Incredibly, Tracey tried to further her narrative by mentioning aspects of the case she must have felt were not covered during trial. She attacked Michael again, getting on record that he failed a polygraph. She mentioned the second intruder. And, as she got on a roll assailing Michael, she accused him of buying only three tickets for that postattack trip to Australia instead of five because he knew Tracey and Bert would be dead. From there, she tried to bring in additional evidence not allowed during trial before Ben Smith finally objected.
The judge held a bench conference.
After they agreed Tracey needed to stay on point, she continued.
“All I know is what I experienced that night,” Tracey said, explaining she did not know Dustin, nor “what he was like as a person.” The one thing she did know was that “I was defending my family from two people, and that Dustin was one of them.”
Then she had the nerve to tell a story about Brett Wehde coming by her house to see her one night after the incident when Michael was not at home. She claimed Brett confided in her. And said “some other things . . . I’m not going to say in court here, but I’m sure Mona probably knows what they are, about issues you and him were having together.”
She even brought up Brett’s suicide letters. Said she had read them.
Why she brought this up, Tracey never acknowledged.
Ben dropped his head. He knew it was nothing more than a way for Tracey to twist the knife in Mona’s back even deeper, further inflicting pain.
Before sitting back down, Tracey played the martyr card, adding how she would much rather “spend the rest of my life in jail for a crime I didn’t commit and have my three children alive, than lose one of my children and be free.”
After another round of blaming everyone else for her miserable existence, Tracey stepped down off her soapbox.
* * *
The judge, quite tersely, read through how much money Tracey owed the state (hundreds of thousands of dollars in court costs and restitution) and sentenced Tracey Richter to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
Then smacked his gavel and closed out the session.
Good riddance.
When he learned of her sentence, Dr. Kellner, the Chicago dentist Tracey had worked for and then allegedly tried to extort for $150,000, told the Associated Press: “[It’s] too bad they don’t have a death sentence down there.”
Kellner wasn’t the only one feeling that way.
87
IN THOSE DAYS AFTER THE verdict, during the period of Bernard Richter’s untimely and shocking death, Ben Smith later explained, there were a series of phone calls between Tracey and her mother, Anna. One call specifically, recorded on the day Tracey was convicted, was rather alarming, Ben said—and yet, for the prosecution, it put the entire case into perspective.
The fact is, Tracey Richter cannot hide from the narcissistic psychopath she is. This call clearly proved that. When Ben later listened to it, he found it hard to fathom that even facing a lifetime behind bars hadn’t done much to curb Tracey’s need to inflict pain, wield control, and absorb all the attention she could.
“Right after she was convicted,” Ben explained, “and law enforcement learned that her father had died, because they didn’t want Tracey learning about it for the first time on the jail TV, before anyone else knew about it [including Anna], they sent an officer to the jail to tell Tracey.”
Right after, as if she couldn’t wait to be the bearer of bad news, Tracey called her mother.
As soon as Anna picked up the phone, Tracey delivered the news: cold and stoic and nonchalant, with a faint sense of artificial emotion.
Of course, Anna broke down.
“When I first heard the tape, I cried,” Ben added. “My heart hurt badly for Anna, who was in shambles after she had been given the news. It’s clear she was in pain. But after Tracey tells her, Tracey turns off the crocodile tears like a switch, and then her true motives for calling her mother become abundantly clear.”
Tracey explained that she was getting one more visit with her fiancé before being hauled off to the state prison. She had totally changed subjects and subsequently started going on about her needs.
“My heart was breaking for Anna,” Ben concluded. “She has lost everything that means anything to her. She’s not lily white in any of this, but she’s no less Tracey’s victim, at least in the collateral sense.”
One would think Tracey would want to fade away into the correctional system, work on becoming a model inmate, and enjoy the benefits that come with that status. Perhaps even find herself a nice lesbian relationship in her cell block and fashion whatever life she could manage behind bars. But as Ben would soon learn, that was not to be the case.
Not only did Tracey make Michael Roberts’s life a miserable existence by allegedly having people on the outside post things about him (and John Pitman) on what were “literally millions of webpages,” as one warrant noted, making claims that Michael was guilty of “theft, perjury, fraud, computer hacking, child molestation, murder and terrorism” (Pitman no less), but Tracey took things one step further as she got settled into her new role as a lifer.
Still very much interested in what Tracey was up to after trial, Ben Smith uncovered what he described in a search warrant as a “clear attempt to solicit fraudulent testimony.” Tracey understood she needed “new evidence” if she was going to get a court to agree to a second trial. It would have to be something earth-shattering, totally out of left field, something that threw the entire case into a meltdown.
* * *
Enter Wisconsin prison inmate James Landa, who had followed Tracey’s trial in a newspaper that a cell mate of his was having delivered to the prison from back home. Landa was a nasty human being, just a vile creature. In 2010, Landa was convicted of “multiple sexual assaults” involving a twelve-year-old girl, who claimed Landa and others had forced her to dress in “erotic” clothing on Christmas Eve, before Landa repeatedly sexually assaulted her. When asked by the judge during his sentencing (Landa received twelve years in prison with eighteen years of extended supervision) if he was a pedophile, Landa responded, “I just might be.”
