Kill For Me (6 page)

Inside that folder was a note.

“Tony shows us this note,” Paul Andrews recalled. “It says,
If anything should ever happen to me, contact [detectives investigating the sexual battery/kidnapping case I was involved in].
”

Sandee had written the note herself.

It was a major find.

All fingers, it seemed, pointed to Tracey Humphrey. The name popped up under every stone. Three times now, from
three
different sources, and the woman had not been dead twenty-four hours.

The PPPD had a problem, however, with the name Tracey Humphrey, or Tracey Humphries, as they were being told early on. They had searched a database and came up short. Nothing. Nowhere. Not a trace regarding a Tracey Humphrey or Tracey Humphries.

Strange.

As the officers stared at Sandee’s note, however, the problem was quickly solved: she had written
Timothy
Humphrey—which, of course, changed everything.

The PPPD got ahold of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) and spoke to a woman who had actually once worked on the PPPD squad. The officer had arrested Humphrey on the warrant for the rape of Sandee Rozzo. She said she was very familiar with the case.

By late that afternoon, Ski had a binder, he said, “chock-full of information regarding Timothy Humphrey.” And most of the charges against the guy stemmed from Humphrey abusing women, or being violent against women, threatening, and even telling several females he had relationships with that he would kill them. In one instance, for example, back in 1998, Humphrey had barricaded himself in a house after being tracked down on a warrant. He wouldn’t turn himself in. The warrant involved an alleged kidnapping and aggravated battery against a woman with whom he was romantically involved at the time. Sheriffs ultimately surrounded the house. Humphrey, armed and ready to do battle, was inside. Sheriffs demanded that he come out. He wouldn’t. So they sent canisters of tear gas into the home through windows and dragged him out.

The PPPD found out that Timothy Humphrey was working at a place called the Brandon Athletic Club, in Brandon, Florida. He was a personal trainer. Humphrey was thirty-six years old, a year younger than Sandee. He lived in a single-floor yellow-brick apartment on Sadie Street in Brandon with his wife and another guy. Humphrey had, in fact, just gotten married two days prior to Sandee’s murder. There was a good chance the guy was out of the country or away on his honeymoon. On top of that, PPPD investigators soon learned that Tracey Humphrey had a number of aliases and a page-long rap sheet of brutal assaults and petty crimes. He had done time. According to his history, the guy was a female basher and abuser. He loved nothing more than getting physical with women, controlling them, dangling a carrot for a while until he had them under his spell, then asking them to do things for him. He had an ex-wife—and child—who were terrified of him.

Sandra Pool showed up at the townhome. She needed to help in any way she could. Sandee was dead. Sandra was confused and sad and needed to do
something.
She was in tears, as was Sandee’s sister, who had also gone along with her mom.

One day Sandee was there; the next day she was gone.

Something had made them drive all the way to Pinellas Park from the hospital, Paul Andrews explained later—beyond Sandee’s murder. They needed to make sure the cops knew what had happened. Sandra Pool felt certain she knew who had killed her daughter.

“Tracey did this!” Sandra said, her daughter agreeing, as Paul Andrews listened attentively.

They were standing in the driveway of the townhome. Forensics was towing Sandee’s BMW out of the garage as they stood and—once again—accusations pointed directly to Tracey Humphrey.

While Paul Andrews talked with Sandra Pool and Sandee’s sister, forensics kept busy inside the garage, where they soon located three spent shell casings, as well as one outside the garage.

In front of where the vehicle had been parked, there were a pair of sandals and a towel covered in blood. There was a cell phone on the north side of the garage, on the ground, “that appeared to have blood on it,” one investigator said later. Quite interesting to investigators early on was a mirror leaning against the wall on the south side, propped up by where the driver’s-side door to Sandee’s Beemer would have been. The mirror had a small piece of brown paper attached to one corner. It was as if something had been ripped off but still clung to it.

Two more spent shell casings were located inside the BMW.

The driver’s-side window was the only glass broken.

The cell phone, it was determined, was Sandee’s.

