Cold Blooded "Hero" - Early, Iowa

Summary

Small Town Murder

Episode: Cold Blooded "Hero" – Early, Iowa

Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman
Release Date: April 2, 2026

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode delves into a perplexing and chilling murder case from the tiny rural town of Early, Iowa. What initially looked like a harrowing case of a mother heroically defending her children during a violent home invasion is gradually revealed, under the hosts’ sharp comedic gaze, to be a web of manipulation, staged evidence, small-town drama, and calculated murder. The hosts break down the twists and red herrings in the story of Tracy Richter (Roberts), whose alarming pattern of behavior and relentless pursuit of her own interests ultimately leaves lasting scars on a community and family.

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TOWN BACKGROUND & SETTING [06:26-25:00]

• Early, Iowa: A small, rural town of ~400–500 people in Sac County—“Crossroads of the Nation”—historically a farming community with declining local businesses. The area is “shockingly uneventful” since the 1880s; the most notable recent attraction is the “world’s largest popcorn ball,” which underwhelms the hosts:

  “It’s about the size of a GMC Yukon… shockingly small. You wouldn’t travel for this.” [19:31, James]

• Community Demographics: Close-knit, overwhelmingly white (87%); surprisingly high Black population for Iowa at 9%; older than average; low crime; strong religious presence (Lutheran majority).

• Economy & Real Estate:

  • Median household income slightly above the national average.
  • Home prices dramatically cheaper ($120-160K typical).
  • Town has little for entertainment: annual Crossroads Day festival, aging local businesses, and the aforementioned popcorn ball.

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KEY PLAYERS [35:01+]

Tracy Ann Richter/Roberts

• Grew up in Chicago. Father was a homicide detective.
• Married Dr. John Pittman III (plastic surgeon); tumultuous, eventually violent relationship.
• Later marries Michael Roberts (an Australian “entrepreneur”).
• Reputation for gunplay and making serious (sometimes unsubstantiated or bizarre) accusations in personal relationships.
• Moves to Early, Iowa, seeking a new start for her three children (Bert, Noah, Mason).
• Known in town mainly as an outsider (Chicago transplant).

Dustin Wehde

• 20-year-old neighbor; local quiet, timid, “nice kid,” special education high school grad, no criminal record.
• Works odd jobs (Dairy Queen, construction, mowing).
• Becomes a kind of mentee to Michael Roberts, welcomed into the family’s social orbit.
• Killed in the incident at the center of the case.

Other Key Names

• Michael Roberts: Tracy’s second husband, Australian, business dealings described as “spotty.”
• Burt: Tracy’s oldest son (with Pittman), 11 years old at the time, calls 911 after the shooting.
• Mona Wehde: Dustin’s mother, local real estate agent, eventually involved in a local affair with veteran/Schwan’s deliveryman Jeremy Collins.
• Mary Higgins: Local farm wife, Tracy’s confidante.
• Dr. John Pittman: Tracy’s first husband, embroiled in years-long custody and child support battles with Tracy.

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INCIDENT: THE SHOOTING [25:00–76:00]

NIGHT OF DECEMBER 13, 2001

911 Call & Immediate Aftermath

• At around 7 PM, Tracy’s 11-year-old son, Bert, calls 911 saying men have broken into the house; his mother has shot an intruder in their home.
• Police arrive to find Dustin Wehde dead, shot nine times (three to the back of the head/neck while face-down, one through the eye) from two different guns (.40 Beretta and .357 revolver).
• Tracy has ligature marks, alleges being strangled with her own pantyhose, and describes a violent struggle.

Tracy’s Narrative

• Claims she was upstairs giving her 1-year-old a bath, hears dog barking, discovers home invasion in progress.
• Is grabbed by the hair, choked unconscious with pantyhose by two (possibly three) masked men: one allegedly Dustin, the other(s) never found.
• Comes to alone, gets into gun safe (without her glasses in the dark), retrieves two guns, fires blindly, hits Dustin multiple times.
• Second assailant(s) allegedly flee; she checks on her kids.

Burt’s Narrative

• Corroborates mother’s account; says he attempted to defend siblings with a baseball bat; recalls hearing Dustin’s voice; claims other assailant called “Ross” or “Boss.”

Immediate Community Reaction

• The shooting shocks the tranquil town. The local sheriff quickly deems it justified self-defense:

  “She’s a hero. They come to the conclusion, they accept it’s self-defense… Case closed. That’s that.” [105:36, James]

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SUSPICIONS, EVIDENCE & INVESTIGATION [76:00–138:00]

Oddities & Red Flags

• No forced entry, no ransacking: Doors possibly left unlocked, but nothing obvious stolen or disturbed, except a computer found stashed in Dustin’s car (parked in the driveway, not hidden).
• Dustin’s behavior: None of Dustin’s friends or family believe he’d break into a neighbor’s house or attack Tracy.
• Strained Family Ties: Dustin’s mother, Mona, is distracted by an affair and, after Dustin’s death, her husband discovers her infidelity, leading to their divorce.

The Pink Spiral Notebook

• Discovered in Dustin’s car. Police keep its existence secret for a decade.
• Contains five pages of shaky handwriting that appears to implicate Dr. Pittman (Tracy’s first husband) in a murder-for-hire plot:

  “JP wants me to get force his ex TR [Tracy Richter]… get force his ex to kill her son Burt and then commit suicide… Plan B: make it appear as though TR had committed the murder of her own son then committed suicide.” [88:09–90:17, James]

• Notebook contains details only Tracy or close family would know (Pittman’s attorney’s name, private details).
• Forensic experts confirm basic handwriting is Dustin’s, but note one random page is by another hand. Some unidentifiable fingerprints (but not Tracy's).

Delayed Prosecution & New Evidence

• For years, Tracy is treated as a local hero. She appears on The Montel Williams Show as a “brave mom defending her children.”
• The local DA and police essentially walk away from pursuing the “second intruder.”
• In 2009, a cold-case review reveals:
  • Forensics show Dustin was shot in the head after blood had already begun to congeal (suggesting execution while incapacitated).
  • Trajectory/blood spatter analysis inconsistent with Tracy’s story (“exceptional accuracy” in the dark, without her glasses).
  • Ligature marks on Tracy’s neck inconsistent with actual strangulation—likely self-inflicted friction marks.
• Mary Higgins eventually reveals Tracy spoke of the secret notebook and that she threatened Mary to never mention it. Mary testifies to hearing Tracy describe killing Dustin with chilling calm and recounting threatening to “blow your f***ing brains out.”

“Mary says, while Tracy is retelling this story… Burt walked in, started banging his head against the table… ‘Why did you go back up there? …You didn’t have to kill him.’” [112:21–112:28, James, quoting Mary]

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TRIAL AND PROSECUTION [126:42–159:14]

Re-examination & Charges (2011)

• New Sac County Attorney Ben Smith aggressively pursues the case as a premeditated murder staged to appear as self-defense.
• Tracy is arrested in Omaha, charged with first-degree murder, extradited back to Iowa.
• Prosecution Theory: Facing an upcoming custody deposition (and possible loss of child and child-support payments), Tracy orchestrated an elaborate plot:
  • Lures Dustin (“promised work”) to her house.
  • At gunpoint, forces him to write the incriminating notebook pages.
  • Executes Dustin.
  • Stages the scene to implicate her ex-husband in a fictional murder-for-hire attempt.
  • Her son Bert, indoctrinated or manipulated, provides corroborating testimony.

“To make somebody write a full thing at gunpoint is fucking diabolical.” [139:48, James]

Defense Arguments

• Maintains self-defense; questions second assailant’s identity (targets Jeremy Collins, Mona’s boyfriend/Schwan’s driver, as possible accomplice).
• Attacks forensic evidence reliability; claims events of that night were ambiguous (“chaos”).
• Suggests Michael Roberts (ex-husband) orchestrated conspiracy against Tracy; accuses the new DA of careerism.

Jury & Verdict

• Jury deliberates for 3.5 hours.
• Tracy is convicted of first-degree murder, life without parole.

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AFTERMATH & FALLOUT [159:14–End]

Families and Community

• Dustin’s Parents: The family is torn apart; father Brett dies by suicide at his son’s grave less than a year after the murder.
• Tracy’s Father: Former homicide detective, dies of natural causes a day after her conviction.
• Michael Roberts: Moves children to California; expresses relief at conviction but “does not rejoice in her downfall.”
• Burt (Son): Asks in court why mother “had to kill him,” yet later supports his mom by testifying in her favor and even gets a large tattoo depicting her as a protective hero.

Tracy’s Post-Conviction Behavior

• While awaiting sentencing, she attempts to send a letter—including addresses, photos of her children, and private information—to a convicted child sex offender, allegedly soliciting a hit on ex-husband Michael and (unclear why) even her own children.

  “Why would you give pictures of your kids to a convicted fucking kid fucker? …That is crazy right there.” [164:44, James]

• Continues to maintain innocence, blaming a web of elaborate conspiracies.

• Various online campaigns (RipOffReport.com) spring up defending her and alleging prosecutorial misconduct, Michael Roberts as true orchestrator (“wild ass claims with zero evidence” [180:11, James]), and even disputes about defense funding.

