Beautifully Cruel

by M. William Phelps

  If that was true, Bandstra intimated, just who was it that Jeremy was calling?

  Bandstra attacked Cessford next.

  Then DCI.

  Trent Vileta.

  Sheriff Ken McClure.

  Mona.

  And on and on.

  In the end, Bandstra asked jurors to think about three questions: “One, is Dustin the aggressor?”

  Pause.

  “Two, did Tracey believe that she was in imminent danger of death or bodily injury?”

  Throat clear. Ahem.

  “And did Tracey have reasonable grounds for her belief?”

  76

  AS DOUG HAMMERAND QUESTIONED THE state’s first witness, Marie Friedman, her articulate manner and intense believability rose above her story of arriving at the Robertses’ house at four o’clock for a sleepover, cookies in hand. From there, Marie spoke of what she saw and what Tracey told her. Marie Friedman had been booted out of Tracey’s house in a hurry after they had tea and Tracey explained that Dustin had come to the front door and Bert needed to go to basketball practice.

  “She told me that plans had changed,” Marie testified. “We wouldn’t be . . . spending the night anymore.”

  Marie said she had never once told Tracey—or heard from her husband, who had gone on that business trip with Michael—that the men were coming home early.

  After five minutes of explaining her story, Hammerand, who should be commended for how he brought in witnesses and had each explain only the reason why they were there, instead of belaboring issues and trying to overstate their role in the case, passed his witness.

  Tracey’s defense keyed on the sleepover, trying to make the cancelation of it seem as though it was not as big a deal as Marie had made it out to be; it was simply something of an afterthought and mutually agreed upon by both women.

  Marie stood her ground. Didn’t happen that way, sorry.

  After Marie’s husband, Raymond Friedman, sat in the witness-box and answered questions about Dustin and the timeline of his and Michael’s road trip to Denver and Minneapolis, the state called SCSO deputy Dan Bruscher.

  The idea was to chip away at Tracey’s lies one at a time, to present testimony showing how Tracey told an evolving tale and could not keep track of all the lies she had said.

  Bruscher talked of arriving at the scene, weapon drawn, coming up on the back of the house, hiding behind a tree, yelling for Tracey to bring the kids outside and away from any imminent danger. But, strangely enough, she refused, as if there was no danger and she knew it.

  Then Hammerand asked about a discussion Bruscher had with Tracey regarding the “intruders” as he stood there behind that tree and she on the back porch.

  “I asked about the intruders that I was told left the residence and she indicated that they left that side door . . . and that they left running south and to the east and indicated that the path would have been off that back deck and south of their garage.”

  They.

  Not he.

  They.

  Hammerand asked if Tracey mentioned how many people left the house.

  “Two,” Bruscher stated.

  With one dead upstairs, that made three.

  Jurors took note.

  Bruscher added several more important details, explaining how Tracey was noncommittal with regard to the man she shot being Dustin Wehde, but Bert was certain it was Dustin. There was even a moment, Bruscher described, when he was asking who it was and Tracey shushed Bert, “scolding” him when he tried to explain how he knew it was Dustin.

  “At one point, she asked if it was her husband, Michael Roberts” that she had shot, Bruscher added.

  By the time Bruscher was finished with his direct examination, the noon recess bell rang and everyone was dismissed for an hour.

  When everyone came back at 1:01 p.m., Bandstra led off by asking Bruscher to explain inconsequential details surrounding his arriving on scene: where he stood, how dark it was, the weather.

  From there, Bandstra questioned Bruscher’s report-writing skills.

  It was clear that when you have little to attack a cop with, you go after his integrity, his investigatory abilities, insignificant details mattering little to the outcome, and how minor oversights every cop makes were more important than they actually were. It was a style of questioning that showed the desperation and weakness of Tracey Richter’s defense right from the start.

  An EMT sat in the box next. He offered yet another description of the scene and how they determined Dustin was dead.

  Then Dennis Cessford walked into the room and took the oath. If there was a contentious witness the defense had in mind to crack, Cessford was that person.

  77

  DENNIS CESSFORD SPORTED A WALRUS mustache, dark gray, balding hairline, a large midsection, glasses often tipping down the bridge of his nose, and a rather calm and sensible disposition. That deep voice of his was commanding and relaxed in its Midwestern charm: Gather round, kids, Grandpa is going to tell you a story.

  Tracey sat and blew her nose as Cessford had made his way to the witness-box. By now, she had pulled her hair back and tied it into a ponytail, giving that graying area just beyond her forehead full exposure in a jarring, Cruella De Vil, skunk manner. Tracey—a woman who could tear you down and hate you with a simple stare—sat off to Cessford’s left, staring at him as he spelled his name into the record for ASA Doug Hammerand.

  Ben Smith and Hammerand sat at a long oak table facing the judge and witness-box, Scott Bandstra next to them, Karmen Anderson next to Bandstra, Tracey and Powers flanked off to their right. Ben watched, often taking notes and referring to a laptop in front of him, walked witnesses into the room, and offered whispers of advice, while Hammerand, hardly ever moving from his seat, questioned Cessford.

