weekend with [my ex-girlfriend],” he told Ashley, referring to the weekend in October when Ashley had turned twenty, after he had first met her, “I rolled with [her].”

“Rolled” meant
taking Ecstasy,
Ashley later explained.

“Do you have any left?” Ashley asked. It was something she had always wanted to try.

Humphrey said he did.

So they got high.

Ashley worked at Planet Smoothie, a health store that sold vitamin supplements, protein shakes, and smoothies. However, after Ashley explained to Humphrey how she could get him supplements at cost, he wasn’t interested in any of it.

“He was on steroids and human growth hormones,” Ashley said.

In late March 2003, Ashley moved into an apartment Humphrey shared with a friend. It was a small place there in Brandon, a one-floor tenement.

They were in love by then, Ashley claimed. Already discussing marriage.

Ashley thought about it. She loved the guy. By now, he was treating her like a queen. Making her feel warm and fuzzy inside. Special. Someone in her life had finally loved her unconditionally. Ashley Laney had met a man who treated her with respect and dignity.

Maybe he was marriage material, after all?

Ski was focused on Ashley Humphrey. He knew she was going to be the conduit into Humphrey’s life, providing she wasn’t in Humphrey’s presence and under his hypnotic spell. The key here was to approach Ashley and get her talking without her feeling closed in by this madman, her husband, a guy who, Ski knew by checking Humphrey’s record, had intimidated women all his life.

The PPPD had done a complete background check on Ashley. As it turned out, she had never been arrested or in any trouble whatsoever.

“In fact, all she had,” Ski later said, “was a citation—and that was from a car accident.”

Ashley had gone to high school in Hillsborough County and even started classes at Hillsborough Community College—that is, before she ran into Humphrey.

“I found out as I began looking into Ashley’s life,” Ski said later, “that her mom was a lifelong alcoholic and her dad was in prison. One of her brothers was convicted as a juvenile as an accessory after the fact for a homicide of one of his friends…. Well, they were all playing around with a gun and one of them got killed. What Ashley’s brother was convicted for was…helping to drag the victim out into the woods after he was accidentally shot, where the kid subsequently died.”

For Ski, after sitting down and taking a look at Ashley’s life and her family history, he thought, “Jeez, you have a mother who’s an alcoholic, a father in prison, a brother who’s been convicted of accessory and spent years in juvenile detention…and she turns out okay, all considering. She was living with her grandmother, too, at some point, and the grandmother dies.”

That year Ashley spent in college, she had met new friends and started to get into the swing of life, away from the chaos she had grown up around. She was determined, sources said, to beat the odds, and to create a life for herself away from the trouble of her past.

Then she met Humphrey.

“And the life she [was building],” Ski observed, “was over with.”

The day following that rather telling interview with Ashley, Ski and Detective Shannon Rozzi began to chip away at Ashley’s version of the weekend Sandee Rozzo had been murdered. The information Ashley had given Ski wasn’t vague or hard to track down. It was going to be rather simple in that respect.

First they drove to the Hollywood Video store, where Ashley said she and her husband had rented movies.

With a few quick keystrokes and a check of the computer, one of the clerks at Hollywood Video said, “Sure, it’s right here.” The dude pointed to the screen.

“When?”

“The last-known rented movies were on June twenty-nine. The movies were brought back on July first.” The clerk gave Ski the rundown of which movies they had rented:
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Punch Drunk Love; Eyes Wide Shut.

Ski had the clerk check to see if they might have rented movies in Humphrey’s name or several of their friends’ names.

Nothing.

Interesting. There was no record of Ashley renting a movie over that holiday weekend.

“Thanks,” Ski said. “We’ll be in touch for those records.”

A woman had called the PPPD to say that she thought she had some important info regarding Sandee’s murder. So Detective Rozzi and Ski headed over to the woman’s house. It just happened to be on the way to the Pizza Hut, where they were headed next to check out Ashley’s pizza delivery alibi.

The woman was shaken up a bit. She said she knew Humphrey, and someone had told her that he was dating Sandee Rozzo. Then Sandee’s name appeared on the news and in the papers, and she thought she might be able to help.

“And after learning about the death,” the woman explained, “after a friend told me she was killed, I went on the Internet and checked it out. See, I was married to Tracey Humphrey years ago. We have a daughter together.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Ski wondered.