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MEMORABLE QUOTES & MOMENTS

• On the Town:
  “There is nothing here. The local restaurant shut down and the gas station’s no longer open 24 hours… there’s only crackheads and rich old white people. Nothing in between.” [11:12, James, reading review]

• On Forensic Oddities:
  “How do you do the combination [on the gun safe in the dark] without your glasses?” [126:09, James]
  “She connects nine out of 11, and that’s exceptional accuracy… a huge red flag.” [125:27, James]

• Tracy’s Pattern: “Everything she does… There’s so much collateral damage. She never has a targeted strike… It’s always just a carpet bombing of a metropolitan city.” [170:01–170:07, Jimmie]

• On the Verdict:
  “She sacrificed a young man for $1,000 a month for the next six years… That’s absurd… Sacrificed a young man for seventy grand over time.” [160:04, Jimmie/James]

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IMPORTANT SEGMENTS & TIMESTAMPS

• [06:26] Trip to Early, Iowa—town introduction and banter
• [35:01] Start of Tracy & Michael’s backstory
• [53:18] Dynamics of the Wehde & Roberts families
• [73:02] Detailed recounting of the home invasion and shooting
• [88:09] Revelation & breakdown of the “pink notebook” key evidence
• [126:42] New DA Ben Smith reopens the case; prosecution & forensic focus
• [138:31] Courtroom drama, conflicting psych evals, and defense/prosecution tactics
• [159:14] Jury verdict, sentencing, and aftermath
• [164:36] Letter to sex offender and further evidence of Tracy’s depravity

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CONCLUSION

This episode offers an unsparing look at how personal vendettas, elaborate lies, and an outsider’s manipulation of a trusting community can lead to tragedy and generational trauma. Through dark humor and careful research, the hosts dig past surface-level narratives of home-defending “mom hero” to find layers of self-interest, shockingly cold calculation, and innocent lives shattered for petty, selfish gains. The case remains a stark warning: sometimes, the most monstrous acts wear the face of the victim.

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NOTABLE QUOTE TO SUM UP

“If everything the prosecutor said happened, happened here—which it pretty much seems like it did… Holy shit. This is one of the most diabolical, sick, twisted plots I’ve ever—like, she needs a hobby… lose yourself in some TV, or something. Holy fuck, man.”
—James Petregallo [168:32]

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For more information, bonus episodes, and tickets to live shows, visit shutupandgivememurder.com

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Transcript

[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[James Petregallo]

That's nationaldebtrelief.com this week in early Iowa. When a young man ends up in a pool of his own blood inside of a neighbor's house. It seems like a mother heroically protecting her kids. But is it all how it appears or is this some kind of massive cover up and conspiracy? Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello everybody and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay. Yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petregallo. I'm here with my co host.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm Jimmy Wissman.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another crazy, wild, insane, don't know what's going on edition of Small Town Murder. A really twisty, weird one for you today and it's a lot of fun in a really rural area. Good stuff here. It's what this show is built on. Crazy stuff. And it's a crazy case and you might have some thoughts on it later on and we all will. And it's going to be one of those where we're going to have to hear them afterwards go, what did we just do? What just happened here? So we'll get to all that and more. First of all though, head over to shutupandgivememurder.com get all the merchandise. Number one tickets to live shows though. That's what we're talking about next live show with tickets Available is Denver on May 2. Salt Lake City is sold out the night before. Thank you for doing that. Oh no, Buffalo sold out on the 29th of May, May 30th, Royal Oak, Michigan. Get your tickets there. And then after the summer In September, the 18th and the 19th, we will be in Milwaukee and Minneapolis. So make sure to get your tickets now. Shut up and give me murder.com. make sure to listen to our other shows as well, Crime and sports and which we just had some real murdery stuff going on in our last episode. Wow, that was a horrific murder there with that boxer. And then also of course your stupid opinions which is just an hour of funny. It's just a lot of funny and so you're gonna love that. If you like jokes, so do that. Check those out. Also get yourself patreon. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all of the bonus material. Anybody $5 or above. How much of this do they get that we put out?

[Jimmy Wissman]

All of it.

[James Petregallo]

Oh my goodness, we're crazy. Everything. So much, so much first of all. Second, you subscribe, you get hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before. It's like a whole other feed of a whole other show to listen to. And then you get new ones every other week. One crime and sports, one small town murder. And you my friends, get it all. This week, no different for crime and sports. We're gonna talk about. We're gonna go back and do part two of the old timey articles and ads. Cause that was. We had so much fun with that and that was great. And we have a whole bunch more. So we're gonna do part two of that for small town murder. Let's talk about Corey Richens.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Let's talk about.

[James Petregallo]

Oh boy. I watched the entire trial know way more about this than I need to. So I need to impart it to somebody and that's gonna be.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I got into the rest of the closing arguments and that was enough.

[James Petregallo]

Oh my goodness. This is the Utah mother who, well, has been convicted now of killing her husband. And she wrote a book about it for her kids where she made the guy an angel. It's the craziest thing you ever wanna talk about. She is a wild, wild murderer person. So we'll talk about all that and more. Patreon.com CrimeInSports in addition to that, you also get everything. We put out all three shows all ad free with your Patreon as well. And if that's not enough, you also get a shout out at the end of the show, the main show here, where Jimmy will mispronounce your name horribly while trying his best to get it correct. Names are hard. Trust me. They're difficult. And I'm not jealous of having to pronounce a million names as much as I reading as I have to do. That's awful. So that's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And we don't have to say all their names. But thank you to everybody that came to the Phoenix show, especially your stupid opinion show.

[James Petregallo]

Unbelievable.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You guys sold out our club twice.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Incredible. Thank you so much for doing that. You made us look cool. And you were just incredible crowds, too. That was just a great weekend. We cannot thank you enough for that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Thank you.

[James Petregallo]

Disclaimer time. This is a comedy show. We are comedians, for sure. We're gonna tell jokes, people are gonna die. And you go, well, how does that work? I don't understand. How do you mix those? We think it's a little more tasteful, honestly. This way it's a little less weird and murder porny. And the way we do it is we never make fun of the victims or the victim's families.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Why, James?

[James Petregallo]

Because we're assholes. But. But we're not scumbags, I think.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There you have it.

[James Petregallo]

That's how it works there. So if that sounds good to you, you are gonna hear a wild story of murder and deception and oddness and strangeness. If you think that true crime and comedy should never, ever, ever go together, we might not be the show for you, but I think maybe you should listen and check it out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You don't know.

[James Petregallo]

But either way, no complaining later. What do you say? So that said, I think it's time everybody to sit back and say, let's all clear the lungs here, arms to the sky, and let's all shout, shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Bags packed, ready to go. Let's do it. I'm standing by the front door waiting, looking down the street for Jimmy. He's always late or he's always early. You never know. He might show up a half hour early sometimes. But it's an accident when you're on time, usually 20 minutes late. Earlier. 20 minutes late. One of the 10 quicker than I thought he'd be. Yeah. You're like, hey, look at that. Wow. Thought I was late. So we're going. We're going to Iowa this week. Yeah, we're going to early Iowa. Just like it's early in the morning. I don't know. There might be a late Iowa, but this is early Iowa. It's inside Boyer Township, which has a bunch of towns in it. It's one of those deals here. Boyer Township. This is in western Iowa. About two hours to Omaha, Nebraska, and about two hours to Des Moines in the other direction. So it's kind of in between those two hours and ten minutes to Mason City, Iowa, which is our last Iowa episode. Episode 645, Breaking Badder, which you can kind of get from the title. What's involved there, Iowa. I promise I will try not to say Idaho at all. But every time we have an Idaho case, I'm going to call it Iowa at least once. And I'm going to do it back and forth. And I don't know why I can't figure it out. But my brain, It's English. My brain wants it to be those things, to be the same word for some reason. This is in Sac County. S, A C. Like your sack. Like a sack in your body. Sack.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Huh. But not the nut sack.

[James Petregallo]

Not your nut sack. It's some kind of sack. Yeah. Nutsack county area code 712. Motto here. Crossroads of the nation.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's always a crossroads.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And their town logo is like a big X with like roads marks on it. You know, like of the nation.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've never even heard of you. Nope.

[James Petregallo]

I guess because Iowa's somewhere in the middle. So they're. What they're doing here. Little bit of history of Early. It was incorporated pretty early 1883 and is named after D.C. early, who was a local settler railroad. He was Judge D. Carr Early.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He was a judge.

[James Petregallo]

A judge, apparently.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

That's what had happened. Somebody had traveled by stage through here looking for a place to start a blacksmith shop. He was just going from town to town going, is this a good place to start a blacksmiths? Blacksmith shop and judge.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm building a real hot fire.

[James Petregallo]

Can I do it here anywhere? I can do that here. I promise I'll try not to burn the entire town down, but I will probably. The judge recommended starting it on the 40 acres that he owned, which was about two and a half miles south of where downtown early is now. And so he even donated 10 acres of land. He said, I'll give you. You buy 30. I'll give you 10 free. What do you say?

[Jimmy Wissman]

25% off right now.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. So that was recorded in 1878, and the new town was given the name early in honor of him in the beginning. It's just a little bit. Little Tiny town, you know, it's really nothing. There's a big tree corner which was a widely known landmark. It was literally turn left up at the big tree corner.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Big tree, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

That was just a way of doing stuff. Now there's a junction of highways that's south of where early is now here. Now. So as this is going on, basically, I guess the original town of early was a little bit south of here. And then they kind of moved the town.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They do that a lot.

