Kill For Me (9 page)

Sandee was quite shaken up by those bullying messages, which seemed to expose a dark side of Humphrey that she had felt was there from the beginning. The guy had lost his mind. Snapped. Allowed his deep-seated, inner anger to come out. Now Sandee was thinking that she had made the right decision in not seeing him romantically. It wasn’t easy for her. Over the past ten years, it had seemed that she had always chosen the wrong guys. Here she was making a change—realizing that Humphrey was definitely the wrong man for her—and it was coming back to hurt her, anyway.

Double-edged sword.

In one way Sandee was disappointed. Things had been moving along fine between them as friends. Humphrey was slowly accepting that they were work buddies, helping each other out with rides, maybe a bite to eat once in a while, or a workout together. Beyond that, he was a great sounding board. For over a month, Humphrey had spoken and treated Sandee kindly, with warmth and friendship. Now this? What the hell was with the guy?

Sandee called a friend and talked to her about what had happened. Another friend came over that day and recorded the messages from Sandee’s voice mail, advising her to call the police immediately. Don’t wait. He was out of his mind. Did she really know him? Where was he from? What about his past? Those were direct threats to her life. Did she really want to see what he was capable of?

Some time passed. Sandee and Humphrey barely saw each other, even at work. He generally worked downstairs at the club, she worked upstairs, so it was easy to avoid each other if they worked at it. Sandee cut her losses and decided against calling the police. That might enrage him even more, she felt. According to Sandee’s credo, people were allowed a mistake. Perhaps someone had stressed him out at work? Whatever the reason, she was willing to forgive and forget. Move on.

By January 14, 2002, Sandee was ready to take off on a needed vacation to Las Vegas. Humphrey had heard she was going to be gone for a week. During work one night, he went upstairs to the bar. He said he wanted to talk. He seemed apologetic.

“Hey, I want to…I don’t know…I snapped. Could I come over tonight, say good-bye? I have something for your birthday.”

Sandee thought about it.

Maybe this is his way of saying sorry—that it’s okay for us to be
just
friends.

“Yeah,” she agreed after considering the gesture.

As promised, Humphrey stopped by later that night. He had a card. A Hallmark. He stood in the doorway. Sandee wasn’t about to allow him inside. Trust was something she valued in friendship. He had severed that bond. It would be a while before she ever trusted him again.

“Read it on the plane, okay?” Humphrey said, pointing to the card.

Sandee looked down. “Yeah, I will.”

“When you come back, let’s go out somewhere and talk things through.” Humphrey said he wanted a chance to explain himself. Sandee was a sweet person; she deserved that much.

“Sure,” Sandee said.

(“The visit lasted two minutes,” Sandee said later during her deposition, describing her life and relationship she had with Tracey Humphrey in vivid detail.)

Sandee Rozzo had a pleasant, relaxing time in Vegas. She had needed the break. If not from Humphrey, then from a life of constant running—sometimes, it seemed, on a treadmill, going nowhere. She was always working and wondering where her life was headed. The past few years had been bad ones, at least in the relationship department. Sandee needed time off from everyone—especially men.

Now she was back in Florida after the five-day getaway when Humphrey called. He wanted that opportunity to meet and explain himself. After all, she had promised.

Oh, yeah…
that.

Sandee suggested a restaurant where her girlfriend worked, a neutral location. Safety zone. Someplace with people around.

What could Humphrey do but agree?

“So we went to a restaurant,” Sandee later explained, “…where my girlfriend worked…and there was another altercation with he and I. And I took him home.”

A dog…his spots.

Sandee never went into detail about what happened, but it was clear that after she dropped Humphrey off at home, he went
back
to the same restaurant and got into it with Sandee’s girlfriend and her boyfriend, a man Sandee later described as a “high-profile person in Tampa.” The guy was at the restaurant visiting his girlfriend. Humphrey made his presence known and words flew. There was some indication that Sandee’s girlfriend and her boyfriend had not wanted Sandee to associate herself with Humphrey after he left those messages. They were upset that she was even meeting him in a public place. Humphrey got wind of the resentment. It turned into one of those “mind your own damn business” arguments that Humphrey could never let go of, or allow someone else to have the final word.

