“Briefly, yes.”
“And did you discuss that with anyone?”
“Tracey,” John said.
“Did you ever tell that to Dustin Wehde?”
“No.”
Hammerand read from the journal. With a copy of the journal in front of him, John Pitman explained there was no way Dustin could have known such personal traits about him without being told by the one person in his life who knew those details: Tracey.
“Dr. Pitman, have you ever met Dustin Wehde?”
“No.”
“Have you ever talked to him?”
“No.”
“Have you ever met a Jeremy Collins?”
“No.”
“Have you ever talked to a Jeremy Collins?”
“No.”
* * *
Bandstra’s cross began with a barrage of questions pertaining to Bert and custody and who was more suited for custody.
Then, in what had become a sort of sarcastic tone he could not shy away from, Bandstra wondered if John Pitman had ever spoken to Dustin or any Wehde family members.
John said he might have spoken to the sister, only because she was babysitting Bert when he once called the house. But other than that, he had no idea who was on the other end of the line when he called his son.
As they talked, Bandstra, perhaps now reaching beyond the scope of speculation, pecked away at Trent Vileta’s investigation and wanted to know from John if Trent had prepared (coached) him for his testimony.
Dr. Pitman said they had chatted, but that was it.
“Has . . . Vileta ever talked to you about the journal prior to today?”
“Yes.”
“Now, what did he indicate to you?”
“Asked me what parts I knew were true and asked me what parts I knew were untrue. Asked me which parts . . . would reflect Tracey’s opinion and asked which parts I knew that only Tracey, or whoever she chose to speak to, would know about.”
All fair questions from a guy investigating a murder.
In the end, it was clear John Pitman and Scott Bandstra could have traded barbs all day, but Bandstra, realizing he was getting nowhere, ended his cross without rattling the doctor once.
Tracey needed a stooge for the journal contents: Where else could that information have come from? If she hadn’t instructed Dustin to write all those things, allegedly luring him to the house with sexual promises while Michael was away on business, who else could have sweet-talked Dustin into writing that journal?
Bandstra showed this part of the defense’s hand when he asked what would be his final set of questions for John Pitman.
“You would agree that you know Michael Roberts, who is Tracey Richter’s second ex-husband?”
“Yes.”
“And was there conflict between you and Michael Roberts?”
“Sure.”
“And would Michael Roberts [have] known about your aspirations and your interests?”
“He could have through Tracey, certainly,” John answered. “Absolutely.”
79
HE WORE A DARK BLACK jacket, black button-up shirt, dark-framed, thick glasses, with a slight orange lens tint. A husky, barrel-chested man, there was no doubt Jeremy Collins was Tracey’s one hope in putting a face on her second-intruder story.
After Mary Higgins and Art Cullen gave jurors their piece of the puzzle, and the medical examiner briefly explained the cause of death and the enormous amount of bullet wounds Dustin’s body sustained, Jeremy Collins walked in with his head held high. As he made his way from the hallway into the witness-box, Tracey put on her best acting shoes and, as one courtroom spectator later told me, “flopped all around, feigning terror at seeing the ‘second intruder’ again . . . for the first time.”
Many in the courtroom would later call Tracey’s behavior pathetic and predictable. She was trying to show the jury that seeing this man for the first time since December 13, 2001, conjured PTSD-like symptoms—that there was absolutely no doubt for her that this was the same man who had broken into her home with Dustin Wehde.
The one person Tracey wasn’t fooling with her Oscar-worthy performance, however, sat just a few yards from her, looking on, not so much in total disbelief of her reaction to Jeremy, but how obvious Tracey was in thinking she could trick jurors with such a dramatic display.
“Listening to her jail conversations in the months leading up to trial,” Ben Smith explained, “I discovered her strategy to introduce Jeremy Collins as the second intruder.”
The truth for Ben further came to light when, during Dennis Cessford’s deposition in the days before trial, Ben placed a photograph of Jeremy Collins on the table, which then prompted “one of Tracey’s two attorneys to cover Tracey’s eyes and the other to cover up the picture,” Ben said.
“After I told Trent about this chicanery,” Ben continued, “he predicted Tracey would flop around like a fish when Jeremy Collins entered the courtroom—and, boy, was he right!”
The problem for Tracey, however, and what she forgot to tell her attorneys, was that during the one conversation she had with Dennis Cessford that he recorded (a phone call), Tracey said something about being scared when she saw the new frozen-food deliveryman, all because she had never seen him before. The implication was that the frozen-food deliveryman was Jeremy Collins, and when she saw him for the first time since the attack, she freaked out. At the time of the phone call with Cessford, however, when Tracey said she saw the frozen-food deliveryman and panicked, the man Tracey was talking about was not Jeremy Collins. Tracey had no idea Jeremy had left his job years before. Tracey’s mistake was that she had never seen Jeremy Collins. She had no idea what he looked like.
“So, by negative implication,” Ben Smith concluded, “Tracey proved to me that she was lying about Jeremy Collins.”
The one attribute of Jeremy’s character that no one could take away from the guy was the fact that he was a war hero. Within just a few moments of him answering questions, he spoke of suffering from PTSD and TBI. Those thick-framed glasses, with the orange tint that he wore, were because of the injuries. Light caused him massive migraines.
