Kill For Me (8 page)

The case was becoming a straight line, a tunnel leading to one man. Humphrey was lawyered up, though. It was not going to be easy getting information out of him without some sort of incentive. A second problem that had come up was that the PPPD had confirmed that Humphrey swung both ways.

“He lived with a guy…as a gay couple,” one source inside the department told me, “for a time before he met Sandee Rozzo.”

“One guy I spoke to called him ‘the gay Mr. Clean,’” another source said.

Humphrey fit the part: bald head, large, muscular frame, one earring.

“Well,” that same source added, “that didn’t go over too well with Mr. Humphrey, the ‘gay Mr. Clean’ thing. So he beat the kid.”

The one thing that came up again and again for the PPPD as DU investigators pounded the pavement in Miami, a place where Humphrey had lived with a hairstylist, was that his anger generally ruled and overshadowed any relationship he ever had, but only when it pertained to females. He got along great with the males in his life.

Clinically speaking, Humphrey’s inconsistent sexual choices would certainly bode well with a theory that he was a man fighting an urge to live openly as a homosexual, and because he fought that urge, or need, he acted out violently against those female lovers who, perhaps without even knowing it, brought his homosexuality to the surface. There were friends of Sandee’s who said she and Humphrey would go out to the mall and shop like girlfriends. Even Sandee herself had made comments about Humphrey’s sexuality, saying a few times that he was like a “good gay friend.” It would make sense that Humphrey targeted Sandee and used violence to express himself sexually against her—Sandee represented that other part of Tracey Humphrey that he couldn’t bring himself to confront with honesty and openness.

One lover Humphrey had lived with said later that he met Humphrey in Miami in 1995.

“We ran into each other one night…and we started talking.” They were at a gay club. It didn’t take Humphrey long to make his move. “And then he told me, ‘Why don’t we go back to my apartment.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ So we went to his apartment.’”

They slept together. The relationship lasted, according to the lover, “two to three months, maybe four.”

Humphrey never once showed any signs of being violent with the man.

Detective Shannon Rozzi had been out interviewing several of Sandee’s ex-coworkers—people Sandee had worked with throughout her time in other area bars and clubs. One guy Rozzi spoke to had a story to tell that summed up how jealous and angry Humphrey was when it came to anyone even mentioning Sandee’s name, or getting close to her.

“Tracey must have killed her,” the witness told Rozzi. He explained that Humphrey had probably done it with his ex-roommate, a guy, he said, who had killed someone already and apparently had gotten away with it. The guy was known to carry weapons. Some dude pulled a gun on him one night and the guy blasted him. He got off on a self-defense rap.

“Anyway, I went into the Shangri La one night when Sandee was tending bar,” the witness explained. Business was slow. The witness and Sandee started talking, joking around, having some fun. At one point Sandee walked around to the other side of the bar and sat on the guy’s lap as they laughed about something. Sandee was like that; she knew how to work the bar and be that ear people needed when they came in and sat down to talk about their problems.

Humphrey, who happened to be there, walked over and “went nuts,” the witness explained. He started screaming, yelling, making threats.

Sandee got up. “What are you doing?” she yelled at Humphrey. There was no commitment between them. They were not “an item,” as he had thought, or anything even close.

They were friends.

Humphrey wouldn’t let up. “Do you know that I just fucked her in the parking lot!” he said, talking about Sandee. “My cum is probably running down your leg right now!”

What a vile creature, PPPD detectives considered when they heard about this.

After Humphrey humiliated the guy with his despicable, sexually charged comments, he got a look in his eyes—pure hatred and anger. He was fuming.

Sandee backed away.

“She seemed afraid of him,” the witness told Rozzi.

The witness and Humphrey exchanged profanities and made it appear as though they were going to come to blows, but they never did.

“I just assumed,” the witness explained as Detective Rozzi took notes, “that he was her boyfriend.”

Ski found out on July 8, 2003, that Humphrey had delivered a message to Sandee through a friend of his. Apparently, in the message, Humphrey said he was prepared to pay Sandee to drop the charges. It was a few months after the incident.

Sandee, of course, did not even humor the guy with a response.

This was compelling information. If true, it meant that Humphrey was, in a roundabout way, once again admitting that the charges against him were serious enough to warrant a way for him to worm out of them. Or, at the very least, the idea that there was enough evidence to convict him.

