Kill For Me (21 page)

Eggshells don’t begin to describe the imaginary terrain that Tobe White was now walking on throughout her days and nights of living the nightmare that Tracey Humphrey had brought into her life. Broken glass might be more like it. Humphrey was calling Tobe dozens of times a day, using their business venture partnership as a way to check up on her and find out where she was and what she was doing.

The reason Georgia Hiers had been so heated was because Ashley wasn’t telling her mother where she lived. Hiers had no idea where her daughter was staying. Humphrey would tell her Ashley wasn’t living at the apartment anymore, and Hiers assumed she was living with Tobe.

Between the middle of September and the end of the month, the SAO brought in all of the major players involved in the case (with the exception of Ashley and Tracey Humphrey): David Abernathy, Georgia Hiers, a few of Humphrey’s former girlfriends, Tobe White’s brother, and others. When Tobe White found out that the list included her brother, who had called Tobe and explained what he had gone through with Ski and the SAO, she knew the events had now taken a different turn. Her lies and life with Humphrey was no longer just about her; her family was involved.

Tobe needed to make a move. The case was building. She had heard of the PPPD’s theory that Humphrey had convinced Ashley to murder Sandee Rozzo. Anyone who had helped in covering that up was an accessory to murder. Tobe could not have that on her conscience.

On September 30, 2003, Tobe White found a quiet place away from the Humphreys, away from her house, away from anyone else, and called Detective Scott Golczewski.

“I want to talk to you about the investigation,” she said softly, looking around, as if Humphrey were going to jump out and grab her. “I do not want to talk over the phone.”

Tobe was as paranoid as her archenemy, Humphrey. She believed he was hiding everywhere, listening to her every word, somehow bugging her car and her house, and listening in on her cell phone conversations.

Humphrey had gotten inside Tobe’s head—something he had spent a lifetime perfecting.

“Meet me at the Brandon Town Center,” Tobe told Ski.

“What’s wrong?” Ski asked.

“I’m scared,” Tobe said. She sounded it.

They hung up.

From where Ski and the PPPD stood, they had to ask themselves if this was some sort of a setup.

“I’m thinking to myself,” Ski said later, “‘Wait a minute here…this is way too easy.’”

Not wanting to take any chances, Ski quickly assembled a surveillance team to back him up, five full cars of agents and detectives and Vice cops doing counter surveillance. Ski wore a wire. It was decided that Paul Andrews would accompany him, just so there was an additional witness.

“We wanted to make sure Humphrey wasn’t doing surveillance on us, too,” Ski said. Or that Tobe wasn’t working for him.

Both parties left for the Brandon Town Center.

They had agreed to meet on the north side of the mall.

When they met, Ski asked Tobe if she wanted to get inside his vehicle and talk, if she’d feel more comfortable.

“Yeah,” she said in earnest.

As expected, Tobe was nervous, fidgety, and worried that Humphrey was going to find out. Ski and Paul Andrews assured Tobe there was nothing to be concerned about at the moment. She needed to come clean and tell the truth so they could get her the protection she needed.

Paul Andrews drove around to the south side of the mall.

They parked.

It was Tobe’s show.

“I do not have any firsthand knowledge of the murder,” she said upfront.

“Nothing?” Ski was taken aback by this. Disappointed. (“‘Oh, boy, here we go,’ I said to myself after Tobe said she hadn’t witnessed anything. You know, now I think I’m dealing with someone who
might have
heard something from someone else, who
might have
heard this or that.”)

“No,” Tobe reiterated with a hesitation. Then: “But I did lie to the state attorney to protect Ashley and Tracey. They came to me and asked me to lie for them.”

Ski said later that he still didn’t trust her at this point. He had his reservations about working with Tobe.

“Why did you lie?” Ski asked.

“He never verbally threatened me, but he insinuated threats toward me. He told me to lie…because Ashley had mistakenly told you that she was with me on the night of the murder. He said Ashley had ‘backed them into a corner and made them look like they were involved.’”

“What else did he say?”

“He told me that Sandee Rozzo was a drug dealer and she had plenty of enemies who could have killed her.”

That was the guy’s argument? Sandee had been taken out by a drug lord?

Pathetic.