“Okay . . . where were you in the service when you suffered that injury?” Hammerand asked.
“Iraq.”
“How long were you in the service . . . in Iraq?”
“Twice. First time was one full year and the second time was six months.”
“And what led or caused the traumatic brain injury?”
“Exposure to explosions.”
“Did you suffer another injury after that?”
“In my second deployment, I . . . ripped my shoulder apart.”
“Now, Mr. Collins, the traumatic brain injury, does that cause any difficulty for you remembering events?”
“It causes memory issues, headaches, um, speech, um, some other, yeah.”
Jeremy came across as lucid, sharp, and entirely locked in the moment. He didn’t seem nervous. If one has spent a considerable amount of time in the theater of war as bombs, mortar shells, and bullets traverse around you, not to mention your fellow soldiers dying, sitting in a witness-box and answering questions was more or less akin to a trip to the mall. If anything, Jeremy had the right to be angry, having been drawn into a murder case, dirty laundry about his marriage aired, all because some psychopath had made up a story that there was a second (and even third) person involved.
“[Is] it you can’t remember anything in the past?”
“No. No. Just some things come and go.... Some things come very easily to me. Some things I’d love to forget.” He sarcastically snickered here. “Um, um, it’s just, you know, some things I can’t remember at all.” He then stopped talking, stared, stoic-faced, straight ahead, as if one of those memories he would rather forget played like a film inside his head.
Hammerand asked Jeremy to take him back to December 2001, when he lived in Ida Grove, a town about a thirty-minute drive west of Early. Jeremy had moved back to Ida
Grove recently, this after spending four years in Germany.
“Were you married at that time?” Hammerand asked, referring to December 2001.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember around November and December of that year, did you have a job?”
Divorced and single as he sat there testifying, Jeremy explained how he was the local frozen-food deliveryman and drove a specific route, which took him into and around Early.
“During that time period, did you know a person named Mona Wehde?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know her?”
“She was on my route and I was having an affair with her.”
After Jeremy said he could not recall how long the affair lasted and when it ended, Hammerand asked if he knew Dustin Wehde.
“Just . . . a . . . from [Mona’s] family.”
“Did you ever go out and do activities with Dustin Wehde?”
“No.”
“Did you ever give him rides and do things like that?”
“No.”
Another desperate theory Tracey had her lawyers pose through questioning was that Jeremy Collins was somehow connected to the Mafia in Chicago, which could, by logistics, tie him to Stephen Komie and the idea that a hit had been ordered. On the surface, this was a rash and idiotic assertion. For one, most know a hit man works alone. Second, the last person in the world a bona fide hit man (which Jeremy Collins was not) would employ would have to be a special-needs kid. A foolish theory—likely dreamed up out of the single reason that Jeremy had once lived outside of Chicago—which would only alienate jurors more than they were already.
Still, Hammerand had to broach the subject and shred it to pieces. Thus, clearly embarrassed to even go down this avenue, Hammerand said: “I am just going to ask these next questions. Mr. Collins . . . did you ever have any connections to Mafia in Chicago, or anywhere else?”
“No.”
“Did you ever tell anyone you were involved in some type of a hit?”
“Of what?” Collins asked, indicating he had maybe heard Hammerand wrong.
“Some type of a hit—a shooting?”
“No.”
“In 2001, in December of 2001, how was your hairstyle as compared [to] today?”
“Normally, all my haircuts have been short.”
Another question designed to show that Tracey’s description of the second intruder did not match up.
“On December 13, 2001 . . . did you go into the defendant Tracey Richter’s house?”
“No.”
“Did you, at any time, go with Dustin Wehde and try to attack Tracey Richter?”
“No.”
Pass this witness.
* * *
Karmen Anderson, a veteran of the armed forces herself, stood and asked for a five-minute recess before she started the defense’s cross. As everyone got up, Tracey, who had been staring at the door with her head turned away from Jeremy, started crying and walked quickly out of the courtroom, as if she was going to have a breakdown.
It was pure theatrics, a skill most psychopaths draw upon when their backs are against the wall. By anyone’s estimation in that courtroom who lived in an honest world, Tracey Richter Pitman Roberts had just seen her chances of acquittal, certainly, diminish by at least half. Jeremy Collins, a man who had, yes, made mistakes in life that he owned up to, came in and easily convinced everyone he did not know Dustin and had nothing to do with breaking into Tracey’s home.
Tracey’s fiancé, who sat just behind the defense, stood and hugged a woman sitting next to him. He was on the verge of tears himself. Here was yet another poor soul Tracey had victimized, conned, cajoled, and was able to deceive.
Anderson came out of the box on cross thanking her fellow soldier for the sacrifices he had made for his country. This clearly made Jeremy uncomfortable, for he shifted in his chair.
Next the defense made a big deal about Jeremy leaving his job in the days just before the alleged home invasion, as if he dropped out of sight just before the attack.
It was desperate and came across that way.
Jeremy Collins said he had no idea, actually, when he left his frozen-food delivery job, why he left, or how he left. He had simply quit a job he did not like.