  Cessford had worked for the SCSO for twenty-two years. He was no green investigator, though Tracey’s team was preparing to rip into the guy as though he was.

  The SCSO former sheriff told his story of the case unraveling before him, from the moment he arrived on scene to interviewing Tracey and Bert at Loring Hospital. There were no revelations here from Cessford: he had done his job the best he knew how, interviewed everyone he was supposed to, asked pertinent questions he believed he should have, and filed all the necessary reports.

  Hammerand went through Cessford’s report of the night, querying what he found. As he spoke of the incident Tracey described, Cessford’s role in the case faded into the background and disappeared. Tracey’s interview and what she had said took center stage.

  After talking about that night and Tracey’s version of events, Cessford described how he canvassed the neighborhood in the days following. As DCI became more involved, Cessford seemed to say, his role diminished, as he became more of a supporting investigator, helping out where he could.

  Ending his direct testimony, Cessford made a vital point after Hammerand asked: “Did you continue to follow up any leads to look for this second alleged intruder?”

  “I did,” Cessford answered.

  “Did the leads ever lead to finding a second intruder?”

  “It did not.”

  After telling jurors he left his SCSO job on December 31, 2002, for another in law enforcement, Cessford said he turned the investigation over to Sheriff Ken McClure.

  * * *

  An hour later, as Scott Bandstra got started, the defense’s first combative question came about five minutes in: “Do you believe that you did an adequate . . . investigation in this matter?”

  Bandstra had a smooth delivery; you’d never know just by listening, for example, that he was looking to tear Cessford’s investigation apart.

  “I believe that we conducted the investigation as well as we could with the information we had,” Cessford explained.

  “Okay. Do you think that you left any stone unturned in this matter?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  “Would you agree, sir, that when you entered the Robertses’ resi
dence . . . you observed a baseball bat downstairs?”

  “Yeah, I think I did.”

  “And you observed panty hose?”

  “I did.”

  A photo was put up on a projector screen of Tracey in the hospital on the night of the attack, that red mark around her neck clearly visible. Bandstra wanted to know if Cessford thought the injury was consistent with someone who had been strangled with panty hose.

  An immediate objection followed. Hammerand argued that Cessford had no knowledge of such cases and couldn’t be considered an expert in this regard.

  It was overruled, even though Cessford said in all his years he’d never seen such a crime.

  Bandstra liked to walk around, move from the projector screen to the front of the witness-box, back to his seat, and refer to notes. After one such sojourn, Bandstra rummaged through his paperwork and had Cessford admit that during his deposition before trial, he had said Tracey’s injuries “could have been” consistent with ligature marks, but he was not a trained medical professional to speak with such authority.

  And this was how the cross-examination went. Bandstra, perhaps doing his job best he could, would try to get Cessford to admit he did not do a thorough-enough analysis of the case, while Cessford held firm, saying he did what he thought was necessary. All of it amounted to what was an end result jurors likely saw through: It didn’t matter how many times Bandstra asked Cessford a question, or how many different ways, the result was the same—the man had done his job as well as he knew how to do it. One could not fault the guy for following policy and procedure best he knew how. This was an unprecedented case in a small town, the likes of which many (if not all) in local law enforcement had never seen during their tenures. An elaborate murder plot constructed by the shooter was not the first position law enforcement took when they arrived on scene and began to investigate, even months and years later. Yet, as the evidence trickled in and piled up, and additional interviews were conducted with those involved, opinions changed, and the event under this new light felt different.

  As they got into it, Bandstra brought up the one source of “reasonable doubt” he would go back to time and again, not only with Cessford, but all of the state’s law enforcement witnesses: “And between the night of the shooting . . . until December 30, 2001,” Bandstra asked, “Mona Wehde never told you about Jeremy Collins, did she?”

  “Prior to the interview on the thirtieth, no, she did not.”

  “Because I presume if Miss Wehde would have talked to you about that, you would have put it in your report?”

  “I would hope that I had.”

  “Prior to December thirtieth . . . did you . . . ever do any investigation regarding Jeremy Collins?”

  “Prior to that?” Cessford wanted clarified.

  “Yes.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Okay. And Mona Wehde, on December thirtieth . . . specifically told you that she thought if there was a second intruder, it was Jeremy Collins—correct?”

  Cessford said he wasn’t sure of the exact wording without looking at the report.

  “In your deposition . . . I’ll read the question. You read the answer. ‘And what specifically did Mona Wehde tell you about Jeremy, how Jeremy Collins may have been involved?’”

  Reading, Cessford answered: “According to my deposition, ‘she felt that he might have been the second person, if there was one.’”

  The Jeremy Collins thread continued for a time and Bandstra then focused on the journal, getting Cessford to agree that the Wehde family confirmed it was Dustin’s handwriting—likely the most devastating blow out of the entire Cessford cross-examination.

  After that, it was on to Tracey’s version of the shooting. A point Bandstra tried to stress was that because Tracey held two guns, it meant there was likely two intruders: one gun for each attacker.

  “That was one of the things that bothered me about that whole statement was the fact that she ended up with a gun in each hand,” Cessford responded, giving credence to the old lawyer trick that you had better know the answer to the question you’re asking, or you should not ask.

