Beautifully Cruel

by M. William Phelps

  This type of sketchy behavior went on and on. Tracey was sleeping with a man—maybe even two or three—fairly regularly by this point, even buying him gifts. Skis. Weekend getaways. All on John’s credit cards, mind you. When John questioned the charges, Tracey gave her husband the guy’s name and said he must have stolen the numbers from her pocketbook at work.

  John called the credit card company, which then tracked the man down. Of course, he said Tracey had bought the items for him. He told the credit card company he and Tracey had been dating for four months.

  After this, Tracey went on another one of her spending sprees. Jewelry. Athletic club membership. Clothes. Expensive trips. Dinners. John found canceled checks from his accounts to area motels. It seemed awfully brazen on Tracey’s part. Yet, what John found next caused him to be alarmed more than ever: a check written out for “thousands” of dollars to an adult-novelty store. Tracey had gone and bought an enormous amount of sex toys, oils, condoms, and other items.

  Her explanation when later asked about this?

  “I was starting a business and had to purchase a lot of inventory. John wanted me to have a home business for tax purposes.”

  From there, as usual, Tracey blamed John for encouraging her to start the business so she could sell the toys to his friends.

  However, as with just about everything Tracey said, the truth was the opposite: She was selling the goods to her friends at the strip clubs. John had actually known nothing about it until he found the canceled check.

  Then, one night in 1992, John walked in late from a shift at the hospital and Tracey and Bert were gone.

  Something didn’t feel right about the situation.

  He waited.

  No word from Tracey.

  It got late. After midnight. John grew worried for his boy. So he picked up the phone and called 911 to report them missing.

  40

  MONA WEHDE GREW SUSPICIOUS OF the Robertses while working for them during the fall of 2001. Not in an immoral or wicked way. But Mona felt there were things going on with the business that she didn’t quite understand. What’s more, with her daughter babysitting for Tracey and Michael occasionally and reporting back some rather peculiar things going on inside the house, Mona tried to keep her distance best she could, while still maintaining a working relationship.

  “I knew them for years,” Mona said. “But my family was not involved with them whatsoever until about a year before Dustin was killed.”

  Mona had opened her own real estate office, but business was slow between the spring and fall of 2001. She relied, in many respects, on the part-time income she was making from Michael Roberts’s business. Mona worked mornings for Michael, the afternoons for herself. If you ask her what she did for Michael, Mona had a hard time explaining the work because she was so unsure of what Michael himself actually did.

  “His company sold some sort of computer-based training courses. . . .”

  Her job was to search all over the world for new customers.

  As Mona would work in the office, she listened to what was going on around her. She felt Michael was intelligent, knew computers like nobody’s business, and could talk with an articulacy few others could.

  By the time December came around, Tracey and Michael were deeply involved with Mona and a new real estate project. They had asked Mona to sell the Victorian dream home they lived in and purchase “this old, abandoned house that needed to be bulldozed” in Storm Lake, Iowa. Storm Lake was a much larger community, about ten thousand residents, located in Buena Vista County, about fifteen miles north of Early. This property offered the Robertses, Mona explained, more room and acreage for their horses.

  During the second week of December, Tracey and Michael and the kids took off to Chicago. They needed a break, Mona was told. The deal for the new home was in the works and Mona was under the impression that the business was suffering. Michael and Tracey seemed to get along, but there were issues, obviously, stress the business had created.

  “I am going to bring you back the most amazing cheesecake you will ever eat,” Tracey told Mona before they took off.

  “Sweet,” Mona said.

  Tracey explained that they wanted the new property badly. The negotiations were ongoing, Mona said. She’d do what she could while they were gone. Mona wondered why, if they were so stuck on the property, they would leave. But then, Tracey talked about how the custody battle she was engaged in with her ex, John Pitman, had been all that consumed her and Michael’s minds lately. They had a lot on their plates and needed to get away and chill out and also, maybe most important, visit several lawyers in Chicago regarding the custody battle. What Mona didn’t know was that Tracey was losing: it appeared John Pitman was going to get custody of eleven-year-old Bert.

  “We want the property,” Tracey told Mona.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  The information Tracey shared was odd, Mona thought.

  “Because I didn’t know any of this,” meaning the custody issues. “I had never asked her questions. She always offered up things to me.”

  Michael, Tracey, and the kids went north to Chicago and returned several days later. It was December 12, when Mona recalled speaking to Tracey next. Mona could not remember who called whom.

  “You bought the house,” Mona said. “I put the deal together.”

  “Oh, it didn’t work out?” Tracey asked.

  Mona thought maybe she was confused. “No, no. I got it all worked out. You guys just bought a new house—congratulations.”

  Tracey didn’t seem too fazed by the news. She came across as preoccupied. Then, for some reason, totally out of character for how she and Mona communicated, Tracey mentioned that the kids were upstairs with the dogs, she was with them, and they were just hanging out, spending some quality time together.

  “We’re just having fun.”

  Tracey then went on to mention several other personal issues.

  “This was rare, rare, rare,” Mona said later. “We generally talked only business.”