Landa had written to Tracey on a whim and told her how much he supported her while following her case in the newspaper. In his first letter, Landa explained how “sad” he was to hear of her being found guilty. He mentioned her father and, in a childish line sounding more like a bumper-sticker slogan, wrote: My heart brake [sic] for you.
So Tracey wrote back. She asked Landa several times if his friend, the one who had subscribed to the local Iowa newspaper covering her case, had any personal knowledge of what had happened. Landa had never mentioned the guy might have information. Tracey was obviously fishing, or trying to plant a seed.
After receiving a few letters from Tracey, Landa (who explained to Tracey in a letter that his last name was pronounced “Londa,” rhyming with the car company Honda) was smitten with his new pen pal, now sending her poems that explained how, if there was a way he could “take away” her tears and sadness, he would. He spoke of certain Bible passages. He told her about his life, his dreams, what he wanted to do when he was released.
In one of the packages Tracey sent to Landa, her letter to him was on her attorney’s letterhead. Inside the legal-size envelope itself, Tracey included actual papers from her court file, including a layout drawing of the house in Early and a diagram of Dustin’s car, along with a list of the contents law enforcement uncovered, including the journal. She also discussed Jeremy Collins, gave Landa Jeremy’s Social Security number, and in great detail described the vehicles Jeremy drove, license plate numbers, his address, and the affair he’d had with Mona. She was, Ben Smith believed after being advised of this package, feeding Landa details about her case.
But that wasn’t the most underhanded, immoral, and disturbing thing she did. In one letter to Landa, Tracey included a photo of several small children, telling Landa she hoped the photo would cheer him
up. (“It was,” said a source, “a photo of small children from a third-world country.... She knew exactly what she was doing.”) Along with the photo, Tracey included a side note: Kids are cute, huh?
“Why would you send a known child molester photos of children?” Ben Smith later said. “It shows the depths of depravity she is willing to go to.”
Ever since Tracey’s arrest, Michael Roberts had taken full custody of the children and had not allowed Tracey or anyone in her family to see them. Michael had been so scared, he was able to enter into the West Coast “victim’s protection program.” He had first allowed calls between Tracey and the kids, but he ended those after listening one day. Tracey, instead of being a mother, embracing the needs of her children at what must have been a rough time in their lives, “probed them for information and details as to their whereabouts,” a search warrant explained. Michael was, then, in the process of seeking full custody, so he could get them the hell out of the United States, away from their mother, and relocate in Australia (which he eventually did).
In the letter that most interested Ben Smith, Tracey went on to tell Landa it “was possible there was another lookout person” involved in the incident.
Landa wrote back and said he was in love with Tracey.
Tracey, playing it smooth, responded to Landa by writing, My trust has to be earned over time. She then added how “actions speak louder than words.” She went on to talk about how, if Landa’s cellie “knew something,” he should come forward and “do the right thing.” She promised Landa’s friend a spot on a television show covering her case if he had any information.
When Ben saw what was going on after being alerted by a tenacious guard who confiscated the letter and diagrams (after Tracey forgot to seal the envelope), he concluded that Tracey was looking for a stooge she could use to project the idea that there was “new information,” which would secure a second trial and help her with her appeals. She was searching for a witness, hoping to pump information into Landa so he could then give it to his friend.
“The conduct described . . . occurred in Polk County, Iowa. Thus, there is nothing I could do, as I only have the authority to file criminal charges for conduct that occurs in Sac County,” Ben explained. He tried to get the local prosecutor to charge Tracey and other people Ben believed were involved in conspiring to feed inmates information about Michael, the kids, and other witnesses, but nothing ever came of it.
“It’s obvious she is trying to solicit testimony,” Ben Smith concluded. “She’s a dangerous, vile creature, and everybody keeps underestimating her.”
Tracey had been given life. Why drag it all through the courts and waste everyone’s time. For Ben, just getting it all publicized in the newspaper and local television was enough. It said they were watching her. And would never stop.
In the end, one might think Ben Smith, who had been through so much over the course of investigating and prosecuting Tracey, would be bitter, jaded, and full of hate. With Dustin dead, Brett a victim, too, the Wehde family now grieving two losses, and a mother of three behind bars for life, where was there a silver lining in any of it?
“I don’t have any feelings toward Tracey,” Ben told me in 2015 as our interviews wound down. “But then, maybe that is just what I tell myself. I can say that I think about her and the case less and less every day. It used to be that I couldn’t go five minutes without thinking about her. For all the hell she has put me through, I should hate her. There was a time I did, I suppose.”
But if it weren’t for the investigation and subsequent trial, Ben added, he would have never been given the gift of a lifetime.
You see, after Tracey was arrested, Mary Higgins, the neighbor who broke the case wide open, would send her daughter, Abbie, over to check in on Ben. He lived alone then. It was during a time when the case had consumed Ben. His drinking was out of control. He was smoking. Not eating. Not sleeping. Questioning everything he had done, unsure if he was prosecuting a guilty woman.
As Abbie started a routine of checking in on Ben, they became friends. After the trial, they began dating.
