Kill For Me (23 page)

On October 14, 2003, Ski asked Tobe White to wear a wire and meet with Ashley for dinner. The PPPD wanted another serious crack at allowing Ashley to admit to being connected to Sandee Rozzo’s murder. Maybe Ashley would say something incriminating if she was alone with Tobe? At a restaurant they would be in a public setting, without the threat of Humphrey showing up and intimidating them with his red-faced huffing and puffing. Perhaps Ashley would feel more comfortable, maybe open up.

Tobe suggested dinner at a restaurant near the Brandon Town Center.

Ashley agreed. She seemed excited.

For most of the dinner, Ashley talked about her grandmother and how the woman had been the only person in the world Ashley had ever truly trusted and loved, the only one in her family who had loved her back.

Tobe sat, ate, and listened, asking questions when the timing felt right.

Ashley and Tobe,
one report of the conversation noted,
talked about the beach, sushi and drinking, as well as Ashley’s parents and friends letting her down in the past.

As the dinner wound down, Ashley brought up the days leading up to her meeting Humphrey, and how her life had been spiraling out of control. She was just a teenager. A wayward child out in the world alone—unknowingly, of course, walking into the path of an experienced con man who knew how to trap gullible and naïve young women into doing what he didn’t have the nerve to do himself.

After dinner Tobe asked Ashley to get into her car. They sat in the parking lot of the restaurant and talked some more. The conversation turned into a rare glimpse inside the chaotic lifestyle this crazy teenager had led and, in many ways, was still leading.

“One night,” Ashley said, almost as if she were apologizing for it, “me and some friends tried to cook some drug oils in order to take them, but we couldn’t. After that didn’t work, we wound up freezing the drugs in order to take them. We ended up smoking seven blunts that night, too.”

Tobe shook her head like a disgusted mother would, hearing her child’s secrets.

Tobe suggested they continue hanging out, that they could maybe go shopping, or walk around the mall.

Ashley said, hell yeah, it would be fun.

Ski called Tobe while she and Ashley were inside Express browsing, and told her to slip away and meet him at her car.

“I’ll be right back,” Tobe said to Ashley. She made up some excuse about leaving her wallet in the car.

While Tobe was at her car, far out of view of Express, the team conducting the surveillance changed the batteries on her wire.

Ski said, “Listen, start talking to her about the homicide, okay?”

Tobe said she would, and then went on her way.

After finishing walking around Express, Ashley and Tobe walked out of the food court entrance and sat on a bench near the doors leading into the Brandon Town Center.

Tobe talked about what the SAO had asked her during her most recent sworn statement. She framed it in a tone that did not sound too hopeful for Ashley’s future, hoping to maybe scare her into saying something.

It was those cell phone records, Tobe said. They kept coming up. The PPPD, she assumed, must have solid information if they continued to talk about it.

“I talked to my lawyer,” Ashley said defensively. “My lawyer said not to worry. I mentioned the cell phone pinging off the Pinellas cell tower…and my lawyer said I would have been arrested already if the police had that sort of incriminating evidence.”

“So they’re lying?” Tobe asked.

“Well, the signals may have pinged off those towers, I don’t know. I was driving
all
over that night!”

Tobe decided to call Ashley on part of her alibi to see if she’d trip over her own words, or admit to making it all up. This part of the conversation had been the elephant in the room among all of them. Ashley and Tobe knew damn well who had killed Sandee Rozzo, and what they were all doing in lying about that alibi. Yet, neither Tobe, Ashley, nor Humphrey ever came out and said it bluntly. It was an unspoken secret among them.

A covenant.

Enough dillydallying around. Tobe decided to go for it.

“There’s
no
way you could have been home every thirty to forty-five minutes”—Humphrey and Ashley had both said Ashley was in and out of the apartment that night—“if your phone was pinging off those Pinellas Park cell towers. There’s no way.”

There was not enough time, Tobe implied, for Ashley to drive all that distance.

But Ashley wasn’t budging.

“You have no proof that you were at the apartment every thirty to forty-five minutes,” Tobe pointed out.