With so many stories coming in, so many different versions of what had happened to Sandee during that weekend and after, the only way to understand the truth, Ski knew, was to hear it from Sandee herself. Each investigator working the case needed to read Sandee’s deposition. Within that lengthy document, Ski understood after reading it, everyone was going to learn a lot, and maybe, perhaps with a bit of luck, Sandee’s own words could lead in the direction of an arrest warrant for Humphrey.

Trouble for Sandee Rozzo didn’t start until after she met Timothy “Tracey” Humphrey in late 2000. It was October 20, 2001, to be exact. Thirty-five-year-old Sandee Lee Rozzo worked at the same club, Inferno, with thirty-four-year-old Humphrey. He was a bouncer downstairs; Sandee bartended upstairs. Almost two years to the day that Sandee had met Humphrey, however, she found herself sitting inside the office of the state attorney in Tampa, Florida, tearfully going through a detailed account of what had happened inside her apartment during the two days that the PPPD’s entire homicide investigation now centered on.

“We got together initially on a friendship basis and had gone on a couple of dates,” Sandee explained of her early relationship with Humphrey. They were buddies, she said. Both were into working out and staying healthy. Nonetheless, the relationship, at least during that early stage, “never progressed to a boyfriend-girlfriend thing. It was strictly just dating.”

They went out to dinner a few times. Worked out together. Had coffee. Even went to a Catholic mass together once, after Humphrey asked Sandee to take him.

The problems with the guy, who towered over Sandee’s tiny frame, started, according to her, as soon as she told him no.

“I don’t want to date you in
that
way,” Sandee said she expressed to Humphrey one night. She liked him, yes. But not as someone she saw herself being with. They could still hang out, as they had been, she told him sincerely. But anything more serious was out of the question.

Strictly friends—
without
benefits.

According to Sandee, Humphrey walked around like a peacock in heat, believing he was her boyfriend, even telling people that he and Sandee were an item, that they were sleeping together. Further, Sandee said, she’d “never had consensual sex with” Humphrey. The few times she’d had sex with him over the course of the friendship, she said, he made her feel that if she didn’t give in, there would be a violent price to pay. He forced himself on her, in other words, and she went along with it because it was easier than trying to fight him off.

“She was attracted to him sexually,” a friend of Sandee’s later told me, “so it wasn’t hard for her to do it.”

She didn’t necessarily enjoy the sex; but then, it wasn’t as if he were raping her, either. She simply went along with it to avoid a confrontation.

As they started working together at the same club, Sandee and Humphrey hung out more and more after work. Humphrey was over six feet tall, 224 pounds then. Sandee was just a peanut: that Farrah Fawcett smile and a body that knocked men over when she walked by, assets of which she had worked hard at keeping in check.

There was one night, shortly after they started working together at the same nightclub, when Humphrey asked Sandee for a ride home. It was late. They had just finished a shift.

“Sure,” Sandee said. Why not? Humphrey seemed—at least then—like an all right guy. He knew she wanted nothing serious. But why not be friends? They were adults. They could handle it.

Sandee said they talked on the way to Humphrey’s apartment. He mentioned how he was once a Tampa Bay Buccaneer. That he had been a Heisman Trophy winner in college. It was the same story he had told other women. Looking at him, Sandee could certainly believe it. He had that tough-guy, weight-lifter mystique and physique about him. A woman wanted to believe what Humphrey said because he sold it so well. Sandee herself had been a personal trainer at one time and had worked doggedly to keep her shape. She knew the sacrifice a healthy, chiseled body took. She admired how well Humphrey took care of himself. It was something they had in common.

What Humphrey wasn’t admitting to as they talked, of course, was that he had never been on an NFL team or won that coveted award in college. The fact of the matter was, Humphrey had been in and out of prison on various charges—most stemming from violence against women. He was never a model, as he had also told Sandee. The guy was—plain and simply put—a bullshit artist. He was lying to win Sandee over. To impress her. He had to make things up because his life had been, essentially, a road to nowhere. He was in his midthirties and still working as a bouncer. He had no career. No plan. No future.

“You want to come in?” Humphrey asked Sandee when they got to his apartment that first night Sandee drove him home.

They were both tired. Sandee thought about it. Finally she parked and shut off the car.