[James Petregallo]

They shifted it. Yeah, they shifted it here. I think whenever the railroad puts in a station, people start meandering toward that. So the new town was in the 1880s and they had several houses, a post office, a railroad depot, a blacksmith, of course, meat market, a barber shop, all that kind of shit. Now reviews of this town and really nothing has happened since then in this town, by the way, since the 1880s. It's really that not much has changed in this town. There's not a lot going on.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a ferrier town.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. From what I understand too. Like stuff is kind of closed down here. Like there was a 24 hour gas station. That's not 24 hours anymore. Stuff like that's going on. Like the restaurant closed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not good, you know, that's what 711 was. Right?

[James Petregallo]

That used to be their hours, 7 to 11. And then they went 24 hours and didn't change their name.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now it's just they took the two off of there.

[James Petregallo]

Why didn't they just change it to 24 7? Why would you not do that? That seems so obvious back then to just change it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't know, man. But it used to literally be 7 2, the number 2 11. Yeah, 2 was real small, meaning we were open from 7 to 11, which

[James Petregallo]

you put a 2 in there, which just confuses everybody now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's all fucked up.

[James Petregallo]

No, it's all fucked up. There is only one review of this town here that I found. It's one review, one star. And it's quote, there is nothing here. The local restaurant shut down and the gas station's no longer open 24 hours. See what I mean from that?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's open 7 to 11. It's stupid.

[James Petregallo]

There is only crackheads and rich old white people. Nothing in between old rich farmers and crackheads. This is all you get here. It's difficult.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Population, Nashville. That's kind of Nashville. Yeah. You also get drunks though there. You get middle class drunks. Yeah. So people who are people from like the hills of northern Georgia come there to party also. So people in this town. 587 is the official number, but people have said since 2020, it's actually gone down quite a touch. So we're not sure. It could be closer to the 400 mark now. Wow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Going down 400 people, not 400,000?

[James Petregallo]

No, no, no, 400. 400,000. We wouldn't be talk, right? There's a city over here that's got 400,000 people in it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Literally 500 people live in this place.

[James Petregallo]

That's it. Pretty much. It's 56.4% men, which is a wildly out of whack statistic for how small the population is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a shitload of dudes.

[James Petregallo]

That's way more guys. Yeah, that's not good. And it's the farm work, I think, is the main issue there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's like 300 men to 200 women.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's definitely a much different ratio. Bad ratio for the fellows out there. Median age here, 43.8, which is about five years older than the national average. So you get a little older crowd. It's only 41.6% married. I expected this to be one of those 60% married towns, but it's not. But other than that, a lot of the stuff is pretty average except for race. Race of this town. 87.2% white, 8.9% black, 3.2% Hispanic. So that's it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Iowa. Look at you.

[James Petregallo]

Look at you. I have zero Asian. Nothing like that. Doing your part. What are you talking about?

[Jimmy Wissman]

For what seems like an awfully high amount of black people for Iowa.

[James Petregallo]

Oh. Oh, you said that right after I said 0.0% Asian. So I was like, what are you talking about?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Doing your part.

[James Petregallo]

Keeping them damn Asians out of here. It was like, wow, what is going on? Jimmy, he's just unleashing a bubbling hatred of Asians I didn't even know existed. And we talk privately all the time. You've never brought this up. This is wild.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Almost 10% African American in a tiny ass town in Iowa is fucking mind blowing. Really?

[James Petregallo]

That seems like a lot of black people for that. For a small town. 74.4% of the people here are religious. That is as high as. That's like Utah levels of religion here. And the highest one of all is Lutheran coming in at 24.3%. So the Lutherans are. They're taking the title here now. There is low unemployment in this town, which, I mean, there's not a lot of people. It seems like if there's no Jobs. You just move to find jobs. So you don't just stick around here and be unemployed. That would be horrible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And hope. And hope the gas station's not even open 24 hours. Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they canceled the night shift. We don't even have that anymore. Median household income here, $78,210, which is above the national average.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy shit.

[James Petregallo]

About almost $10,000, which. A lot of the properties are big. It's a lot of farms, a lot of things like that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

How do they do that?

[James Petregallo]

What do you mean, farms?

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a lot of money.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I think there's a lot of people have property and farms, living off

[Jimmy Wissman]

the land and stuff.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. When you only have 400 something people, I don't think there's a lot of, you know, there's not a lot of people that are working at the gas station. It's probably only two guys that work there because there's only two shifts that are open, and that's it. So you probably get everybody. You either kind of own some property and make some money off of that, or you don't really.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They probably cut that midnight shift because nobody needed the job.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, we can't find anybody for it now. Cost of living, 100 is regular average here. It's 73. So that's. 73 is pretty low. And the median home cost is really low here. This is what's crazy, 123,500 bucks.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Maybe they don't want us talking about this.

[James Petregallo]

James. That is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This sounds great.

[James Petregallo]

It sounds awful. This is the middle of nowhere in Iowa.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But, I mean, everybody's making money and nobody has to spend any money.

[James Petregallo]

Who cares?

[Jimmy Wissman]

They seem to be happy about it.

[James Petregallo]

It's like 100 degrees and humid all summer. It snows all. This is a terrible place to live. You wouldn't go there and go, yeah, I got me a cheap house. But everything else, who cares? This is great. This is awesome.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Doing it up in fucking Ohio.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And look what happens. Cops come kick your goddamn door in for no reason. That's what I'm saying. You don't want to live through your fucking gate. You want to live here. No offense, early, but no, thank you. You know, I'm sure it's great if you grew up there, but it would be hard to, you know, put yourself. Weave yourself into the fabric of this community. Although that's our story today, as someone attempting to do that. Yeah. Correct. So that's pretty cheap, though. $123,500. So if we've convinced you or if Jimmy's convinced you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

That this is a wonderful place to live. We have for you the early Iowa real est. All right. House number one in Jimmy's utopia here. This is actually in nearby Sac City. It's the next little town over. There's only one. One house open in the. For sale in the town proper of early. So in Sac City, though, you can get yourself a one bedroom or a studio with one bathroom. It's a house, though.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Who the hell builds a house with one room? What a weird thing to do. And it's not. It's not like a new tiny house. It's an old house. It makes no sense. It's 1110 square feet, no land to speak of. You're kind of on top of your neighbor here. Seems kind of depressing. $112,000 though, for that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, you're in Sac City, babe.

[James Petregallo]

You're in Sac City. Oh, it's time. And then here is the one on. Right on main street in downtown. Early. You can watch the gas station close at 10 o' clock every night from here. This is a three bedroom. Yeah, three bedroom, two bath, 1488 square foot house. It's a nice little cute house. Two story on 0.29 acres. So not huge, but you know, you're not right on. Not right on top of your neighbor, which is nice.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Quarter acre. Kind of. Kind of close to it though, right?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, because it's downtown early, so I mean, there's a few little houses like that 162,500 doll for that. It's nice on the inside. Well done.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And you're a homeowner.

[James Petregallo]

And you're a homeowner. That's not bad. I mean, 1500 square feet, three bedrooms. Not a bad house. Next up. Oh, here's. If you want to really stretch out and relax. This is the. The crowning jewel here. There's a lot of land for sale around here, but not a lot of houses. This is another one in Sac City. It is a five bedroom. Keep that in mind when I tell you the square footage. Five bedroom, three bath, 1668 square feet. Five bedrooms. I don't know, how do you do that? I don't know how you squeeze five bedrooms.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I mean, there's no living room, no kitchen, there's no bedrooms.

[James Petregallo]

You're on 39 acres, but behind you is like a big farm field. And it just looks like flatness as far as the eye can see. That's your view. Flat. 475,000 bucks for that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They better Justify that. What is that?

[James Petregallo]

Where that's coming from was gold found

[Jimmy Wissman]

on this property in the past?

[James Petregallo]

I think Jed Clamp used to live here and I think there's a good deal of oil under this property. Is the only possible explanation.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Civil War battle.

[James Petregallo]

If you are shooting at some food, you may come up with something here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You may find some crude.

[James Petregallo]

Other than that I don't know anything about it. So that's a lot. That is expensive. Now, things to do here. There's a couple of things to do. Number one, everybody should really do this. Eleven minutes away, a short 11 minute drive from here is the world's largest popcorn ball.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, how.

[James Petregallo]

That's about the reaction I had too. It's not even that big. That's the thing. It's shockingly small. It's not that big.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is it a basketball, like a medicine ball?

[James Petregallo]

No, it's about the size of a truck. I would say 10ft high. It's about the size of like a GMC Yukon. If we'll say which the world's largest. I expect it to be like, oh, it's three stories high and it's. You know what I mean? Didn't you think of it like that?

[Jimmy Wissman]

It better be indoors too because that's going to be a little smaller every

[James Petregallo]

year, every time it rains. But yeah, you picture that. I picture like something impressive. This is literally. They have it like in a, just like in a bulldozer thing like picked up and you go look at it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh really?

[James Petregallo]

Like a front end loader. Yeah, and it's not that much. It's about the same size as the front end loader. It's pretty pathetic, honestly. You wouldn't travel for this. Put it that way. No, it's pretty sad.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It feels like that Little Rascals sketch of a four foot man eating chicken. And it's just a four foot child eating a chicken leg.

[James Petregallo]

Eating a chicken leg? Yeah, it's the same thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You stop and you're like, oh, that's it.