“I have no proof of my whereabouts, either,” Ashley sassed back. After all, wasn’t
that
the damn point of Tobe lying for them?

Ashley seemed to be getting worried as she and Tobe talked in more depth about that night. Tobe outlined things to Ashley in the same fashion the cops had explained it to her.

“I was never gone for more than an hour,” Ashley said at one point. “I was on the phone the whole time, or I was at the house, Tobe! I swear to God. I was
not
involved. There’s no way I would commit a murder for him. I swear to God. I would
not
kill for him.”

“Okay…okay…but your cell phone was pinging off the Pinellas Park tower shortly after the time of the murder. That’s what they told me.”

Ashley didn’t say anything.

“I want an explanation from you, Ash! How your cell phone could have been pinging off that tower if you were
not
in Pinellas Park.” Tobe sounded frustrated. Trying to force Ashley’s hand.

“I think I drove to the Gandy Bridge, but I don’t think I crossed it,” Ashley finally admitted.

The Gandy spans Tampa Bay to St. Petersburg, crossing over Old Tampa Bay.

They next talked about a gun show Ashley and Humphrey had attended back on May 1.

Humphrey got bored, Ashley said, because there wasn’t any shooting going on, and so they left, not long after arriving.

Tobe mentioned the shooting range she knew Ashley and Humphrey had gone to after the gun show. She wanted to get Ashley on tape saying that Humphrey had violated the law. This without Ashley knowing what she was actually saying.

Ashley mumbled something incoherent. Then: “We went to the pistol range and I shot a thirty-eight-caliber pistol.”

“Just once?”

“No, a bunch of times.”

It was clear that Humphrey had handled the weapon, loading it for his wife, showing her how to point and lock onto a target. Yet, later, in court, Humphrey talked about guns as if he was allergic to steel. “I don’t like guns,” he said. “I don’t like to be around guns.”

Regarding taking Ashley to the range that day, he had an explanation for that also.

“I humored her,” he said. “We went to a gun show. We walked around. Ashley wanted to shoot a gun. Shooting Sports was right in front of where I used to live…. So I took her up to Shooting Sports. I didn’t touch anything. I didn’t—nothing! She went in. She rented a gun. And I paid with my debit card, which was usual. I paid for
everything.
So I paid, and she shot the gun….”

Mr. Innocent.

Tobe and Ashley got up, started walking. Ashley became defiant again, at one point talking about the cops and any possible charges they were going to press against her or Humphrey.

“They are just trying to scare you, Tobe,” she said.

“Are we just supposed to shut our eyes and ignore what’s going on?” Tobe responded.

“I had a dream,” Ashley explained. “It was about me having a gun and shooting.”

“I need to see what the investigators are doing next,” Tobe said. “We need to figure out what to tell them.”

Ashley nodded, indicating that she agreed.

“Why is it,” Tobe asked shortly before they parted ways, the conversation coming to an end, “do you think they
haven’t
charged you?”

It was a good question. What, in fact, were they waiting for?

“Look, Tobe,” Ashley said, mocking the police, “let them charge me for it! I’ll get off, and they will
not
be able to bother me again.”

It was Sunday, October 19, 2003. FDLE special agent Steve Davenport took a call from Tobe at around ten o’clock that night. Davenport had been working closely with Ski over the past couple of weeks, getting Tobe to work for them, holding Tobe’s hand, making her feel comfortable whenever she became unnerved or scared. Davenport had a good relationship with Tobe, same as Ski. They both kept her focused on what to say and what to do.

Tobe said she had been receiving threatening calls. They were more brazen than they had been in the past. More pointed and serious:

“You’re dead, bitch….”

She was scared as hell.

“I think it’s Ashley’s mother,” Tobe told Davenport.

“What did she say?”

“She threatened to kill me. I don’t even know her. Why would she do this?”

Davenport tried to reassure Tobe best he could over the phone, hoping to get her to relax. But Tobe was terrified, full of anxiety.

Who wouldn’t be?

“I think the person was drunk,” Tobe told Davenport, “because her words were slurred.”