After they sat and talked for hours, Sandee fell asleep on the couch, got up at some point later, then took off, telling Humphrey she would see him at work.

“Take it easy,” he said.

Nothing happened. A friend had slept on a friend’s couch.

The more Sandee got to know Humphrey as the weeks and months went by, the less she wanted to be around him, for fear of leading him on. She could tell that Humphrey was beginning to view the relationship in a different manner than she had intended—in an
entirely
different manner, in fact. He was falling for her, or so it seemed. It was hard for Sandee to gauge what the guy was thinking. She appreciated this great “guy friend” whom she could talk to like one of the girls. But she didn’t know if he could handle rejection in
that
way.

They remained friends (in Sandee’s mind), and because she lived about a half mile from Humphrey’s apartment at the time, Sandee said she’d be more than willing to pick him up for work whenever he needed a ride. But that was it! Nothing more. What harm could come from picking Humphrey up once in a while and driving him to work? Sandee had gotten Humphrey the job to begin with. She felt it her responsibility, in some respects, to make sure he didn’t make her look bad.

That relationship—the two of them driving to work together and talking during their shifts and having coffee and working out once in a while—stayed fairly on track for a few months. Nothing much happened. Humphrey, Sandee believed, was beginning to see that they were never going to be anything more than friends. The guy was coming around. He was accepting the relationship for what it was, she thought.

What Sandee didn’t know then was something that most everyone who knew Timothy “Tracey” Humphrey personally later said about him: “You did not tell Tracey no.”

On New Year’s Eve, 2001, Sandee and Humphrey’s friendship took a turn. Sandee picked Humphrey up at his apartment and drove him to work. They were both working the entire night. It would be busy.

Sandee said, “Be happy to drop you off after work.”

“Thanks,” Humphrey said. “I actually need a ride home.”

They agreed to meet up at the end of the night. Sandee said she’d wait for him. The bar was packed. By closing time it would clear out. They could find each other.

Sandee ran late that New Year’s Eve. “At the end of the night,” she said later, “I still had people that needed to close out their tabs at my bar.”

It was well beyond closing time. The bar was basically empty. Sandee was still upstairs cashing waitresses out.

When she finally finished, the bar now deserted, Sandee walked downstairs, where Humphrey had been working all night, and began looking for him. “He was nowhere to be found. I looked. I believed he may have left. And thought maybe he had gotten a ride home from someone else.”

Throughout the time Humphrey had worked at the bar, Sandee noticed a constant flow of Humphrey’s old friends from Miami coming in and out of the bar. Plus, all of the people he knew from the Tampa region showed up now and then. Someone always recognized Humphrey. He was that type of person.

Unforgettable.

He was talkative and blatantly social. He could jump into a conversation and own it within a few minutes. He had probably run into some old friends, Sandee thought, got to BS’ing about his glory days, and decided to take off with them for a nightcap somewhere else.

Oh, well.

So Sandee left. She was beat. It had been a long night. Her legs ached. Her head throbbed. She wanted to get home and go to sleep.

Nestled in bed by about 4:00
A.M
., Sandee fell asleep quickly. Two hours later, she was awoken by the sound of her cell phone buzzing on the nightstand.

She opened her eyes. Rolled over.

I’m not getting that….

Whoever it was could wait.

The next morning, as she poured herself a cup of coffee, Sandee checked her messages.

“I had three very explicit, threatening voice mails,” Sandee said later.

All from Tracey Humphrey.

The man had snapped. He was upset because, he claimed, Sandee had “left him” hanging at the bar without a ride home—at least that’s how he started off the threatening messages. By the end, though, Humphrey had laid his cards on the table, screaming at Sandee because she wasn’t interested in dating him “in that way.”

“I am going to kill you!” Humphrey said in one message. “You will probably need to start dating a plastic surgeon, because by the time I am finished with your face, you’re going to need one!”

Sandee was blown away by this outburst—and who wouldn’t be? What she had feared, or perhaps sensed in this guy, had come to fruition. Here he was showing his true colors. The dude was a maniac. And if Sandee knew one thing, it was that when a guy like Humphrey showed you who he was, you had better store that information in the back of your mind and believe him at face value. The real Tracey Humphrey had exposed himself. He was a damn monster.

Sandee Rozzo was now terrified of what would happen the next time she saw Humphrey.