“Okay,” Bert said, and off he went.
Some time passed. Bert was not back from the office yet, Tracey explained (to Cessford). So she called to see what was up.
“Soon, Mom,” Bert said. He liked playing the computer games in the office.
More time went by. Bert was still a no-show.
Tracey called back. By now, it was dark out.
“Can I just finish this game, Mom?”
“Yes.”
Tracey told Cessford it was around 7:15 p.m. when Bert came back from playing computer games. How did she recall this? Well, in a total contradiction to Marie Friedman’s later testimony in court, Tracey told Cessford, “When he came home, Marie gave him a hug. . . .”
Marie spent forty-five minutes to an hour at the house and she arrived right after she left work at four o’clock. She said she never saw Bert. She said Tracey claimed she had to go get Bert in Storm Lake. These major—seemingly simple—facts are in total disparity to the story Tracey later told.
“Bert, do you have any homework?” Tracey told Cessford that she asked her son, though she could not recall Bert’s answer.
Next, with Marie gone, Tracey said Bert was still wearing his winter coat when he expressed a desire to watch Spy Kids, a movie Tracey’s sister had sent her nephew. So she took all three kids up to Bert’s room so they could put the film on there.
The youngest, Cassie, needed to get ready for bed. Tracey changed her diaper and put a robe on the child to get her ready for a bath.
The plan was for all of them to eat, Tracey told Cessford (not mentioning anything about lamb curry or Michael being expected home for dinner), so she could take Bert to a basketball practice in Storm Lake. (If it was 7:00 p.m. at this point, what time was Bert’s practice?)
Once again, the complete opposite of Marie Friedman’s testimony.
As she prepared Cassie for her bath upstairs, turning the light on in the bathroom, Bert and his younger brother were in his room watching Spy Kids. Adding more, varying detail to this part of the narrative years later, Tracey said in a 2004 deposition that Cassie was with her in the bathroom and she “started running the water” and “was still feeling the temperature,” but turned the water off once she heard something downstairs. In that Storm Lake Times interview, Tracey laid out even more detail regarding this important time of the night, saying she placed “a couple of towels over the stairwell bannister, along with”—an alleged fact that would become very important to Tracey’s narrative later on—“some panty hose.”
It was then, Tracey claimed, that she heard distinctive noise downstairs. To Times reporter Art Cullen, however, she claimed Maxine, the family Rottweiler, was barking outside and she yelled out the window for the pooch to shut up. For yet another deposition in 2003, Tracey changed this up some, saying, “I kind of, I knocked on the window and kind of yelled out at her to be quiet. . . .” She described the window as being “in between [Cassie’s] room and the bathroom . . . that overlooks the kennel area down below.” She claimed then to have yelled at the dog before going into the bathroom.
Hearing a few bumps downstairs, she told Cessford, made her think “people” were in the house.
Michael’s home?
She told the Times the back door was unlocked.
Tracey walked from the bathroom to the top of the stairs, so she could look down. She had Cassie in her arms the entire time, according to her Cessford interview. In her 2004 deposition, she claimed she walked out of the bathroom with Cassie to go over to the top of the stairs in order to “say hi to my husband.”
In his first statement to Cessford (hours after the events), eleven-year-old Bert said, “Somehow [Cassie] got out of the room . . .” He did not recall his mother preparing Cassie for a bath.
“I saw shadows.... There were two of them,” Tracey explained to Cessford.
In her deposition, she said of the same moment: “I know I heard footsteps on the hardwood floor downstairs—and I heard what sounded like two people. . . .”
Tracey claimed she thought it was Michael and Marie’s husband; perhaps they had come home without calling and had walked in without saying a word. She began walking down the stairs to say hi, with Cassie still in her arms.
In a deposition, however, she never mentioned walking down the stairs.
According to her Cessford interview, Tracey realized there was a “white male coming up the stairs” toward her and her child, a man “[who] had on a black jacket, no hat . . . dark brown or wavy black hair.”