[James Petregallo]

What the fuck? I mean technically it probably is the world's largest popcorn ball because no one thought that was important enough to make a giant popcorn ball. Except for whoever.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nobody else has tried.

[James Petregallo]

But when I saw, I was so unimpressed. Oh, we could set the record. Easy. It's so unimpressive. So unimpressive.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What do you stick it together with? Is it just like a melted sugar?

[James Petregallo]

Who knows, honey? I don't know. Popcorn. Popcorn glue. Jimmy, you know that stuff.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I used to get popcorn balls when I was a kid. The Fucking ones that looked like a jack o' lantern at Halloween. Yeah, I don't know what the fuck they're glued together with.

[James Petregallo]

That's probably something edible, I would assume. But I hope if you're making it just to look at, you could use fucking Elmer's glue at that point. It wouldn't matter.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, I guess so.

[James Petregallo]

No one's gonna eat this goddamn thing. So there's also early Crossroads Day, okay? That's an annual July event. It's the most important community celebration of the year, according to the town website here. Important. Important. That's the word that struck me too. Featuring numerous activities for people of all ages, including a parade, school reunions. They just have it at this every year. They don't bother getting like gathering at a hall or anything. They just say, I'll see you at the next parade at the festival. Softball tournaments, a craft show, food and live music. And we'll find out what that live music is because it's not even ludicrous.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, there's no way. It's 400 people.

[James Petregallo]

There's nobody here. So it says. Though the events of Crossroads Day are important for current and past residents alike. Okay, so we start out on Friday, July 18, with the play Bags tournament. I assume that's cornhole, but they don't want to say it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It fucking better be.

[James Petregallo]

The kids make too many jokes, so they just call it Bags.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now we got Sack City right down

[James Petregallo]

the road right there. I'm gonna go play. I'm representing Sac City in the Bags tournament. Now there's bingo for three hours. That's how exciting this is. Bingo is one of the main events.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Bingo and bags.

[James Petregallo]

Bingo and bags. There's a kids parade, which just looks like a. What is that? Like a pedophile buffet? That sounds awful. Just walk them by and pick them out as they go by. Creepy. Then there's Noise Kitchen, which I think is a band.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It should be.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, but it's a three hour thing. That's a long set.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Good Christ.

[James Petregallo]

Jesus. Then there's a car show. There is a big parade. Registration. Yeah, okay, the big parade, I guess. Then there's the big parade. And it's in all caps and it says, featuring Abu Becker, Rat Patrol.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What is that?

[James Petregallo]

Those people that kill rats or is that a band? I don't know. Then there's a Lucky Wife. Wine slushies will be available at 10am

[Jimmy Wissman]

for the lucky wife.

[James Petregallo]

The lucky wife who gets drunk before noon on a Saturday.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Frozen wine.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. The noon meal, which is free with a donation.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You Know lunch.

[James Petregallo]

You know lunch. Well, they call it different because then they call it the evening meal later on. That's some Iowa shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

That's some Iowa shit. Yeah, this is one of those places, I think, where like where supper is at noon. You know what I mean? Supper is lunch. And then they have the evening meal. It might be like that. There's kids, water fights. That's in the street at 12:30pm Then there's regular water fights at 2. Then we bring in the adults here, push those kids aside to fight with each other.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We bring up the big guns, warming up their pitching arms.

[James Petregallo]

Come on now. Evening meal from 5 to 7. At 5pm, cow pie bingo will be taking place. Cow pie bingo. Which means they're using shit as markers. Yep, that's what that means.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's disgusting.

[James Petregallo]

And then the big entertainment for the weekend.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh boy.

[James Petregallo]

Cotton Creek Entertainment. Dj. That's what it says. I don't know, somebody spinning that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Some DJ we hired.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, some DJ we hired. Now, crime rate. We're interested in this town property crime about half of the national average. So very low. That's good because you'd be able to know who stole anything.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, for sure.

[James Petregallo]

I saw it. It was Bob. He stole my shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And that's. That's all their crime, right?

[James Petregallo]

That's it. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery and of course, assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is about 1/4 below the national average, which seems like. That's all. Seems like it should be lower, right?

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's frighteningly high.

[James Petregallo]

Let's talk about a reason why maybe it's a little higher with this murder here. Let's talk about some murder, everybody. Okay, let's go. Now let's start out with December 13, 2001. Give you a little snapshot of the overview and then we'll go back and get into this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now there's another crime's two weeks away.

[James Petregallo]

Two weeks away. And somebody is actually Christmas shopping comes up in this whole thing too. That somebody was Christmas shopping, doing it early. They're getting it out of the way. That's nice. Plus early you need to get out of town to Christmas shop. So you really gotta plan it. You can't just go to the store.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It was before. In early late.

[James Petregallo]

You can't even stop at the gas station for a last minute item. Get you some 10W40 for your troubles. You can't even do that if it's late. So there's a 911 call from an 11 year old boy. Oh, and he's Saying they need help over here at the house. And early. People have broken into their home. It's been like a home invasion with multiple men have broken into the home and his mother shot an intruder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh. Oh, good for her.

[James Petregallo]

They need it all. They need everything. Yeah, bring the cops, bring the ambulance.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Come help this man. He's injured.

[James Petregallo]

Everything you get. Now when police arrive, they find a young man, absolutely been shot quite a bit. He's been shot nine times. He's in a pool of his own blood. He's in a heap on the floor. He's a mess.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She hit him nine times.

[James Petregallo]

Nine times. We'll find out later. 11 shots were fired, nine strikes on this guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Now, the woman at the hospital, they discover later on she has red marks around her neck that they believe are ligature marks from strangulation. And she says she has been strangled with a pair of pantyhose that she was hanging over the banister to dry. And she's got other bruises on her indicating a possible struggle here because that's her story. Now she also says he was not the only person here. Multiple people broke in, the rest of them ran. It was at least the dead man and another person and possibly a third. Wow. She said the whole thing was, you know, she didn't realize whether it was two or three, but at least two. So this other assailant, this person who breaks into a woman's house, she has three small kids at home. There's an 11 year old, there's a nine year old or a 10 year old and a one year old in the house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's why you shoot 11 rounds. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So that's a lot. So she says there's still somebody on the loose right now. So the cops freak out, the town freaks out. This is not a sure. This is not a normal occurrence in early Iowa that this is going on. Even any kind of lights, emergency lights. People are like, what the hell's going on? They think they know everything about everybody. So hey everybody. Jess gonna take a quick break from the show and tell you a much better way to feed your dog with

[Jimmy Wissman]

ol ollie.com o l l I e.com Absolutely.

[James Petregallo]

We love our dogs. We do crazy things for our dogs. You know what I mean? You take care of them. My dog, Benny the big cone corso, he's got like skin problems and stuff. So he's got to like go to get bathed all the time and he's got like, you know, put like lotions on him and stuff and take care of him. They take A nice picture of him with his little bandana on and all that. This is what we do for our dogs. That's true. A lot of people like their dogs more than their family. That's a statistic. It's. It's a lot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Should be all of us.

[James Petregallo]

It's a lot. And if anybody knows what being dog obsessed is all about, it's Ollie. They're relentless about delivering the best food and experience for you and your dog. And they give you a way to check on the health of your dog over and over and over again. It's really, really great. You really want to do this. The food Ollie's fresh recipes are developed by real chefs. It's not just a bunch of slop. It's human. Great food. I want to eat it. It looks great. I want to sit down next to them. Carrots and peas.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It looks great.

[James Petregallo]

It really is. Backed by vet nutritionists, they're obsessed with making the best meals with the high quality ingredients, the highest ones they can find. And from the moment you start your subscription, everything is tailored to your puppy, to your dog. The meals are perfectly portioned, and you get a puptainer and a scoop for easy storing and serving. And with Ollie, you don't just get food through their app. You can actually check in on your dog's health with real vets just by uploading a picture. Their team can check in on your dog's weight, digestion, teeth and coat. And because they're obsessed with making sure your pup is healthy as can be, this is what they want to offer you. We love Ollie. How's the new pup? Loving it. He's got to love it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, so good.

[James Petregallo]

So good. He eats it up. My dogs go crazy for it. And certain stuff that Benny can't have from his allergies, they can. It's awesome. He can eat this. It's really, really good. And the health screenings, everybody should do that with their dog anyway. That's fantastic. It's really great. Get ready for both you and your pup to be obsessed. Head to ollie.com stm and tell them about your dog. And use the code STM to get 60% off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer an obsession guarantee. If you're not completely obsessed, you'll get your money back. That's O l l I e.com STM Enter code STM to get 60% off your first box.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp.com youm know it, because we all have problems and we all have stresses and we all could use somebody to talk to. And BetterHelp is the place to go. And especially when you're having financial stress that's bearing down upon you. That's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's so much stress, you already feel terrible. And then the financial stress just makes you feel like even more, worse, worthless.