“So,” Ben said, “I wouldn’t have my beautiful wife, Abbie, today. And we wouldn’t have our beautiful baby—the best two things that have ever happened to me—if it wasn’t for me meeting Mary Higgins through all of this madness.”
EPILOGUE
HERE’S THE THING ABOUT SPENDING a lot of time investigating certain true crime stories: While cracking open the egg, you begin to get a feel for the field where the foul creature who laid it spent most of its life. When you do that carefully and thoroughly, certain absolutes rise out of the muck. For example, from the moment I began this case, I was told Tracey Richter—or whatever name she goes by these days—had her share of supporters. In fact, there are several websites devoted to supporting Tracey. You can Google and read, if you choose. I won’t promote that nonsense here. Additionally, Tracey, like many convicts today, has her own Facebook and Twitter pages. Her domain name is for sale. As of this writing, you can be the proud owner of TraceyRichter.com for $2,750.
As far as I can tell, the main purpose for all of this is to provide a stage for those involved to claim that anyone pointing a finger of guilt at Tracey is telling a lie. We see that with the assault on Michael Roberts’s character from the moment he decided he wasn’t buying Tracey’s nonsense any longer. Go back further and you see it with John Pitman.
The main source of Tracey’s pain these days, the man shouldering most of the blame for imprisoning her, is Ben Smith. You’ll read on those Tracey-run webpages that she believes Ben has targeted her from day one and had it in for her from the moment he took office. For what reason this man would do such a thing is left unexplained. Yet, in one piece of drivel Tracey promotes on her Twitter account bio, there may be some indication as to what drives her delusional thinking: My name is Tracey Richter. I was convicted of murder for defending my 3 children during a brutal home invasion. My deadbeat ex-husband[’s] friend prosecuted me.
Michael and Ben are in cahoots, apparently.
Or is it Ben and Pitman?
The bullshit coming out of this woman’s mouth never stops flowing.
In writing some twenty-five books about female murderers, I have learned a few things. One lesson that fits here is: the psychopath believes if she tells a lie long enough, it is true.
As I dove in, it became apparent that no matter what I—an impartial, independent party to this case, especially in the beginning—said, or what evidence I presented to certain individuals supporting Tracey, nothing was going to change their minds. They believe Tracey and that is the end of the story. There is no room left to have an intelligent conversation about this case. Tracey, as anyone who has read this book with an open mind can attest, is a master manipulator. Whenever someone accuses her of a crime, she spins those accusations and targets the person accusing her. First John Pitman was the bad guy. Then Michael Roberts. Now Ben Smith. As I began working on this book, as you will soon read, it became me.
* * *
I contacted, of course, Bert and Anna, Tracey’s son and her mother. I contacted Tracey’s current attorneys. I reached out to Tracey. Tracey’s new attorneys told me no, not until every appeal is exhausted. Anna, however, e-mailed me. It took her some time, but she sent a rather long, accusation-slinging e-mail to introduce herself, its main theme ridiculously obvious: Everyone except Tracey is a liar.
I sent you just a little of the corruption and lies in this case, Anna wrote.
In that first e-mail, Anna talked about being “intimidated to shut up.” By whom, she never mentioned. She went on about Michael Roberts and everything he had done. She called Michael all sorts of disparaging names and psychologically analyzed him, adding how she just couldn’t “sit” back and allow “lies to be put up there” about her daughter. She spoke of the so-called “second intruder.” She mentioned how a writer (such as myself) telling the “real story” would meet with great “fame and recognition.”
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It felt to me as though I was being asked to sign a pact with the Devil.
Was I going to be afraid of “the truth,” Anna went on to ask, before attacking my integrity: I don’t see how you could write a book with absolutely no investigation. She offered no clue as to how she had drawn this conclusion without knowing my work, how much investigation I had already done, or whom I had spoken to.
If I truly did ever decide to dig in, she suggested, I would realize that there is “something very wrong in this case.”
She wanted to know when I planned on “contacting” her, “if ever.”
I can say with a clear understanding of this entire case that the only thing I found wrong with it is that it took ten years to arrest Tracey Richter for Dustin Wehde’s murder. Tracey should have been put in metal bracelets on the night she executed Dustin. Regarding contacting Anna and that smart-ass “if ever” comment of hers: I had contacted Anna—this e-mail she sent was her returning my original note of introduction.
Anna said she “thought” someone “writing a book would make sure” that what he wrote was “true so their reputation isn’t ruined.”
Knowing about others involved in this case whose reputations had been attacked, I considered this comment a veiled threat. Every time Anna sent me an e-mail, I forwarded it to my attorney.
Anna next wanted to know why everyone in the media was “afraid” to talk to her.
I found that ridiculous.
Then she attacked Ben Smith, calling him Doug Hammerand’s “water boy.”
From there, she launched into a vicious, verbal beat-down of Michael Roberts.
She ended this first e-mail with: Still waiting for your call. I never answered this e-mail. Instead, I picked up the phone—and recorded the call. (Iowa is a one-party state; in order to protect myself, I have every right to be that “one party” deciding which calls to record, at least when I phone people in Iowa and several other states.)
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