True Crime Campfire - Episode 11: Tracey Richter: Trust Games, Part 1

Episode Date: November 15, 2019

December 2001. The tiny town of Early, Iowa. Police respond to a 911 call from an eleven year old boy who said his mom, Tracey Richter Pitman Roberts, had just been attacked by two intruders while her husband was out of town on business. They had choked her unconscious, and when she came to she managed to get to her gun safe and take one of them down while the other fled out the back door. At first glance, it looked like an amazing "hero mom" story, and Tracey became a local hero. But when police started looking into the identity of the dead intruder, this clear-cut narrative started to seem a lot fuzzier. The dead man was 19 year old Dustin Wehde, a local special-needs kid (and family friend of Tracey and her husband) who didn't seem to have a violent bone in his body. And when police got a look inside a pink notebook they found in Dustin's car, the story got even weirder.Join us for part 1 of this twisting tale about one of the most intelligent and devious killers you'll ever encounter. Sources: Book: Beautifully Cruel by M. William PhelpsInvestigation Discovery's "Pandora's Box," Season 1, "A Murder, She Wrote"https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/tracey-richter-wrote-to-wis-sex-offender-in-attempt-to/article_90c1d272-5258-5b01-9e77-d7ad9b85ff19.htmlhttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/hero-claim-rejected-iowa-mom-guilty-of-murder/Follow us, campers!Patreon: https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. So, campers, welcome to season two of true crime campfire. In season one, we brought you the bizarre story of the mainline murders, a case so complex that it needed a whole season. to do it justice. In season two, we're going to go another way and cover lots of different cases. And the one we've chosen first is a doozy. We've decided to divide our cases into categories from now on, categories like bad romance, cult stuff, sinister ministers, just bananas for the hard to classify ones that make you go, oh, this just can't be real, and more. Listen to a certain number of episodes in a category and you'll earn a badge, just like summer camp. We'll tell you more about that as we go along. Today's episode, I think you'll agree, fits squarely into the

bad bitches category, the story of Ms. Tracy Richter. Okay, so we're in early Iowa, December 13th, 2001. It's a teensy little town of only 600 residents. the kind of place where, as true crime shows never tire of telling us, people don't lock their doors. Do we need to say it again, campers? Lock your doors. Oh my God, please, please, please lock your doors. Lock it down, damn it. Don't make us come over there. So, anyway, it was 7 p.m. in early on that winter night, and the 911 dispatch received a call from a surprisingly calm 11-year-old boy named Bert Pittman.

Little Burt told the operator that he needed help. His mom had just been attacked, strangled. But she was okay. Some men had broken in and hurt her, but she'd shot one of them and the other one ran away. Now, this was so not a normal call in early Iowa, as you can imagine. So the police hauled ass over there as fast as they could. And when they arrived, they were surprised to find beautiful 35-year-old Tracy Richter Pitman Roberts. And her children, I know it's a hell of a name, isn't it?

Yeah, Tracy Richter Pittman Roberts. and her children just waiting on the front porch. She's very calm and composed despite having just been through one hell of an ordeal. Tracy had a red mark around her neck. It looked kind of like a rope burn or a ligature mark. And she told the cops a terrifying story. She said her husband Michael was out of town on business. They owned a business at the time, something to do with IT or computers.

I'm not 100% sure exactly what they did, but it meant that Michael had to travel a lot. And she'd been making dinner and giving them. their baby girl a bath when she heard the front door open. She assumed it was Michael coming home, but she was expecting him a little later, so it was kind of weird. So she poked her head out the bathroom door and she got a shock. There were two men stomping up the stairs and neither one of them was her husband. So Tracy moved fast. She grabbed the baby. She put her in 11-year-old Bert's room. She corralled Bert and her younger son and she told Bert, look, lock the door. Do not open it no

matter what you hear, which had to be a terrifying thing for a kid, you know, when your mom is that intense and grabs you by the shoulders and says, no matter what you hear, do not open this door. Like, I would have opened the door like the first bump, right? Like, mom, are you okay? And then I would have just been, oh my God. Yeah. So anyway, once she had her kids secured, Tracy tried to run. But before she could get away, one of the men caught up with her and wrapped something around her neck and choked her from behind and she was choked unconscious so holy shit right yeah when she came back too she heard the intruders like banging trying to get into bert's room and so of course her mama bear instinct kicked in and she ran for her bedroom for the gun safe that she and michael