Looking at all the evidence this early in the game, it wasn’t a stretch to think that someone had waited for Sandee to come home. If that were true, Sandee’s killer at least knew about what time she had come home, or Sandee had been followed. This could mean that Sandee was being stalked. When Sandee pulled in, her killer started firing. Sandee picked up her cell phone to call for help, maybe, and her killer finished the job by unloading the weapon in through the driver’s-side window as Sandee’s cell phone went tumbling out of her hand.

And that person, just about anyone connected to Sandee Rozzo had said, was a man named Timothy “Tracey” Humphrey.

After Detective Cindy Martin helped her PPPD colleagues search Tony Ponicall’s townhome (nothing of any significance was uncovered), Paul Andrews pulled Martin aside. He told her to partner up with another detective and head over to the Green Iguana in Tampa. It was near 6:30
P.M
. on Sunday, July 6, 2003, fewer than twenty-four hours after Sandee’s murder. Sandee’s coworkers would be showing up about now, some of whom were sure to offer insight, undoubtedly, into what was going on in Sandee’s life. By now the PPPD had a mug shot of Humphrey to pass around.

PPPD detectives were in information-gathering mode, locked and loaded, digging into every little clue they could uncover. Now wasn’t the time to go over to Humphrey’s apartment in Brandon and bang on the door. Investigators needed facts. They needed flesh to put on the bones of what had become a growing number of accusations mounting against Humphrey. Why turn over their cards now, at this early stage, and begin prodding the guy? It made more sense to keep looking. Especially for other suspects.

The Green Iguana is one of those franchise bars in Florida decked out in tiki attire and all things tropical. There are $1 drink and karaoke nights. Music. Hot girls. Great bar food. And a party atmosphere that caters to Florida’s nightclub crowds and people looking for a little more than a meal and some drinks at a Chili’s or T.G.I. Friday’s.

Detective Cindy Martin hooked up with several of Sandee’s former coworkers, who began painting a solid portrait of Sandee’s life inside the bar. Almost everyone said Sandee was dependable and had been at the Green Iguana for about the past two and a half months. Yet, as much as Sandee kept hush-hush about her life outside the bar to many of her coworkers, she had also opened up to several others. Many had stories to tell of what had occupied much of Sandee’s thoughts leading up to her murder.

“She had been the victim of a rape/kidnapping by a security guard/bouncer in Ybor City,” said one coworker. It was the reason, that same woman reported, why Sandee had left the Y bor City bar and come to Tampa looking for work. She was running from a madman.

There was also the problem of Sandee working as many hours as she could the past few months because of that nagging DUI she had gotten. It was the first time she had ever been in any type of legal trouble this bad.

Detective Martin asked everyone she spoke to about Tony Ponicall—if Sandee had mentioned him at all. Good cops are careful not to put all of their eggs in one basket and develop tunnel vision. Sure, a solid folder was being put together on Humphrey. He was going to have a lot of explaining to do in the coming weeks. But a detective cannot stay focused on one suspect. Law enforcement has to follow the evidence. And right now, some of that evidence kept pointing back to Tony Ponicall.

“Sandee told me,” one coworker stated, “that she had recently told [Tony] that she wanted to start dating other people.”

“No kidding. How long ago?”

“Oh, I’d say within the last three weeks.”

This was a far cry from Tony talking about Sandee in the manner of being his fiancée, which he had told several investigators. Now there were three stories circulating around the relationship: one had Tony and Sandee as roommates, another had them getting married, and now a third claimed that Sandee wanted to spread her wings and break away.

Many of Sandee’s coworkers simply said they’d had no contact with her outside of work. Sandee seemed to be a hardworking woman, totally type A. She was someone who set her mind on something and did it without bitching about how hard it was or any obstacles that might be placed in her way. One coworker said she and Sandee had made plans to go to Texas at the end of the week.

“She told me she had modeled before,” that same girl added, “but felt she wasn’t good enough. She had a self-image complex. She would try to fix me up with guys she knew here at the bar. I told her once, not too long ago, ‘I need a boyfriend,’ and she responded, ‘You and me both!’”

