Kill For Me (28 page)

It was vital that additional charges be tacked onto Humphrey’s growing list of legal problems. With the accusations he currently faced, there was a chance that he could make bail. Now that Tobe White had been named as a witness against him, Humphrey was raging mad, bulging at the seams to get out and, presumably, get his large hands around Tobe’s throat.

The FDLE had been working on additional charges ever since Humphrey’s arrest on gun possession. Finally an indictment came through and a warrant for felony battery and tampering with a witness. It was enough to keep Humphrey locked up without a chance for bond.

Good thing.

Beyond that, the FDLE was also working on interviewing witnesses and building a case against Humphrey and his wife for financial fraud. Tobe had mentioned they had falsified documents to obtain loans. If that was the case, additional serious felony charges could be piled on.

For the next eight weeks, while Humphrey and his wife were securely tucked away in jail, unable to get out on bail, law enforcement went to work interviewing new witnesses, reinterviewing old ones, and getting all of their ducks, so to speak, in a row. This was often the most difficult part of any case. Putting everything together so that a jury could unpack it without any difficulty. It was one thing to make a case—quite another to prove it. The PPPD, along with several other law enforcement agencies, had worked too long and too hard to allow Humphrey and his wife a way out of the system this time around.

As it were, Ashley still wasn’t talking. Yet that was about to change. Throughout this time it was pointed out to Ashley (presumably by her attorneys) that the husband whom she
thought
she knew was not a Tampa Bay Buccaneer, for starters. Nor did he ever play in the Rose Bowl, back in his Iowa college days. Or model in Italy and New York. No. In fact, Humphrey was a proven, pathological liar, career criminal, and batterer of females.

Yet, none of that seemed to faze Ashley all that much. It was as though she had expected it all to be
untrue
. What the actual motivating factor for Ashley to consider talking to the police finally turned out to be, according to several sources, was something entirely different, and maybe even somewhat socially material. It was the fact that Humphrey had lied to her about his sexuality.

When law enforcement first picked up Ashley on murder charges, it was apparent that Humphrey had brainwashed and manipulated her to the point where she was programmed to ask for her attorney, which she did repeatedly. But what a few weeks away from Humphrey could do for a Patty Hearst–like, Stockholm syndrome girl.

“I was not too surprised when Ashley’s attorney called the SAO,” Ski said later, “wanting to make a deal. I was surprised it happened so fast after her arrest. I was glad we left the door open for Ashley to contact us when we [first] interviewed her. I also heard Ashley felt betrayed by Humphrey when she found out he was gay, but I do not know for sure how much that played into her decision to flip on him. I do think that was the final example of how Humphrey had manipulated Ashley—and she
finally
realized she had been taken advantage of.”

“Used” was maybe a better term.

It was also a good bet that Ashley’s attorney wanted to strike a deal with the SAO before Humphrey’s attorneys got in there and tried to do the same.

“One of the hardest parts of this case,” ASA Fred Schaub told me, “was cutting a deal with Ashley. It’s never easy to decide to cut a deal for the individual who is the shooter. She killed Sandee Rozzo. It was difficult for our office—this was the shooter. But we also knew Humphrey was the man behind it. And the only way to really
get
him was to utilize her testimony.”

In discussing a deal with Ashley, the SAO had to look at the worst-case scenario: Humphrey winning. Had Ashley not come forward, there was a chance Humphrey could someday walk out of jail. He would have eliminated Sandee Rozzo and gotten rid of Ashley on top of it all.

Win-win.

“We thought long and hard about it,” Schaub added. “But the twenty-five-year plea we gave her”—which was the deal the SAO put on the table for Ashley—“you know, twenty-five in Florida isn’t out in five, out in ten. No! It’s twenty-five. Period. Day for day. She serves
all
twenty-five years. And for a kid her age, well, that’s a long time. Her childhood is gone.” The best years of Ashley’s life would have been spent behind bars. “And rightfully so. What she did was terrible.”

A suspect rarely approaches a prosecutor, unless the evidence is stacked against him or her. In this case Ashley looked at the job law enforcement had done, saw how much evidence there was, and was smartly advised by her two attorneys, whom Schaub called two of “the best” public defenders he had ever worked with. If Ashley wanted to roll the dice with a trial, she was facing a possible death penalty sentence. And Florida isn’t shy about putting people to death.

Why chance it?

And so, late into February 2004, one of Ashley’s attorneys came forward and related to the SAO that her client was ready to talk.

On March 2, Ski got a call to head over to the SAO and interview Ashley. Bob Schock went along, too, with several other investigators. This was what everyone had been waiting for. Ashley was ready to give up the goods on her husband—which Humphrey believed she would never do.

Ashley seemed much more comfortable and congenial than she had been just over two months ago when she and Humphrey had been arrested. She first talked about how she had met Humphrey (at the Brandon Athletic Club), how the relationship between them blossomed quickly, how Humphrey began—almost immediately—to talk about his “criminal problems,” as Ashley called them, with Sandee Rozzo, and how none of it was his fault. Sandee had set him up for a crime he did not commit.

