Beautifully Cruel Read online

  “It’s embarrassing to admit,” Ben explained later, “but honestly, Trent and I played a game online, Call of Duty.” It’s one of those narrative-type video games that connect players online, who then chat on headsets while playing. “Trent and I talked more about the case while playing the game than we did the game.”

  Every time Ben picked up the three large-ring binders in the prosecutor’s office and read through, he found something new that bothered him.

  “And my questions became more and more focused,” Ben said.

  After the New Year, as Ben tried to go about his new life as Sac County prosecutor, everything, he said, “video games, eating, sleeping . . . became secondary to this case.” The home-invasion homicide had taken over Ben’s life, presumably the same as it had Trent when he picked it up in 2008.

  As soon as Trent became a DCI investigator and, after being asked, opened up the case file, he found problems beyond the crime scene photos.

  “Hey, you have a look at that case?” Trent asked a fellow investigator who was actually at the crime scene. The guy was an ex-Navy SEAL, a top-notch cop Trent trusted.

  “Trent, listen, I looked at those photos.... Look, there’s no way this is a random, over-the-shoulder, eyes-closed, never-shot-a-gun-before type of thing. This is basically tracking someone to the ground and standing over them, shooting them in the back of the head.”

  The crime scene photos said as much. But in the scope of it all, what did the opinions of two investigators really amount to? Cold cases were reopened and solved with new information, new witnesses, deathbed confessions and admissions.

  Even from the little bit of information he had available to him in the case files, not three months on the job, Ben Smith came to the same conclusion whenever he reviewed the available evidence: “This was a murder.” Plain and simple. It was all there. Dustin Wehde, in Ben Smith’s view, had been targeted and lured to the Robertses’ home somehow—and then brutally executed.

  “What are we going to do?” Trent asked Ben.

  Ben was totally convinced he was sitting on a murder case—his job was to see that justice in the community he was elected to oversee was served. There was no way Ben could sit back now and forget about this case or turn his back on what he believed.

  There were problems, however. Major hurdles here. For one, two years after the shooting, the former prosecutor Earl Hardisty, the same guy Ben beat out in the election, had told the local Storm Lake Times that no charges would be filed in the case. Front-page, center, top headline: SAC COUNTY ATTORNEY SAYS: NO CHARGES AGAINST ROBERTS.

  One of the pluses living and working in a small town was that in a situation such as the one presenting itself, keeping the secret of the two of them—Trent and Ben, working on this case as if it was a murder—was fairly easy to do. The fact that the former prosecutor had not brought charges did not seem to bother Ben Smith. No one knew how obsessed Ben and Trent had become with the case and bringing the perpetrator to justice. It was the beginning of a new year, 2011, almost ten years after Dustin Wehde had been shot by Tracey Roberts inside her home. So many things had changed.

  Yet, there was no statute of limitations on murder.

  “I was at the point where I was working on it so much that I was hiding I was working on it,” Ben recalled.

  One of the issues that frustrated Ben, made him “angry” and “pissed off,” he said, was that the initial investigation, he could tell after studying the case files several times through, was “wholly incomplete.”

  The signs were all there, Ben later claimed. Nobody, according to Ben’s reading of the case, had followed up on anything. Follow-up with any police investigation is essential in finding the truth. There had been so many small details Tracey Roberts had gotten wrong that Ben could see without much effort. It was strange to Ben that no else but Trent had seen them, too.

  “Look, not that they did a bad job—but there was more that they could have done and they didn’t. Dustin Wehde was a ‘throwaway kid.’ He wasn’t the star quarterback on the football team,” Ben added. “It happens.”

  This was one reason why, Ben concluded, more had not been done to run down every lead and follow through on some of the more bizarre and conflicting stories Tracey Roberts had told during interviews. Like firing the weapon over her shoulder, for example. Just so happened that as she fired the weapon over her shoulder, one of those “lucky” shots had hit Dustin Wehde and stopped him in the nick of time.

