Kill For Me (7 page)

At 3:00
P.M
. on July 8, 2003, Ski and his partner, Detective Mike Lynch, took a ride over to the Athletic Club in Brandon. It was time to speak with Humphrey and see what the big man had to say for himself. Ski and Lynch were not going to be accusing Humphrey of anything; they just wanted to talk. Feel the guy out. See what he had to say for himself, and weigh his reaction to the visit itself.

Body language and eye movement don’t lie.

Lynch was one of those “methodical investigators” every good detective squad has on the force, said one colleague. He could be tenacious and pigheaded, but in a way that moved the case forward and didn’t upset anyone. Lynch stood six feet tall, a little over two hundred pounds, and had a clean-shaven look.

“Not thin, not heavy,” Lynch’s boss, Paul Andrews, later said. “He is a good family man. He has two daughters,” Paul added. “Lynch is a dedicated father who makes his family his focus. We have worked many cases together and have a connection between us, with mutual trust and respect for each other as persons and investigators. My first weekend as supervisor, we had a homicide by beating and stomping. Lynch and I interviewed a key witness, the suspect’s extremely intoxicated and beaten wife, at the hospital. Through the interview we learned about each other as investigators and our styles, and we had very similar thought patterns.” As far as the Sandee Rozzo homicide went, Paul said that Lynch was “instrumental in working with Ski and giving him pointers on the investigation and subsequent documentation of each step.”

As Ski and Lynch drove to the club, Ski thought about the case. He wasn’t 100 percent sold on the notion that Humphrey was their killer.

“I didn’t want to have tunnel vision,” Ski said later. Which is important, maybe more so in a case such as this one, when everything seemed to point in one direction. “Just as I had given Mr. Ponicall the chance to dispel any alarm from me and cooperate, and to see what information he had to offer—basically, I was heading over there to do the same thing with Mr. Humphrey.”

The goal in talking to Humphrey now was to get an alibi. Humphrey had good reason to want Sandee Rozzo dead, so the PPPD needed to hear from him regarding what he was doing on the night near the time she was murdered.

The Brandon Athletic Club was your typical cookie-cutter gym in a strip mall, offering all the latest and greatest gadgets for losing weight and weight training. Humphrey had been a personal trainer at the Brandon location for some time. He seemed pretty popular with the ladies at the club—that much Ski and Lynch knew from speaking to several of Sandee’s friends. What was also clear was that Humphrey had a con man’s blood running through his veins; he knew how to get people to do what he wanted. It was more of a skill he had developed, rather than an inherent trait he’d had his entire life. But even more than that, Humphrey had a way of working himself into the lives of those females he trained and getting them to focus on him more than their own lives.

Svengali all the way.

“I’d say it developed over—when you’re seeing somebody several days a week, talking a lot,” said Tobe White, a forty-one-year-old woman Humphrey had been training at the club since March. “I’d say probably over a few months, we became better and better friends.”

“Friends” was maybe how Tobe White viewed the relationship. But as the PPPD slowly began to learn, Humphrey rarely allowed anyone into his life that he couldn’t use or manipulate in some capacity. Humphrey definitely needed something out of Tobe—it was the only reason he had taken the relationship from the gym floor to the outside.

Walking in, Ski and Lynch asked the owner of the franchise if Humphrey was working.

“Tracey’s here,” the guy said. “Sure.”

“We need to speak with him.”

The owner provided a space for the impromptu conversation, one of those soft rooms.

Lynch and Ski introduced themselves. Humphrey, all smiles, stuck out his hand. He was sweaty and out of breath, a towel wrapped around his neck like a boxer after a fight. He seemed surprised by the visit, but not shocked.

“I understand that you knew [Sandee Rozzo]?” Ski said.

“Yes,” Humphrey offered.

Ski mentioned that they wanted to interview him about something extremely sensitive and important. As he watched Humphrey, Ski noticed how big—or juiced up—Humphrey appeared. He spoke softly, in a low monotone. But, man, was he jacked!