Ski brought up the notion of Ashley actually knowing Sandee Rozzo. Tobe said she didn’t think Ashley had ever met her.

“How ’bout the pistol range in Tampa—what can you tell us about that?”

“They both went to a range two times,” Tobe said, holding up two fingers to clarify.

“Did you ever talk to him about how he heard about the murder?”

Tobe thought about that. “Yes,” she said. “He told me he heard about it the Monday after it happened. He was concerned because of his pending court case with Sandee Rozzo. He felt he would be the prime suspect in her murder.”

There was a lot that needed to be done with Tobe White. Ski and Paul Andrews had discussed the idea with other members of the DU that if they could convince Tobe to wear a wire and go back into her life with the Humphreys, they could possibly nail the guy. They weren’t sure how she was going to react. They knew Tobe was a tough woman, and she could definitely handle it.

Driving back to the north side of the mall, where her car was parked, Ski brought it up.

Tobe didn’t seem thrilled about it. But what other choice did she have?

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

When they got back to where her car was parked, the rest of the team came out from hiding and a few Vice/Narcotics detectives gave Tobe the official confidential informant (CI) paperwork to sign. The FDLE was also present, due to jurisdictional issues.

The main purpose for the wire, Ski and Paul Andrews instructed Tobe, was obviously to elicit information from Ashley or Humphrey. Tobe’s job was to get them to talk about the case. She was going to have a beeper attached to her hip that would transmit those conversations to a surveillance team. But they also strapped an actual microphone and recording device to her chest, running a small microphone through her bra strap—just like in the movies.

“We’ll call you on your home phone,” Ski explained, “when we have the information we need and you’re done.”

Tobe nodded.

“One more thing,” Ski said. “We need your cell phone.”

“What?”

Ski knew how many times Humphrey was calling Tobe. He didn’t want Humphrey to call her while she was heading home and, all of a sudden, demand that she go somewhere to meet him and Ashley. Tobe was scheduled to go home now; Ashley and Humphrey were supposed to be waiting for her there.

Ski reminded Tobe how many times Humphrey had actually called while they were meeting that day. She hadn’t answered the phone.

“Look, tell Humphrey, when he asks, that you lost your phone.”

Tobe grumbled. “No way…I can’t.”

“Please, Tobe, we cannot have him change his plans.”

The last thing they wanted was for Humphrey to pull a Plan B and take off with Tobe and Ashley somewhere out of range.

Ski took the phone. Then he sent Tobe White on her way home to initiate and execute the plan.

When her family found out she was working with the police, “they disowned me,” Tobe White later explained. They believed, Tobe added, that she should have changed her name and relocated—not gotten in bed with the PPPD and put her life at risk.

This was exactly what Tobe White believed she was doing, now that she had turned, so to speak, on Tracey Humphrey.

“They didn’t want me involved in this at all,” Tobe said, speaking of her family. “But you know, when you’re in that situation, when you’re basically the only person who can possibly get information out of them [Tracey and Ashley Humphrey], and you know that there’s a little girl who lost her mother, you just…well, just
have
to do it.”

Once Tobe knew certain facts about the case, it was never a choice. Tobe had no children of her own, and she was consumed by the thought of Sandee Rozzo’s daughter growing up without a mother, she said. It ate at her sense of ethics. She
needed
to do something.

“How do you ever make it up to a child who lost her mother? You can’t. But if there’s a little part you can do, you want to do it. I was in a unique situation that no one else was in.”

It was the alibi, Tobe said, that did it for her. She had not considered the idea that Ashley or Humphrey had had anything to do with Sandee Rozzo’s murder. It really never entered her mind. She simply believed what they had sold to her. Humphrey had convinced Tobe that Sandee was a drug dealer and that she had truly pissed someone off enough to cause her own death. It was a mere coincidence that Humphrey and Sandee had a date in court just a month later.

But when Humphrey asked Tobe for the alibi and then started making demands and threatening her, a question developed inside Tobe. She knew in her gut then that something was off. Yet, the absolute clincher was when Paul Andrews and Ski sat Tobe down and gave her as much information as they could regarding the evidence they had against the Humphreys.

“Then I knew…. I just knew,” Tobe said.