Other detectives joined Martin with the questioning of Sandee’s coworkers as it carried on into late evening.

Detective Harry Augello sat with the nighttime chef from the Green Iguana, who seemed to know Sandee quite well. Dave Simmons (pseudonym) said he was also one of the partners in the Green Iguana business.

“I do some managing and some cooking,” Simmons said. He seemed confident and calm, upset that such a good friend, a great person like Sandee, was here slinging drinks one minute and the next, well, dead. “She seemed to be in a good mood last night,” Simmons added. “I spoke with her.”

“Did anything happen last night?” Augello asked. “Anything out of the ordinary?” Like maybe someone had come in and threatened her, or perhaps Sandee had said something about being stalked.

“No. I was here with her, though, about a month back, when she was subpoenaed for the upcoming trial.” That sexual assault and kidnapping case against Humphrey.

“Tell me about that.”

“She seemed so afraid and upset. I asked her what was going on. She told me she had been beaten, raped, and held for two days by a bouncer. I knew him only as Tracey. She said she had worked with him at Club Inferno.” Simmons thought himself to be a big dude. Someone who could take care of himself. He told Augello he asked Sandee if she needed any help, protectionwise. If she was being harassed, he could do something about it. “She then told me that a few weeks prior to receiving the subpoena, Tracey’s girlfriend and his roommate had come to the Green Iguana…on different occasions, and sat at the bar, staring at her. She said she didn’t tell anyone about it at the time because she didn’t want Humphrey to think he was getting to her. Plus, she didn’t want anyone [at the Green Iguana] to know what had happened. I told her to let me know if anyone threatened her or came into the bar again.”

Augello took notes as Simmons talked. This was good information. It spoke to the character of Humphrey—the fact that his friends had maybe tried to intimidate Sandee meant, at least in theory, that Humphrey was worried about her testimony.

The question became: was he worried enough to have her killed?

“What else did she say?”

There was a pause. “She…told me…she lived with this guy who thought they were a couple, but that she did not really consider him to be her boyfriend.”

“She talk about how he treated her?”

Simmons answered immediately: “Yeah. She said he treated her ‘very well’ and she liked the ‘safety’ of the relationship…. She said they bought that townhome together.” There was a look on Simmons’s face, as though he had a memory that made him laugh.

“What is it?”

“She gave me a toaster for my new apartment just recently,” Simmons added after thinking about it. “Then she made a joke to the effect that she might need to share the toaster with me…and I interpreted that to mean that she might be moving out of where she lived. I remember, clearly, her saying to me, ‘I’ll enlighten you later.’ But we never discussed the matter again.”

Augello thanked Simmons. Took out a photo of Humphrey and asked Simmons if he recognized him.

He took a hard look.

“No.”

Displaying a mug shot photo of Humphrey, his bald head and cocky half-smile prominent, Martin and Augello asked just about everyone in the bar if they had ever seen the guy or remembered him coming into the Green Iguana.

Not one of them said yes.

Near 7:30
P.M
. on Sunday, July 6, 2003, Detective Scott “Ski” Golczewski was at his desk inside the PPPD squad room checking his voice mail. It had been a long day and night. Many of the detectives in the PPPD’s DU had been up well over twenty-four hours by now, working every lead they had. All of the anecdotal evidence the PPPD had collected thus far pointed to one man: Mr. Humphrey. That was no shock. It was cause for some excitement, sure. But not enough to be pumping fists in the air just yet. Ski had seen stranger things happen during an investigation. Like the time he had arrested a con man who was renting equipment, but instead of returning it, he was selling it. The guy had committed several other nonviolent crimes, too, and had been in trouble all his life. Seemed he was just your average con man out and about, taking whomever he could for however much he could get. Ski arrested the guy. Months later, Ski happened to hear that the guy had been found guilty and sentenced—that is, to 160 years behind bars.

Indeed, the law was funny sometimes.

