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As long as we both shall live - or until the trial

A couple is accused of killing one of his former lovers only one day after they married.

By CHRIS TISCH
Published August 6, 2005

	Ashley Christine Humphrey, above, likely will testify against her husband, Timothy Lee Humphrey.
	Sandee Rozzo had said she feared Tracey Humphrey before she was killed. She was shot eight times.

PINELLAS PARK - Sometime early next year, a young woman with striking green eyes is expected to take the stand in a Pinellas County courtroom.

Ashley Humphrey will admit to a jury that she ambushed a Pinellas Park woman and shot her eight times. She will admit she killed for love.

At some point, prosecutors will ask Humphrey to point to a man sitting at the defense table. They will ask her to identify him as the man who manipulated and cajoled a one-time honors student into committing murder.

If Ashley Humphrey does that, she will secure for herself a 25-year prison sentence.

And she may help send the man at the defense table - her husband - to death row.

Ashley was married to Timothy "Tracey" Humphrey one day when she says she killed for him.

The target was Sandee Rozzo, an ex-lover of Humphrey's who had accused him of assaulting her. Prosecutors were taking him to trial in August 2003.

Just a month before trial, Rozzo, 37, was shot eight times in her garage. She died at the hospital. Her friends suspected Tracey Humphrey. Rozzo had said she feared him.

But Humphrey had an alibi. He had ordered a pizza at his Brandon home that night and paid with a credit card. Receipts confirmed it. Cell phone records showed calls he made that night bounced off a tower a mile from his house.

Police noticed Humphrey had married the day before the murder. They turned their attention to Ashley.

In fall 2002, Ashley joined a Brandon gym where Tracey Humphrey was a personal trainer. He gave her free sessions. They dated, then she moved in with him.

Humphrey was 36, Ashley was 19. One of her friends called him a child molester for pursuing her.

A big, muscular guy who admitted steroid use, Tracey was 7 inches taller and 100 pounds heavier than his girlfriend.

Women found him charming. He seemed to have several on the hook at once.

He claimed to have once played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He said he starred in a Rose Bowl game. He said he modeled Armani underwear in Italy, according to court records.

In truth, Tracey Humphrey was a convicted felon with a history of violence toward women. Several ex-lovers said he beat them. One said he tied her up with nylon stockings, stuffed a sock in her mouth and held a gun to her throat.

Humphrey feared he would be sent to prison for 10 years for assaulting Rozzo.

Humphrey told Ashley he would kill himself first. They talked of a suicide pact, but also of a plan to eliminate Rozzo. They got tattoos of each other's name on their backs.

Ashley later said: "I didn't want to lose him."

According to court records, Tracey Humphrey coached his wife to kill. How to load and shoot a gun. Where to ambush Rozzo, to be sure to snatch her book bag so it looked like a robbery.

"He planned a lot of what I did," Ashley later said. "I just followed through on what he said."

Ashley first tried to kill Rozzo in spring 2003, court records state.

She stole a rifle from her mother's boyfriend, then waited in her Volkswagen Beetle outside the Green Iguana bar off Courtney Campbell Parkway in Tampa, where Rozzo worked. When Rozzo emerged, Ashley pointed the gun out the window and fired. But she shot the Beetle's side mirror; the bullet glanced off and missed the target.

Rozzo ducked but didn't realize she had been shot at. She never mentioned the noise to anyone.

Humphrey worried someone had seen the Beetle, so he and Ashley set it on fire in Hyde Park, according to court records. They reported it stolen.

A second plan to kill emerged. This time, Ashley complained to her mother's boyfriend that someone was stalking her. She asked for a gun, and he reluctantly gave her his loaded .22-caliber Ruger.

On July 4, 2003, Ashley married Humphrey.

The next day, wearing black makeup and beard, Ashley headed to the Green Iguana. She wanted any witnesses to believe Rozzo was killed by a black man. She waited in a rental car outside the bar for more than seven hours, calling Humphrey 14 times.