The Times reported Tracey saying: [She] looked down the dark stairwell and saw the tops of two heads. Tracey went on to explain here how she even made eye contact with one of the men through the towels hanging over the bannister and she knew then that it wasn’t Marie’s husband or Michael. Nothing about going down the stairs.
Dustin wore a brown jacket, white shirt, and blue jeans. He always had his glasses on. His hair was unmistakably black. To Cessford, Tracey described the man she saw as “good-looking” and moving fast—up the stairs toward her—and she “felt something was wrong.” Because of this, Tracey said, she might have yelled out to Bert.
“Someone is in the house!”
(“I heard my mom screaming for help,” Bert recalled in his first statement. “My mom brought [Cassie] back to my room. . . .”)
Tracey turned and bolted. She was thinking she had to get Cassie into Bert’s room so he could lock the door and barricade the children inside the room while she fought off what she believed were two attackers.
As she handed Cassie to Bert, Tracey felt the man “grab her from behind.” She added a detail to the Times about the man pulling her back out of the room by her ponytail.
“Shut the door, Bert! Shut the door . . . and stay inside,” Tracey told Cessford she yelled at that point. Later, she recalled telling Bert to lock the door while screaming, “Help, help!”
“Stay in there . . . and don’t leave,” Bert recalled his mother telling him.
43
AFTER TRACEY AND JOHN DIVORCED, she began an entire new life (of crime). It was early 1996. Tracey was on the hunt for work (according to her) and asked a friend to introduce her to a doctor working at a local Chicago hospital. She had attended Catholic school in Chicago with the doctor’s sister and wanted to say hello.
That doctor, a dentist, Robert Kellner (pseudonym), was a Loyola alumnus. He’d done a one-year residency there, with four and a half years of surgical training at that same well-respected Chicago hospital where Tracey’s friend worked. A board-certified dentist, Dr. Kellner was qualified to conduct oral and maxillofacial (trauma, reconstruction, and cosmetic) surgeries.
“If you ever need any help around your office,” Tracey told Dr. Kellner after the introduction, “I am available. I can help.”
It’s important to note that many sources from this period of Tracey’s life claim she wore revealing clothing, especially her blouses, which often showed more than a respectable amount of cleavage, accentuating her rather large breast implants. Many said that Tracey dressed to show off what she had.
As a matter of fact, Dr. Kellner said, he just might need someone to help set up the computers for his office. Not necessarily punch in at nine and leave at five, but Tracey could help out on an as-needed basis as a subcontractor.
Tracey soon ascribed a penchant for dictation to Dr. Kellner. Many surgical procedures are recorded and later transcribed, so doctors can write papers, assess, and present their work.
“And she started by reprinting some of my forms, my consent forms and stuff like that,” Dr. Kellner recalled later during a court proceeding.
“You’ll need a new computer,” Tracey told her new boss one day.
“So get one,” he said. He handed Tracey the business credit card.
Tracey ordered the computer, but had it delivered to her house.
“I need to configure it,” she explained when the dentist and his assistant, weeks afterward, asked where the computer was.
“It was months later that I finally got it in my office,” he recalled. Dr. Kellner didn’t pick up on it, but this was the beginning of a series of bizarre behaviors on Tracey’s part.
It’s clear that Robert Kellner, though engaged, saw something else in Tracey: a pretty woman, who seemed to be not only flirting with him, but very much attracted to the doctor.
At first, Tracey was great. Any issues with the computers, she was able to fix. Dr. Kellner said at this time they had a great working relationship. As time moved forward, an attraction mounting, perhaps against his better judgment, Robert Kellner began taking Tracey out on dates.
“You think you could lend me some money?” Tracey asked one night.
The dentist was a bit wary, but what the hell? Why not?
First it was $200. A week later, $500.
Then $1,100.
Tracey always paid him back.