“June twenty-nine.” The woman was certain, she explained. “It was for a Father’s Day celebration.”

“Did he talk about any threats he might have made toward Miss Rozzo? Did he say anything around you like that?”

“No…not about her. But we had a rough relationship. Violent. He threatened me in the past. He told me if I ever contacted the police about his violent behavior, he would do me harm.”

There was that MO coming up again.

“Do you recall what he said exactly?” This was important. To hear the same words from several different sources would help the PPPD build a solid case against Humphrey and help to convince the state attorney’s office (SAO) to press charges. It would make those other threats Ski had recorded all that much more believable. The more the merrier, something along those lines. Chances were that there wasn’t a line of women in Humphrey’s past making up stories, out to get him by imagining threats, but as a cop you never assume. You tally the evidence and weigh it against what you have.

“Yeah, I do…,” the woman said rather unabashedly. She recalled that her then-husband had warned her—how could she ever forget—to keep her mouth shut.

“He said, ‘If you ever go to the police, I will bury you in the backyard!’”

“We’ll be in touch,” Ski said.

Ski and Rozzi found a Pizza Hut store nearby and spoke to the manager. It was one of those uplifting moments in any investigation when they realized, through talking to the manager, that Pizza Hut kept detailed records of the deliveries its drivers had made.

“Looks like Humphrey ordered pizza on July 5, 2003, at approximately ten forty-nine that night.”

This was stunning. How could Humphrey order pizza and kill Sandee at nearly the same moment?

Ski asked which store the pizza was ordered from.

“Brandon.”

Ski and Rozzi headed out to the Brandon Pizza Hut to speak with the manager directly. Maybe there was a mistake somewhere? Perhaps they had the wrong date.

“Nope,” said the manager, “it’s right here.” She showed them on the computer.

Sure enough, pizza was delivered on that night, at 10:49
P.M
., to Humphrey’s Sadie Street apartment.

How could that be?

The manager gave Ski the cell phone number the pizza was ordered from.

It was Humphrey’s.

“It was ticket number two hundred and seventy-five,” the manager explained. “They ordered two pizzas. One was a large, hand-tossed chicken and black olives and tomato. The other was a large pan pizza, same ingredients.”

Ski thought about it. They needed to speak with the delivery driver.

“Is there a record of the driver’s name on there?”

“Sure.” The manager gave Ski the name. “In fact,” the manager said, looking around the restaurant, “he’s working right now, if you want to speak with him.”

“Indeed,” Ski said, looking at Rozzi.

It took some time, but the driver, a young kid, sat down in a booth with Ski and Rozzi. He agreed to talk.

“Do you remember that delivery specifically?” Ski asked. The idea was to see if the kid could recall who answered the door, who was home, and maybe if there was anything he could tell by talking to the person.

The kid thought about it, taking his time.

“I do remember that delivery. Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.”

“How so?”

“I had to call the cell phone number on the ticket because they didn’t give an apartment number.” He said he spoke to a man.

“What’d he say?”

“He told me to go to apartment C.”

“Who answered the door?”

“A tall, bald man.”

Ski and Rozzi exchanged a glance.

Humphrey.

“Anything else happen?”

“He asked me to come inside his apartment. Told me to put the pizza down on the table while he paid his bill.”

“How did he pay the bill?”

The kid thought some more. “Credit card, I think.”

“Was there anyone else in the apartment that you recall seeing?”

“No, just him. The tall, bald man.”

Ski pulled out a photo of Humphrey. “Is that the man you delivered the pizzas to that night?”

“Yeah…I believe that’s him.”

“Anything else you can tell us?”

The kid explained that the only car he saw was a dark Cadillac parked in a spot facing east.

“I remember this because I was able to pull in alongside the Caddy and park my car.”

“That should do it, then, unless you can think of anything else.”

“I recall getting a [twenty-dollar] tip,” the kid said.

“Thanks, we’ll be in touch, okay,” Ski said, and he and Rozzi were on their way.

Inside the car on the way back to the PPPD, Ski talked with Rozzi about the tip. It was rather large.

“Humphrey wanted this kid to remember that he ordered pizza that night. Invited him in…paid with a credit card…gave the kid that big tip. Conveniently forgot to give Pizza Hut his apartment number. It all seems…suspect.”

“I’m with you,” Rozzi said.