Tobe explained that Ashley’s mother had no idea where she lived. So that was a good sign—if, in fact, it was her. As far as the caller driving anywhere, the sound of her garbled, alcohol-induced speech indicated that she likely could not find the driveway, better yet get behind the wheel of a car.

Still, the implication that bodily harm was coming to Tobe was there, obvious in every word. Tobe couldn’t help but wonder if Ashley and Humphrey were somehow behind the call.

“I bet Ashley and Tracey said something to her to cause the calls!” Tobe told Davenport.

The agent was concerned. “You need to call the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office and report this, Tobe, okay?”

“I will.”

Davenport hung up. Then he called his supervisor, SA Ray Velboom, and Paul Andrews, filling both men in on what was going on.

Like they needed this now. Why in the hell was someone else getting so involved?

“Ashley’s mother was a substance abuser and was upset that, in my opinion, Ashley was not communicating with her,” one law enforcement source working the case later told me. “Since Tobe and Tracey Humphrey were her links to Ashley, and she could not talk to Tracey, she would get drunk and call Tobe.”

Paul Andrews called Tobe and calmed her down, explaining that they were on top of things. No one was going to hurt her.

In the interim Tobe had called the HCSO. After speaking to a deputy, she felt a little better. The deputy paid Tobe a visit and asked her to file a report of the incident. He said he would attempt to contact Georgia Hiers and ask what was going on. Maybe tell Hiers to stop making threatening calls, or she’d be brought in.

“I’m concerned,” Tobe told Paul Andrews.

Paul Andrews and SA Davenport explained to Tobe that she needed to call 911 if there were any more suspicious calls or circumstances.

No matter how bad they wanted Tracey and Ashley Humphrey behind bars, the PPPD and the FDLE, now working directly with Tobe White, needed to remain patient. The arrests had to be done through the proper legal channels. The grand jury was still convening. The SAO was working diligently to obtain indictments for both the Humphreys, but it was in the hands of the grand jury. Even so, the waiting didn’t mean the investigation should stall. There was plenty to do. Or, rather, plenty that could be done—providing that Tobe White wasn’t too spooked after those telephone calls.

Ski and Paul Andrews got ahold of Tobe on October 21. They asked if she was willing to do one more recorded meet-and-greet with Ashley and Tracey Humphrey. Maybe take the situation a step further and put some things out on the table in front of Humphrey. Push and poke the guy a little bit. See how he reacted. They assured Tobe there would be numerous agents and detectives monitoring every moment of the meeting. They would record it on audio and video. If they thought for one moment that Humphrey was going to do something, they would move in and take him down.

Tobe said she was all in. Maybe more than anyone else at this point, Tobe wanted to see the Humphreys in jail. It was the only way she was going to get any sleep and be done with this mess she had gotten herself into.

Davenport and Ski explained to Tobe that they wanted her to make a call to the Humphreys and ask if she could speak to them both in person at Terrell Therapies, part of an office space in Brandon that Tobe and Humphrey were renting out to train clients for their own business.

“Five o’clock tomorrow,” Ashley said over the phone, checking with Humphrey first. “We’ll both be here.”

Tobe sweetened the pot by telling Ashley that she had heard some new things from the cops. She wanted to go over them. And that she had been subpoenaed to give testimony once again to the SAO and the grand jury.

“Great!” Ashley said sarcastically.

Six FDLE agents, accompanied by seven PPPD detectives, met with Tobe at 3:00
P.M
., on Wednesday, October 22, and wired her up before her meeting with Ashley and Humphrey. As they did that, Ski and Davenport went over what they wanted Tobe to talk about. Tobe was given specific instructions. She was to tell Ashley and Humphrey that she had been served with a subpoena to testify in front of the grand jury, and she was scared. They gave Tobe a copy of a subpoena made out in her name.

“Hand it to them so they can read it,” Ski said.

Tobe took the paperwork and drove away.