kept next to their bed which is where i assume she was running in the first place when the guy caught up to her and it was just like a horror movie she could hear one of the intruders coming after her And she was so shaky like anybody would be that she kept entering the code wrong to the gun safe. But finally, she got it right just as one of the guys came running through her bedroom door. And she was just able to aim the gun over her shoulder and fire blindly at the guy twice. And she heard him hit the ground. And right as she heard him hit the floor, she heard the sound of running footsteps down the stairs, which presumably was the second assailant,

because he'd heard the shots hauling ass out of the house right so she whirled around and she saw that the first intruder the guy that she shot over her shoulder was still alive he was on the ground but he was still breathing he was moaning it looked like he was trying to get up and she was running on pure adrenaline so she tried to fire at him again but her gun jammed so she went back into the gun safe got a second gun that they kept in there and she pumped seven more rounds into him and killed him my heart is racing right now i know god it's just a it's such an action movie horror movie dramatic story and this was the story that tracy told the cops so you know hero mom right she protected herself she protected her kids everybody's okay except for this kind of choke mark across tracy's neck and she

said she was having a little bit of trouble getting a deep breath so police quickly arranged to take her in the kids to the hospital they called michael who of course was horrified and came rushing back to early and the police began their investigation. So they find the body upstairs on the bedroom floor, and this guy had been riddled with bullets. And the shots, interestingly enough, were very strategically placed. It looked like a shooting done by someone with expert firearms training, like somebody in the military or something.

There was blood everywhere. These shots were aimed at places on the body where if you get shot there, you're going to die. So that was interesting. They also found that there was not much, if anything, missing from the house. And in fact, they later found that the only thing missing was an obsolete computer that wasn't really good for anything other than a doorstop. And that was kind of odd, given that Michael and Tracy's home business, which was computer related, meant that there was a ton of, like, expensive top-of-the-line computer equipment available in that house. but none of that stuff was taken

and of course there was also the usual stuff in a nice relatively well-to-do families home there was jewelry electronics cash lots of good stuff right out in the open none of it stolen so what does that tell us Katie that it's personal

yeah robbery's not the motive it's probably personal so they quickly determined that the body upstairs was that of Dustin Wheatie a 19 year old local kid and a family friend of Tracy and Michael. Not what anybody was expecting, I'm sure.

And of course they put out a bolo on the second intruder, but they weren't able to track him down. He'd apparently just disappeared into the night and gotten away, at least for now. So back to Dustin. They found his car parked right out on the street, right outside the Roberts home, and inside they found that missing obsolete computer.

And they also found a pink notebook that appeared to be like a journal of some kind. and this is going to become the most important clue in this incredible case, and we will get to it in just a bit. So who was Dustin Wheatie, the dead man on Tracy's floor? Well, Dustin was the son of Mona Weedy, who was a realtor in Early, who'd befriended Tracy and Michael when they first came to town, and was in the process when all this happened of trying to find them a new house.

Destin was a special needs kid. Throughout his life, he had amassed a whole laundry list of different diagnoses from different doctors. This is pretty common, I think, with special needs kids or kids who aren't neurotypical maybe or who don't fit into the norm. They tend to just amass all these different diagnoses from different doctors. It must be tremendously frustrating for the parents and for the kids to, who do you trust, which doctor is correct?

How do you know? And I think when they're young, it's really hard to separate what's a symptom from what is just, you know, kids being kids. Right. Yeah, kids being kids. So I think that the diagnoses can be narrowed down as they get older, but especially because I think he was diagnosed with oppositional defiance. That was one of the many things, yeah. Yeah, which can be comorbid with some other symptoms of other diagnoses.

Right. So, you know, he had heard everything from social anxiety to, as you mentioned, oppositional defiant disorder, generalized anxiety disorder. But the common denominator in most of his diagnoses was that Dustin had trouble relating to other people. people. And although he was really smart in a lot of areas, he was a natural mechanical engineer. He was amazing with computers. He could take anything apart and put it back together. It could fix stuff. But he was really bad at dealing with people. He was socially awkward to the point where according to his mom, Mona, he had never had a friend. Oh, God. He'd never been invited to a birthday party. The other kids never asked him to play with them at recess or invited him to the prom, which is just

incredibly sad. I can't even imagine. It's heartbreaking. Yeah. Never once having a friend. But he was really close with his family. His mom, his sisters, his aunts and uncles. His family was his social life. Until Tracy and Michael came along. Michael Roberts, who by the way is Australian, just FYI, accent and all. He's super hot. He really is pretty handsome. I know. He is. I think it's the accent. The accent is definitely a panty peeler. I am not going to disagree with you there. So Michael was a born-again Christian, and part of that for him was that he felt a need to, you know, minister to people and help people that he perceived to be in need. And he kind of took Dustin Wheatie under his wing, started taking him to church, inviting him to come paintballing.

