Kill For Me (24 page)

The pressure was on Tobe White. Not by the PPPD. Or from the FDLE.

But from Tracey Humphrey.

Ski was at the station house on October 23, the day following that meeting at Terrell Therapies, which Tobe had with Ashley and Humphrey. Ski called Tobe on her cell phone. She was at home.

Tobe said she was just about to call Humphrey.

Ski wanted to record it.

It was one-thirty in the afternoon.

“What’s up?” Tobe said when Humphrey answered.

“Why the
hell
are you calling me from your cell phone? I warned you about using your cell phone or your cordless phone. Remember, Tobe, I don’t feel comfortable talking on my cell, and
you
don’t feel comfortable about talking on your home phone.”

“Sorry, Trace…jeez.”

“Let’s meet somewhere.”

“Where?”

But, instead of answering, Humphrey took a quiet moment to himself and, to Ski’s great surprise and delight, broke his own rule and began talking.

As the conversation moved into the subpoena and the night of the murder, once again, seemingly picking up from where they had left off the previous day, Humphrey took on the role of Tobe, talking for her, saying, “‘The only thing I am going to swear to is what I know, OK? I was with Tracey, so I know where Tracey was. I talked with her on the phone. I saw her. She did not look like she’d done anything. I spoke to her. The only time I spoke to her, she said she was in Brandon.’”

“I got all that,” Tobe responded.

“‘I know where Tracey was,’” Humphrey repeated, making sure to cover for himself, “‘and he ordered pizza.’”

They then went through it again. Humphrey said it “scared the living shit out of” him that Ashley was going to, at some point, speak to the cops for a second time, and that she would have to explain the same things. It sounded as though he trusted that Tobe could get the job done, but he had little to no faith in his own wife.

By day’s end, Tobe and Humphrey spoke two more times. It was more of the same nonsense from Humphrey about times and what he and Ashley were doing on the night Sandee Rozzo was murdered. Although he was obstructing justice and asking a witness to lie for him, Humphrey had not once admitted to anything having to do with killing Sandee. Yet, the more Humphrey talked, the more crimes he seemed to confess.

Tobe made two more calls to Humphrey the next day, both of which Ski recorded. She got Humphrey to talk during one about how he and Ashley had conspired and changed the numbers on several W-2 forms, turning them into fraudulent documents, so he could
obtain,
Ski later wrote in his report,
money in the form of loans for cars and gym equipment.
Most of it was done via e-mail, Tobe was able to get Humphrey to admit, so there was going to be plenty of documented evidence, Ski knew.

The next few days were quiet. Then, on October 27, Tobe called Ski. She was panicked and scared for her life.

“I think someone tried to burglarize my home.”

“What happened?”

“The cover over my remote garage door opener was in the opposite position, and the only people who have the old code to the garage are Ashley and Tracey!”

Ski could hear the fear in Tobe’s voice. It was genuine. Whether she was imagining things or was being overly cautious didn’t really matter. The fact was, Tobe White believed something was about to go down. She was certain they had been in her house and were planning something.

“Okay, what do you want to do?”

“I tried to call Ashley and Tracey—they’re not answering their phones.” Tobe explained she had taken several calls from Humphrey over the past few days: “Where are you? Where are you
right
now?” He was calling at all hours of the day and night, asking the same questions: “What are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you with?”

Tobe knew Humphrey had stepped up his efforts in recent days to keep tabs on her. It was crunch time. The Humphreys maybe sensed a move by the cops—that an arrest was imminent. Humphrey himself sounded scared. Maybe he had finally run?

But where?

Tobe could not find Humphrey or Ashley. She called repeatedly. No answer. She drove over to Terrell Therapies, where they were spending most of their time these days. She checked the apartment they shared with Wade Hamilton. She asked around town if anyone had seen them.

Nothing.

Scared, she told Ski she needed to go into hiding herself. Maybe the Humphreys were planning some sort of accident for her?

Ski and SA Davenport got Tobe a hotel room, where she ended up staying for a week. Before leaving her house, Tobe left a note for the Humphreys—just in case they returned—saying that she was heading north to North Carolina to visit her ailing father.

When Tobe returned home with her dogs in early November, she wasn’t in the house, she said, for what was more than a few minutes, when the phone rang.

“Where the
fuck
were you?” It was Humphrey, of course. “Where have you been? What are you doing home now, when you should be in North Carolina?”

Tobe was startled by his candor. Humphrey sounded different. More focused and driven.

“They were following me,” Tobe recalled later. “I was sure of it.”

With Humphrey huffing and puffing on the phone, demanding an answer, Tobe went into survival mode. She told him her dad was bad, very ill. So the hospital in Florida had transferred him to a hospital near Duke University for some sort of special treatment. “You know I wear that beeper, Trace. They paged me and I left.”