“I’m working the case…where Sandee was killed and I’d like to talk to you about it all,” Ski said, putting it out there.

“I was wondering why,” Humphrey said, “ever since you called. Huh! I thought it was that maybe something happened to my ex-wife or daughter, who live in the Pinellas Park area. There’s nothing wrong with them, right?”

Ski noticed how “robotic” Humphrey was acting, like he had practiced the conversation. Rehearsed it. Been over it in his head.

“No, no,” Ski said reassuringly. “This involves a homicide investigation we’re conducting, Mr. Humphrey.
Not
your family.”

“Homicide?” Humphrey asked with raised eyebrows, quite a forced reaction.

Ski asked Humphrey in general terms about his life.

“I just got married, like three days ago. My wife’s name is Ashley.”

Ski went to ask Humphrey another question, but the big man cut him off with raised hands. Things were getting too personal, obviously. Humphrey wanted no part of the conversation.

“Listen, because this doesn’t involve my ex-wife, wife, or daughter,” he said, “I—I already spoke to my attorney, Vanessa Nye, last night after you called. She advised me, because of the ongoing case with Sandee Rozzo, not to make any statements unless I make them in front of her. Sorry.”

Okay…,
Ski thought.
Red flag number one.

Sandee’s death was nothing more than a page-two mention in all the newspapers. But there was no doubt that Humphrey knew why they were there.

Ski and Lynch looked at each other. Shook their heads.

“I do want to cooperate one hundred percent,” Humphrey added. He took out a piece of paper and wrote down Nye’s phone number. Handed it to Ski. “Call her. Set up an appointment, a time, so we can get together. Be glad to help you out, as long as she’s there.”

Yeah, right,
Ski thought as he took the paper; then he and Lynch left.

Driving away, Ski and Lynch had the same feeling.

“Now he’s definitely more of a suspect that we need to dig more into,” Ski recalled of that moment when they walked out of the building and started talking.

“He’s involved, Mike, huh?” Ski asked.

Lynch nodded.

“It doesn’t take a great amount of detective work to figure that out,” Ski added.

Yet, the PPPD had no idea, really, of what they were about to uncover as they began to take a serious look at Mr. Timothy Humphrey—nor did they realize, when looking back, where the case would head and how it would eventually turn into one of the most remarkable cat-and-mouse chases many of the detectives had ever seen.

Detective Paul Andrews heard from forensics that technicians had found an additional shell casing inside Sandee Rozzo’s BMW and a bullet fragment lodged in the passenger-side door of the interior of the vehicle.

These were important discoveries. If a shell casing had made its way into the car, there was a good chance that their shooter had his hand inside the vehicle as he fired. If that was the case, Sandee’s killer wanted to make damn sure she wound up dead. It lent credence to the most popular theory of payback as motive.

Tracey Humphrey.

Paul took a call that morning from the former prosecutor who had been building the sexual assault case against Humphrey. The prosecutor couldn’t believe Sandee had been murdered. It had to be retaliation for her testimony in the sexual assault trial coming up, the prosecutor suggested. There could be no other explanation for someone to want Sandee dead. She had no enemies besides Humphrey.

Paul and Ski drove to the prosecutor’s office and spoke to the new prosecutor in charge of Sandee’s sexual assault case. (They wouldn’t learn this for almost a year, but the fact that the prosecutor in Sandee’s case had been replaced by a second prosecutor was one of the determining factors in Sandee’s death.) The detectives needed a complete rundown of the sexual assault/kidnapping case. Was it rock solid? Did the prosecutor think they had a winner? What was the projected outcome going to be? How many years was Humphrey facing, and what evidence did the office have against him?

“They were shocked,” Paul recalled. “It’s not every day you have a witness in a trial killed.”

Life isn’t like an episode of
The Sopranos.

Ski was thinking along the same lines. “It’s almost like a mob hit,” Ski said to Paul as they left the meeting.

