Kill For Me (19 page)

According to what Georgia Hiers told Ski (and what Ashley later told police), Ashley may not have killed Sandee on that Memorial Day weekend, but the gun was fired, which, in turn, left Ashley and Tracey Humphrey stuck with the problem of having to destroy the one thing in Ashley’s life she had loved more than just about anything else at the time: her VW Beetle.

On the day Ashley sat in her Beetle, waiting for Sandee, Humphrey called so many times, Ashley later explained, she had trouble recalling the exact number. During one of those calls, Humphrey explicitly instructed his girlfriend to “keep the windows up, so no one will see you.” He implored her to be “very, very aware of [her] surroundings, to see if anybody was watching [her], and to keep looking around and try to keep a low profile.”

The woman was sitting in a car, with the windows rolled up, wearing a disguise. She had an old Asian rifle—a relic, really—inside the pant leg of a pair of jeans, the barrel butted up against the window. And this guy was telling her to keep a low profile.

Ashley waited until she saw Sandee walking out of the bar. Then she rolled the window down and rested the barrel of the weapon on the door frame.

She peered through the scope. The barrel stuck out of the passenger-side window just a tiny bit. Sandee was walking toward her BMW. She appeared to be talking on her cell phone, not paying much attention to her surroundings. Ashley sat in the driver’s seat, hunched over, one eye squinted, focused on her target.

She aimed—just as Humphrey showed her.

With her eyes closed, she fired.

Ka-boom!

Sandee turned, startled by the tremendous noise the gun had made.

Ashley ducked as soon as she realized the shot had missed.

Sandee didn’t seem to know what was going on. She looked around, didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, and then carried on with her business of walking to her vehicle.

Ashley could almost hear Humphrey:
“You missed? What the f…? Fire again! Do it now.”

Sandee’s killer sat up and searched for the trigger. She was desperate to refire as quickly as she could. This time, however, the clip had come loose and “kind of jammed,” Ashley said later. When the gun wouldn’t fire, Ashley pulled it back inside the vehicle and set it down.

And that’s when, she said, “I realized that I shot…the side mirror of the passenger side.”

The rearview mirror itself was gone. Part of the housing was still attached to the car. Only now, it had a bullet hole in it and was partially destroyed.

What was Ashley going to do?

The way Hiers explained this part of the story to Ski was a bit different than the version Ashley later explained in court.

“She didn’t want to kill her,” Hiers insisted, “so she shot the mirror out.”

In other words, when push came to shove, Hiers was saying, Ashley had missed on purpose.

All Ski could do was listen.

Hiers continued, Ski later reported, asking him repeatedly, “Do you think this was why she possibly set her car on fire?”

“I don’t know the specifics of the arson investigation, Miss Hiers, sorry,” Ski said. Then he asked her to continue.

On that Memorial Day weekend, Sandee Rozzo got into her car and drove out of the parking lot—as if nothing had happened.

Ashley rolled up her window hurriedly. Started the car. Drove away. Then she called Humphrey. Her hands shook. She was looking in all directions, to see if anyone had seen what happened.

“I was very scared of what to say to him,” Ashley later said.

Humphrey asked what had happened. He was expecting to hear that the job had been completed, that Sandee Rozzo was lying in the Green Iguana parking lot, bleeding profusely, fighting for her life, on the way toward meeting her Maker.

“Don’t be mad…but I missed.”

“What the f…Get your ass back here right now!” Humphrey was furious, Ashley remembered.

“I’m getting on the causeway…with her. She’s in front of me.”

This sparked something in Humphrey. He got an idea.

“Find out where she’s going!” Humphrey screamed. She could hear him mumbling angry words to himself, cussing and breathing hard and heavy. He was definitely rolling his eyes and clenching his teeth in frustration and fury.

“Okay.”

Humphrey became “afraid” that Sandee was going to call the police about the incident. But it appeared to Ashley that Sandee had not even noticed what had happened, and there was a good chance that, if she had, she hadn’t related the incident to herself.