Humphrey was quiet. Then, “Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah, Trace. Thanks.”

She had escaped by a hair once again. It could have been a disaster. How many chances did Tobe White have left?

Tobe hung up and sat down inside her house by herself. It had been such a long road with these two, she thought. All she had been involved in. Thinking back, she realized how many times she should have turned herself in and gotten out of the situation. What was she doing working for the police?

Am I out of my freakin’ mind?

There was one time, Tobe recalled, when she had let Ashley and Humphrey borrow her car, and Humphrey went into her garage and asked if she had a drill.

“A drill?”

Ashley said she needed to help her mother do some work around the house. Humphrey said he needed Tobe’s car so Ashley’s mom wouldn’t recognize his when they drove up. They took off with the drill and Tobe’s car, and they didn’t return for almost two days.

“I thought about it,” Tobe said later, “and I knew they had gone to dispose of the weapon she used to kill Sandee. They probably used the drill to disassemble it.”

Then there were the strange things that Humphrey wanted Ashley to do, Tobe said, thinking back.

“She told me once that Tracey had asked her to go to a foam party with him.” Tobe didn’t know what it was. “So I asked. She told me that guys and girls get into a room full of foam and have sex with each other. Doesn’t matter—guy on guy, girl on girl.”

Ashley didn’t want to go, but “she told me that he finally convinced her…and she did it.”

Then there were the times when Humphrey and Ashley and Tobe sat around Tobe’s house, watching television, and Humphrey would, for no apparent reason, get a crazy look in his eyes. Stand up. And then tell Ashley to do the same. He’d put his large hands around Ashley’s tiny neck and, in a somewhat joking manner, stare Tobe dead in the eyes and say, “Do you know how easy it would be to kill her?”

Tobe thought about this: Humphrey had been sending her subtle messages with his wacky behavior for quite some time now. Sooner or later, he was going to show up, Tobe believed, and put his hands around
her
throat—only, he wasn’t going to be laughing about it afterward.

On November 5, 2003, after another round of what Tobe called “drunken death threats” from Ashley’s mother, Tobe filed a temporary restraining order, which was quickly approved. Written in bold black letters across the midsection of the order:
TEMPORARY INJUNCTION FOR PROTECTION AGAINST REPEAT VIOLENCE.

There was a court date set for a hearing on the matter to see if the court would consider issuing a final, perpetual order. But for now, Georgia Hiers had been warned.

No more damn phone calls.

Tobe knew that Ashley and Humphrey were being backed into a corner—feeling it now more than ever. As the week before Thanksgiving dawned, the Humphreys were on high alert and not talking much anymore. Every time Tobe met with them, they watched every word they said. They spoke in broken sentences, in almost what seemed like their own language. On top of the pressure cooker they were in with law enforcement, on November 18, Tobe told Ski the Humphreys were facing the toughest financial jam of their lives, which was getting worse as each day passed. Lawyers. Car payments. Rent. The business that Humphrey was trying to start with Tobe. It all piled up. On top of that, the insurance company had refused to pay on Ashley’s VW Beetle pending the outcome of the arson investigation.

To keep up the pressure, Ski made sure to show his face in front of Ashley and Humphrey whenever he could. He made sure they spotted him watching and following them.

This only made Humphrey more suspicious.

Then, in early December, Ashley had what was described as “an altercation” with an HCSO deputy.

Tobe was at the car wash that day, vacuuming and detailing her car. Ashley had told Tobe she was going to be waiting in Tobe’s driveway for FedEx to drop off a package.

“A check from someone,” Tobe recalled. “I told her no problem. She could wait all day if she needed to.”

After finishing cleaning her car, Tobe came around the corner and pulled into her driveway, only to see a sheriff’s deputy in her driveway talking to Ashley, whom the deputy had out of her car. Ashley looked scared.

Tobe’s stomach tensed.
This is it,
she thought.
They’re here to arrest Ashley.

But where’s the rest of the team?

“What’s going on?” Tobe asked, walking up to Ashley and the sheriff.

“He thinks the way I am backed up into your driveway, that I am setting up for a home invasion burglary.”

Ashley was trying to explain herself to the deputy. He had been driving by, apparently, and spied Ashley wandering around in the driveway.

“No, no, no,” Tobe said, addressing the deputy. “I know her. She’s waiting for a FedEx delivery.”

It was a totally random event. The team involved in the investigation had no idea what had happened. This was just some observant deputy protecting his community.

Ashley left and drove directly to Terrell Therapies to tell Humphrey what had happened.