And Dustin was thrilled about this, of course, because he had literally never had a friend in his life. And so to have someone taken interest in him was huge for Dustin. And it was huge for his mom, too. She was thrilled about it. And Dustin very quickly developed an obsession with paintball, which is usually what they would do. They'd bring 11-year-old bird along, and they'd have a great time. And as a matter of fact, just a few days before the shooting, Tracy had invited Dustin to come work for her and Michael part-time, just little stuff like making coffee, making copies, running errands, that kind of stuff. And Dustin, although he was socially awkward and had trouble in school, like he basically had trouble with the verbal stuff.

He wasn't good at writing or reading, but he was known as a good kid, and his family was just stunned by this. Dustin didn't have a violent bone in his body. He had never done anything like this. He'd never hurt anyone, and his family felt he would never hurt anyone, much less the only two people who had ever reached out to him in friendship. And yet in the upstairs bedroom of the Robert's house, there he lay in a pool of blood. So they were just stunned, they were devastated, and mostly they were confused. Okay, so Katie, let's talk some more about that pink notebook. All right. So as you said, they found this thing in the backseat of Dustin's car.

A pink spiral-bound notebook, which was weird from the get-go because pink wasn't really Dustin's color. It was also strange because, according to Dustin's family, if there was one thing in the world Dustin hated and was terrible at, was writing. Writing was kind of like torture for him. So the idea of him keeping any kind of journal was ridiculous to them. And yet, there it was. And when the police showed Mona just a tiny snippet of the journal, just one or two lines, she had to admit that was Dustin's handwriting, no doubt about it. It's so strange. It really is. And in the aftermath of this home invasion, Tracy became the biggest news story in town. She appeared on television as the hero mom, and she seemed to be enjoying the attention. And it was a great story, a mom defending her family.

Plus, there was still a second intruder on the loose. Tracy described him as a white guy with dark brown hair and a Chicago accent. Not a lot to go on. Yeah, seriously, that could mean anybody anywhere. That's like most of the population. Surely, probably, except possibly for the Chicago accent, but that's subjective. Yeah. That could be a Midwestern accent, I guess. Exactly. Yeah. That's a lot of guys, that's what we're saying.

Since robbery was clearly not the motive, they started their investigation by trying to figure out what the motive might be. They asked Tracy if she could think of any reason why Dustin would be angry with her. And she said they'd been spending less time with him lately. She said she'd never been entirely comfortable around Dustin. Michael had wanted to help him, and she did too, but she was always a little skeeved out by the kid. She didn't really want him around the kids. which Mona later said was very strange, since Tracy had invited Dustin over many times to hang out with her and the kids, including the day of the shooting. But Tracy said they've been pulling back a little from Dustin lately.

So there was that possibility. But the investigators also wondered if maybe Dustin and his fellow assailant had been sent by somebody else, since the motive was clearly personal. So they asked Tracy, if someone were to do this, do you have any ideas about who it could be? And Tracy immediately said, yes, definitely, my ex-husband, Dr. John Pittman. This was born out by the Pink Notebook. They were digging into this thing, and there was some interesting stuff in there. The journal contained about six pages of writing, and it began, 19 years ago, a boy was born into a middle-class life.

And it went on like that in an awkward autobiographical type style to, quote, make a record of a mysterious fellow who has asked me to work for him, John Pittman. J.P. wants me to get slash force his ex, TR, to kill her son, Burt, and then commit suicide. A mysterious fellow. Yeah. The notebook also included quite a few personal details about Dr. John Pittman, that he had wanted to be a psychiatrist, but he'd bowed to family pressure to become a surgeon instead. Dustin wrote that Dr. Pittman seemed to love his son Burt, but also seemed to want him

dead because he and Tracy were in the middle of an ugly custody battle, and Bert had accused him of sexual abuse. For that, Bert had to die. Jesus Murphy. As the journal said, Tracy and John Pittman were in the midst of a custody fight, and Tracy had accused him of sexually abusing Bert. Dr. Pittman strongly denied the allegations, and an investigation yielded no evidence of abuse. But, of course, that didn't mean it hadn't happened. Tracy said it did, and so did 11-year-old bird. So this fight was ongoing. In fact, Dr. Pittman and Tracy's current husband, Michael, had some angry words just a couple of days before the shooting. So the cops were reading all of this in the little pink notebook and they thought, okay, well, Dr. Pittman, right? It bore out

what Tracy had told them. The only problem was that they couldn't figure out how the hell Dustin Wheatie, a 19-year-old kid in early Iowa would even know a successful 45-year-old surgeon in Virginia. So they talked to Dr. Pittman, and he seemed genuinely baffled by the whole thing. His reaction was basically a very convincing, Dustin, who? It seemed sincere. Of course, people can be damn good liars sometimes and damn good actors, so that didn't necessarily prove he wasn't involved, but it just didn't fit for the investigators.