At 6:05
P.M
., Tobe White arrived in Brandon at Terrell Therapies, a white stucco building underneath a red roof, a large green shamrock in front of the
T
for “Terrell” on the sign. Recording—this time in audio
and
video—started as soon as Tobe pulled up in front of the building. Cops were all over the place, hidden in plain sight, roaming around the area in undercover vehicles, all keeping a sharp eye on the situation.

Nine minutes later, at 6:14
P.M
., Ashley and Tracey Humphrey pulled up in a white Jeep Cherokee, with temporary license plates. Getting out of the vehicle, Humphrey looked around, checking out the situation. Swinging his keys on a finger, he and Ashley walked directly toward Tobe, who had run up to the back of the vehicle.

Looking a little tired, but still holding on to that girl-next-door charm and innocence she didn’t have to work at, Ashley wore a dark-colored tank top and baggy sweatpants. She hugged herself, as if cold. Humphrey, doing his best to sport a good-guy look, had on glasses, a ball cap, sweatshirt, sweatpants, and running sneakers. Tobe wore a casual sweater, striped sweatpants. They stood in back of the Cherokee in a semicircle.

Humphrey seemed spooked, worried. The fact that Ashley had a chill, on what was a warm October evening in Florida, told the surveillance team that she was definitely nervous. Humphrey’s constant moving, darting his eyes, probably added to it.

Before either of them could speak, Tobe said with urgency, “We need to talk!”

Humphrey’s face contorted. “Why didn’t you call?”

Tobe repeated herself two more times. Then: “As I was leaving your house [apartment, the day before], I was served.”

“You were served?” Ashley asked, shocked and confused.

“Yes.”

Ashley told Tobe she needed to call her lawyer—the guy they had hooked her up with.

Tobe mentioned her brother, how scared
he
was, how the cops were bothering him. Showing up at his house, calling.

“I mean, he—he said that they were going to bring him in!”

Ashley looked at Tobe. “I like your sweater,” she said. It was an odd statement at what was such an intense moment. Here they were discussing being arrested, lying to the police, grand jury subpoenas, and Ashley was thinking fashion. Said a lot about her conscience.

Humphrey rolled his eyes at the comment.

Tobe didn’t know what to say. “Oh…thanks.” She looked down at the sweater, then handed Humphrey the subpoena.

Humphrey unfolded it and read it. He didn’t say much as Ashley and Tobe talked about her brother, and how scared he was regarding being brought into this mess by the police.

After he finished reading, Humphrey explained that all the subpoena said was that the SAO was calling Tobe in to testify in front of the grand jury.
So what.
Big deal.

“Obviously,” Tobe responded, “they’ve
got
something to bring me back in.”

“From what they said to your brother?” Humphrey asked; he sounded bewildered, as if he didn’t understand what Tobe was referring to.

“So, what am I supposed to say to them?” Tobe asked sternly, ignoring the question.

Humphrey became agitated. “What we talked about a
million
times!”

Tobe brought up the cell phone records, saying that the cops had told her the records weren’t jelling with the timeline she had given them.

“But we talked about that as well,” Humphrey reassured her.

“Yeah…” Tobe didn’t sound too certain of herself.

Humphrey took a deep breath. Frustrated, he then explained himself—again.

“If somebody asks you to raise your hand and swear on the Bible, or told you that, you know,” he said, losing his temper slightly, “say you…you know…you—you only knew what—what she said and, you know, as far as you knew, she didn’t go over there. Maybe she was mistaken. Maybe whatever. You—you just
know
what she said and you know,” he took off his ball cap and put it back on, “you weren’t running a
stopwatch
!”

“Yeah, but she’s gotta figure, what, an hour and a half, minimum?” Tobe said, pointing out the discrepancy in their fabricated timeline. “And I said twenty to, uh, forty minutes.”

“Again, you
weren’t
running a—” Ashley tried to say before Humphrey cut her off.

“I thought you said—” he began as Ashley interrupted him, finishing.

“…stopwatch.”