[James Petregallo]

You can't sleep at night. It's horrible. It keeps you awake. And really, it affects more than just your bank account. It takes a serious toll on your mental health and your relationships. 88% of Americans feel some form of financial stress starting out in 2026. That's crazy. And that's. It's tough, man. It can bring you down. And money worries bring anxiety, sleep disruption, depression, one of the leading sources of conflict for couples as well. That happens so much. So this month we want to normalize the emotional weight of financial stress and remind you and remind everybody that struggling with money doesn't mean that you failed. Sometimes it's about accessing the right kind of support. And God, we know that therapy is everything. It's incredible. And whatever your problems are, whether they are financial, romantic, health, anything that really, really helps, helps family conflicts. It helps so much just to talk to somebody. They have quality therapists at Better Help. They work according to a strict code of conduct. They're fully licensed in the US BetterHelp does the initial matching work with you to get you with a therapist that's going to work for you so you can, you know, concentrate on what you're doing. They just do a short questionnaire, helps identify your needs and preferences. They have over 12 years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rates. So they'll figure that out and who to hook you up with. But if they don't get it right the first time, doesn't matter. You can switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's phenomenal and with no additional charge either.

[James Petregallo]

That's the thing. They just want you to get some help and get better. Your financial stress doesn't need more stress because you don't like your therapist. You know what I mean? With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. They've served over 6 million people globally. And it really works. They have an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] Smalltown Murder. That's betterhelp.com Smalltown Murder now back to the show. Neighbors immediately after that say they're. They lock their doors. Now this was a no locking community before this, but now everybody's deadbolted up. One neighbor said, it has been really shocking. I know it happens all the time, but this is a small town and somebody, you know, how does this happen? You know what I mean? She said she and her husband were watching TV when they saw the flashing lights of emergency vehicles coming down their street. And she said it's a pretty quiet town, so something like that really shakes people up. It is bizarre as you might imagine.

[Jimmy Wissman]

A lot of 50 cent origin stories happening in the world.

[James Petregallo]

Not a lot of that. No, no. A rapper from here is really gonna get clowned on a lot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's not gonna get hit with nine ears of corn.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's it. That was his. How'd you know that was the name of the one guy's debut album, Nine Ears of Corn. And yeah, people knew. People knew what he meant because he's hard. It's okay. So Kenley Schamicher and his wife Jane are both members of the local fire department's emergency medical units. It's a lot of volunteer, Right? There's not a lot of work, so

[Jimmy Wissman]

they keep the community together.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, not a lot of work for people around here. You can't hire a full time staff. You gotta have, you know, there's only 400 people. What are the odds of needing constant medical care in emergencies?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, and the ability to keep somebody on staff. More than one fireman. Cause you can't just have one fireman.

[James Petregallo]

No, he's the guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You gotta have firemen.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, exactly. So that's how you do volunteer stuff. Now they said, quote, there was a lot of blood and shell casings. I have no idea what she went through. The woman who had to do the shooting, she had to go through hell to be scared like that? That's what they said. Like it looked like. Man, somebody must have really just been so terrified.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Grass all over the place.

[James Petregallo]

No, this shit looks like the OK Corral, for Christ's sake. It's wild. And when we find out later too, two guns were used. What? So she was going like Doc Holliday on this person? This is crazy. That's why the OK Corral came up with me, because someone just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I mean, that's pretty wild.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She had dual holsters, this lady. That's impressive.

[James Petregallo]

It's pretty impressive. So let's find out a little Bit about her and find out who's on the floor and what the hell happened here. Okay? Tracy Ann Richter is her name. Now, at the time this happens, she's Tracy Ann Roberts, but Richter is her maiden name here. Now, she's from Chicago originally.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay?

[James Petregallo]

Born in 1966. She's not from the farm area. She's not from Iowa. She's not from this area. She's pretty new in town. Actually. They've only been in town about three years. Ish. Two to three years. Her and her family, her and her husband and three small children. Now she. Her dad is a Chicago homicide detective, by the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

So, yeah, someone said she's aware. Yeah, someone told her, somebody breaks in your house, you shoot first and you ask questions later. I'll tell you that right now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And if one gun is empty, grab

[James Petregallo]

enough, you grab two. In case one don't work right? I'll tell you that. Yeah, that's right. You put a sport pepper on it afterwards and you make it Chicago style. That's how you do it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Shake the celery salt.

[James Petregallo]

Celery salt and a little bit of a sport pepper, and you got yourself something special there, pal. Let me tell you. So that's where she comes from. If you come from your dad being a homicide detective, you've heard some wild shit and you are like, okay, it's finally coming for me. I would assume you'd just be waiting for the minute that somebody's coming to murder you in your home, locked and

[Jimmy Wissman]

loaded every day, all the time.

[James Petregallo]

So she got married in 1988 at age 22 to a Dr. John Pittman III. Oh, yeah. He's a plastic surgeon.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hell yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Originally based in Colorado and then later in Virginia. Now plastic surgeons I never trust, by the way. They're the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

I've always heard somebody. I can't remember who said it, but years ago, someone said, plastic surgeons are the pimps of the Dr. World. And I was like. Because they're not like normal doctors. They have, like, jewelry and shit and they're. You know, you go in their office and they're like, you want a white wine spritzer while I look at your tits? It's a real weird scenario. It's not as. Not quite as clinical as other.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I've never seen one of them walking around like this either. You know what I mean?

[James Petregallo]

No, no, no, never.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're just like, shaking hands and they're, like, about to go do surgery. Excuse me.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's crazy. You never know. Like, you go to a Normal doctor. They're like, well, nothing's wrong with you. Go home. Whereas you go to these people, they're like, what do you want me to fix? You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Like, shit, I'll fix it up.

[James Petregallo]

I'll carve you all up. What are you. You don't like your nose? No problem. Your lips, we could work with that. Your tit sagging? Perfect. How's your ass doing? Does that need a little help too? It's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They'll do anything and they'll look at

[James Petregallo]

you and just pick you apart like, ah, look at you. Yeah, I could see that. There's five toes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jesus. Everybody only has four now.

[James Petregallo]

Everybody. It's kind of the new trend, really. If you hang out, it's usually taking

[Jimmy Wissman]

the middle one out. It balances you out.

[James Petregallo]

We take that out and it seems. Yeah, people seem to like it. No, you'll walk funny, but it's. People seem to think it looks good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Closed toed shoes for sure. You'll never fit in another pair of sandals.

[James Petregallo]

No, no. They'll fall off for sure if you do that. So. 1990, they have a son named Burt. Now bert is the 11 year old who called 911. By 1992, their marriage is getting a little fucking weird here. A little messed up here. Complicated and messy would be a good way to put it. They separate after some strife and they get back together and separate again. They accuse each other of all sorts of shit. It's mutual accusations of abuse. There's a gun. There's gunplay involved here as well. Some crazy shit. In 1992, Tracy ends up pleading no contest to discharging a firearm during an argument with him in the home. Wherever they were, it doesn't really matter, honestly. She discharged a firearm in the house down at the city limits. Yeah, yeah, just during an argument, I think is the main issue here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's not good.

[James Petregallo]

If you fire a gun in anger, that's a lot. That's some shit. So she received probation for that. Okay, okay. It was her first offense. So Tracy, she pulls guns. Apparently.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's good for it.

[James Petregallo]

She's good for it. By 1996, the divorce is happening between them. And there's, like I said, competing stories of violence during the divorce. She accuses him of sexually abusing their son, Burt, the one born in 1990. She said he was three years old when Dr. Pittman was abusing him. Now the investigators look into the claim, fully, investigate it, social services, everything else. They find no evidence of this whatsoever. And they find it awfully Convenient that it only comes up during a custody trial, during a divorce, and not earlier. You know what I mean? And he countered that she was violent. I mean, she did let a shot off it during an argument.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There is evidence of that.

[James Petregallo]

Never mind letting a shot off. There was a gun out. During an argument.

[Jimmy Wissman]

During an argument.

[James Petregallo]

That's crazy. You've been married and divorced. You've been in arguments with your spouse. A gun ever come out? Once. Never. Right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm shocked. But no.

[James Petregallo]

At your house? Yeah, that is shocking. But still, no. So he said that she was not only violent, but unfaithful as well. She also was cheating on him and all that kind of thing. So after the divorce, Tracy moves back to Chicago with the young son with Burt. So it's just Tracy and Burt. And she begins dating, apparently a new man, a different doctor.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure. Oh, she likes the docs.

[James Petregallo]

She likes. Well, they're stable people. You know, there's an income coming and they're usually, you know. Well, people tell you too, you know, go find a nice doctor. Go find. Especially back in the day, not now, but in the 60s where she was born, they'd say, know you find a

[Jimmy Wissman]

nice doctor also back then, health insurance paid you no matter what.

[James Petregallo]

You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah. They just cut the check if you were a doctor and send them a bill. They'd pay it.

[James Petregallo]

They'd pay it. So this is Joseph, Dr. Joseph Laspiza.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What's he do?

[James Petregallo]

He's an oral surgeon in Chicago.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

So a hated, hated man.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Boy, are they fucking.

[James Petregallo]

They're heroes. People have nightmares about his face, though. That's the problem. Well, it's this close to them. Terrible shit happens happen.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They will change your life.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, they're great for a week you will. It's horrible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. By the way, want to kill that person?

[James Petregallo]

I'm saying all this as I have a dental appointment tomorrow. So that's why as much as I love them, I hate them too. So absolute heroes. Oh, yeah, heroes. I won't feel that way tomorrow, but a week from then I will feel that way again.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Begrudged hero.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Now, so there is a serious accusation that she makes toward Dr. Lispiza here. Okay. And they were dating, by the way. She claims that he sexually assaulted her while she was sedated in his dental chair.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, how'd she know?