They couldn't imagine how these two would have even come into contact in the first place. So the detective started to wonder if maybe this was more sinister than it looked. Maybe Michael Roberts, Tracy's current husband, was responsible. They questioned Michael, who vehemently denied any involvement. He said he would never want Tracy harmed. And even if he did, he wouldn't want his own children traumatized. Burt is Tracy's son with Dr. Pittman, but she had the younger two children with Michael. So Michael said, of course I wasn't involved.

But they gave him a polygraph exam. And he failed it. Hmm. Nevertheless, Tracy insisted that Michael had nothing to do with it. Michael would never hurt us. This was my ex-husband, John Pittman. I know it. Go after him.

Hmm. In Campers, the investigation basically stalled at this point. They were unable to find any connection between Dustin Wheatie and Dr. Pittman. They had no proof that Michael had anything to do with it, and he was hundreds of miles away when the shooting happened, and they had no leads on the second intruder. In fact, when they asked Dustin's mom, who Dustin tended to run around with, trying to figure out who his accomplice might be, Mona said, he doesn't hang around with anybody. He never leaves the house except to hang out with Tracy and Michael.

So, the case went cold, and it stayed cold for 10 years. Yeah, that's so long. Wow. We don't know a ton about Tracy's childhood. Just that she grew up in Chicago and her dad, interestingly enough, was a homicide detective. As far as we've been able to determine, she had a pretty average middle class upbringing. But that's all we know about her early life. So we're going to begin our examination of Ms. Richter Pittman Roberts in 1986 when a 20-year-old

Tracy met 30-year-old med student John Pittman at the hospital where he was studying and she was working as she claimed a radiographer. Later on, he found out that she wasn't a radiographer. radiographer. She was a nurse's aide. Or something like that. I'm not 100% sure. But yeah, she wasn't a radiographer anyway. She was like bigging herself up. Why lie? It's bizarre. I can't imagine why people do things like this. So Tracy is like irritatingly pretty. And you'll see from the pictures we posted. And John was taken with her right away. There were some things that bugged him about her though. She was a little crass for his taste. She like,

to drop F-bombs, for example, which he made, he felt made her seem a little unsophisticated. He liked women who were more urban. Oh, no. Well, he'd hate us, wouldn't he? I guess we're not ladylike enough for him. Well, fuck. I'm going to lose sleep over that. Me too.

Fuck. Oh, well, I guess we'll have to learn to go on somehow. Oh, we'd both well. We're not urban and sophisticated enough. because we occasionally drop the odd F-bomb. I mean, if I can't drop the F-bomb while I'm talking about Elliot Emu, what's the fucking point? It is such a satisfying word. It really is.

I've tried to explain this to my poor long-suffering mom, who, granted, I usually don't swear around, but I've had the odd slip. Bless Mom's heart. I'm sure she's listening right now. Hi, Mom. I love you. Anyway. Hi, Whitney's Mom. But, you know, it's just such a satisfying.

Sometimes no other word will do, like if you stub your toe or something, it's just a just feels good to say it, Dr. Pittman. Okay, but Tracy had the goods. I mean, she was a fucking smoke show. She really, it's irritating it. It's true. Yeah. She knew how to charm a man.

She flattered him. She made him feel good about himself. And before long, he was a smitten kitten, F-bombs, notwithstanding. And it was one of those relationships right from the get-go that was really good when it was good and really bad when it was horrid. Tracy was moody. She was extremely possessive and jealous of anybody and anything that took up his time. And she worked hard to alienate John from his family and friends to the point where

she once got in a fight with his roommate and hit the guy in the face. My God. She knocked his glasses clean across his face and across the room. And despite the fact that there was a roomful of people who saw her hit him, she claimed forever that he'd hit her. Wow. And this, by the way, is a prime example of a couple of things. Number one, gaslighting, which we've talked about in previous episodes. And it's also an example of projection, which seems to be one of Tracy's superpowers, like accusing another person of what you yourself are guilty of Tracy is the queen of projection. Yeah, she was a nightmare. Yeah.

To put it plainly. She called John's friend sloppy and their girlfriend's moochers. Once, John brought her along on a ski trip with some of his best friends, and she wouldn't go skiing. She refused to take lessons that John paid for for everyone. Oh, my God. Which, can I be friends with John? I know, right? Can I have some free ski trip? But then, after being a stick in the mud, she threw fits about being left out when really she was leaving herself out by being a drama queen and refusing to do things with the others and blah, blah, blah.