  In her first interview, Tracey Roberts had claimed she “. . . was able to pull away [from her attackers] and get into the bedroom.” She said she got “between the bed and the dresser because that was where the gun safe was located.” Further, she explained how she had problems getting the safe opened. It took several tries for her to hit the right combination of numbers. It was then, as she fidgeted with the gun safe, trying to get it to open, “that someone had her by the neck.”

  Those few lines alone, Ben considered, made him take notice of how intense the situation must have been. How could she manage, under such circumstances, to get not one, but two guns from a locked safe—in the dark—and stop a man grasping at her hair and torso? What’s more, Ben wondered, what was the second attacker doing during this time?

  There was also the nagging question: why would Tracey Roberts launch into an attack on her ex-husband during her initial interview with Lieutenant Dennis Cessford at the hospital merely hours after the incident?

  This kept coming up for Ben. Why had she done this? Cessford had asked about her ex-husband, yes. But the detail, Ben thought, was beyond anything Cessford was looking for.

  As Ben and Trent continued to talk, Ben felt not only was there a “murderer” getting away with a major crime, but Tracey Roberts had been flaunting it in Trent’s face for a very long time.

  “So tell me how you got involved again?” Ben asked Trent one night while they were playing Call of Duty.

  Trent explained how his boss had encouraged him to look into the cold cases hanging around the office. By the process of choosing, he wound up with the Dustin Wehde case. It was 2008. It hadn’t taken Trent long to see that Tracey Roberts and perhaps her then-husband, Michael Roberts, had some additional questions to answer. The guns used in the crime were Michael Roberts’s weapons. And he was “out of town” at the time of the home invasion. Anytime a husband is out of town and an event such as the one that took place inside the Roberts home occurred, the husband has to be the first suspect.

  “Michael Roberts was a collector of sorts,” Trent explained. “He was kind of the skinny, little, wormy guy that never stuck his neck out in life, trying to be a big badass by having some cool guns.”

  Cool guns? The guy had an arsenal. In a March 2001 search of Michael Roberts’s home regarding a different criminal matter—a domestic abuse allegation by Tracey—Early Police Department (EPD) seized two Taurus .357 Magnums, a Para-Ordnance Model P 14 .45 caliber, Blackhawk Ruger .30, a Bushmaster .223 caliber, a Ruger .22, a 9mm Walther, a .22-caliber New England Model R, a .22-caliber Sport King, a Ruger Security-six. 357 Magnum, a 12-gauge Benelli Model Nova, a 20-gauge Stevens Model 9478, a .22 Marlin 15YN, a. 22-caliber BAJ Machine, another Ruger .22, and “two unknown” military-style rifles.

  Over a dozen weapons, on top of an abuse allegation. Eight months after the search and seizure, the guy went away on a business trip that his former mother-in-law would say “he did not need to take,” and a home invasion occurred at his house and his wife was nearly killed.

  For some cops, this alone would have been enough to haul Michael Roberts in and get a statement on record.

  5

  AS HE THOUGHT ABOUT THE potential for a murder case as being a viable reality, back in 2008 when he first looked at the case, Trent Vileta approached the former prosecutor Earl Hardisty, Ben’s predecessor.

  “The old prosecutor wanted a slam-dunk, one hundred percent, no-loose-ends case,” Trent explained. “For the most part, they don’t want to go to tri
al.... I couldn’t give that unbeatable case to him at that time.”

  Trent wound up bringing the former prosecutor the case on several occasions, but Hardisty refused every time. One of the main reasons Trent had met with Ben right away, during Ben’s first few weeks in office, was to point out the case and get Ben interested before he, as Trent put it, “became jaded and started to hate cops. . . .”

  For years before meeting Ben, Trent had walked around his office with his arms up in the air, routinely telling himself: Why doesn’t anyone else see what I am seeing? Up until the day Trent met Ben and got him interested in the case, no one wanted to hear Trent out about the overwhelming amount of evidence—in his view—pointing to Tracey Roberts as a killer who set this entire incident up.

  More were on board with the notion that it was Michael Roberts behind it all.