Back then, Ashley said, she bought it all.

“He told me his problems would go away if Sandee Rozzo was not around.”

Humphrey had planted the seed. From that moment on, as she fell deeper in love with him and, arguably, became obsessed and insanely jealous of the other women in his life (another tool of manipulation Humphrey had used to his advantage as leverage, once he realized Ashley was infatuated with him), Humphrey worked on shaping and molding Ashley into his personal killer. He drilled into her head the idea that the only way he was going to stay out of prison was if Sandee Rozzo and her false accusations disappeared. This was something, he said over and over, he could never do himself. The authorities would suspect him immediately.

Ashley told Ski they planned “to do away with Sandee Rozzo” together. She corroborated the gun range story Tobe had told them. She spoke of how she had attempted to “kill Sandee Rozzo in May,” on that Memorial Day weekend, but botched it. Which was why she and Humphrey had to torch her VW Beetle.

Everything was falling into place.

“Yes,” she said, “I can show you where all the evidence is hidden.”

None of this information—although very important to the investigation—was all that new to Bob Schock or Detective Scott Golczewski.

Then again, Ashley wasn’t finished. She had much more to say.

The following morning, March 3, 2004, at ten o’clock, Ski and Schock met with Ashley again as Detective Sergeant Paul Andrews sat in. Ashley went through every part of the murder she could recall. How she did it. When. Where. How she had stalked Sandee. The routes she had taken to and from the Green Iguana. Her conversations with Humphrey over the telephone before and after the murder. The details of the actual murder itself and how Sandee had suffered. How she had walked up to Sandee’s car as Sandee sat in it inside her garage, looked her in the eyes—as Humphrey had told her to do—and unloaded eight rounds into the woman as she kicked and screamed and fought for her life. The way Ashley described it was as if she was talking about a dream, or a movie she had seen.

The fact that Ashley had lodged serious sexual abuse claims against David Abernathy, her future stepfather, came up. It was all part of the brainwashing scenario Humphrey had scripted, Ashley said. Abernathy had never done any of those things. She had made it all up because she had stolen the gun from him and had never returned it. When he threatened to go to the cops to get the gun back, she and Humphrey used the sexual abuse claims as a distraction—and it worked.

Concerning how Humphrey had programmed her to kill, Ashley said later, “He verbally abused me and just was constantly making me feel the lesser…. To keep from losing him, I desperately wanted to be with him.”

“We pretty much knew what happened with respect to the homicide,” Ski said, later analyzing this second interview, “and the attempted homicide (sniper shot at Sandra in Tampa on the Memorial Day weekend), the vehicle arson, and most of the rest.”

But Ashley then talked about the disguises she had worn—which was all new to them at the time.

“For example, how,” Ski said, “she got dressed up to look like a black male. She also told us where she dumped the disguises and weapons. That information was unknown to us at the time of the interview.”

Cops called it a “show and tell” ride. Ashley drove with FDLE investigators and PPPD detectives, showing them the locations connected to the murder. As they traveled around and walked through the woods, Ashley narrated her murderous adventure and showed investigators where she hid the accessories to the murder—all under the direction of her lovely husband, Tracey Humphrey. He was there, she said, on the other end of the cell phone, telling her what to do and when and where to do it.

The mastermind.

Over the next several days, Ashley connected all the dots and put all of the pieces together for law enforcement. There had been fuzzy spaces for cops before this interview. But now, the murder of Sandee Rozzo, along with Ashley and Tracey Humphrey’s roles in it, came perfectly into focus. It was absolutely as stunning as a Florida sunrise that Ashley remembered such vivid details as she went along and explained how they had planned, plotted, and murdered Sandee Rozzo—together! If anything, it was now more clear that Humphrey was the architect behind it all, but that Ashley willingly went along with the entire scenario for fear of losing her man.

In theory, though, if Ashley had never met Tracey Humphrey, many in law enforcement believed, there was not a chance in the world she would have murdered Sandee Rozzo, or anybody else.

“Ashley would likely be a housewife, with kids,” one source in law enforcement close to the case later told me.

The stroller. The weekend barbeques. The Lia Sophia parties. The PTA meetings. The whole shebang. Ashley would have drifted off into the suburban middle class and disappeared into the silence of being another American with dreams and goals and soccer games and Little League, and everything else “apple pie.”

But, of course, that wasn’t the path she chose. The fact was, when law enforcement finished checking out the information Ashley had given them, taking countless rides throughout Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties to search for buried weapons and sift through dirty Dumpsters, everything that Ashley had told them was corroborated by the evidence left behind.

In prosecution circles this was a slam dunk.

And yet, as well as things were going for law enforcement, the unthinkable was about to happen.