So basically, this is not all about me, so I'm going to throw tantrum after tantrum. Yeah. And at one point, she and John adopted a dog and a cat together. And she was jealous of the attention he paid to the pets. Oh, my God, in heaven. You love the cat more than you love me, et cetera. And just a point of order campers, the cat will always love you. Just dump the guy, dump the girl.

dump the person. Amen to that, right? Because yikes. Yikes. Yeah. And over the course of a few years, they would go through good patches and bad, and they broke up and got back together a few times. And John, bless his heart, ignored all these neon flashing red flags along the way, especially the possessiveness and the fact that all his friends hated her. And we've talked about this before, campers, if literally everyone who cares about you hates your significant other, you have got some thinking, to do because that's a massive red flag okay i'm not asking you to substitute my judgment for your own i'm just saying that's a red flag but we have all known people like this who stay in terrible relationships no matter what their partner puts them through some of us have been people like

this i am one of those people so i can't sure as hell can't judge because i was in two relationships like this when i was younger before i met my wonderful husband but poor john at one point he was almost out. He'd almost decided to break it off once and for all. And then at the last minute, he decided, nope, I want to try to make it work. And he asked her to marry him. Whomp, wamp, oh, John. That's like very, you're like, you swing to one side of the scenario where you're like, I'm just going to dump her. And then you just go all the way to the other words. I'm going to fucking marry her. I'm really tempted to break up with this toxic person. Nope, screw it. I'm marrying her.

Let's just see what happens. Let's roll the dice. We need a fucking lawyer to end this relationship now. So anyway, oh, John, you were almost out, my dude. So poor Dr. Pittman was in for a few more years of torture. Bless his heart. So they got married, and it didn't take long for it to hit the skids, which should surprise no one, based on what we've told you so far. Tracy knew that John wanted to be a surgeon, and she knew the kind of hours that that entailed,

but she hated the fact that he was always working, which is fair enough. you know, you don't want to be home alone all the time. So she adopted dogs, which according to John, she didn't take good care of. And that right there makes me want to hunt her down and give her a kick up the arse, even if it wasn't for all the rest of the stuff. And possibly to lash out passive aggressively at John for her loneliness, or possibly just because she's a greedy asshole. Tracy also stole money from John's parents at one point via their credit card numbers,

which is lovely. So they never actually could prove it was her. Oh, okay. So this is allegedly. Yeah, but, like, it was stuff, it was, like, delivered to their house in veil and picked up, and it was, it was definitely her. It was definitely allegedly her. So anyway, all was not well in the Pittman household. And then, like many people who are struggling with a stressful marriage, they decided to add a tiny, screaming tyrant to their home to see if it would take pity and magically fix their problems overnight.

Great plan, guys. Anyway, that's not going to work. Just spoiler alert. No. Don't do that. Turns out lack of sleep and strained finances don't help a relationship. That's amazing, right? But anyway, little Burt was born.

Which, okay, if we have anybody listening with this name, I'm sorry. But that's a weird name for a child. Like, I couldn't imagine looking at a baby and being like, aw, that's all Burt. Yeah, I always think of Burt as like an old dude name. Like, Burt is the guy who sits in a rocking chair outside the Cracker Barrow. all day, like a handkerchief on his head saying, whoo, it's hot to everybody as they walk in. Or if you're listening and your name is Bert,

Bert is a handsome, handsome individual who has a great name and we're wrong and stupid and just joking, so chill. Okay. Yeah, it's fine. But, yeah, Bert was never a baby. Yeah, Bert has Benjamin Buttons. Anyway. So Tracy seemed to have mixed feelings about being a mom.

And one night, Dr. Pittman came home from work to hear Tracy upstairs screaming, suck, suck, suck, damn it, suck. He's like, what in the hell is happening? So he raced up the stairs and found Tracy in the nursery pressing a squalling baby Bert's face hard into her boob, like out of frustration, I guess, because he wouldn't latch on. He wouldn't breastfeed. So, yikes. So they put Bert on formula after that. Good choice. I don't know why he didn't just immediately take Burt out of the house, but that's fine.