  One of Trent’s moves back in 2008, after reopening the case and believing there was more to it than a home invasion, regardless of whether Michael or Tracey was at the center, was to get Tracey talking. Trent decided to begin nudging, poking, and prodding Tracey. See what she had to say. But as he explained all of this to Ben during the early days of Ben becoming involved, even though they had talked about the case and Ben saw something, Trent got the impression he was going to run into the same pushback he had with the previous administration.

  “I don’t know, Trent . . . ,” Ben called and said one night. “I am so far in the weeds right now. I just don’t think this is working out.”

  Trent could sense Ben was caving. Not wanting to take it any further. The trepidation and insecurity in Ben’s voice was profound. He wanted to, Trent felt, take the easy road and just let it go. This struck Trent as surprising. Ben was known as the “brash” type of political player; he did not much want to play the PC game with cops and other law enforcement and politicians. Ben often got himself into trouble because he spoke his mind on myriad issues.

  “Well . . . look, Ben,” Trent said. “Why don’t you call Mona Wehde and tell her it’s not worth it. That it’s too hard for you to prosecute.”

  Trent hung up and stared at the phone.

  Play his ego, Trent knew. Here is a guy that has been great at everything he has ever done in his life and just the first bit of resistance in this case and he’s looking to fold.

  6

  BEN SMITH MIGHT HAVE CONVINCED himself he wasn’t interested, or that the obstacles he faced were too vast to overcome, but he could not let the case go. One more obvious clue pointing to Tracey Roberts as Dustin Wehde’s murderer as Ben looked through the case file was a journal cops found inside Dustin’s car on the night of the attack. For Ben, this journal was the “smoking gun” in Tracey’s hand: “No pun intended.”

  “I think, above all things, this is what I struggled with the most,” Ben explained later. “The journal is so patently ridiculous—how was she not arrested the minute they found this journal in Dustin Wehde’s car? I’ll never know.”

  This journal would be the cause of much discussion and debate.

  As Ben studied every word of it, the journal became a polarizing piece of evidence, depending on whom you talked to, and one more hurdle that Ben and Trent would have to get over in any potential prosecution. Purportedly written by Dustin, it provided a motive for Dustin driving to Tracey’s house on the night of December 13, 2001, breaking in, and attacking her with the intent to, specifically, murder Tracey and her son Bert. It explained, in rather candid (however strangely worded) detail, how Dustin became involved, what inspired him to commit the crime, and, more important, whom he was “working” for.

  One day about 20 years ago . . . , the journal began, a boy was born into a middle class life.... Then the page abruptly jumped to several numbered entries: in the first one, listed as (1.), Dustin explained how he decided to keep a journal of his thoughts, “to make a record of a mysterious fellow who has asked me to work for him.” This man was John Pitman.

  There was Tracey’s ex-husband’s name again: Dr. John Pitman, Bert’s father. Was this the reason why Dennis Cessford was so interested in discussing Pitman during that first interview with Tracey in the hospital? Because Cessford knew what Tracey didn’t—or shouldn’t have known—about the journal and its contents?

  Not six lines into this journal by Dustin Wehde and he was mentioning Dr. John Pitman. For any cop walking into an interview with a woman who had just been attacked by a man inside her home, and this journal had been found inside the attacker’s car, the officer would want to know about Mr. Pitman.

  Ben soon went in search of additional information about Dustin Wehde. Who was he? What was his mental-health status and history? The boy had a record of “behavioral problems,” though not necessarily the trouble-making type to cause mischief for mischief’s sake. Dustin was diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at a young age and had been in therapy since age four. He had also been tagged as a kid with oppositional defiant disorder (often called, ironically, ODD). ODD symptoms include depression, defiance, and substance abuse, alongside significant problems at work or school. Besides the substance abuse, Dustin, a C student throughout high school, was a classic ODD case study, according to a doctor who later evaluated him. He had been on psychiatric medications in the third grade (Ritalin) and then later between the ages of fourteen and sixteen (Prozac). At the time of his death, according to all the available evidence at the time Ben started looking into the case, Dustin Wehde was, however, med-free. Dustin, a small man at five feet seven inches tall, 155 pounds, had graduated high school in 2000 at the age of nineteen. He had worked at a local Dairy Queen and also had a construction job at a nearby ethanol plant. Although there was some indication he knew Michael and Tracey Roberts and eleven-year-old Bert Pitman, and perhaps even hung around with them and worked for the Roberts family on occasion, Dustin Wehde did not keep many friends.