The girlfriend called Sandee from the restaurant. “Hey, Tracey’s back here threatening [us]. We just had him escorted out and we had to call the cops….”

A few days later, Humphrey buzzed Sandee’s apartment from the gate out front. Sandee lived in one of those semi-gated communities, the ones where you had to buzz someone who lived there in order to get into the parking lot. Humphrey, in turn, couldn’t get into the compound unless Sandee allowed him. There was some talk later that he was actually waiting for people who lived there to come home and would sneak in while in their wake. But on this night, close to one in the morning, shortly after Sandee and Humphrey had just gotten home from work, Sandee said she buzzed him in herself, thinking,
How many chances does the guy deserve?

Only to the door, Sandee decided. Like the last time they had talked. No farther. She decided to give him his few minutes there on the stoop again, but this was getting beyond ridiculous. The guy obviously had anger issues and Sandee wanted no part of him. She’d had her share of vicious, abusive men throughout her life, according to family and friends. There was no room for another one.

Humphrey showed up with his sad, tired puppy dog look that he could put on like an actor. He stood, Sandee said, with a face that promised,
Hey, none of this will ever happen again. I screwed up, I know. Forgive me this one last time.

Sandee wouldn’t allow him into the apartment. “I’m very angry with you,” she said. “I won’t speak to you! Your actions were absurd. I want you to leave.”

Humphrey bit his tongue and left.

Sandee drove Humphrey to work after those incidents, she said, about five more times. She never said why. Only that she wanted to help the guy, and, likely, she felt sorry for him.

But again, that was the extent of the relationship: rides to work and back.

Nothing more.

Humphrey was a ticking time bomb, Sandee knew. She, of course, had no idea that it was ’roid rage fueling Humphrey’s anger—or that he was all jacked up on the juice. One of his ex-girlfriends later told police that he could be fine for days and weeks. Sincere. Loving. Caring. But then he’d be sitting at the table one night, digging into his white rice and boiled chicken, and, for no reason, he would stand up and flip the table over, yelling and screaming.

As February came around, Sandee was transferred downstairs and now worked nearly side by side with Humphrey. She couldn’t avoid him. Slowly he worked his way back into her good graces, using his well-seasoned, calculated controlling skills to woo Sandee and gain back her trust.

On Ash Wednesday, for example, Humphrey asked Sandee if she would take him to mass with her. He knew Sandee was a Catholic at heart. It was a way to show her—even if the guy wasn’t Catholic—his amiable, good side.

Sandee said okay. And they went.

Then he asked her for a ride to the gym—and if she wanted to work out with him.

She did.

“Twice,” Sandee recalled.

Those two workouts turned into dinner afterward.

Two times.

Not by candlelight or on the gazebo of a dock overlooking the Gulf, watching the dolphins dance gracefully like sickle blades through the seawater. Just dinner. A quick bite to eat somewhere.

“We were spending time together,” Sandee said.

As late February approached, Humphrey started to pressure Sandee once again into having sex with him. They were getting closer. The only thing not in the picture was sex. So he begged, she said, like an adolescent boy going through puberty, trying to get his first taste.

“Come on, Sandee, it’s been four years since I’ve had sex with a woman,” he said one night. They were inside Sandee’s apartment. “You’re the chosen one! And I am going to have sex with you one way or another.”

Sandee didn’t know how to react. Was he kidding? Was he serious? What was happening? How had their relationship gone from work and workout and dinner buddies to sex?

When Sandee didn’t respond, maybe the way in which Humphrey had wanted her to, he continued, adding with a slight tinge of remorse in his voice, “You’re a prick tease…. You enjoy walking around and making men sexually excited—and you need to pay for the way you act!” There was a short fuse of anger there in the last part of the statement. Sandee could tell Humphrey meant what he said—or, rather,
believed
what he said.

Sandee started crying. Humphrey picked up on her vulnerability and began to berate her. He made Sandee feel like she was waltzing around town, strutting her stuff, shaking her ass, making every guy she came in contact with go crazy. Then, to top it off, the whole “not putting out” thing. Humphrey said she was playing a game with him, using him for friendship and dinners, and he was not getting anything out of it but sexual frustration.

Here they were again: back to square one.