Yeah, she lost it a little bit. And Tracy tended to have huge temper tantrums over nothing, and she could get violence. So, for example, one night, Dr. Pittman made the mistake of leaving some muddy shoes on Tracy's nice clean floor, which granted is annoying, but Tracy flipped the F out out. She told him, shit you not, you're not going to make it out of here alive tonight over muddy shoes. brought out a gun and eventually fired said gun into the wall like a totally stable person does that's a normal thing yeah and poor dr pitman fled the house went to a neighbors called the police and when they got there tracy accused him of domestic violence but between the bullet hole in the wall and the neighbors accounts of what had happened because i imagine it was quite loud they were able

to kind of iron out what had happened and dr pitman didn't get in trouble or anything i think tracy spent the night in jail, if I remember rightly. And by the way, just to let you know, and this is always going to be on our social media and everything, but our main source for this was the book Beautifully Cruel by M. William. So thank you, M. William. I call him M. WOM. Thank you, I'm William. All right. Thank you, I'm one. All right. So you think this would be the end of the relationship, but nope, bless his heart. John stuck it out a while longer. Oh, my God. He's the little engine that could. And he tried. Yeah, he tried. This man tried. it became obvious to John that Tracy was cheating on him. So it needed but that, right? She started

hanging out with all these bodybuilder type guys at a gym where she worked out. And these dudes were all into steroids. And Tracy at one point had the nerve to ask Dr. Pittman if he'd write prescriptions for them. And when he said, uh, no, she just stole one of his prescription pads and did it herself, which is, can I just be the fly on the wall for that conversation? I know, right. Honey? I'm getting railed by these dudes and they need. they need prescriptions for steroids could you just you know just one time

so anyway the good thing about that was that this at least made him aware that she was involved you know with other men so Pittman hired a private investigator now we're starting to get a pair on us right Dr. Pittman to follow Tracy around and it didn't take long for the guy

to get proof of Tracy's infidelity he got pictures of her at the beach with one of these guys grabbing his butt making out with them etc And of course, when Dr. Pittman confronted her about it, Queen of Projection Tracy accused him of cheating on her with exotic dancers and women he met at the gym, none of which was true. So finally, John Pittman had enough and he filed for divorce, he moved out, he got his own condo, and Tracy let him know right away that she was going to make his life a living hell. And man, did she deliver on that promise. That seems to be something at which Tracy excels, making people's life a living.

living hell. Do you think she believed her own projections or was that just a really, really good question. I think some of these folks do. I think some of these really narcissistic people do start to believe their own bullshit. Right. At least on the surface, maybe not deep, deep down. Maybe she does have, or they, people like this, do have moments of clarity where, you know, at three in the morning when it's just them alone with their own thoughts, they know that they're full of shit. But it's very possible. But fortunately, Dr. Pittman still had this private investigator, and he was having the guy follow Tracy around to sort of help get ammunition to use in the divorce and the custody battle because she let him know, oh, you're never getting this kid, right? And it's a good thing he did

because one afternoon, Tracy called John and asked if he'd meet her at his new condo to iron out some stuff for the divorce. And she sounded unusually conciliatory. Like, you know, she said, I'm in your neighborhood. I'm right outside your building. Well, the PI just happened. to have a tail on her that day, and she was nowhere near Pittman's condo. And what's more, he had just witnessed her having a very intense, suspicious-looking conversation with a couple of her big, muscle-bound bodybuilder guys, and she'd handed one of them a key. And the bodybuilder guys had headed off in the direction of Pittman's condo. And the PI heard her call him and say, I'm right outside your building.

So the PI called Dr. Pittman and told him all this and said, look, man, I might be paranoid here, but I wouldn't go home if I were you. And he put a tail on the bodybuilders, and guess where they went? Right in the direction of Dr. Pittman's condo. Oh, my God. It's scary, right? So... That's fucking terrible.

It really is. So Pittman met up with his PI at a coffee shop instead of going home, where my guess is he would have either been murdered or had the crap beat out of him that night. So, yeah. And as the divorce was proceeding, Tracy embarked upon a period in her life. that I like to call the sex-dortion escapades. Interesting music. I know. It does really sound like a bad porn.

So basically what this was is she would meet men, and she specifically targeted married men, and you'll see why in a moment. She would sometimes meet them on the fledgling internet, sometimes just, you know, at bars and stuff. She would hook up with them in hotels for sex, and then when they fell asleep, she would take Polaroids of herself with their teeties out, naked in bed with them. She'd leave a couple of the pictures on the nightstand with a note that said something like, wire me $2,500 by tomorrow afternoon at five if you don't want your wife to see more like this.

And this is how she made her money for a while. Now, guys, who does this? Seriously, who does this shit? What kind of human being does this? It's like something from a movie or something. To flesh out this picture a little more a couple times, she met up with the guy the second time, like so she'd sleep with the guy a second time and then leave the pictures that she took on the first time.

Oh, Lord, have mercy. So she knew, yeah, this is a, this is fucking scary. Yeah. That, that, I, I seriously, I can't even, I can't even conceive of the type of mind that comes up with something like that. That's bananas. And I mean, shame on them for cheating on their wives, but like, holy shit, lady, really? First of all, it's incredibly dangerous.