Ashley's beard wouldn't stick. Then she dozed off. When she awoke, Rozzo was getting into her white BMW convertible. It was too late to shoot, but Ashley followed her.

"And when I was behind her in pursuit, I called him and said, "It will be over in a few minutes,' " Ashley later said. " "I'll call you when I'm done.' "

Cell tower records confirm Ashley's 14 phone calls to Humphrey from the Courtney Campbell. Those records also show she headed into Pinellas County, right behind Rozzo.

Ashley ambushed Rozzo in her car, shooting her eight times. Rozzo kicked and screamed as the shots rang out, Ashley later said.

As rescue units rushed to Rozzo's home, Ashley called her husband again. The call bounced off a cell tower in Pinellas Park.

Ashley asked him to order a pizza: double cheese with chicken and tomatoes.

He said it was on the way.

Not long after Rozzo's murder, Hillsborough prosecutors dropped the charges against Humphrey.

But police were piecing together a case against the couple.

In addition to the cell phone records, Ashley had used her credit card to do an Internet search on Rozzo. Ashley also had confessed to her mother that she had tried to shoot her, records state.

Police arrested both Humphreys in December 2003, about five months after the murder.

Ashley was charged with murder, but police could only take Humphrey in on a weapons charge.

Detectives tried to get Ashley to talk, but she asked for a lawyer. They told her the only way to get Humphrey was through her. They told her he would let her dangle for the crime. She held her ground, again demanding the lawyer.

Four months later, a Pinellas County grand jury indicted Tracey Humphrey for first-degree murder. If Humphrey is convicted, prosecutors will seek the death penalty because the murder was so calculated.

As Humphrey was moved from Hillsborough to the Pinellas jail in April 2004, he escaped from a transport van. He was on the loose for several hours before deputies found him hiding in underbrush about a mile away.

About that time, as Ashley sat in jail, she told her lawyers to seek a deal.

She promised to tell them everything. In return, prosecutors will allow her to plead guilty to second-degree murder and serve 25 years in prison. She will be 46 when she is released.

"I had been brainwashed and taken advantage of by this man and I wanted to let the truth be known and do whatever it took to . . . confess of what happened and let it be known that he was the mastermind behind it," Ashley said in a deposition.

If she fails to deliver at trial, the deal will be off, and she, too, will face the death penalty.

She allowed investigators to interview her for many hours. She gave extraordinary details. She led police to woods in Thonotosassa where she had buried both the rifle and the Ruger. Police unearthed both.

Then, for her own safety, prosecutors moved her to another county's jail, away from her husband.

Rozzo's mother, Sandy Pool, said she approves of the arrangement.

"She's going to turn state's evidence but he's going to get the death penalty and I'm going to see to it," Pool said. "He not only killed my daughter, he ruined Ashley's life, too. I know she's the one who actually did it, but he corrupted her. This girl never had so much as a speeding ticket."

The case could be complicated by a Florida law that gives Tracey Humphrey the right to prevent his wife from testifying about the contents of their private conversations.

That law has thrown a wrench in a few other Florida cases, including that of Oscar Ray Bolin, who had six Tampa Bay area murder convictions overturned largely based on the fact that testimony from his ex-wife was used in trial.

But anything said between Ashley and Tracey Humphrey before the wedding is admissible, including Ashley's detailed account of her husband planning Rozzo's death.

Joe McDermott, an attorney for Tracey Humphrey, also may ask a judge to suppress the cell tower records from the night of the murder. But legal experts predict the judge will allow that evidence.

"The only thing privileged is the content of the conversations," said Bobbi Flowers, a Stetson University College of Law professor.

So when Tracey Humphrey's trial starts next year, jurors picked to hear the evidence will see the rare case of a wife providing testimony that could condemn her husband to death.

"It's the kind of thing a book could be written about," said prosecutor Fred Schaub. "They're married one day and when most people would be on their honeymoon, he's planning to kill someone."

[Last modified August 6, 2005, 02:19:10]