“I have a canker sore, a lesion in my mouth, and was hoping you could treat it,” Tracey said one day.
Her boss said no problem. He had just gone in half on a laser machine with another area doctor. It was a piece of equipment they shared.
Then: “I know a doctor who might want to rent it from you,” Tracey said of the laser. “He’s a plastic surgeon.”
Dr. Kellner said okay. They could make some money off the machine when they weren’t using it. This would become one of the odd jobs Tracey took on: renting and making sure the machine was delivered and returned.
Things were going well. Tracey made a few bizarre moves here and there, but she seemed to be helping out. She had even convinced Dr. Kellner that she had devised some sort of program in the company’s computer system to generate invoices and letters on his stationery head easily, without having to bother the doctor all the time with paperwork. All the local practices were doing it, Tracey explained.
“We need a fine-point, a medium-point, and a felt-tip” pen, Tracey said. She came into the office with papers in her hand. “I want you to sign your name and see what looks like the best [signature], and I am going to scan it into the computer so the girls can just use your signature on your doctor’s letters.”
The dentist thought, Okay.
Sounded pragmatic enough.
“Here,” Tracey said, pointing to where on the letterhead she wanted him to sign, “write here.” Then she pointed to another area. “Write [your signature] at a third of the way down the page, too.”
The doctor signed his name with three different types of pens, in several places, as Tracey looked on, coaching him all the way.
Tracey took the papers, smiled, and walked out of the office. The computer now had the doctor’s signature on file. Anytime he gave the okay, the computer would generate an invoice, create a contract, or sign a document for him. He could be at a conference in Timbuktu and the office might need his signature.
Tracey got into a car accident. She was fine, but she had totaled her vehicle.
“Listen,” she explained to her boss, “I am selling some stock to buy a car, but that money won’t come in for some time.” The impression he got was that she would pay him back as soon as the stock sell-off came through. She didn’t want to miss out on a deal she found for a new vehicle.
“How much?”
“Eighteen thousand.”
Dr. Kellner thought about it. She had been good on her word before and had always paid him back. He had the business cut her two checks: $9,000 each.
“I had no reason not to believe that I would get this money back,” Dr. Kellner said later.
It wasn’t long, however, before Tracey, according to the doctor’s testimony during a court proceeding, began making fraudulent charges on the business credit cards, using that signature-signing device to facilitate her crimes. One charge was a trip to Australia (no doubt that first time she flew out and married Michael Roberts—this, mind you, at the same time she was also having sex with Robert Kellner). Then she charged a continuing-education course and a weekend getaway at an expensive resort.
Dr. Kellner called the travel agency when he found out that a trip to Australia had been charged to his account. He was furious.
“I’m not paying for this,” he said. “I’m disputing these charges.”
The agency explained that Tracey Roberts had charged the trip under what was his clear authority. He had signed off on the charge, literally.
How could she do this? he asked.
“We have a fax here,” the travel agent clarified, “with a contract that says you agreed to the trip.”
Tracey had taken his office stationery/letterhead and, along with his computerized signature, she produced letters, contracts, and other documents with his signature, one of which gave her the authority to charge any trips she wanted.
Dr. Kellner called the police. And after it was explained to Tracey that she was going to be arrested on numerous charges, she paid the bills herself.
If Robert Kellner thought that he was done with Tracey Richter-Roberts, however, he was terribly mistaken—because her biggest con to date had been put into motion when she got that $18,000 loan from him. Tracey was in the midst of initiating a malicious plan—and she was about to use every sexual cell in her body to put it into action.
44
TRACEY TOLD DENNIS CESSFORD THAT, as she forced Cassie into Bert’s room, screaming for Bert to close and lock the door, one of the intruders pulled her back out of that bedroom threshold.
She was now alone in the hallway upstairs with that man.
In that interview, Tracey also alluded to there being a second man in the hallway at this time, telling Cessford, “There was some conversation between them while they were behind me . . . but it was not directed toward me.”