  “Okay,” Bandstra said.

  To which, Cessford added, “Twenty-six years in law enforcement at the time, I would not have thought to a grab a second gun. If I thought I needed more ammo, I would grab another magazine.”

  The day was over.

  * * *

  Cessford was back first thing next morning, October 26.

  One way for a trial attorney to drill into jurors’ minds alternate theories of a crime is to pose those theories as questions. Thus, just in case the Jeremy Collins narrative fell apart at some point during the trial, Tracey needed a fallback, which Bandstra presented as: “During your investigation prior to retirement, there were discussions about Michael Roberts being a suspect in this shooting, correct?”

  “There was.”

  “There’s been discussion about the journal. You would agree that in the journal, there’s a reference to John Pitman . . . and Stephen Komie . . . correct?”

  “Through our investigation, we determined, yes, that was correct.”

  “And would you also agree with me, sir, that Michael Roberts, who’s married to Tracey Richter at the time, would also know those two gentlemen?”

  “I would assume that he would.”

  “And in your investigation, you learned that Michael Roberts had befriended Dustin Wehde prior to his death?”

  “That is correct.”

  Bandstra was done.

  78

  GETTING SOME OF THE SCIENCE out of the way, DCI CSI tech Robert Harvey was called back on the morning of October 27 to finish discussing his investigation of the crime scene and Dustin’s vehicle he’d started after Cessford left the box the previous afternoon. It turned out to be your standard technical testimony driven by unimpeachable scientific evidence. One of many points Harvey made was that DCI never recovered DNA or evidence of a second human being at the scene. Harvey made an even greater point when he said if Dustin and his so-called co-conspirator committed the crime as a team, they would have shown up together. Tracey said she saw two men at the bottom of the stairs. However, no scientific evidence was left behind indicating there could have been a second man inside Dustin Wehde’s vehicle.

  Why would two intruders show up in different vehicles?

  Late into the day, the state called the one witness who displayed not only an understandable uneasiness as he walked in, but it was not hard to tell this man held onto an utter revulsion, an utter hatred for Tracey Richter. As her first husband, Dr. John Pitman, walked into the courtroom, Tracey stared down at a sheet of paper and—no doubt—made it appear as though she was deeply engrossed in whatever she was reading. She certainly did not want to make eye contact with a man whose life she had entirely destroyed—emotionally, personally, and professionally—not to mention the relationship with their son.

  John Pitman was not thrilled about being here—who would be in this same situation? As he got settled, the plastic surgeon talked about his work and his military life. They guy had the credentials of an American hero: a few tours each at Walter Reed Corning Medical Center and in Haiti. He was, as he sat there, a colonel in the Army. He had logged some 740 “active duty days”—two years in various battle zones.

  John spoke of meeting Tracey in college, getting married, Bert’s birth, and the “contentious” divorce that followed. He talked about Stephen Komie and about paying child support of $1,000 per month. Then Hammerand had Dr. Pitman describe a motion he had filed “concerning modification of custody of Bert.” After being asked, John explained it was for “complete physical custody” of the child.

  Further into it, John said the date he filed the motion was February 8, 2001. This was important for the prosecution, because Dustin would be dead ten months later, as John’s filing was on the cusp of being granted, after he had proven all the sexual abuse allegations throughout the years to be nothing more than Tracey’
s psychotic neurosis, a litany of made-up allegations to tarnish and destroy the man’s credibility.

  The day concluded with John Pitman on the stand.

  * * *

  Dr. Pitman’s testimony continued the following morning, October 28, at 9:09.

  Hammerand asked the doctor about the pink spiral notebook, that journal written by Dustin. They went through just about every line of the journal, and John, repeatedly, answered “no” after being asked if he had any knowledge of the contents, or if he even knew Dustin Wehde.

  A valid point no one brought up here, which would have been the best time for it, was: Why hadn’t Dustin ever mentioned a partner in his so-called journal? If he was going into the Robertses’ house with someone else, with the amount of detail he seemingly wrote about in the journal, wouldn’t he mention the man who helped him—that alleged second intruder? And, as per Tracey’s second line of defense: why wasn’t Michael Roberts acknowledged in the journal?

  One fact Hammerand was able to make through John Pitman was that most of the contents of the journal could have only been information someone in Tracey’s position knew about—that is, besides the person (John Pitman) the information was written about. As he was asked questions, Tracey could not look at her former husband. She dug through that plastic bag she brought into court every day, like a raccoon in a Dumpster. As it turned out, the bag contained documents. The look on her face at times when Pitman spoke was apoplectic. It felt as though she wanted to lurch from her seat, over the table, and strangle the guy. She blinked her eyes constantly and ground her teeth; her rage for this man seethed from her pores.

  John Pitman came across as sympathetic and believable, without sounding vindictive or fueled by revenge, this after being a victim of Tracey’s madness for what was the past twenty years.

  “Are you a doctor?” Hammerand asked.

  “Yes.”

  “‘Wanted to be a shrink, family disapproved,’” Hammerand read from the journal. Then: “Did you want to be, at some time in your career, a psychiatrist?”