When Tobe White returned home after her meeting with Ski and Paul Andrews on September 30, 2003, Ashley was there—along with Humphrey. They were basically living in Tobe’s house at this point, hardly ever staying at the apartment they shared with Wade Hamilton. Part of this, Tobe now felt, was to keep watch on her, while at the same time, being so close helped with the business she and Humphrey were still in the process of getting off the ground.

Walking in, Tobe noticed that Ashley was alone. Humphrey was in another part of the house, Ashley said, training a new client. FDLE agents, along with PPPD detectives, were swarming around Tobe’s house, driving by casually, scoping out the situation incognito. By 5:26
P.M
., an FDLE report noted, Tobe had been
equipped with surveillance equipment.
Near six o’clock, Tobe was standing in her kitchen talking to Ashley, who was visibly upset, while a white Ford Focus—a car that the Humphreys had rented—sat in the driveway next to a car that Humphrey’s client drove.

Ashley wanted to know what had happened at the SAO and what the police had been telling Tobe about her and her husband. They had not discussed any part of the case at length, as of yet. Ashley seemed a bit sarcastic and defiant in her manner. She must have gotten a good reaming from Humphrey, Tobe thought, while she was gone.

Tobe said she had been placed on administrative leave from her job and would be out for weeks because of an injury. She was worried about medical insurance. Ashley, however, was concerned with what Tobe had told the police, and what the police had said to her.

“I did not tell them where you were driving around that night,” Tobe said, answering a question Ashley had posed about the PPPD’s interest in the alibi that Tobe had provided to the SAO.

Ski, Paul Andrews, and a surveillance team of FDLE agents listened from various hidden locations in the neighborhood of the house, charting the times and documenting key moments of the conversation.

“Well, I don’t think I was in Pinellas County,” Ashley said, a bit of sass in her voice. “But I don’t
know
where Pinellas County is.”

Tobe wondered how to respond to such an erroneous statement. Of course, Ashley knew where Pinellas County was. Nonetheless, Tobe explained where. Then she said, “The investigators interviewing me said I had lied. They know I said several things that were not true, Ash. We need to change the story. They have cell phone records!”

Wink-wink.
“I don’t think I ever went to Pinellas County,” Ashley said, still stuck on the location of the murder. “I have to get ahold of my lawyer and let her know about all this.”

The PPPD had found a rental car that Ashley must have rented after her VW burned. Inside that rental car, forensics had located a small piece of glass that was thought to be from the mirror that Ashley had shot out of her VW. Somehow it had gotten on Ashley’s clothing and ended up in the car. Ski and Paul Andrews had told Tobe about this.

Tobe mentioned to Ashley that she believed the cops had a key piece of evidence linking her to the burned VW.

“Well, why the hell haven’t they arrested me, then, if they have such incriminating evidence?” Ashley said.

As it drew near 6:30
P.M
., they talked about tedious, everyday things. Ashley was growing increasingly agitated with Tobe, because she had spoken to the police, Tobe guessed. She knew Humphrey was going to be pissed off about it. Tobe, at one point, asked Ashley if she had ever researched Sandee Rozzo on the computer.

Ashley said she had, but that she had a good reason for it.

“We were going to hire a private detective, you know, for the court case of Tracey’s. The more information I was able to find on my own for the private detective, the cheaper it was going to be. I paid for the research myself,” Ashley concluded, offering an excuse for using a credit card online.

Tobe asked Ashley why she would do such a thing.

“His lawyer told us to,” Ashley said. “We were told to research Sandee’s lifestyle as much as we could and make her look worse, when we went to court.”

Ashley asked what else the police had said. Tobe mentioned that through many of the questions they had asked, she could decipher some of the information they had uncovered.

“I know for a fact they have your cell phone pinging off a cell tower in Pinellas Park,” Tobe said.