  * * *

  Dustin was standing beside Mona in the kitchen as she spoke to Tracey. The previous day, Mona’s daughter had said something about Tracey asking her if her mom minded Dustin coming over to do some work for her and Michael. Dustin’s sister told her mother about it. Mona thought she’d ask Tracey about that now, while she had her on the phone.

  “Tracey, what’s this about you having some work for Dustin to do?” Mona said. Dustin had been out of work since being fired from the ethanol plant. He needed to keep busy. But Mona had her reservations about her son going to work for Michael and Tracey. It all depended on what they wanted him to do.

  “Oh, yeah!” Tracey said, as if she had just recalled. “I have a whole bunch of copies of things that need to be made. You know, Dustin lost his job . . . so we want to give him a trial basis here. So he can come down and make some copies for us.”

  The implication from Tracey was that Dustin would start out making copies and work his way up to other tasks.

  “Look, Tracey,” Mona explained sarcastically, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It takes the kid three days to empty the dishwasher.” Mona was staring at her son as he sat nearby and listened.

  “Oh, don’t worry. It’s just a trial basis. If he does well, there’ll be more work for him.”

  Mona was confused. She was trying to tell Tracey she was doing wrong by hiring her son.

  “Okay,” Mona said, giving more into her son’s stares of wanting to work for the Robertses than Tracey’s pestering.

  “Yeah, just send him down in the next day or two,” Mona recalled Tracey telling her. “We’ll see how it goes. And please, Mona, don’t you come with him. He’s twenty years old, for crying out loud. Just send him down on his own. In fact, don’t say nothing to him about it, just send him down.”

  “Um, Tracey . . . ah, Dustin is, like, standing right here across the table from me, listening.”

  “Oh, okay then.
That’s fine. Just send him down in the next day or two and we will see how it goes.”

  Mona hung up. She was thinking: These are wealthy people—it would really help out if Dustin had a job. The more she thought about it, in fact, the better Mona felt. It would be awesome. She worked there already. It would be fantastic if it all worked out.

  “Well,” she said to Dustin, “you heard the conversation. What do you think?”

  He shrugged a yes.

  “Dustin, listen, you have an orthodontist appointment tomorrow. Go over there after that. Check in with them. See what they want you to do.”

  The following day was December 13, 2001.

  41

  JOHN PITMAN WAS AT HOME; his wife and child were missing. He called the police and an officer told him they’d check it out, but he should wait out the night. See what happened.

  Pitman didn’t get much sleep. After getting out of bed the next morning, he heard a car pull in, door shut. Then Tracey walked through the door, Bert in tow.

  “Where were you?” Pitman asked.

  “I stayed at a friend’s. . . . I am upset, John, because you are having an affair.”

  “Tracey,” he said, quite frustrated because he had been down this road so many times before, “I told you I have been moonlighting. . . .” Did he need to remind his wife of all her damn spending and the amount of money they needed to stay afloat these days? In addition, Tracey had spent a weekend just recently with her boyfriend at a ski lodge. John had proof.

  By March 1992, after John suffered a nasty back injury while sledding with Tracey and Bert, having been in a back brace for three months, the marriage, hanging on by a thread as it was, deteriorated into dust. At this point, Tracey did not even hide what she was doing anymore. She did whatever she wanted, went out whenever she wanted, slept with whomever she wanted, spent whatever amount of money she needed. Each job Tracey took on always turned into a drama and ended with her leaving or being fired “on a note of controversy,” John later said in a report. She’d start a new job and the people in the office would warm up to her. Then she’d do something inexplicable, like become belligerent with patients or get an attitude with her boss. While working for one doctor, she actually took home patient claim forms, altered them, and had patient benefits—yet another fraudulent act on her part—sent to her home, where she cashed the checks. She would come up with all sorts of excuses why she missed work: accidents that never occurred, Bert being ill, John not allowing her. Once, Tracey drew blood herself and, changing her name and birth date, sent it in for an HIV and pregnancy test. When she got caught, once again turning the tables, she claimed she did it because she was scared of the affairs her husband was having.

  By early summer 1992, Tracey agreed to move to Chicago so John could begin a plastic surgery fellowship at Northwestern University. Perhaps this was the final chance for their marriage. They sold the Denver condo and rented an apartment outside the city, staying in the area for a time while sending Bert ahead to Chicago to live with Tracey’s parents. The idea was they could finish their affairs—literally for Tracey—in Denver and meet up with Bert, purchase a home, and try to rebuild.

  Before heading to Chicago, they took a trip to Toronto so John could present some of his research. While there, Tracey met several men, many of whom were later described as rough street people. John became worried when he’d catch her talking to the men alone. It seemed as though they were discussing some type of secret plan or deal. He felt threatened and believed there was something “odd or even menacing” about the entire situation. It unnerved John to the point where he could not trust Tracey at all.

  * * *

  Upon their return to Denver, before discussing when they would move to Chicago, John’s credit card company called and said someone had stolen his card numbers and charged each account up to the max—but all of the charges had occurred after they left Toronto. It had to be Tracey’s new friends.