[James Petregallo]

Which is. I mean, I guess if you've seen that episode of Seinfeld, maybe her shirt was untucked or. I don't know what the signs of that something. But that's what the accusation is. Now, she produces a typewritten confession from him. What she says is from him. In which he not only admits to all of this, but agrees to pay her $150,000 for her trouble. Okay, now. Okay. He said, I didn't fucking type that. That's crazy. I didn't molest her. We were going out and I never sedated her in the chair. I didn't molest her. And I certainly didn't type up a confession. I definitely didn't agree to pay her 150 grand. So this is all bullshit. Basically, he called the whole thing an extortion scheme.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That sounds like.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. He said she had him clocked from the minute they met, probably to do this. He said none of this ever happened. She didn't report this to the police, by the way. No.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who'd she report it to?

[James Petregallo]

Didn't report it to the police. Didn't report it to, like, the Board of Dentistry or whatever, whoever you're telling a doctor to. She filed a civil suit for the 150,000 that she says that he promised her. Now, based on this letter, this went nowhere. There's no proof. No proof it happened. No proof he wrote the letter. It's just her with a typewritten page saying, he should give me $150,000.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He owes me 150 grand.

[James Petregallo]

So Laspiza later said that the incident damaged his practice. He described the whole thing, and he said it made him feel angry and stupid.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. He got like Sharon stoned in casino. Basically, that's how he feels, that he got scammed. So about 1997, maybe late 1996, she's had a busy year. She's been divorced, had this whole thing with the oral surgeon, and now meeting a new guy all in the same year. So it's been an eventful year.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, it's been a time.

[James Petregallo]

Been a time. She meets a new guy named Michael Roberts. He is an Australian, actually, and he's an entrepreneur, which makes him sound really fancy. He's an Australian entrepreneur, but he also. Income is spotty and stuff like that from his entrepreneurial adventures and things of that nature.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's starting and selling businesses so much that he doesn't know which one he's

[James Petregallo]

involved in right now. I think it's just. He doesn't have a job, I think, is the main point. But he will end up working and doing this. But for some, he's not overly successful. He's not some kind of Australian baron who came over here to relax in Iowa or anything like that. So that's what he does. Now. They met online in 1997, which is incredibly ahead of the curve chat rooms.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right? I'll tell you.

[James Petregallo]

Well, yeah, probably. It's way ahead of the curve, this shit. This is well before this was called out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's before eharmony.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, yeah, Right before that. This is when. If you met someone online, you'd make a deal not to tell anyone where you met. I know people like that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

I remember in, like, 2000.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You what?

[James Petregallo]

In 2003, there was a couple that I knew, and they said they knew each other in college or some shit, whatever. And my friend took me aside, and he was a real funny guy because he had a Boston accent. And he's like. He goes, I got to tell you the truth. And I'm like, what?

[Jimmy Wissman]

He goes, I never been to college.

[James Petregallo]

Well, he was actually, like, a really good accountant with a weird Boston accent, which was hilarious. He goes, I didn't meet her in college. I'm like, okay, where'd you meet her? He goes, I met her on the Internet.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Whispery like that.

[James Petregallo]

Whispered. We were nowhere near people. I met her on the Internet and

[Jimmy Wissman]

I said, I need this to go no further.

[James Petregallo]

I said, okay. He goes, don't tell nobody. Seriously. Because people make fun of us. We didn't tell our families. Cause. Cause my mother would kill me if he. If she.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We didn't tell our family.

[James Petregallo]

My mother would kill me if she knew. I found a girl off the computer. That's what he tells me. Just like that. And then he did one of these where you. He pats you on the arm, like, that's our, like, pact of silence. And he nodded and he walked away. I'm not shitting you at all. That's exactly what happened. And I was like, girl on the computer. The computer. I was like, I won't tell, bro. You're good. You are totally fine.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's too fun. Yeah. Do you know why she would kill you? Because it never fucking works, man.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it usually doesn't work. All they did was fight, too. It was a now. Because now they've got it down to a science. It's no stupid.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, they're still together.

[James Petregallo]

I don't think they're together now. They were fighting in, like, 2003, so I can't imagine they're still together now. But now it's people that meet online. It's different because there's so many, like, things. Filters you have to go through first. So it's a little more Matched up back then, it was just there was this chick in this chat room.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And then, like she was talking and I was talking and, you know, like, I was like, hey, she likes the band. I like. And like, you know, TV shows are the same. And then we got together.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now we're married.

[James Petregallo]

Don't tell my mother, though. Don't tell her. Yeah, she don't know. So it's like, I'm gonna meet his mother, too. I didn't know this guy that well.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Coming to meet his mother, that means

[Jimmy Wissman]

she's as embarrassed as he is that if we're not telling anybody.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. But this is like, Tracy's adventurous because not only is this online and she's like 32, 31 years old at this point. So not a lot of 31 year olds were really kicking around on the Internet in 97. This was for like 15 year olds to be doing. And not only that, but he's an Australian. This is all very exotic. Very exotic, this whole thing. So they get married very fast. Like really within a year of meeting, they're married.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. They have kids. Quick pumping them out. Entrepreneur, entrepreneur, Australian entrepreneur. He makes kangaroo repellent. And not a large market for that in Iowa, unfortunately, but in his homeland, it went huge.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Makes mallets to defend against drop baits.

[James Petregallo]

So I love that. 1998, they have a son named Noah. And then in 1999, 2000ish, they have another child named Mason. So three kids total for her, two out of this marriage. Two are half Australian.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So we've got Bert, Noah and. What's the last one?

[James Petregallo]

Bert, Noah, Mason.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They moved to four letter names. Oh, Mason. All right.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, Mason, but short. They all moved to early. It's cheap. Number one, you can get a big house for cheap.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Which I've heard of that.

[James Petregallo]

That's. We heard tell of that bit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's my selling point.

[James Petregallo]

It's quiet, it's cheap, it's a nice. She thinks it's a nice place to raise kids. It's not like Chicago. It's not, you know, a big city and that sort of thing. So they were like. Plus she's got a lot of history in Chicago with all these divorces and lawsuits and gunplay and things like that. So she's looking to start over, start anew. New family, new times, new start. So they buy a house here from a woman named Mona. Wede. I think it's Wede. W, E H D E. I think it's Wedi or weed. But Mona. Now Mona lives two houses Over. And she's also a real estate agent. So she is the person showing the house to the Roberts. Now, Roberts family. Tracy, Michael Mercy, Noah Mason. Okay, so Mona's family lives right there. And they're gonna be close with the Roberts family because they're the first people they meet. She's the real estate agent who sold her the house. And she's like, if he's in the house, I'm right there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is this also her house or somebody else's house?

[James Petregallo]

No, it's somebody else's house. She's just showing it. But she lives two doors down, so. Cool. Now Mona has a family as well. She's got a husband named Brett here, and they have a son named Dustin at this time. Dustin's born in 1981, so when they move in, he's 18ish, just graduating from high school. Dustin grew up here his whole life, all that kind of thing. His father's lived there forever. He's a local guy. They're sewn into the early fabric here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're early as it gets.

[James Petregallo]

They're early as it gets. That's right. Real early. Now, Dustin, people say he's quiet, pretty timid, seems a little depressive sometimes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Generally a non confrontational kind of a quiet kid. That's just the way it is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Iowa boy.

[James Petregallo]

Iowa boy. But he's not like a. He's not brash at all, which is understandable for an Iowa guy. But he's also not like, I'm a tough farm guy. He's not like that either. He's just kind of a timid young guy. No criminal record or anything like that. Not a real ambitious guy. He works at Dairy Queen. You know, he's working at Dairy Queen and stuff like that. He likes to play golf and go snowmobiling with his dad. In high school, he was in special education classes. He worked at Dairy Queen, and he also worked on a construction on a plant. Basically the construction of an ethanol plant. Let's turn that corn into something essentially here. Now, Dustin, that was likely like the

[Jimmy Wissman]

big job to get at the time too.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, probably, yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The ethanol plant.

[James Petregallo]

They're building the plant. It's probably decent pay. Now Dustin becomes close with Michael, Tracy's Australian husband. Okay. They become close. Michael becomes like a mentor to Dustin. And for Dustin, if you grew up your whole life in a town with 400 people, somebody from another country across the world must seem pretty cool and exotic. And he's been around the world and. And he seems like he's probably just Worldly, you know what I mean? And you don't know shit. And Michael's real nice to him and takes him along to church. He'll take Dustin along with them and

[Jimmy Wissman]

he's doing fine, but he was a little slower than the other kids, so it's probably pretty impressive that he does things too.

[James Petregallo]

And I don't know what his level of that was or if he's just dyslexic or. I have no idea. You know what I mean? He could just be. Be something simple like that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm not sure if there was less people in the classroom. I probably would have been in those classes too, if the teacher could see it, apart from my grades.

[James Petregallo]

They just heard you read the shout outs and they're like, we're bringing him in. He said, pamela, and that's not right. They never.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They never had me read out loud. If they would have heard that shit.