Like, some guy might just murder you or something, for one thing. but she obviously wouldn't worry about that. So anyway, around this time, she met a Chicago dentist named Dr. Laspisa. Dr. Laspisa was married, so her favorite kind of dude. So shame on him for that, but Tracy charmed the pants off of him, figuratively and literally, and soon managed to talk him into letting her take over the bookkeeping for his successful dental practice. Now, did Tracy have loads and loads of experience as a bookkeeper or accountant? No, she did not.

Interesting. And yet, because she, you know, was pretty and stuff and was sleeping with him, I guess, he decided to fire his presumably qualified accountant and bookkeeper and let her just take over. So, dude, what are you doing, man? Let's just let this person we just met and haven't done a background check on who has no experience take over our accounts. He's thinking with his downstairs. I think so, yes. So anyway, she convinced him she could streamline his system. and what she actually ended up doing was stealing a bunch of money from him and a bunch of

a computer equipment and eventually he caught her at it red-handed and of course he fired her and she apologized profusely she gave him a big sob story about her divorce and being a single mom and needing the money and blah blah blah so he agreed to just fire her but not press charges sucker can we just do a collective eye roll here okay it's going to get worse so one night Tracy called Dr. Lispisa and asked if he would meet her at his dental office after hours. So she could apologize properly and return some of his equipment, right? And because he is a dumbass, he said, sure, and once they were there alone, Tracy opened her coat, and I picture it as like a trench coat. I don't know if it was or not, but she opened her coat to reveal a super sexy little get-up underneath that left nothing to the imagination.

and she told him she'd always had a fantasy of having sex in a dentist chair. Aw, every girl's dream. I know. I know I can't get it off my mind. And in particular, she's always had a fantasy of having sex in a dentist chair while high on laughing gas. And, you know, nitrous oxide. What could possibly go wrong? And Dr. Lispisa, bless his heart, despite the fact that this woman has embezzled thousands of dollars from him.

lied to him, stolen computer equipment from him, etc., decided, yay, sex, and just plopped right down in the chair and let Tracy hit him with the nitrous. And the last thing that he remembered was Tracy saying something about how she'd always fantasized too about having sex on medazolam. Now, that is the heavy-duty injectable sedative that they give you when you, like, have a wisdom tooth out. It's the twilight sleep stuff. knockout drug. And then watching her

sashay across the room toward him in her sexy outfit with his medical bag in her hand. And he remembered thinking, why is she wearing latex gloves? And then just the prick of a needle and Dr. Lesbisa was swirling down into darkness. Right? So he came to about 15 hours later to find a little gift from Tracy a contract that apparently he had signed overnight. Now, he had no memory of this. The contract said that during a dental exam,

Dr. Lispisa had sexually assaulted Ms. Tracy, had rendered her unconscious with laughing gas, undressed her, put red, high-heeled shoes on her feet. It was very specific. Put her ankles over his shoulders and masturbated onto her. And she had supposedly come to in the middle of this, and because she'd caught him red-handed, he'd agree to get counseling for his sexual issues and pay Ms. Richter the sum of $150,000 in return for her promising not to press charges.

Just take a minute for that to sink in, campers. Wow. That is some audacious extortion right there. So, unsurprisingly, his first reaction was, uh, fuck that and fuck you. I'm not paying you a dime. and Tracy basically said, well, you already signed the contract, and if you don't do it, I'm going to call the police. Oh, this shit gets me fucking good. Oh, boy, I know, me too. It's horrifying. It's horrifying. There is a special circle of hell for people that make up sexual assault allocations. Because there's this myth that this happens all the time. It actually happens far, far less than people think.

It's like 2%. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny. It's actually quite a rare occurrence. And yet, when it does happen, it has some. a ripple effect and it does so much harm to real victims who already have an uphill battle to get their perpetrator prosecuted. It's just the worst. It makes things so much harder for victims. It's a, it's, it's, it's a form of evil. I can't even imagine you, if you do this, you are scum of the earth. Screw you. Just don't do this. Yeah. Do not. Fuck you. So, Dr. Lispisa, as I think many people would, caved. and he was hoping this would be a one-time payment like it said in the contract, but was it?

Oh, no. For years, every time she needed money, Tracy would hit up Dr. Lispisa. It's never a one-time payment, guys. No, no, no, no, no. If you're being extorted, you're in for it for... Because once they know they've got you, they've got you, and they're going to keep coming back.