“Find out if she is on the phone,” Humphrey ordered.

Ashley throttled the engine and pulled up alongside Sandee.

As they drove side by side, Ashley recalled, she saw that Sandee was, in fact, on the phone. They actually stared at each other for a brief moment.

Sandee pulled ahead, not knowing Ashley, whom she had never met or seen before. Ashley pulled onto the 275 with Sandee, and said to Humphrey, “Do you want me to follow her?”

He paused. “No. Get your ass home!”

“Okay.”

“No.” He changed his mind again. “Go get rid of everything and meet me at the mall.” He was referring to the Brandon Town Center, also called the Brandon Shopping Mall. It was one of Tampa’s largest shopping malls, just off the 275. Ashley had a book bag with all of the items she had used in the attempted murder. “Everything that ties you to this, get rid of it all,” Humphrey added.

Sandee was heading in the direction of Pinellas Park. Ashley turned off the highway and headed back toward Tampa.

After driving for a while, she pulled off the main road and down into a secluded area in the town of Thonotosassa, about fifteen miles, or a twenty-minute ride, from the apartment in Brandon, where she lived with Humphrey and Wade Hamilton.

Ashley got out of the car when she was certain no one could see what she was doing. With the butt end of the gun, Ashley broke off the remainder of the rearview mirror, as Humphrey had instructed her to do over the phone. She had blasted a better part of it off with the shot, but there was still the housing left, dangling. She and Humphrey were scared that the police were going to be waiting at the apartment. They didn’t want them to see the bullet hole in the mirror fixture.

When she finished, Ashley put all the pieces of the mirror into the book bag, along with everything else, and tossed it back inside the car. Then she walked into the woods about two hundred yards, out of eyesight and earshot of anyone but snakes and crocs, and tossed the rifle in the brush.

Now she needed to get rid of the book bag.

Ashley drove to Williams Road, near an RV trailer park in Thonotosassa, found a Dumpster, and tossed the book bag inside.

The entire plan of discarding the items was Humphrey’s idea, Ashley later said. He had coached her from his cell phone each step of the way. They had spent so long on the phone that by this point in the afternoon, the battery on Ashley’s phone was just about dead.

Leaving Thonotosassa, Ashley headed for the Brandon Town Center. Humphrey had told her to meet him inside Sears. She’d tried calling him with what little battery life she had left, but for some reason, he wasn’t answering his phone.

Driving slowly around the parking lot, she finally spotted Humphrey’s Lincoln and parked beside it.

She called him.

“What?”

He was inside Sears.

Ashley got out and walked inside the store.

Looking around, not seeing Humphrey, she felt someone grab her from behind. It was Humphrey. He pulled her into one of the hallways that employees used to come in and out on breaks.

Humphrey didn’t say anything at first. He looked visibly angry, extremely paranoid, his eyes darting from one side to the other. Then he started patting Ashley down, looking to see if she was wired up. Apparently, Humphrey was so suspicious that he thought maybe she had driven to the police station and was already working with them as an informant. (“He was furious,” she later recalled.)

“What are you doing?” Ashley asked.

“Have you been talking to the police? Huh? Huh, bitch?”

“No, Trace. Of course not. No.”

He was getting more physical. “Have you been telling on me, bitch?”

“No. Come on. It’s me, Trace.”

She couldn’t understand. She had been on the phone with him practically the entire time she had been gone.

Humphrey looked around in the store to see if anyone had seen them.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s go.” He grabbed her by the arm.

It hurt Ashley that he didn’t trust her. She had gone out and tried to kill a woman for the guy. How dare he not trust her like this!

“When you shot the gun,” he said as they walked, “did the—did the bullet (shell casing) go inside the car or outside?”

“I think…I don’t know. I’m not sure if it went inside or out.”

They went outside into the parking lot, near her car.