Odd that a pair of home invaders, their target within an arm’s reach, was discussing anything at this point. What’s more, according to Tracey, two men did not have control of one woman.
Odd.
Then, without warning, Tracey told the Times, one of the men choked her from behind with that pair of panty hose he must have, she insisted, grabbed from the bannister. Tracey explained to reporter Art Cullen how she “remembered trying to get free,” but couldn’t. What would make matters even more confusing years later, when describing these same events to Trent Vileta’s predecessor, DCI detective Dan Moser, and later to an insurance agent, Tracey went back and forth from “they,” meaning two men, to “he,” referring to one man. She also mentioned how she had turned all the lights off downstairs before heading upstairs to put the kids in the room to watch that movie, but then later changed this to say she turned off just the kitchen light.
These were seemingly unimportant facts that did not add up.
“She often tried to change and take back a lot of what she says,” Ben Smith explained. “Hell, she threatened a court reporter for transcribing her testimony incorrectly (her testimony concerning the Sophie Edwards passport charges). She was actually banned from the Buena Vista County Courthouse because of this. There were flyers on the wall of the courthouse saying if you see this woman, immediately contact courthouse security, as she is allowed in the building only with a deputy sheriff present.”
To Cessford, Tracey described the hallway altercation in near-total contrast to several other versions she would later give. She told Cessford she was “trying to get to the bedroom”—meaning, one would think, hers—but was “pulled back a couple of times” toward the guest room’s doorway. As this occurred, Tracey claimed, she “pulled away” from “the one” grabbing her—she did not mention any panty hose being involved here—“really hard,” before she managed to push back “in hopes that he would let go.” She recalled thrusting backward so hard, with all of her might and weight, that “the one” man she was grappling with stumbled and she thought he hit the wall “really hard.” She gave no explanation as to what the other man might have been doing during all of this.
Bert explained in his first statement (to Cessford) that he heard the commoti
on going on outside his door: There was a “guy talking.” So Bert went to “my locker”—inside his bedroom—“and got a baseball bat.” Bert then leaned up against the door, baseball bat in hand, so he could listen to what was going on outside his door in the hallway. Of this moment, Cessford’s report read: At this time he [Bert] remembers that one guy said something to the other guy . . .
“Okay, boss,” Bert claimed to have heard one man say.
Bert was unsure what he said, but thought it was like “axe,” Cessford reported.
Then Bert heard, “Here ya go, boss.”
“I thought it was a prank,” Bert told Cessford.
Tracey claimed in her Cessford interview that as the one man fell back and hit the wall, he said, “You fucking bitch.” Then, to the “other guy,” he scowled, “Get her!”
“At this time,” Tracey explained to Cessford, “I remember something around my neck. I also remember someone pulling on my ponytail.”
Hours after the attack, it is “something” around her neck; but a week later to the Times, Tracey is certain it is a pair of panty hose.
Cessford wanted to know if the light in the hallway was on.
“Yes, it was.”
“How ’bout [in] your bedroom?”
“No. I remember turning the bedroom light on after it was over.”
To the Times, Tracey claimed that while she was in the hallway fighting with the “men,” she was dragged toward the stairs, blacking out somewhere along the short distance. Yet, in her interview with DCI detective Dan Moser on December 28, 2001, just nine days after the Times article published, Tracey said she couldn’t recall passing out. She also told Moser she thought there was some sort of argument going on down the hall by Bert’s room and she heard Bert yell, “You motherfucker!” It was at that moment, she insisted to Moser, when she believed the intruders had possession of her kids.
Tracey said by this time she had not recognized either of the men as Dustin. Bert told the Times he heard the men talking in the hallway and knew one of them was Dustin because he had been paintballing with Dustin and recognized his voice. Bert also alleged hearing one man refer to the other as “boss” or “Ross.”
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