One voice mail piqued Ski’s interest the moment he walked in and played it. The call was from a guy by the name of Jeff Erb, a special agent with the Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco (AB&T). Kind of bizarre that an agency set up to regulate the sale of booze and cigarettes in the state was calling the PPPD about a murder case.

“I have some info related to your homicide,” Jeff Erb said into Ski’s voice mail. “Give me a call.”

Ski didn’t waste any time.

“I know of a subject named Tracey Humphrey, whose real name is Timothy,” Erb said, “who was associated with Sandee Rozzo in the past and had possibly raped her.”

There it was again—that damn name. Along with the rape case.

“Continue,” Ski said.

“I feel pretty strongly that Humphrey had something to do with this homicide in one way or another.”

“No kidding.” Ski was interested. Here was a law enforcement brother talking about a hunch he had, which was based on some rather chilling information, Ski would soon find out.

“I was introduced to the sexual battery case in Hillsborough County when a friend of mine (Sandee’s best friend’s fiancé) brought Miss Rozzo to me to report the sexual battery. Miss Rozzo told me she was raped and tortured over a period of two days back in 2002.” Erb added that Sandee looked pretty beat-up and was definitely shaken when she arrived at his office. It was quite obvious something violent had transpired. But, Erb told Ski, he explained to Sandee that his office—Erb was working for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) at the time—didn’t have jurisdiction over the case, so he advised Sandee where to go.

“That’s great info, Jeff, thanks.”

“There’s more.”

“More?”

“Yeah. A friend of Sandee’s called me yesterday.”

Yesterday?
Ski thought.

“She told me,” Erb continued, “that Humphrey’s roommate [he gave Ski the name] recently found out where Sandee worked, at the Green Iguana. The friend told me that Sandee had always been scared that Mr. Humphrey would find out where she worked and eventually, through that, where she lived.”

After speaking with Erb, Ski drove to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office with another detective and spoke to an investigator who had remembered Humphrey from a case a year ago.

Another sexual battery charge.

The investigator pulled out the file and gave Ski Humphrey’s last known address. It was time someone headed out and spoke to the guy. See where he was with all of this. Maybe put his feet to the flame and see what he had to say.

“Here, he lives with this guy….” The investigator gave Ski the address of Wade Hamilton (pseudonym).

Ski and his partner drove out to the address in downtown Pinellas Park.

Wade Hamilton answered the door. “He’s not here,” Hamilton said with an attitude. “Let me give you his cell phone number.”

“Here is my card,” Ski said. “Give it to Humphrey for me, would you?”

Hamilton took the card in his hand and looked at it. “Yeah, okay.” He nodded.

“Tell him to call me as soon as possible.”

“We heard Humphrey works at the Athletic Club in Brandon,” Ski’s partner said. “Do you know if he still works there?”

Hamilton thought about it a moment. Eyed both of the cops standing on his front porch. “Yeah, he does.”

The following morning, July 7, at approximately nine o’clock, Ski stopped by his desk to check his voice mail again. He had finally gotten some rest the previous night. This after what had turned into running on hyper speed for the past twenty-four hours. Homicides dictated the course of action that as a cop, you struck while the information was hot. If not, an officer could miss out on a crucial piece of evidence.

“Let people talk,” Ski told me. “It opens up all sorts of doors.”

After he listened to several unimportant voice mail messages, there was the man of the hour’s soft voice on Ski’s phone: Timothy “Tracey” Humphrey. He sounded calm, and quite in control of himself. He had a supple, wispy tone, a hint of smugness there. Humphrey sounded like one of those guys who thought he was smarter than he actually was—someone who spoke as though everything out of his mouth was supposed to be believed based on the merits of
him
saying it.

“I have no idea why you need to talk with me,” Humphrey’s voice mail message said. “But I heard you’re looking for me.” He gave Ski his phone number. “Feel free to call me anytime.”

Ski didn’t want to phone Humphrey; he wanted to greet him, face-to-face, judge his reactions to questions. While looking over documents associated with a file on Humphrey, Ski realized that Hillsborough County prosecutors were involved in not one or two sexual battery cases against him, but three, including Sandee’s.