Humphrey gave his wife a look, urging her to
shut up already.
Then he stared at Tobe, certainly tired of having to repeat himself: “You weren’t running a stopwatch,” he said, his words slowed down, as if speaking to a child. “You didn’t realize you had to be timing it. You were just hanging out over at my house. You know? Refereeing an argument. I mean, other than that, that’s—”

This time Tobe butted in: “I just have a feeling they’re gonna arrest me when I go in there.”

“You
what
?”

“I just have a feeling they’re gonna arrest me when I go in there.”

“For what?”

“For perjury! That’s what they’ve been telling my brother.”

This was an easy sell for Tobe, because, in some ways, she was speaking the truth.

“It would only be perjury,” Humphrey explained, “if it was a court of law.”

“I gave a deposition.”

“You
didn’t
”—he let out a breathy laugh—“give a deposition.”

“Yeah, I did, Trace.”

“You gave a
statement.
It’s a sworn
statement,
” Humphrey said, unworried and unfazed by Tobe’s concern. “That’s
not
a deposition. There’s a big difference between that and a deposition.”

“So it’s not perjury, then?”

“They can’t charge you with perjury!”

They walked into Terrell Therapies and continued the conversation inside the building, near the front counter. Ashley called her lawyer from the front-desk phone and read the subpoena over the line, while Humphrey kept telling Tobe not to worry about anything. It was all going to be okay. Stick to the plan. Stay on point and on target. Don’t fall on your sword now. They were almost at the finish line. The cops had nothing.

“If they did, we’d all be in jail.”

Tobe knew Humphrey was lying to her face. He was telling Tobe it was okay to go into a grand jury proceeding and lie—that nothing was going to happen to her. Tobe played stupid and agreed.

At one point, about a half hour into the meeting, after hanging up with her lawyer, Ashley said, “He said no phone calls between our cell phones and…yours and your house, because they’ll think that we’re trying to steer your testimony. He said it’s the same damn subpoena you have [already been given once]. There’s no—this isn’t a grand [jury] case. No one’s gonna be charged with anything because we…would have…already been charged, if they were gonna charge
any
of us.”

Humphrey had apparently trained his bride well.

For the next hour, they talked about the story Tobe was supposed to be sticking to. Both Ashley and Humphrey continued to school her on what she should be saying. Humphrey repeated himself several times. He kept bellying about the idea that as long as Tobe stuck to the plan, everything would work out. At times he and Ashley tag-teamed Tobe, jumping on her, demanding that she just calm down and don’t lose her nerve—which was exactly what the cops wanted, Humphrey suggested more than once.

Tobe insisted that she was going to be arrested, and they were next.

“About the alibi,” Humphrey said, eyes moving from side to side, sweat beginning to form on the cap of his head. “There would be a plethora of evidence. There would be overwhelming evidence to the contrary of what you said. Yeah, once they had [enough evidence]…they’d take us into custody; then they’d come and they’d worry about you. Once they had us in custody, they’d already indict us, and they’d have us in custody, and then they’d go back to you and say, ‘We have him in custody, and this is all the stuff that we have, are you sure you wanna do this?’ If they had
that
much information, we’d be in jail, regardless. They wouldn’t want us wandering the fucking streets just based on
your
statement.” He laughed angrily and impatiently, upset that Tobe didn’t seem to get it. “There’s no fucking way in hell, Tobe!”

Tobe looked as though she was about to cry.

Ashley piped in, backing up her husband, yelling, “Yeah!”

Patrons who had been in the gym portion of the rehab center periodically walked by, on their way out, waving to Ashley, Tobe, and Humphrey, saying, “See you tomorrow, Tobe. Later, Trace. Bye, Ash.”

When she was certain they were alone, Tobe demanded more details: Where had Ashley driven around that night? Which bridge or bridges had she driven over? Which highways and byways had she taken? The towns she drove through? How many times had she and Humphrey spoken by cell phone? She said she was certain the cops were going to ask her for those minute details, and that she had better have something to give them.