[James Petregallo]

They've been like, oh, no, something's wrong. That's fucking funny. Yeah, that's. If you don't know. I don't read the stories because I like the sound of my own voice. Yeah, that's not what it is at all. I can't. If I could say, jimmy, read this, that would be wonderful for a while, but it would take, and it's no

[Jimmy Wissman]

offense, for a good 5, 10 minutes. It might be fun.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's no offense at all too, because reading out loud is not. You have to be practiced at it or else it's not easy. So you're not dumb. It's just a matter of. It's a hard thing for some people to do. So anyway, basically Dustin gets to hear about the outside world from Michael and Michael's trying to take him under his wing. They do paintball tournaments and stuff too. Yeah, Michael and Dustin are like paintball buddies. Dustin goes with the family and they enter paintball tournaments and he's on Michael's team and all that kind of shit. And so, you know, the family is pretty. They're pretty enmeshed, these two families. I mean, they're not eating at each other's houses every night or anything like that. But, you know, the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're doing special outings together.

[James Petregallo]

That's pretty cool. They know each other well. And now there's also Mary Higgins. She is a local lady who. Mary Higgins. Sounds like she's from Iowa.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, there's a farm author, Mary Higgins Clark, right?

[James Petregallo]

Yes. She doesn't have a Clark, though.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No.

[James Petregallo]

No. She's looking for a guy named Clark she can marry.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She thought It'd be so everybody thinks she's real rich.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she could up her status a little bit here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Every one of that bitch's books. Yeah, that's fucking one of them.

[James Petregallo]

I was gonna say someone. A lady like your mom's age. That's right in the wheelhouse there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Agatha Christie and Mary Higginson. My fucking bathroom was. Looked like a border. So it was just those, though.

[James Petregallo]

That's the female equivalent to having a shelf of Tom Clancy novels. It's very similar. That couple's married, you know, Mary Higgins Clark lady and fucking Tom Clancy guy. So she's a farmer here, Mary. And she becomes Tracy's close friend in early. There's her confidante. She drove Tracy's son home from school all the time. And her and Tracy would have coffee together. And, you know, this is her pal. This is her, sit down, lady pal here. Now, there is still drama here, though. This isn't. Everything isn't settled.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can't clean it out.

[James Petregallo]

Well, it's not all settled because she. Tracy, is still in an ongoing custody battle with her first husband, Dr. Pittman, over son Burt. It's still going on. They've been divorced for years. They're still fighting. He's 11 or some shit going on. He's 10 going on 11. So it's a lot. And there is a custody hearing approaching in early 2002. So now the whole shooting happened December 13, 2001. There is an approaching custody hearing going on there. And it's a big deal, too, because he pays her, at this point, $1,000 a month in child support in the 90s. In the late 90s. And that apparently shit and early. That's enough to live on back then.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And that apparently is something that Tracy does not want to lose at all. I mean, I'm sure she doesn't want to lose her son either, but she also needs the income as well, so there's a lot. If she loses primary custody, she loses her son. And $1,000. It's winner take all here. So there's a lot. So this thousand dollars meant something to her as well.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Now, 2000 and 2001 in this area, her marriage to Michael is starting to fall apart. Her relationships are rough. Yeah, they're rough. I mean, they don't last long. Mutual allegations of abuse again. Tracy claiming physical violence, Michael denying it, and accusing her of trying to suffocate him. Now, we don't know if that's figuratively or literally, but that's the accusation that he says is suffocating him. So we're not sure. So she. In 2001, she's still fighting with Dr. Pittman here. She makes new allegations about abuse of Burt from Dr. Pittman. Oh, and these were dismissed by the

[Jimmy Wissman]

court from 10 years earlier. She's still saying this shit was going on?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she's still saying from 1993 this happened. And I don't know if she's saying that or if she's alleging new instances of abuse.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Got it.

[James Petregallo]

Not sure. But either way, the doctor responds by filing legal actions, claiming that she was interfering with his visitation rights and alienating him from his son. She's not allowed to do that. So Tracy is worried about all this. She's going to have to travel to Chicago to go to court now, and it's turned into a huge pain in the ass. Now, a few days before the shooting in her house and the home invasion and all that, a judge had ordered that Tracy be deposed shortly under oath. In the next couple weeks, you're going to be deposed, which is a big deal in a case like this. That's a lot. So December 13, 2001, comes around. This is where we started. This is the pool of blood. Two guns blazing. I got two guns, one for each of you. All that shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Letting them have it.

[James Petregallo]

Letting them have it. Now, Michael's out of town. He, I believe, is in Minneapolis doing something for work with a friend of theirs as well. They have a friend couple, the Friedmans and the man, and the couple works with Michael and the woman hangs out with Tracy. So they have, like a work couple friends here. Now, on this night, on this day, Tracy's home. She's got the children, Bird, 11, Noah, 3, Mason, 2, all at home with her here. So they're all home. Everybody's home except for Michael. Now, in the days leading up to December 13th, apparently, I guess she had Dustin, the next neighbor, Mona's kid. I guess Tracy had asked Mona, Dustin's mom, if Dustin would be available to be able to come to her home in the next day or two to do some work for a computer business that Tracy owned with her second husband. There was some filing and paperwork to do that she didn't have time to do because she has three small kids, too. And she's saying, I could use his help and I'll pay him and all that kind of thing if he needs some extra money. So Mona said, quote, she said, we have a whole bunch of copies that we want Dustin to make. So Mona said, I said something like, dustin's not really speedy about getting jobs done. Dustin's a bit of a slacker here. He's a teenager. And if you want speedy clerical work, he might not be your top, might not be your top prospect for that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Takes him a minute to find the dilly boy.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's tough. So Mona said, quote, she goes, that's okay. Just send Dustin down in the next day or two and it'll be on a trial basis. If he can do it, then he can stay on. If not, then no harm, no foul, basically. So apparently on the 13th during the afternoon, Dustin stopped by as requested by Tracy. Rang the doorbell here and was looking for work. Like she said. I heard you have work. Hey everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you the best home security available out there. SimpliSafe.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

Hey everybody. Jess, going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a much better, easier way to shop with Thrive Market.

[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

Thrive Market is a membership based online grocery store. It's just $5 a month. You get access to curated selection of organic and non GMO brands. 90 plus dietary filters. The app is awesome for that. Weekly sales, free gifts and the peace of mind that 1000 plus ingredients are already restricted one annual fee. Priceless peace of mind. We love Thrive Market. I really enjoy it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I love eggs out of my diet with them.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. For Sarah, the gluten, you can filter that right out. Anything with gluten in it and it is gone. It's awesome. And if you find some ingredient that you don't want, you can find another something like that without that ingredient. It's really excellent. It really is fantastic. We love it. I really do. Can't tell you enough about Thrive Market. I love their sea salt tortilla chips, by the way. Absolutely outstanding. I keep those stocked all the time. I order multiple bags at once. It's a lot. I love this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What am I a big fan of?

[James Petregallo]

Sea salt. Oh, they're so good. They're so good. Those sea salt chips. They really are here. It's excellent. Plus Thrive Market restricts, like we said, a thousand plus ingredients. No stressing over any of this. Labels or googling every additive. Who has time to do that? Every product is curated organic and non GMO brands vetted before they ever hit the site. The in app Barcode Scanner finds healthier swaps for almost anything in your pantry right now. They're awesome. And you pay $5 a month so you don't have to google all this stuff and worry about it. And I don't have time to do that too much. It's too much of a hassle. And the member pricing up to 30%. You end up with like 30% off every week anyway on sales and free gifts and price matching. Free delivery. It'll pay for itself. Really. It really does. It's excellent. No per order delivery fees, no service charges or figuring out what your tip's going to be. None of that stuff. One annual cost and that's it. All the filters mean you're gonna get anything you want out of there. You want high protein, you want low sugar glp, one friendly gluten free keto, more whatever you want. It's awesome. The fact that you can filter out the whole site by high protein or low sugar in seconds, it's awesome. You guys want that? Ready to do your own spring reset. Join Thrive Market with our link thrivemarket.com Smalltown Murder for $20 off your first three orders, plus you'll get a free $60 gift.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

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[James Petregallo]

This is the time of year where you got to rethink what's in your closet. What do I have? What do I have to put out? I've been putting big coats on and stuff all winter. Now I gotta actually show myself and I gotta show my clothes. What are they? And you know, I want to keep fewer things but better things. I don't want a closet full of junk. Basically pieces that are well made, pieces you can wear all the time. That's why we keep coming back to Quince. The fabrics feel elevated, the fits are thoughtful, and the pricing actually makes sense. Quince makes high quality everyday essentials using premium materials like 100% European linen and their insanely soft flow knit activewear fabric, which is really good, by the way. It's soft, it feels great. They're men's linen pants, which Jimmy has. We love those linen pants. We know that. Yes, they're awesome. And their shirts are lightweight, breathable and comfortable. Basically the perfect layer for spring. The pants strike the right balance between laid back and refined. So you look put together without looking like you're trying too hard. You know, nobody wants that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're great for on the lake.

[James Petregallo]

They're sitting on a boat, sitting on a Beach, little breeze going.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They're great water pants.

[James Petregallo]

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[Jimmy Wissman]

He's the one that needs the.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, so she said, yeah, you know, well, I need him to talk to you too and all that kind of shit. Or she was just busy with the kids, didn't feel like doing it, dealing with it right then. We don't know. Now she had a friend that was supposed to stay with her the night of the 13th. You didn't hear about her being in the house, right?

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, no.