As she cried and balled herself up into a fetal position on the couch, Humphrey leaned into it, taking his verbal assault, the emotional abuse he was so good at, one step further.

“He made me feel so bad about myself,” Sandee recalled, speaking of that day. “So I gave in.”

In order not to have to endure whatever it was he had planned for her after he was finished emotionally abusing her, Sandee said, she had sex with him. But she felt like he had forced her to say yes. That she had no choice in the matter. She was terrified of saying no.

After that night Sandee knew she needed to “remove” herself “from the situation.” Yet, she still drove Humphrey to work the next few times they were scheduled together, being careful not to just cut the relationship off cold turkey. She was afraid of what he would do if she happened to up and disappear.

You don’t say no to Tracey Humphrey.

In the back of her mind were all those voice messages he had once left her and the new ones he was now beginning to leave. In total, Sandee counted later, Humphrey had made twenty-three additional threatening phone calls to her, and she was horrified about what he would do if she stopped seeing him altogether. She was a hostage. That look on his face that night he forced her to have sex. The tone in his voice. The idea that he knew she had a daughter. It was all too much for Sandee. She needed to be very careful and let him down—for a third time—easily.

On February 22, 2002, Humphrey showed up at Sandee’s apartment. Sandee had loaned him some money. He said at the gate over the intercom that he had the money on him and wanted to pay her back. If she could just let him in, he would drop it off and leave.

After buzzing Humphrey in, Sandee allowed him into her apartment. She was in a hurry, getting ready for work.

“Can I get a ride with you?” he asked.

Sandee was unsure. But…oh, what the hell. “Yeah.”

“I need to get ready,” Humphrey said. He had just come from the gym. He had his work clothes with him.

Sandee said okay, he could change in the bathroom.

As Humphrey got dressed, Sandee took a minute and thought through things. This drive to work would be a good opportunity to tell Humphrey that their relationship—whatever it was—needed to come to an end immediately. She was losing her mind. He had gotten into her head. She was frightened. And in her view, friends didn’t scare each other. She couldn’t go on like this.

On the way home from work later that night, Sandee decided as Humphrey got dressed, she’d tell him. This entire back and forth, up and down, needed to end. She didn’t want anything to do with him—ever!

The ride home turned into something Sandee did not want, nor had she expected.

“We were arguing the whole way home and I got out of the car and went into my apartment, and he just walked right in behind me.”

Humphrey’s car was there; he had parked it when he showed up earlier to repay her. She figured he’d get out, slam the door, call her a few nasty names, then hit the road. With any luck, she’d never see him again. Maybe she’d have to quit her job. Whatever. The guy was poison. A raging lunatic she did not need in her life.

But not this time. Humphrey had other plans.

No one was around. It was dark—about four-thirty in the morning.

Inside Sandee’s apartment Humphrey carried on and on about something that had happened back at work inside the club. Sandee couldn’t even understand him at times. He yelled and screamed and punched the air.

He was out of control.

“I just cannot handle your aggressive behavior anymore, Tracey,” Sandee told him bluntly.

Humphrey said something about her being his girlfriend. The way he phrased it sounded as if, in his mind, he and Sandee had been going together.

She didn’t like the way it came out.

“I don’t want to be your ‘girlfriend.’ I don’t even
want
a boyfriend! I don’t want
any
type of relationship.”

Humphrey had a look about him. He paced inside the living room. He took deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

’Roid rage…like a volcano.

“I want you to leave!” Sandee said, sensing he was going somewhere in his mind she didn’t want to know anything about.

He didn’t move. Or respond.

“Tracey, I need you to leave my apartment right now.”

A moment passed.

Sandee continued. “Tracey, I feel like you’re smothering me and I need some space from you. You’re way too aggressive for me.”

They went back and forth, Sandee later said, until eight-thirty that morning. Yelling. Fighting. Arguing. Humphrey didn’t want to leave and didn’t like the idea that he was being rejected, or, Sandee now knew, that he was being told what to do.

You don’t say no to Tracey Humphrey.

Sandee was going to—and wanted to—leave her own apartment, but, she later explained, “I could not have left. He was getting very angry with me. He was blocking me [from leaving] most definitely. He was in my face. He wouldn’t let me step to the right without him being with me.”