A cop looks at the weapon chosen for the murder—a .22-caliber Ruger, semiautomatic pistol—and as an investigator, he leans toward a hired killer.

“You have a small-caliber weapon that packs a punch,” Paul explained. “The bullets break apart easily upon impact with bone…and the fact that the victim is supposed to testify against someone.”

It all seemed to point to a murder for hire, or a planned hit.

Paul and Ski got their hands on a deposition Sandee Rozzo had given in support of her case against Humphrey. It was chilling to read Sandee’s account of her relationship with Humphrey. During the deposition Humphrey’s attorney tried to play off Sandee and Humphrey’s relationship as though Sandee had had consensual sex with the guy on numerous occasions—and that the rape and confinement were, perhaps, part of their relationship, a figment, essentially, of Sandee’s imagination.

“I never had consensual sex with him,” Sandee had said numerous times during the deposition. “Never.”

This told Ski and Paul a lot about the man they were dealing with.

“We looked at Humphrey,” Paul said, “as a coworker of Sandee’s who took their relationship out of context and believed she was attracted to him.”

Humphrey lived in a fantasy world. In other words, he was like a psychopath stalker falling in love with someone on television and driving to Hollywood and forcing himself on her, waiting outside her home, sending her creepy letters. PPPD investigators were starting to believe that Humphrey realized at some point that he couldn’t have Sandee all to himself. So he confined, raped, and beat her. Then, when she turned around and charged him with sexual assault, he killed her so she couldn’t testify against him. It certainly seemed like a plausible explanation.

However, as the PPPD was about to learn, they were almost entirely wrong with regard to this early theory. And as they dug into Sandee’s life and background, interviewing friends and family, reading Sandee’s own words she left behind, the idea that this was going to be an open-and-shut case quickly faded away.

The year before Sandee Rozzo was murdered, her life seemed centered around the sexual assault and battery/kidnapping charges in Hillsborough County that she had lodged against Humphrey. The case gnawed at any serenity Sandee had, tearing at her every waking moment. All she could think about was sitting in front of this intimidating man, pouring out her soul, telling the courtroom and jury what went on inside her apartment during those two days in which she claimed he had held her hostage.

The forced sex. The beatings. The blood. The crazy look in Humphrey’s eyes as he cut himself. Sandee spoke of it as though describing a horror movie she had just gone to see.

The pending case, slated for trial in June 2003, but postponed to August merely weeks before Sandee was murdered, could have landed Humphrey in prison for ten years. And that was, Sandee had told numerous friends and relatives, the main reason he wanted her dead. He said he couldn’t do another day in prison, that he would kill himself first.

Yet now, with Sandee Rozzo dead, prosecutors had no choice but to drop all the charges against Humphrey.

Exactly what he wanted.

“We learned,” Paul Andrews noted, “that Sandee Rozzo was in fear of Mr. Humphrey and believed he might seek her out and do her serious bodily harm in retaliation for being the complaining witness in his criminal charge.”

Sandee was terrified. She routinely had told family and friends that Humphrey was going to do something to her and might even kill her one day before the trial. She talked about her fears often to friends. One woman, Erika Innus (pseudonym), bartended with Sandee poolside at the Club Coliseum. It was the summer of 2002. Hot and humid in Florida. Bugs the size of small helicopters were buzzing around. No rain. The weekends outside at the poolside bar were always busy. Erika and Sandee rarely got a chance to talk during work, but Sandee had picked Erika up one Saturday. They now had a chance to get to know each other more intimately.

Sandee said she was in the process of trying to get charges pressed against “some guy that I worked with in Y bor City.”

“What happened?” Erika asked. If there were charges involved, it must have been pretty serious.

“He kidnapped and raped me!” Sandee responded. She sounded as if she was ready to testify. Taking back her life. She wasn’t going to be a victim. She wanted to make sure this animal didn’t hurt anyone else.

“He what?”

“Held me hostage.”

“Who?”

“Tracey…his name is Tracey.”

