Ben was the county prosecutor. He could bring charges against anyone in the county himself if he thought a case warranted it. The new issue Ben faced, however, if he was going to take that course, was that the case belonged to the SCSO, not DCI, and Ben would need to involve the sheriff, an office Ben was effectively saying did not do its job to begin with. How could he negotiate this politically incorrect move? Moreover, how was Ben going to involve Trent Vileta and DCI without telling the SCSO and the former prosecutor that they had all basically dropped the ball back in the day? As the prosecutor, you didn’t have to come out and shout incompetence with a bullhorn—just bringing a case against Tracey Roberts now was enough to suggest that the former regime missed something.
Ben made a few calls and got two prosecutors from larger counties in Iowa to commit to helping him, if he decided to go it alone.
Trent called. By now, Trent and Ben were good friends. Trent told Ben to take it to court. Do it. Get the SCSO to write up an arrest warrant for Tracey, get her in jail, and begin the process of adjudication. Tracey had no idea that all of this was going on. She was going about her life in Omaha, still as Sophie Edwards (with a fiancé, one source claimed, who called her Sophie), totally unaware that the hand of the law was about to come down on her.
Ben was terrified, however. He’d wake up and think, No way. I am not going to go through with it. It’s too much. He was not sleeping. He was smoking and now drinking early in the morning.
Can’t go through with it, Ben thought.
“You’re the county attorney,” Trent would call and tell Ben when Ben expressed any unwillingness. “You’re the one who can file charges. You can do this!”
One comment Ben thought about that the former prosecutor had made to the press—something along the lines of the case being closed and that Tracey would never be prosecuted—seemed like an omen that perhaps it was not a good idea to move forward. Leave it alone. Go on with life and forget about Tracey Roberts.
But then, Trent’s voice would creep back into Ben’s head: Tell Mona Wehde to forget about her son. . . .
Mona, by this point, had lost much more than just her son.
So, after all that work, all of those hours he had logged, the sleepless nights, burning the midnight oil, the supposed new evidence he had uncovered, Ben found himself back to square one: on the fence, leaning toward not doing anything, simply going on with his life as a county prosecutor.
17
SINCE HE’D MOVED BACK TO town, Ben Smith had started going to daily Mass at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Sac City. It was a place Ben could sit during some mornings, listen to the daily readings, the priest’s homily, pray, think in a quiet space, and reconnect with what was important to him. He needed a safe zone, somewhere to separate the darkness overtaking his life from the light he still believed in. Everything Ben had heard up until this point had convinced him that Tracey had lured Dustin to her house and killed him in order to set Dr. Pitman up as a hired killer. It was the only way she was going to be able to maintain custody of Bert.
Still, Ben was unsure of his abilities to prosecute a murder case.
While he was at Mass one morning, Ben thought about something Trent had said to him back in February, when that fraudulent passport narrative had begun: “I think Mary Higgins,” Trent explained during a phone call, referring to a friend of Tracey’s in town, “knows a lot more than what she told law enforcement previously.” Trent didn’t mean that Mary was acting nefariously in holding back information. Rather, that without a cop asking the right questions, sometimes information from a witness is lost or never gleaned. People talk about what they are prompted to discuss. It’s basic human nature.
Since that February conversation, Ben had become Mass buddies, or friends, you could say, with Mike Higgins, Mary’s husband, who also attended daily Mass.
“I was of the opinion that Mary did not know anything more,” Ben said later, “and I didn’t want Trent basically . . . hounding the family of the guy I was, and had been, seeing at morning Mass.”
Mary had said all she knew, Ben considered.
But now, after thinking seriously about prosecuting Tracey, Ben sat at Mass and thought why not just poke around and see if Mary knew anything more. He had taken things this far. What was one more interview?
“So I volunteered to go out to the Higgins house and just feel Mary out and find out if she knew anything more,” Ben recalled.
A week before Ben wound up at the Higgins house, he asked Mike Higgins after Mass one morning if it would be okay to speak with Mary. Keeping what he was up to vague, “Just briefly, Mike, that’s all,” Ben had said. “Nothing pressing. Just a short follow-up.” The idea was that the new prosecutor was looking to answer a few nagging questions.
“She was very good friends with Tracey,” Mike told Ben.
After returning from speaking with Mary, Ben called Trent. “You need to set up an interview with Mary Higgins.”
Whatever Ben had heard from Mary was significant.
“Will do,” Trent said.
18
TRENT VILETA ASKED MARY HIGGINS to come into the SCSO on March 30, 2011, for a formal interview. Mary Higgins, now a former friend of Tracey’s, said no problem. She arrived early.
Some would call Mary and Tracey “neighbors,” but the reality was that they lived on opposite sides of Early, about three miles apart. Mary had moved into town back 1993. Before that, she and her husband had a home in Odebolt, a twenty-minute drive south of Early. When later asked, Mary described herself as a “stay-at-home mom,” a woman who had raised four children, two girls, two boys. She and her husband, Mike, also farmed the land they lived on. They are your classic, God-fearing, middle-American family, a firm belief in familial roots and always doing the right thing.