  The picture Ben Smith arrived at after digging into Dustin’s life was that as a special-needs person, Dustin was unlikely to articulate the syntax and thought progressions expressed within this very brief, six-page (two of which had no writing) journal. In Ben’s view, Dustin was not intellectually capable of writing the journal.

  “The journal purports to be” written by Dustin, “a special-needs kid from rural Iowa,” Ben explained. “After reading it, there was no way I was ever going to believe that.”

  What got Ben’s attention first was how Dustin particularly focused on Dr. John Pitman, seemed to know details about Dr. Pitman and Tracey Roberts’s former life together, and how Dustin presented that information in the journal. For instance, numbered entry two stated Dustin was “not trusting” John Pitman (“JP”) anymore. Then the journal writer explained: JP wishes me to keep watch on his wife, which he is divorcing.

  Some of the language used by the writer was a key component in understanding the person behind the pen. Taken at face value, it was beyond confusing—that is, if Dustin Wehde was, in fact, its author. Because the journal entries are undated, the wording of the divorce in present tense—“is divorcing”—would indicate that either Pitman would have looked into a crystal ball and picked the exact location in the country where his ex-wife would ultimately move to with her new husband (so he could seek out Dustin Wehde), or Dustin was hired as a hit man when he was eleven years old and wrote some of the entries then. How else would Dustin know that they were divorcing? The divorce was finalized in 1996, a process that began in 1992. Why would Dustin write “he is divorcing”? Tracey did not move into Early until 1999. There is, logically speaking, no way Pitman and Dustin could have known each other for him to have written this entry in the present tense.

  Next, Dustin inserted, with an arrow, “&investigate” between “watch” and “on” within that same entry, seemingly as an afterthought. Dustin (if he was the journal author) went on to say JP was “curiously strange,” and he knew: nothing for this mysterious fellow, though I strive to learn all I can.

  It was an odd way to phrase what
were bizarre ideas to begin with.

  Within the journal, the writer used side notes for many of the entries. One side note claimed: [JP was] some sort of doctor from Williamsburg VA wanted 2 B a shrink, family disapproved . . . JP = white male, in 40s, w/a “thing” 4 strippers & hookers, slightly over weight . . . tortures victims with their homes. Inserted as a second thought to make sense of the “tortures victims with their homes” comment was an addendum to make it read: tortures victims with household items from their homes.

  As he studied the journal, Ben wrote a note to himself: Did Pitman even know Dustin Wehde? How could Dustin Wehde have written this journal?

  One of the biggest tells for Ben was that a man with Dustin’s educational level and capability would not have used side notes to the entries in a journal. It didn’t make sense.

  After the entry about strippers and hookers and torture, there was another paragraph about JP, where he lived now (Virginia), a bit of Pitman family history, and some rather unusual comments about JP’s personal life. Dustin supposedly wrote that JP wanted him to make prank phone calls to his “soon 2 be ex-wife” (that’s allegedly in reference to Pitman’s second wife, not Tracey). He mentioned: JP has an obsessive hatred for his wife & (Tracy Richter).

  Both of these entries actually date the journal as contemporary.

  Number seven was even more interesting to Ben. Here the journal explained: JP wants me to get/force his ex T.R. to kill her son Burt & then commit suicide.... It goes on to note how if that plan failed, there was a second option for Dustin: make it appear as though T.R. committed the murder of her son & then committed suicide.

  Entries number eight, nine, and ten talk about JP loving his son, but “strongly” wanting him to die, and how if that plan went well, JP would then hire Dustin to “kill his parents” and make it appear as though his new wife had killed them. JP wanted this done so he could, apparently, collect an insurance inheritance payout. The journal writer also implied in this same entry that JP’s longtime attorney, Stephen Komie, was involved in setting up the murders and facilitating any murder-for-hire payments on John Pitman’s behalf.