Looking in all directions, Humphrey shoved her inside the car and said, “Search it. Find the casing.”

Ashley looked through the car two or three times. Humphrey sat in his Lincoln, idling.

She came up empty.

They left the VW at the mall and took off together in Humphrey’s Lincoln.

Driving along the I-4 or the Suncoast Highway (Ashley couldn’t later recall which), she and Humphrey discussed their next move. What if someone had seen her and gotten the license plate number and reported the incident? What if Sandee Rozzo had seen her and called the police? No one knew Ashley, but the vehicle could be ID’d, which would tie the episode back to her, anyway.

Ashley said she had an idea.

“What?” Humphrey groaned. He was still pissed off that she had botched the thing so badly.

“How ’bout we make it look like the car was stolen?” Ashley suggested.

“Not a bad idea,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“And we burn it,” Humphrey added.

The story Ashley had related to her mother on the day she showed up, flustered and out of her mind, Georgia Hiers explained to Detective Scott “Ski” Golczewski, wasn’t entirely how it happened. Someone was either embellishing or downplaying Ashley’s role. It was either Ashley telling her mother, or Hiers retelling the story. Still, Ski had a witness saying Ashley Humphrey had made an attempt on Sandee Rozzo’s life.

“Miss Hiers,” Ski later said, “continued to tell me she later found out that Mr. Abernathy had lent Ashley his twenty-two-caliber pistol.”

This was an important statement from Hiers as Ski interviewed her on August 4, 2003. It corroborated a part of the story Ski knew already.

“Tell me, Miss Hiers,” Ski said, “are you sure Ashley shot her vehicle, or was there a possibility that she shot Miss Rozzo’s vehicle?”

“Although she was really upset when she came here that day, she told me—I’m certain—it was
her
vehicle she hit.”

Hiers gave Ski and Detective Brian Cook more details about the mirror Ashley had supposedly shot off, describing how she did it. They listened, wrote things down, and asked pertinent questions.

As they wound down the interview, the actual murder of Sandee Rozzo came up in the conversation.

“Look, Ashley told me that Sandee was shot eight times,” Hiers said. She and Ashley had been talking about Sandee’s murder, she explained.

Ski listened carefully.

“Now,” Hiers continued, “did you tell Ashley how many times Sandee was shot? Did you share any of those details with her?”

“No, ma’am,” Ski said. “We did not disclose to Ashley the number of times Miss Rozzo was shot.”

Silence. Hiers’s face contorted. Her posture seemed to droop. Neither of them had to say it—but how could Ashley know that number?

Things had changed for Ski. Hiers had opened an entirely new door in the investigation. He couldn’t just walk out of the house now.

“Have you discussed this case with Ashley on any other occasions?” Ski asked.

Hiers nodded her head.

“When was that?”

“The day after you showed up at Ashley’s to interview her.”

Ski looked at Cook.

Hiers continued.

Ashley and Humphrey had driven to Hiers’s house that day. They were all upset. They said the cops were trying to blame them for Sandee’s murder.

“We have an alibi for the weekend,” Humphrey told Hiers. “We’re innocent!”

“How was Mr. Humphrey?” Ski wanted to know.

Hiers explained that Ashley went along with Humphrey that day regarding everything. Of course, Hiers knew different, because she had spoken to Ashley a few times about the failed first attempt. It was hard to put two and two together, but Hiers knew that Ashley was terrified of Humphrey.

“She didn’t say anything while they were here,” Hiers explained. “I wanted to confront her about the conversation we had previously, but not in front of him. I feared that if he knew, he would retaliate and possibly beat Ashley if he found out what she had told me.”

“Where did it go from there?”

Hiers said they all had had dinner together the week before, on July 31, 2003. The murder came up again. Ashley and Humphrey had brought someone with them to dinner, Hiers said, a woman. She was older. Blond hair. “They called her Tobe.”

Ski knew that was Tobe White, one of the next people on his list to speak with.