  Then John thought about something else: before leaving for Toronto, Tracey had demanded he “up [his] life insurance.”

  Then this: “Hey,” Tracey said one day. “I want you to write me a prescription for anabolic steroids. It’s for my uncle.”

  Did Tracey not realize John knew all of her new friends—both in Toronto and now back home—were bodybuilders?

  “No,” John said.

  “Come on . . . and can you bring some of those blank prescription pads home for me?”

  John said no again. How damn brazen was she?

  Growing increasingly worried about what Tracey was planning, John decided to do something about it. Tracey had obviously been dealing with some rather sketchy people and was making promises to them. John decided to call the private investigator his parents had used to look into the credit card theft in Vail. He explained what was going on: that gunshot into the ceiling, the strange people Tracey was hanging around with (some of the same men, in fact, John had come home to find inside his apartment one night with Tracey while he was out), the credit card issues, and more.

  “She asked me to raise the life insurance premium,” John explained to his PI.

  “I’m concerned for your safety, Mr. Pitman,” the PI said.

  John was now scared.

  “I think I should put her under surveillance,” the PI suggested.

  “Okay,” John agreed.

  Within two days the investigator came back with some news. Tracey had spent two nights in one guy’s apartment, a “bodybuilder type.” She had spent the entire time with the man.

  John realized she was not only still cheating, but she was not working, as she had claimed she had been doing all along.

  “I know, Tracey,” John told her after receiving the report.

  “You know what?”

  John explained.

  “No, you don’t understand,” she said. “He’s gay. He’s just a friend. Look, I am being followed and I decided to stay there because I am afraid.”

  It was bullshit. The private investigator had photos of the two of them kissing, holding hands, acting like lovers. What’s more, the PI’s log read like a script from a Danielle Steel novel. Tracey was observed coming and going all day long from various apartments, restaurants, gyms, meeting different men at various places. There were many times when she’d have a blue duffel bag with her.

  On one night, the PI followed Tracey into an office building. Tracey was dressed extravagantly. As the PI walked in behind her, two women came out through the door Tracey had entered. The PI fell back. The two women started talking about Tracey.

  “Did you check out that dress?” one woman said to the other as they waited for the elevator.

  “Yeah. I told her she looked like a hooker.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Oh, she just laughed.”

  On and on, for seventy pages, the investigator’s report went, detailing Tracey meeting men for dinners, at hotels, at office buildings, at apartment buildings, all over the city. Sometimes she’d be dressed as though she was a high-class call girl; other times, she’d have that blue duffel bag and she’d be wearing sweatpants and a workout shirt.

  John wound up leaving Denver, scared Tracey was plotting to kill him. There was one particular incident that did it. John’s PI called him one night. John was still at the hospital.

  “Hey, listen, Mr. Pitman, be careful. Tracey is going to try to get you alone inside your apartment.”

  “Okay,” John said. He asked the investigator to explain.

  Tracey was not only screwing around and becoming involved in all sorts of despicable activities, but the people she surrounded herself with were “involved in the underbelly of society.” Street hoods. Hustlers. They were acting, the PI explained, as though they had money. They would go out, sometimes with Tracey, and test-drive expensive trucks and cars and motorcycles, yet none of these people worked. All they did was con and swindle folks.

  “Where are you going after work?” the PI asked.

  “Ho
me to the apartment to see Tracey,” John explained. He had just spoken to her.

  “I know. I saw her call you.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Don’t go there,” the PI warned.

  “Why not?”

  “She says she is there waiting for you, but she’s not. We’ve been following her. She is walking right now in the opposite direction of the apartment. I need you to go to a public place and wait there until I find you.”

  The implication was that Tracey had just set John up. That several of her “friends” were going to be inside the apartment waiting for John instead.

  This was enough to send John running to Chicago.

  “In my opinion,” Ben Smith later explained, “that life insurance policy is huge.” The life insurance policy that John never upped was forged by Tracey, anyway. “They would have killed him by injecting illicit narcotics in his body. Tracey has always alleged that Dr. Pitman was a drug addict, which, applying the Tracey formula, means Tracey was the drug addict and was setting him up. She would need to find a way to discredit and humiliate him in death, which would also allow her to obfuscate her role in his murder.”

  * * *

  While in Chicago, John had his private investigator continue surveillance and report back. Tracey moved around a lot, always seemingly involved in something reprehensible. A lot of the men she interacted with during her day “appeared to be bodybuilders.” One of her favorite dresses to wear out at night was a “tight black evening dress, long black gloves, [with] high heel pumps.” On several occasions, the PI followed Tracey into adult bookstores, where she’d spend time buying sex toys and condoms and oils and then head off to a motel, where a man would soon meet her. She’d spend a few hours inside and the man would leave. A while later, another man would arrive and enter the same motel room, spend several hours and leave. One PI waited for Tracey to leave the apartment she had resided in with John, and once she was gone, he went in with a key John had given him and found a business card he believed was Tracey’s. It was for a business called “Strips-Ta-Please,” and alongside the card was a box of condoms. Inside the refrigerator were several bottles of steroids.