Then it was on to Trent Vileta; and in a similar manner the defense would use with several witnesses, Anderson wanted to know if Vileta had gone over Jeremy’s testimony with him and somehow coached him.
What’s interesting here was that as Jeremy took a few moments to look over documents provided by the defense, every time the media pool camera in the courtroom panned over to monitor Tracey’s temperament and reaction, she’d turn on the tears, grasping firmly at a Kleenex in her hand, while staring off into the distance or at the floor. It was beyond noticeable that she was playing up her emotions.
At one point, Jeremy told Anderson, after she badgered him for a timeline of where he worked and when, that he was not going to be able to answer a “yes” or a “no” to certain questions, adding, “So, if you are trying to tie me up,” it’s not going to work.
Bottom line here was that it didn’t matter where Jeremy held a job, when he quit, or when he started his next. In addition, he might have bumped into Dustin while picking up Mona at her house while her husband was at work, but his focus was on his mistress and the affair, not her son.
As the cross became a bit argumentative, an acidic and condescending tone on the part of both taking over, Jeremy leaned on the phrase “No, I don’t recall.”
* * *
A series of law enforcement officers were called next to clean up the rest of the investigation and make a solid case that as the years passed DCI felt more confident that Tracey Richter was a murderer and not a victim. The evidence became clear as each interview was reconducted and each piece of evidence looked at again. The more DCI broadened the scope of the investigation, the more they were convinced Tracey had set up and murdered Dustin Wehde to try to gain an upper hand in a custody fight she was engaged in with her former husband. And when that plan failed postmurder, she pointed a finger at her second ex-husband, Michael Roberts, saying he had set up the attack.
“Bandstra should have argued one theory,” said a source in the courtroom. “Not two entirely mutually exclusive ones—Michael Roberts did it or Jeremy Collins did it.”
There was definitely some validity in this comment. It was as if whenever the Jeremy Collins narrative wasn’t working, the defense switched to Michael Roberts. All it did was expose the weakness in Tracey Richter’s defense.
80
WRAPPING UP THE LAW ENFORCEMENT witnesses took several days, with a weekend break in between. On Halloween morning, October 31, 2011, Mona Wehde made her way into the courtroom.
Mona was a pretty woman, long blond hair, silky and smooth. She had a figure one could say spoke of a woman who took care of herself. Yet, the look on Mona’s face told another story. The tragedies she had endured—first losing her boy and then a husband, of whom she stepped out on and separated from—would have broken a softer human being, one or the other enough to send most into deep despair. But Mona had battled back. She was here to help seek justice for her son—and yet a sallow glare and intense sense of loss made it clear ten years had done little to lessen the pain.
Mona lived in Minnesota these days. As she spoke, her voice cracked slightly, that emotional pain palpable in every word out of her mouth.
For Mona, she explained how her twenty-one-year-old and twenty-four-year-old daughters, Dustin’s sisters, were her focus these days.
Then she talked about Dustin: his high-school years, his room in the basement, where he worked. She described the type of “special needs” Dustin required. The disorders he suffered from. Clinical diagnosis. His hobbies.
“He liked to go golfing with his dad, snowmobiling with his dad. He enjoyed the computer. He liked to play games on the Internet. That’s really what he did.”
In 2001, Dustin was not on any type
of medication, Mona clarified.
Hammerand placed a photo of Dustin on the witness-box and asked Mona about it.
Just the sight of it made Mona uncomfortable. On the verge of tears, she described how her son, in the photo, had “dressed up like ‘the Fonz’ for homecoming” in high school that year. She had a hard time looking at the picture. Mona missed her child—her loss magnified by the circumstances in which she found herself having to talk about him.
Hammerand had Mona talk about a few instances where Dustin had acted aggressively toward his sisters; but in the end, it was not any type of behavior that would have indicated a later disposition to become some sort of violent home invader.
“Were you concerned about Dustin harming other people?”
“No.”
There was one incident regarding Dustin and a BB gun Mona talked about. He had threatened his father with the gun. Dustin was just a teen. On the surface, it sounded violent and unstable. But Brett, Dustin had been told, was going to take his dog away for some reason. Dustin holed up in his bedroom with the dog and the BB gun and told his dad he wasn’t going to allow that to happen. He did not want his dad to hurt the dog. If anything, the story showed character and heart.
Mona spoke of dealing with the Robertses in the days leading up to the incident, and how she and Tracey had talked about Dustin maybe working for them. The most devastating piece of testimony from this exchange came when Mona described her communications with Tracey in those hours and days before Dustin was killed.
“So what did the defendant say when Dustin’s name was raised after you mention [him working for her and Michael]?”
“Tracey said, ‘Yeah, we have a whole, whole, whole bunch of copies that we want Dustin to make.’ And I said something like, ‘Well, Dustin’s not real speedy about getting jobs done.’ And she goes, ‘Oh, that’s okay, just send Dustin down in the next day or two.’”
Mona had just testified that Tracey invited her son over to her house, when she knew her husband was going to be out of town. If she thought the boy was creepy and strange, as she had since maintained, why invite him over when Michael was not going to be around?
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