“They told us Tobe was their alibi on the night of the murder, along with their roommate.”

A good investigator knows that when dealing with truth or lies—doesn’t matter which one—locking suspects down to a story is key. If a suspect is lying, he must keep up the lie, and eventually the bottom falls out of it. You get caught up in your own lies—especially when you begin involving other people. The truth is binding. It’s something that does not change—no matter how you word it. So if Ashley and Humphrey were lying, it really didn’t matter in the scope of Ski’s investigation: They would have to continue to sell the lie to everyone. And here was Georgia Hiers, the one person you’d think would buy it more easily than anyone else, not falling for any of it.

“I told Ashley to go to the police and tell them what she knew.”

They were out one night eating together. When her mother suggested that Ashley go to the police, Ashley told a story about being sexually abused by David Abernathy, saying, “I want to report
that
to the police, instead.”

“She got upset with me because I wouldn’t go with her to the sheriff’s department to report it.”

Just four days before Ski and Brian Cook had met with Hiers, she had left Abernathy and moved into a hotel, she explained. “We had an argument.”

Ashley turned around and called the HCSO and told them that Abernathy had physically abused her mother. On August 2, Hiers met with a detective (an investigator, actually) from the HCSO, whom she told about the attempted murder on Sandee Rozzo by her daughter, and the arson she believed Humphrey and Ashley had committed when they burned her VW.

“Do you know the investigator’s name, Miss Hiers?”

She did not.

The attempt on Sandee’s life on Memorial Day weekend wasn’t the only time that Ashley and Tracey Humphrey had set out to either scare Sandee or try to kill her. There was one day when Humphrey and Ashley showed up at the Green Iguana while Sandee was working. Their intention was to rattle her cage by presenting themselves in her presence. Humphrey had been an intimidator in one respect or another for most of his life. He had a frightening aura about him. He had made it clear to Sandee that he was not going back to prison. Perhaps just showing up at her place of work—which at the time she believed Humphrey did not know about—and staring at her would send a message.

Ashley had other plans. She was looking to resolve the situation in another manner. She wanted to explain to Sandee that her fiancé was a good man. There was no way he could have done what Sandee had accused him of. Ashley believed that Sandee was lying.

According to a coworker of Sandee’s, who witnessed the incident and later reported it, the soft talk ended as soon as Ashley saw Sandee behind the bar. When they met eyes, that was it. Ashley went off, screaming, “I cannot believe you’re really going to do this!”

Sandee was frozen in fear. She wanted them out of the bar, but she did not know what to do. The last thing she expected was to be wiping down glasses one minute, then looking up and seeing Humphrey and his new bimbo looking at her the next.

“I cannot believe you’re really going to do this!” Ashley yelled again.

Sandee became upset, on the verge of tears. She couldn’t believe she was being intimidated by Humphrey’s latest girlfriend, some twenty-year-old arm candy he had probably picked up at the gym.

By now, Sandee was in constant fear that someone was following her. She believed that Humphrey had hired someone to kill her. She was afraid that Humphrey was trying to threaten her into dropping the charges. She’d gotten a restraining order against him after he wouldn’t stop calling. One of the last times he called, in fact, Sandee said later, he had offered her money to drop the charges.

Humphrey and Ashley sat at the bar, staring at Sandee.

“You’re really not going to go through with this,” Ashley said again. “You’re
not
going to make him go to jail.”

Humphrey smiled, sipped his drink.

When they wouldn’t leave, Sandee ran into the kitchen.

The coworker who later reported the incident asked Sandee what was wrong. “She looked rattled,” a second coworker, who was there that day, said.

“Why didn’t you call me?” the guy said. “We could have had him and the woman removed for trespassing.”

Sandee stayed in the kitchen while her coworker walked out into the bar.

Tracey and Ashley Humphrey were gone—the message they were looking to send with the visit left, loud and clear, in their wake.