On March 18, 2004, a grand jury hearing evidence in the case against Tracey Humphrey handed down an indictment for first-degree murder charges. Now, all Ski had to do was serve the warrant to Humphrey and see if he was going to make things easy, or, as his MO had proven, fight until his last breath. Maybe he’d want to cut a deal? Perhaps he would want to stop playing and finally man up and take responsibility for his horrendous actions.

No one was holding his breath, however.

Ski called SA Davenport. They had grown close over the course of the case. Serving the warrant was something they needed to do together.

The following morning, March 19, a Friday, Ski met with Davenport and Paul Andrews to go over how the arrest would go down. When they finished, all three, along with another agent, headed to the Hillsborough County Jail. After checking in and showing the warrant, Ski requested that Humphrey be summoned to a visitor’s room they would be waiting in with FDLE SA Barbara Smith.

When Humphrey arrived, Davenport introduced himself and the rest of the team.

Humphrey didn’t appear shocked by the visit. He smiled, off the corner of his mouth, looking everyone over. Humphrey was good at this: keeping himself under control while under pressure.

Poker face.

Davenport read the warrant.

Humphrey exclaimed bitterly, “I wasn’t even
there
!”

“We know,” Davenport said, “you have a lawyer for those pending charges…so you can leave now.” Humphrey had already invoked his right to counsel. They weren’t about to waste any time trying to get him to waive that right and open up.

Humphrey stood quietly after making that initial statement. Unmoved. Silent. He bowed his head. Let out a deep breath. Then he sat down in a chair while everyone stood.

Ski looked at Davenport.

What’s he up to?

Humphrey was putting on his mask. His tough-guy suit. He started to laugh in a breathy whisper, which Ski had heard before. He rubbed the top of his head, as if for good luck. Then he looked up.

“All you got is a scared twenty-one-year-old over the barrel,” he said, sounding like a Clint Eastwood–movie bad guy. Then another laugh. “I didn’t kill that woman.”

“Mr. Humphrey,” Davenport said with that Florida twang in his voice only true Southerners could stake claim to, “you are free to leave this room. You can go now.”

Humphrey stood—and, once again, just in case they didn’t hear him the first time—invoked his right to remain silent.

“Have your attorney contact Detective Golczewski or myself if you wish to provide us with a statement,” Davenport suggested.

Humphrey continued standing before them, quiet and reserved.

Then, without warning, the big man, now formally charged with first-degree murder, walked out of the room.

The one true characteristic Humphrey exhibited that stood out more than any other—according to those who knew him well—was that he had to have the last word.
No matter what.
You never told Humphrey off without hearing from him that he was going to get you, kick your ass, burn your house down, or maybe kill you. Revenge seemed to run through his veins as part of his DNA. There was no way that Humphrey could allow someone to say something about him that he disliked or disagreed with, and not make an effort to come back at that person. In Humphrey’s skewed world, everyone else was a liar, a charlatan out to get him and make things up. Humphrey had always maintained that time would be the best retribution of all. Just wait. Given enough time, the truth would come out. And yet, all Humphrey had to do, essentially, was keep his mouth shut and he was certain not to dig a bigger hole for himself. The murder charges against him would come down to a classic case of he said/she said.

A man against his wife.

But Humphrey couldn’t do that, of course. He had to meddle. He had to show his might. He could not allow his ego to be trampled on. How dare someone point a finger at him.

“I wasn’t even there.”

On March 20, 2004, at 8:54
P.M
., Tobe White was at home when she received the first in a series of calls from an unknown male. During the first call, nothing was said. Just a silent line.

“Who is this?” Tobe asked repeatedly before the caller hung up.

Static…nothingness…dial tone.

Tobe knew who it was, all right.

Who else
could
it be?

Not a half hour later, the phone rang again.

It was a male’s voice, with an “island accent,” Tobe said later, “like Jamaican. But I didn’t recognize it.”

The man said he was speaking on behalf of Humphrey: “I want you to drop the charges. I thought I made myself clear. I didn’t hurt you then because I wanted to give you one last chance to fix what you did. This is
all
your fault. You’ve had more than enough warnings. Now it’s too late. Believe me, if I don’t get you before then…I’ll get you before you testify.”

Tobe’s heart raced.

The next night, more calls.

“Yes, I have a message for…the message is
Can you listen to me? Okay.
The message is
I should have hurt you a few weeks ago, but I am going to hurt you now.
You will never make it to the witness stand to testify against Tracey
or
Ashley. But, because of you, I will have to take care of her, too. Even if I have to get you going into the courthouse, I will.
I won’t stop until you’re dead.
Got it…okay?”

Sometime later, “Have you thought about the ways that you want to die? How do you want it to happen? I bet that you want it to be quick. But it’s not going to be. It’s gonna be long and painful.”

There was something in the voice during both calls that told Tobe the lines had been rehearsed. It was as if the caller were reading from a script.

Still, Tobe wanted round-the-clock surveillance and a constant watch on her animals. She was going back into hiding.

Was it ever going to end?

Actually, things were about to get a lot worse.