“You’re not talking about Tracey Humphrey, are you?” Erika asked. She was confused. She knew a guy named Tracey Humphrey. Seemed anyone who worked at a club or a popular bar in the Tampa region anywhere into the new millennium knew the guy. Same went for Miami during the 1990s. As for Erika, she had worked with Humphrey many years before, she said. She had actually run into him a while back, gave him her phone number, and tried to get him a job at a club she had worked at then.

This, of course, was a familiar story to Sandee, who had gotten Humphrey the job in Ybor City after he wormed his way into her life and had built a rapport and trust with her.

“Yeah. Do you know him?” Sandee asked.

“Yes, I know him. I used to work with him. I cannot believe you’re talking about this same guy I used to know.”

It was strange to Erika. Humphrey seemed so nice, she said. He was a big, powerfully built, imposing character, straight out of the club circuit. He had worked many of the clubs as a bouncer and/or a doorman. Everyone—she couldn’t say it enough—knew the guy.

Sandee started to go into more detail as they pulled into the work parking lot. “We’ll talk later,” she said.

“Yes, definitely.”

Throughout the day Erika couldn’t get what Sandee had told her out of her mind.
Tracey?
The story Sandee had told didn’t fit with the image of the gentle giant of a man Erika knew.

At the end of the day, as Sandee and Erika were cashing out from their shift, going through their receipts and counting their drawers, Sandee started talking about the incident again. To open up about it, like this, turned out to be therapeutic for Sandee. It was as if talking about it took the power of the crime away. The more she opened up, the better she felt. Sandee felt stronger by verbalizing what had happened. She had gone through blaming herself—that “it’s all my fault” syndrome so many rape victims endure. Now she was ready to take back her soul.

She and Humphrey, Sandee explained to Erika as they stood around, had gone back to her place after work one night.

“He snapped…,” Sandee said.

“How?”

“He came at me and started choking me and holding me down on the bed. Then he tied me up…and raped me.”

That was only the half of it. Sandee was leaving out about twenty-four hours of the most horrific details a person could imagine.

As she listened to Sandee tell the story, Erika couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

Reliving the moment, Sandee started to cry. Maybe it
was
too much?

“Let’s get out of here,” Erika told her friend. “Come on.”

Sandee was shaking. Erika hugged her. Held her tightly. “It’s okay, Sandee. It’s all right. You’ve gone through a living hell.”

More than that. Sandee was suffering twice. She had paid the price during the incident itself, and now here she was again, suffering all over, fearing that this lunatic who had raped, beaten, and kidnapped her was following her around, stalking her, planning her murder. Just when she thought she had her fears licked, they started all over again.

Sandee mentioned how tough it was to go through with charges and file the complaint. Anyone not living in a cave knew what women who made accusations of rape had to undergo publicly—especially when you added violence beyond rape into the picture. Sandee was going to have to be tough to withstand the onslaught of questions by a defense attorney. She was going to have to be strong to sit and face Humphrey in court and tell her story. Lots of women failed to press charges because of not wanting to go through with testifying. But not Sandee. She wasn’t going to allow Humphrey to get away with it. She was determined to see it through until the end. No matter how many times he would threaten her, call her place of employment, or try to intimidate her. This was it. No more. It ended here and now.

“If this is true,” Erika said as they left the parking lot, “he does deserve to be prosecuted.”

As they made their way home, Sandee mentioned that Humphrey had hired himself a hotshot lawyer. Some woman, Sandee said, “who wore slutty clothes and had long nails and piled on lots of makeup. Tracey’s probably sleeping with her,” Sandee added. “She was so nasty to me one time.”

Erika had heard nothing like this in her life. She didn’t know what to say.

“Will you support me?” Sandee asked her friend as they concluded the conversation. “Will you come with me to court?”

Erika thought about it. “I would love to,” she said, a look of concern on her face, “but since I’m also acquaintances with Tracey…I don’t really want to be involved in the whole thing.”