So your best bet, his best bet, I think, would have just been immediately go to the police and say, look, this woman drugged me, and she drew up this fake comment. contract and just face the music. But of course, he was cheating on his wife. There was that to be considered as well. He probably didn't want his wife to find out. And he was worried about what an accusation like that might do to his practice. I can understand why he did what he did. But obviously, I mean, she had him on the hook for years. And interestingly, shortly before

the shooting of Dustin Wheatie, Dr. Lispisa had told Tracy, finally, I've had enough. I'm not going to pay you another dime. I imagine a lot of victims of extortion finally reached this point. And when Lispisa cut her off, Tracy sued him. She didn't go to the police, but she sued him. And that lawsuit was going on at the time of Dustin's death. In fact, when the early Iowa police asked Michael Roberts, who he thought might have hired the intruders to attack Tracy, his first response was Dr. Lispisa,

especially since Tracy had described the second intruder as having a Chicago accent. So all this was going on as Tracy was getting divorced from John Pittman. And as we said earlier, during the custody battle, she accused Dr. Pittman of abuse and sexual abuse against Byrd, subjecting the poor kid to very invasive medical checks. Oh, my God, that poor kid. And as we said earlier, nothing was found. But after a while, I guess Tracy decided she was tired of being single and hustling married men for cash. So she went on a Christian dating site, which is fucking hilarious. She picked a Christian dating site. Wow.

Irony. Maybe she figured that was the least likely place to find someone. like her. Yeah, that's a good point. Probably she felt people would be trusting. Yeah. And right away, she met handsome Australia and Michael Roberts, sexy accent and old. Yeah. Interestingly enough, Tracy tended to take on the persona of the person she was with. When she and Michael first started talking online, she sent him sexy pictures and flirted a lot, saying stuff like, I used to model. You will not be disappointed, et cetera. Gross. When Super Christian Michael expressed that he was turned off by her overt sexuality, she dialed it way back immediately. Wow.

She started wearing more demure clothes, little headbands, less makeup, and she started acting religious. Oh, God. Ugh. Yeah. And Dr. Pittman said the same thing, by the way. When they were first dating, if he expressed an interest or preference for a certain type of woman, Tracy would become that woman. Oh, wow. No, didn't people say something similar about Scott Peterson that he was like a chameleon with his various girlfriends and mistresses? They did indeed. And it's interesting if you were to hypothesize that Scott Peterson might have some characteristics of a psychopath or sociopath, which I do subscribe to that theory. And we might cover Scott Peterson on a future episode. I know there's some discussion in the true crime community, you know, about.

his guilt or innocence and stay tuned because we might actually cover that in a later episode maybe in season three we'll see but if one were to hypothesize that he might have some characteristics of a psychopath or sociopath one of those is sometimes this chameleon where just like tracy you take on i'll be who you want me to be so if you want a religious guy scott peterson never expressed any religiosity whatsoever until he met Amber Frye. And Amber was a devout Christian. So suddenly he said he had a degree in theology and started quoting scripture. He'd never done that before. So interesting. And that is, as I said, that chameleon thing is a common characteristic of some psychopaths and sociopaths.

Very, very interesting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, Anywho. I did the sew for you. So. And Katie says, anywho. Yeah After they'd corresponded online for a while Tracy flew over to Australia And 18 days Inters They got married

Unbelievable Damn that's fast Who does that 18 days? Guys Please don't do that Just have a long engagement It's fine You don't marry somebody

You met 18 days ago Yeah No no no There's no reason for that Even if you're positive They're the one Yeah And you're not

After 18 days days. You've just not. You've got a Britofilter older than your relationship. Just don't do it. Okay. So they came back to the U.S. and they had a couple kids. And eventually they ended up in early Iowa, where our story began. Their marriage was great at first, but then it started to get kind of volatile. Mona Weedy used to come over to their home office and do a little office work. once they became friends, and one day she witnessed a rip-roar and fight. One of Tracy and Michael's clients had gone bankrupt while owing them $20,000, and Tracy felt like it was Michael's fault, and she was screaming at him.

She kicked a hole in the wall. At one point, Michael spent a night in jail for domestic violence, though he claimed Tracy was the one who attacked him, and although people said they seemed to love each other, they'd always say stuff like, I love Tracy, or I love Michael, but it was never just, wow, I really love my wife. What a beautiful story. So now we're back at the time of the home invasion and the ice cold investigation, which is about to heat up big time. And we're going to stop part one here. We wanted to do this episode in two bite-sized pieces for you.

But since we're releasing them on the same day, you can go ahead and listen to Part 2 now if you're so inclined. And if not, save it for later. For now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. You can follow us on Twitter at TC Campfire, Instagram at True Crime Campfire, and be sure to like our Facebook page. If you want to support the show and get access to extras, please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash true crime campfire.