This was true. In fact, Ski and Paul Andrews had cell phone records proving that someone was talking on Ashley’s cell phone—presumably her—all the way from Brandon to Pinellas Park, not only near the time of the murder, but for most of that day. When Tobe looked at the timeline, she was blown away by how blatant the two of them were. On Memorial Day weekend, May 30, 2003, either Ashley had called Humphrey, or the other way around, at 12:36, 12:52, 1:00, 1:01, 1:05, 1:06, 1:07, 3:07, 3:56, 5:10, 5:40, 6:06, 6:47
P.M
. (the time Sandee Rozzo had clocked out at the Green Iguana)—the location of which being Pinellas Park, a cell tower not too far from Rocky Point—6:54, 7:12, 7:48, 7:50, 7:51, 8:05, 8:10
P.M
. At 10:03
P.M
., Humphrey checked in and paid for a room at the Howard Johnson on Dale Mabry Highway, in Tampa. Right afterward, he called a local pizzeria and ordered two pizzas to be delivered to his room. Further along, early the next day, June 1, at 2:30
A.M
., gas receipts show that two 1-gallon gas cans were purchased with cash from a Wal-Mart on Dale Mabry Highway, in Tampa. Less than an hour later, at 3:22
A.M
., the Tampa Fire Department responded to a car fire, a VW Beetle.

Tobe’s reaction to all this was a simple one: “Holy shit.”

But the phone records for July 5 and 6, the latter the day Sandee was murdered, were even more revealing. Ashley’s phone had called a client at 4:06
P.M
.; the signal pinged off a cell tower near the Brandon Shopping Mall. At 4:07
P.M
., Ashley’s phone took a call from Humphrey’s phone, same cell tower. Thirty minutes later, at 4:37
P.M
., Ashley’s phone called Humphrey’s phone—and pinged off the tower at Rocky Point, right near the Green Iguana. At 4:38
P.M
., those two phones spoke again. Then at 5:30 and 5:36, 5:51, four more times between 5:52 and 5:58
P.M
. At 6:06, and 7:07, 7:10, 7:52, and 8:00
P.M
. Keeping in line with his Memorial Day MO, Humphrey ordered pizzas from Pizza Hut next. His and Ashley’s phones continued to connect throughout the night. The only times the cell phones did
not
register calls was a window of opportunity that centered around the time Sandee Rozzo was murdered.

“Oh, Tobe, the police are probably lying to you,” Ashley said after Tobe presented this evidence in another form. “I was never in Pinellas on the night of Sandee’s murder. They’re just trying to put me at the scene of the crime…. This wouldn’t be the first time they hung an innocent person!”

At 7:10
P.M
., on September 30, 2003, the team conducting surveillance on Tobe’s house witnessed a Toyota Highlander pulling out of the driveway.

Must be Humphrey’s client, Ski and Paul Andrews figured.

Just then, Humphrey walked in on the conversation Ashley and Tobe were having in the kitchen—and he didn’t look happy.

“Where have you
been
?” Humphrey asked Tobe, staring at her. He and Ashley hadn’t seen Tobe all day, and, of course, neither could get ahold of her on her cell phone. The tone in Humphrey’s voice made it clear that he believed Tobe had been up to no good.

Tobe took control of the conversation. What other choice did she have?

“What am I supposed to tell them?” Tobe asked, meaning the police.

Humphrey could distinguish from the way Tobe spoke that she felt they were all being backed into a corner, now that Humphrey had made her lie and those lies were being exposed. After all, it was the core of her conversation with Ashley, part of which Humphrey had overheard.

Humphrey rubbed a hand over his head and thought things over for a moment.

“I’ve been calling you all day, Tobe,” he said. “Why haven’t you answered your phone?”

Tobe stayed calm. She knew what to do. She and Ski had gone over it.

Stick to the plan….

“I lost it…at Wal-Mart.” She had tossed that in for good measure, apparently.

Humphrey had a hard look on his face. Then a light-bulb turned on.

“We need to go to Wal-Mart,” Humphrey said. “Right now! Let’s go.” He wouldn’t engage in the subject matter inside the house. It was clear he was growing more paranoid and concerned as time ticked by. “We’re going to find Tobe’s phone.”

Tobe just about fell over. Her legs turned to rubber. Anxiety flowed through her veins.

The surveillance team watched as Tobe and Humphrey, Ashley trailing just behind, walked out of the house and got into Humphrey’s rental car.

Listening to all this, Ski was horrified.

“Damn it. We need to get her that phone.”

The only way they were going to be able to get Tobe’s phone back in her hands was to suit up a detective as a Wal-Mart greeter and get her over to the Wal-Mart before Humphrey and the gang got there.

But was it even possible?