“Kids are my business . . . ,” Mary said in describing her life.
It was the day Tracey and Michael moved into their home in Early, Mary recalled, that Mary walked up to the door, knocked, and introduced herself. In a small town like Early, with only hundreds of residents, when a new family moves into town, everyone hears about it. Mary was excited to meet the Robertses and wanted to show some neighborly warmth.
“And right away I knew I liked her,” Mary said in a 2005 deposition.
To Mary, at least in the beginning days when she and Tracey hit it off, Mary believed they shared the one thing that was rather uncommon for this day and age: staying at home and taking care of the kids. What Mary liked was that Tracey seemed to be a dedicated mother, who was, much like Mary, juggling motherhood duties while working at home. Tracey worked for Michael’s computer company; Mary on the family farm. But Tracey’s kids, Mary supposed then, came first for her and Michael. Eventually Mary and Tracey’s kids went to the same school, so they carpooled.
It was instantaneous, the connection between the two, Mary suggested. “She was a breath of fresh air” in a town that was fairly stale, as far as new faces went. Mary found Tracey to be “very intelligent” and “beautiful.” At one time, Tracey was able to maintain that aura: Lots of people said they felt pulled into Tracey’s world by her charm and intellectual persona. Tracey kept herself in shape and worked that “sexy librarian” angle for whatever she could. She stood out. And she liked it.
Mary drove Bert home from school almost every day, she claimed during that 2005 deposition. She would see Tracey then. But they would go for as long as a month without actually sitting down for coffee to catch up; however, they did talk on the phone quite often and, whenever time permitted, sat together.
The families wouldn’t get together as a whole because, Mary explained, “I was uncomfortable with [Michael].” What Tracey and Mary liked to do more than anything was sit on Mary’s front farm porch, talk, eat cheese, drink wine, and enjoy the country air, perhaps realizing how lucky they were to live in such a spectacular place.
Michael Roberts rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Mary was not alone in this feeling. He fashioned him
self a born-again Christian and made no bones about expressing his staunch conservative Christian views. Mary was a cradle Catholic herself, went to Mass every Sunday, and had kids in Catholic school, but religion was a personal thing. Still, she thought Michael’s way of articulating his beliefs was radical, same as a lot of people in town later said. Beyond that, Mary added, she didn’t like the way Michael was always fussing over Tracey in what seemed to her to be an overly dramatic fashion. She hated when he would say things like, “Oh, Tracey, I love you . . . I love you . . . I love you . . .” whenever people were around. Mary recalled once when Michael was saying how much he loved Tracey and he wrote it out on a foggy windowpane. It all seemed to be over the top.
Trent Vileta and Ben Smith were interested in Mary Higgins because she was one of Tracey’s only real friends in town, had spent a lot of time with her, and there was a report in the file claiming Tracey had gone to see Mary not long after the incident in 2001. This new interview with Mary, born out of a conversation Ben had with her, was a good way to get Mary’s story firsthand. For Trent, witnesses fell along a scale of devotion to a suspect. As an investigator, you wait several years and go back and talk to people and they remember different things, now have different agendas, and might not hold the same loyalty they once had to an individual. People get divorced. Alliances bust. It was always a good practice as a cop looking into cold cases to talk to anybody you could, as many times as you could, with years in between.
“Come on in,” Trent said after Mary walked into Ben’s office. Ben was there, too. But Trent ran the interview.
They sat down. Mary explained immediately that she had never queried Tracey about what happened inside her house that night, simply because a friend killing someone wasn’t something you brought up over cheese, crackers, and wine on the front porch.
“Anything I learned from her about it, she told me,” Mary explained.
“Okay,” Trent said. “What did she tell you, exactly?”
Things had changed on Mary’s end with regard to her and Tracey—though, Mary added, “She believes we are still best friends.”
“You’re not?”
“No. Not true. I’m scared of her. If she knew I was talking to the police, my life would be in danger.”
Ben and Trent looked at each other.
19
IN MARY HIGGINS’S FIRST INTERVIEW with law enforcement back on December 26, 2001, she came across guarded and concerned about what she should say. It was clear that Mary didn’t want to say anything that might hurt her friend.
Lieutenant Dennis Cessford asked Mary if she had spoken to Tracey much since the attack.
“Since the incident”—which had been thirteen days prior—“Tracey called a couple of times but I was not home,” Mary explained.
She then described to Cessford how she and Tracey met. Cessford asked questions about Tracey and Michael locking the house up. Mary said it was always locked, but there was away in through the “doggie door.” This prompted Cessford to ask about the Robertses’ dog, which Cessford was “under the impression” was extremely “unfriendly.”
Mary concurred, saying the dog “hates men, but loves kids.”
Cessford went on to ask if Mary believed Tracey might be having an affair.
Mary said, “Absolutely not.”
“What about Michael?” Cessford wanted to know. What could Mary share about Mr. Roberts?