“He immediately thought that I was working with police,” Tobe recalled, “because of that incident.”

When Humphrey heard, he went off. He demanded Tobe meet him at Terrell Therapies.

“You have an appointment with us to work out, anyway,” Humphrey reminded her.

Tobe walked into Terrell. No one else was around.

Humphrey was fuming. He grabbed her. Threw her on the ground, facedown. Straddled her back. Took her arms and bent them behind her.

Tobe was thinking,
This is it…. I’m fucking dead!

She winced in pain. “Trace, come on. You’re hurting me!”

He twisted her arms harder, pushing them farther up her back, toward her head. The pain was immense.

“You’re turning on us,” Humphrey snapped, leaning down, whispering in her ear.

“No, Trace—” She had a hard time getting the words out.

“I will fucking
kill
you if you are working with police. Do you
hear
me?”

“No, Trace…I’m not. Come on—”

“You had better tell me now. You better tell me right fucking now!”

“I’m not, Trace.”

“I’ll
kill
you,” he said. “It will be a very long and painful process. Trust me.”

“Come on…you’re hurting me.”

Tobe had been cutting back on her workout appointments lately. Humphrey had always been firm where Tobe’s workout routines were concerned: They were not to modify habits in any way. It would look suspicious. Tobe was beginning to fall behind, scared, obviously, of spending any more time with Humphrey than she needed to. Tobe felt “safe,” she later said, “if there were other [customers] in the building” when she worked out with Humphrey. But he was scheduling her appointments to be by themselves lately.

This concerned her.

Humphrey finally let Tobe up off the floor. She was in a lot of pain. Her arms. Her legs. Her back. There were black-and-blue bruises beginning to appear on her arms where he had grabbed and held her down. She was shaking.

“Don’t forget that on Monday we’re working out,” Humphrey said.

Tobe drove home in tears.

Playing confidential informant needed to end.

Now.

She was finished.

When the hell are they going to make an arrest?

When she pulled herself together, certain now that something was about to happen, Tobe sat down at home and, going against the advice of Ski and other law enforcement, typed out some notes to remind herself what she needed to do to get Ashley to confess. It was the only way, Tobe decided, that she could help end this impasse. If she could just get Ashley to say
something,
Ski and his boys could arrest her—and maybe even Humphrey, too.

Tobe wanted to write down some new ideas she had developed to get Ashley talking. There was no doubt in Tobe’s mind that Ashley knew a lot more than she was saying. Tobe believed she could ultimately get it out of her if she pried deep and hard enough—without Humphrey around.

Under the heading
Talking to Ashley,
Tobe began to type.

The two pages of notes were Tobe’s way of approaching Ashley. According to Tobe’s notes, she was planning on telling Ashley that
several things were not adding up
for her any longer. She wanted the truth, so she could adjust her strategy with police. She wrote that her lawyer had told her she had another shot with the SAO, not mentioning that she had used it already.
If you are not involved, then I am going to rescind my statement,
Tobe typed out in a Word file. But if Ashley admitted that she and Humphrey were involved, Tobe wrote, she was willing to stick by what she had told police already.

In one section, Tobe noted how they had all discussed the fact that Humphrey and Ashley had previously said they
wanted to go to Baja, Mexico,
if they believed an arrest was imminent.
Do you still want to do that?

Tobe next wrote how much she loved them and would do anything for them, explaining she had over $22,000 to bring to Mexico right now. She said they could leave some money with someone they trusted so that person could ultimately bond Humphrey out of jail, should he be arrested while they were gone. Apparently, Tobe was going to suggest that just she and Ashley take off. Concluding that section of what sounded more like a letter to Ashley, Tobe said she would have no trouble selling her house, which would put another $150,000 in her pocket, which they could use for living in Mexico.

By the end of the first page, Tobe explained that she believed they both were involved. But that it was okay with her. She understood why Humphrey needed to do it. He
couldn’t let this girl go through with these bullshit charges…,
she wrote. She said if she was going to
leave everything behind
and
get this far involved,
the only thing she wanted was the truth.

The second page consisted of
Questions for Ashley if she confesses
and
What to do if Ashley won’t tell me.

Postconfession, should Ashley decide to admit guilt, the questions Tobe planned were basic, straightforward inquiries that she had wanted answers to for some time:

What happened?

Was anyone else involved?

What did you do with the gun afterwards?

They were questions Tobe had discussed with Ski at one point or another.

Tobe decided to print out the pages and delete all traces of the Word file from her computer. All she needed was Humphrey or Ashley showing up and snooping around her computer, which they had used from time to time, and then she would be caught.

Tobe hit print.

Nothing happened.

“Damn it!”

She checked the printer.

It was jammed.