Sandee told Humphrey she was too tired to argue with him anymore. Both had been up all night by this point.

“I need to just lay down and get some rest,” she told him. “Can I at least do that?” She suggested he do the same. Maybe the sleep would do them both some good. They could discuss the situation with clear heads when they woke up.

“I thought that after we both had rested that maybe…after we rested, we could both talk about it all again and be able to agree on something, and that’s when I had laid down to go to sleep.”

It was about quarter to nine by then. Humphrey mentioned the idea that he wanted sex. Sandee, in no way, wanted to have sexual intercourse with him. He made her believe that he was going to have sex with her—with or without her consent. She was terrified and felt threatened, vulnerable, and scared. What would happen if she refused him? He had shown her how angry he could become. The guy was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier. Humphrey could squash Sandee like a bug under his shoe.

“I was in survival mode,” Sandee later recalled, describing this chaotic, violent beginning to what was turning into a hell she had never thought Humphrey was capable of. “I was in fear of even moving.”

Sandee lay down in her bed after Humphrey finished getting himself off inside her. She was disgusted. Was it rape? Sure. She had agreed to the sex out of survival—sure, it was rape.

Both of them fell asleep.

Sandee was awoken somewhere around one-thirty in the afternoon. She opened her eyes. Humphrey was standing over the edge of the bed, kicking at it, forcing her to wake up. He had a look on his face Sandee had not yet seen. He was a different person. Crazy eyes, like a rat. Beady and dark.

“I fucking hate you!” Humphrey repeated over and over. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you!”

He continued kicking the bed, repeating this statement.

“I hate you.”

“What…what are you talking about?” Sandee asked. She was still half asleep. As she opened her eyes, the thoughts of what had happened before she fell asleep reminded her that she was locked in some sort of nightmare, which was still going on.

“I fucking hate you. This is
my
fucking day! I’ve decided I hate you, and this is the way things are going to be!”

He sounded like a child who wasn’t getting what he wanted.

Sandee had no idea what he was referring to.

Humphrey’s face was red. His eyes bulged out of his skull. The veins on the side of his bald head were throbbing. Sandee could see the sweat rolling off him.

“Tracey, calm down….” She was horrified.

“I was still in a daze,” Sandee said of the previous sexual encounter and all the arguing they had done. Knowing that Humphrey was now caught up inside some sort of rage, Sandee did not move. She could only stare up at him.

Humphrey jumped up on the bed and straddled Sandee, placing his large knees around her head, covering her ears with the inside of his legs, his penis hanging there by her chin.

“I fucking
hate
you,” he yelled. His face was nose-to-nose with her, an erection nearly staring Sandee in the face.

Sandee thought of maybe banging on the walls, but she could not move her arms. Anyway, she knew her neighbor directly next door had moved out—the apartment was empty.

“This is
my
motherfucking day and you are going to show me respect,” Humphrey screamed, still straddling Sandee’s head. She was crying, tears flowing down the sides of her cheeks as he laughed in her face.

She couldn’t move.

“You know what?” Humphrey said. “You are going to sign your fucking car over to me! Yes. Your car. I have spent approximately two hundred and fifty dollars on you, going out to dinner and other things, and I don’t pay anybody’s bills. I want some money out of you,
bitch
….”

Sandee knew this was a very different person from the man she had come to know over the past year. Even the rage he now displayed came from a far deeper place than she had experienced previously. Humphrey was screaming words she could barely understand at times, while squeezing her tiny head between his knees, her ears throbbing in pain.

“You are going to sign your
fucking
car over to me and then sign a false statement and report to your insurance company saying that the car was stolen,” he said.

“No,” Sandee responded. More out of instinct. Like,
No, don’t hurt me.

With a closed fist, Humphrey punched her in the face.

“Once again,” he said, “you are going to sign your car over to me, right?”

“No, Tracey. I cannot do that.”

He punched her in the face again. Blood now dripped from one of Sandee’s eyes.

“Okay,” Sandee managed to say. “Okay.” She was crying uncontrollably.

But it wasn’t over. In fact, the nightmare Sandee Rozzo had found herself waking up to—that man lurking inside Tracey Humphrey, whom she had sensed and feared so much—was only now just beginning.