How could
three
separate women who didn’t know each other be making up the same accusations against the same man? The odds were insurmountable. Based on the accusations alone, Ski suspected the guy was a chronic abuser. Toss in his criminal record and the time he spent in prison over the years, and you have a career criminal—a guy, moreover, whose crimes seemed to have escalated throughout the years. In addition, add in the fact that Sandee Rozzo had reported to more than one person that one of the things Humphrey repeated to her, over and over, during her two-day ordeal with him was that he said he was never going back to prison.

No matter what.

“I’ll do whatever I need to,” Humphrey had told Sandee more than a dozen times.

There was a meeting that morning between PPPD detectives and the Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney’s Office (PPCSAO). It was time to coordinate a plan of attack. Assignments were given out to various investigators. The PPCSAO was there to assist the PPPD, and the teams of detectives needed to get together and discuss what, when, where, how, and by whom.

Ski met with Tony Ponicall later that day. Tony was more than willing to give up his fingerprints and another DNA sample so the PPPD could eliminate him forensically (and completely) from the case. It was standard procedure at this point. They knew Tony had no more killed Sandee than any of her neighbors or coworkers; but they had to cross Tony off the list, or there would be trouble down the road when they tried to make a case stick against whoever was ultimately—and hopefully—going to be arrested and tried.

“Mr. Ponicall was very cooperative and he gave us consent to take elimination fingerprints and also obtain DNA swabbing,” Ski said in his report, describing that meeting with Tony.

Cops will always come in on the side of the innocent not having any reservations whatsoever about helping with an investigation, with or without a lawyer’s consent. The truth is the truth—no matter how you stack it up. If a guy has nothing to hide, he has no problem doing whatever is asked of him, within reason, obviously. Tony Ponicall proved that.

Ski met with Joan Hallmark, who acted as the liaison between the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office and the FDLE forensic labs. Hallmark printed out what Ski called a “master list” of the evidence the lab had developed up until that point of the investigation: from bullet fragments to Sandee Rozzo’s bloodied, cutoff shorts and T-shirt, to the shell casings found at the crime scene, along with many of the fingerprints located inside and outside Sandee’s BMW.

All of this evidence was going to play a part in where the investigation was headed. It needed to be filed in a proper manner, and Ski was confident that Hallmark’s lab was doing that. More important, however, the list was going to help Ski and the PPPD work through the case, step by step.

A map, essentially.

As he was on his way back to the squad room, Ski made contact with Sandee’s best friend, Amber Kellogg (pseudonym). Amber’s fiancé had been the guy who had reached out to Jeff Erb.

By 6:30
P.M
. on July 7, Amber was sitting across from Ski inside a small room at the PPPD. She said she had known Sandee for about six years. She was devastated by her friend’s death. Amber said she couldn’t believe it at first. Then, when she sat down and had time to collect her thoughts and think about things, little bits and pieces of Sandee’s life she had known about became larger pieces of a murder. Amber believed that she and Sandee both knew who had authored this crime.

“Tracey Humphrey.”

Discussing the sexual battery case, Amber went through what Sandee had told her about that two-day terror-filled weekend she claimed to have spent with Humphrey. When she was finished, Amber came out with it, saying, “If anyone was going to do Sandee harm, it would have been Humphrey….”

Wherever Sandee worked, Amber said, at a variety of times (after the alleged sexual assault and kidnapping), strange calls would come into that particular place of employment. Men, generally, but occasionally a female, would call and ask if Sandee Rozzo worked there. As soon as they got the answer, the caller would hang up.

Amber said she was certain “that was Tracey Humphrey sending Sandee a direct message.”

Sandee had told Amber she
knew
it was Humphrey.

More than trying to intimidate Sandee, Amber pointed out, it was also Humphrey’s way of trying to find out where Sandee worked at any given time.

Again and again, no matter how Ski and the PPPD lined it up, it appeared that Humphrey had wanted Sandee Rozzo dead and gone before she could testify in a sexual battery case that he feared would send him to prison for no fewer than ten years.

For Homicide Division cops, was there a better motive for murder?