“It’s his way or no way,” Mary said in 2001. “He’s very controlling. He seems to be very religious, but the church they go to is strange.”
“Strange?”
“Yeah, like a cult.”
They spoke of the church for a time. Then Cessford asked Mary “about the incident and if she knew why it happened.”
“If it was not someone local, we will never find the second person. If that is the case, well, you guys are wasting your time and you should close the case and move on to something else” was all Mary divulged then.
“What has Tracey told you?” Cessford pressed.
“Nothing directly about the case,” Mary said back on December 26, 2001.
“Explain that.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Tracey has told me things in confidence and I will not breach that confidence.”
“Why?” Cessford wondered.
After all, a man was killed.
“When someone tells me something in confidence, it stays that way forever. If Tracey says it’s okay for me to talk to you about it, well, I will.”
That was the end of Cessford’s interview with Mary Higgins.
“This is why we go back and reinterview years later,” Trent observed. “That alliance they once shared was quite a bit different ten years later.”
It was no longer there.
20
MARY WAS NOW SITTING IN Ben Smith’s office in 2011. She expressed her concern that if Tracey found out she was talking to the police, Tracey would do something drastic.
Mary Higgins was scared.
In fact, it was that “life in danger” comment that piqued Trent’s interest immediately after they got started talking. It gave him pause to feel confident that one of his core investigatory tactics of returning to witnesses and suspects was about to pay a huge dividend.
“Continue, please,” Trent encouraged.
“She thinks I will back her up in court—but that is not the case. From the first time I met them, I thought there was something not right about them.”
Trent encouraged Mary to tell her story.
Mary explained how, just days after Dustin’s death, Tracey and Michael took off to Australia (it was actually weeks). Mary had asked Tracey about the trip, being so soon after the incident, and if Tracey should first speak with police before she took off. It just seemed like a bad time to be heading out of the country on such a long trip.
“Oh,” Tracey had told her, “I’m not a suspect. It’s okay for me to travel.”
What could Mary say to that?
By this point in his investigation, it was not hard for Trent to believe that the trip Tracey and Michael took to Australia just after the incident was designed entirely so Tracey could take Bert Pitman out of the situation because he knew so much about what had happened that night inside the house. Tracey needed a safe space to sit the boy down and tell him what he needed to say, Trent surmised. (The trip to Australia, according to Michael and Tracey, was planned long before the incident occurred at the house.)
Bert Pitman had been rather gregarious in talking through various versions to law enforcement of what took place. Bert had claimed to have witnessed a lot. Trent got a taste of how manipulative and controlling Tracey could be over Bert when he met with them at the airport on Christmas Eve (during their 2008 through 2009 e-mail correspondence). Trent had studied Bert’s statement and knew there were discrepancies. He tried questioning Bert about it, but Tracey kept butting in and making the interview impossible. She was hanging right over Bert the entire time.
“When she returned from Australia,” Mary explained to Trent, “she started talking about what happened.” In that same conversation that she and Tracey had upon Tracey’s return from Australia, according to Mary, Tracey said “the police found a notebook of Dustin Wehde’s.”
“A notebook?” Trent asked Mary.
“She said that Dr. Pitman was the one who had brought all of this into play,” Mary explained, meaning the notebook and the assassination attempt. “She told me that all the stuff in the notebook showed that Dr. Pitman was behind it. She said the police had given her all of this information. I thought everyone had known about the notebook, because she said the police were releasing the information about it.”
If this new information from Mary Higgins was accurate, Trent knew without saying, they had Tracey nailed—because no one in law enforcement had ever released the contents of the notebook. Beyond the first page, which was shown to Mona Wehde so she could analyze the writing, the only
way someone could have known what was written in the notebook was if that person had read or written it.
“Did she tell you anything else?” Trent asked.
Plenty.
Mary went on to say Tracey described “two notebooks” the police had found. “One was with the computer in Dustin’s car and the other was at Dustin’s house.” Tracey supposedly said that “one of the notebooks had pornography all over it and the other contained personal information about her and her son Bert.” Mary added that Tracey talked about the contents of the notebook as if she had read through it all. Tracey knew just about everything written inside the journal. She quoted from it almost verbatim.
“I don’t believe Dr. Pitman had anything to do with the attack,” Mary said she had told Tracey on that day when Tracey talked about the notebook.
“Well, the police found some things that prove he wanted me dead!” Tracey snapped back.
Tracey and Mary chatted briefly about how Tracey believed Pitman wanted her and Bert and her other son with Michael dead, but not the daughter.
“I recall someone carrying a computer out of the house during the attack,” Tracey allegedly told Mary.
“Tracey, I do not think Dr. Pitman had anything to do with it—I think it was Michael,” Mary said.
“John [Pitman] is going to be arrested,” Tracey responded. “Michael had nothing to do with it.”
For Trent, this statement in particular was important. “Because,” Trent explained to me, “you see, Tracey thought that she would come back from Australia and Dr. Pitman would be in jail, arrested on charges of setting up everything that happened in her home. But that did not happen.”
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