Humphrey said he didn’t want her to worry about specifics, adding, “Look”—again losing his patience—“the girl drove aimlessly all over the place. She doesn’t really know where she was. She came and went, but she doesn’t know where she was. We don’t remember exactly how long she was gone.” After that, he broke into a long, winded explanation regarding how, when couples fight over the phone, especially when one of them is driving around, you never really pay attention to where you’re going. He said Ashley was so mad that night—yelling and screaming at him over the phone—there was no way she could have been concentrating on the road and where she was headed. It was impossible for her to recall every town and landmark she had passed.

Tobe said okay. She was beginning to get it.

Humphrey wanted to be certain. Putting more words into Tobe’s mouth, he continued: “‘She (Ashley) wasn’t covered in blood and terrified and freaked out. She wasn’t driving her rental car. She was in Tracey’s car.’ You know? ‘She…I watched her leave in Tracey’s car.’”

That’s all Tobe needed to remember.

Tobe said she was scared of saying the wrong thing.

“All right,” Humphrey said. “You want me to run through it
again,
[or] is it clear?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. Okay.” He looked around. Shook his head—more frustration, more impatience—over Tobe’s obvious incompetence, saying, “I’m shaking my head because if they’re listening to me saying this, I don’t wanna—”

“Well,” Tobe suggested, “do you wanna walk outside?”

“No, they’re more likely to—” He stopped talking abruptly, looked around the room and put a forefinger up to his lips.

Shh.

“Oh,” Tobe said. “Okay.” She understood.

Dropping his voice a notch, Humphrey went through the entire night again—or, rather, what he wanted Tobe to say.

Tobe listened, nodding at times, shaking her head at others; then she asked about Ashley’s clothes. Tobe wondered what she was supposed to say Ashley had worn on that night. She was certain they were going to bring it up.

“She was wearing her gym clothes!” Humphrey screamed through clenched teeth. “I mean, she wasn’t covered in blood and glass and carrying a gun. And she didn’t look like she just
fucking
murdered somebody….”

This was the main problem when telling a lie: One led to another, to another…and so on. The truth was easy to keep track of. Easy to recall at the drop of a hat. But lying led only to confusion and uncertainty, which led to…what?

More lying, of course.

Part frustrated and part paranoid, Humphrey said he was leaving. He had somewhere to go.

“Bye,” Tobe and Ashley said.

It was near eight o’clock. “What do you think they could have on you?” Tobe asked Ashley after Humphrey was gone. “How much do we have to worry about?”

“What
could
they have on me?” Ashley said defiantly.

“Yeah.”

A pause.

“I don’t know.”

Tobe said she had an idea. She was under the impression that both Ashley and Humphrey knew she had a stash of money saved up and could easily get a loan on the house for even more money if they needed it.

“…I don’t want any of us to go to jail,” Tobe said, planting the seed. “If it looks like, well, that things are gonna get bad, maybe we should just all leave.”

“And go where?” Ashley asked, sounding somewhat interested in the proposition.

“Where you guys were talking about before—Mexico, or something.”

Humphrey had brought up the idea weeks before that they could take the money Tobe had and run—all of them together—if the legal situation heated up.

“If I’m gonna get hung for something,” Ashley said, not wavering from that “I had nothing to do with this” bearing she had stood behind all along, “I’m not gonna—I didn’t do it!”

“I mean, I don’t wanna take off, if we don’t have anything to worry about,” Tobe said, ignoring Ashley’s obedience to her own lies. “But if there’s something they’ve got that we need to worry about, then we need to really consider doing that.”

“The only thing I’m worried about is that they had something saying that I was there around the time she was killed.”

“The cell phone records?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything else you can think of?”

“No. I swear.”

“’Cause I gotta tell you, I’m afraid they’re gonna arrest me when I go in there.”

“If they do—I don’t think they will, and my lawyer doesn’t think [they] will—but…if they do, we’ll bond you out. You
know
we will. And they can’t hold you for that long, I’m sure…. No matter what the bond is, I mean…just know that we’ll be there for you.”

Tobe said she had to go. She told Ashley to lock herself inside the building if she was going to hang around. “You don’t need to be sitting here alone.”

You never know.

“I will,” Ashley said.

“Call you in the morning,” Tobe said as she walked out the door.