[James Petregallo]

That's because Tracy sent her away. Oh, this is Marie Friedman. She is the Michael's work friend's wife. Yeah, she's friends with them for that. Now she says that she showed up at the home here on December 13th planning to spend the night because their husbands were traveling on business.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, she's gonna stay over Little Gals night.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I guess she doesn't like being in the house alone.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And if you live in a rural area too, it could be creepy to be in a house alone like that. You could feel like at any moment you choose the horror movie character that can come murder you without anyone knowing the difference. So. So, I mean, that makes sense. We don't know. So this woman here, what is her name? Marie. Marie Friedman. She told Tracy that, or she said Tracy told her when she got there that the Dustin kid was here, a couple doors down. He had been over and he was asking about work. But Tracy had told Marie that she was glad that Dustin left because he creeped her out. So her story now is she sent him away because he was creeping her out. Didn't want her in the house without the husband. So she also told Marie that we're not going to do the sleepover tonight. Even though Marie came over to the house with like a duffel bag ready to sleep over.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She had a sleeping bag? Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She told her to go home, which is super. And Marie was like, what? Like, why? Why'd you tell me to come here? And now I gotta leave.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You brought a tent?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Why am I not allowed to stay here? Also like, what the fuck? I brought some Hot Pockets with me. It's fine, I won't eat. It's good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And a nice bottle of wine.

[James Petregallo]

Look at it. She pulls it out of her bag. She left. I guess they had tea together and they chatted about all this. And then Marie just took her shit and left. She's like, anyway, so you'll go home now. And she was like, I guess I'll go home now. She took off. Now later on here, Tracy says this is what happened and this is the goings on. She was getting the one year old daughter ready for the bath. Okay. And she said she laid towels over the banister along with some pantyhose. I don't know if the towels were to dry. The baby and the pantyhose were. I don't know what it was. Pantyhose. It sounds like the pantyhose were probably hanging over the shower like women used to do. And she probably took those and the towels that were hanging and put them over the mattress. That makes sense. I'm just trying to put together why you would do that. So. So her son Burt was watching a movie with his brother, the three year old, in Bert's room upstairs.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Got it.

[James Petregallo]

That's what's going on. So Tracy says she hears their Rottweiler Maxine. So they have a Rottweiler in the house, so that's pretty secure, barking outside. So she does what people do when we have. We have dogs and we hope they alert us to intruder. And Then when they bark, what do we do?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Shut up.

[James Petregallo]

Shut the fuck up. God damn it. Shut up. Why are you barking? Fuck. Stop doing the thing that you're supposed to do and that dogs do, especially a Rottweiler. What do you expect? They're a little territorial and that's what they do. I love Rottweilers. They're great dogs. So she told her to shut the fuck up. The dog. She screamed, shut up, Maxine. God damn it. Then she heard a noise downstairs.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

She was like, oh. And Maxine's like, yeah, I told you, think of that shit. That's right. She thought it must have been her husband and Ray Friedman who went. Who had gone to Minneapolis with him. They're supposed to come, drive back, like, overnight, but they left in the morning. They got here a little early. You know, who knows? Either way, that is the setup here. Something is happening. Now, then we cut to the 911 call. So she hears something downstairs. A little while later, Burt calls 91 1. Police arrive and find, like we said, a dead young man on the floor. It's Dustin.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh. What?

[James Petregallo]

Dustin is dead on the floor. Full of holes. Nine gunshot wounds from two different guns. Now, they look at this. Including, three of the wounds are to the back of the head and neck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Whoa.

[James Petregallo]

And we'll later find out that they are fired from above while he was face down on the floor.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the hell is that about?

[James Petregallo]

Fuck, that is rough. Including one shot through the eye.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, wow.

[James Petregallo]

This is pretty graphic.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So this is a lot. They said later on they will find out, but there's. The timing of the shots will become important.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure.

[James Petregallo]

Now, Tracy's story is because obviously she's standing there with guns, and she said, I shot him. I mean, she's not hiding it or anything. And she said that I was upstairs, I was bathing the baby when I heard noises downstairs. She said she ran into Burt's room and handed him the baby. Can't leave a baby in a tub alone. Yeah, that's rough.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hang on to Mason.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, hang on to Mason here. So she said after she handed Burt the baby, she was grabbed by the hair and pulled. And then she said that she was choked unconscious with a pair of her own pantyhose that were drying on the staircase banister. So somebody used that as a weapon. So they didn't bring their own ligature. They used the pantyhose that were hanging there. Okay. Now she passed out from being choked.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She regained consciousness, she said, and she was alone.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She heard noises but there was nobody over her. Nobody was still choking her or anything like that. So she ran to the master bedroom, opened up a gun safe, which is either under or beside the bed, not sure which, but right by the bed, and grabbed a.40 caliber Beretta and a.357 revolver.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is a wild.

[James Petregallo]

That's a lot of gun.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a frightening human being. Holding both of those.

[James Petregallo]

That's a lot. And one semi auto. One fucking revolver. So she said at that point she had two guns and she just blindly fired over her shoulder. Really? With three small children in the house. Blindly shot. She heard noises and blindly shot over her shoulder. After she pulled him out, she raced in there, got the gun safe open, heard somebody chasing her. As soon as she pulled it out, just pulled, turned behind and only missed twice. Well, no, no, no. That's the first couple shots. Okay, okay. She said she blindly shot over the shoulder and hit one of the intruders, who was Dustin. She said once the gunshots went off, the second intruder fled. You hear a.357 go off inside a house, you will fucking. You will run. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's more than a Rottweiler.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, man, that's a lot. That'll make the Rottweiler go high, like that's a lot. So the second intruder fled. She said she got up and fired more rounds into Dustin as he laid on the floor, including after he had tried to get up. She said. So she knocked him down with the initial shots. She doesn't know how many she shot at him or hit him with, but he went down. But he was trying to get up, and he was telling her to stay down. She said she warned him to stop and she'd shot him a couple more times, she said. Then she went and checked on the children. Now, Burt corroborated the story and said that he had a baseball bat, and that was part of this whole thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He was there, too.

[James Petregallo]

We'll get more details as this comes out. But he said that he had a baseball bat and was trying to defend his siblings when this was going on. That's when his mom was passed out from being choked. The intruder went to him and he had a baseball bat. And then she ended up running away. They followed her, she got her gun, and this is what happened. So police find that she fired 11 bullets, nine of which struck Dustin.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Now, they find no forced entry. But a lot of people don't lock their doors around here also. So a lot of. Especially a back door or something. People aren't gonna lock that but they also find no ransacking as well. Now, maybe that's because they didn't have time to ransack because they ran into Tracy and this whole thing took place first. Maybe the point the thing was to get her out of the way and then ransack. We don't know. So they find no signs that the house had been broken into. They do find Dustin's car parked in the driveway.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So he drove there from two doors down.

[James Petregallo]

Two doors down, he drove there. Which, I mean, I guess if you're gonna steal shit you'd want, you're gonna need something to carry it in.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You don't wanna carry it two doors down.

[James Petregallo]

That's a long walk. That's a long walk. And pretty obvious as you carry a desktop Dell down a couple of blocks there. So it's not hidden, it's not in the bushes. It's not around the back of the house. This is right in the driveway. And inside it, they find an old computer that was in the house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

In their house.

[James Petregallo]

In the Roberts house. So they find an old computer, and they find Dustin's car in the driveway. So this is not the most brilliant attempt at a home invasion jacking.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. This is interesting.

[James Petregallo]

Now, the computer was apparently the only item that was taken from the house and brought outside. They cannot find the second intruder. And it's not like they can ask Dustin, who's with you, who was with you. So they don't know who the second intruder was. There's no fingerprints from a second person or anything like that. They don't know if he's wearing gloves.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But they went in, took the computer, put it in the car, went back in the house, evidently.

[James Petregallo]

Apparently so. So that would make sense, I guess, maybe for the barking as well. What? Tracy's saying that she heard the barking. Maybe that was when they went outside with the computer. The dog was barking outside. Then they came back in and she heard noises.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

So, yeah, now he. They find out that Dustin, you know, mowed the grass. He was like a local kid that mowed grass and did like that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Hope not. Does the odd jobs.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. They said one of the local people said, he's nice if you know him and quiet if you don't. That's all quiet kid. Or he's a nice kid, whatever they said. Didn't seem like the type who would really be aggressively committing crimes. Like breaking into an occupied house is a very aggressive crime.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sure is.

[James Petregallo]

They said he's pretty timid. That doesn't sound like him. But you never know if he Gets hooked up with some other kid and they get a couple of fucking wine coolers in him. You never know what can happen.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sometimes a follower will do some pretty

[James Petregallo]

dumb shit, especially if it sounds like a good idea. And this person is a strong personality. They also were wondering, was Dustin maybe trying to protect Tracy from the other man and been killed in a mix up? They were wondering that. They said, what could this be? Well, they don't understand the whole thing here. So as the EMTs leave the scene, obviously they can't do anything for Dustin here. They hear Tracy in the kitchen with her three kids and the deputies, and she's screaming. They said that or she said that two other intruders, one or at least one, but probably two intruders had escaped. And so the deputies and everybody they could find, any state police, county police, they are canvassing, they're knocking on people's doors, asking for shit like they're doing house to houses here. And the fear spreads and it gets for sure. Yeah, there's two crazy people out here on the loose. So they. The story is that bert had dialed 911 and Tracy is then taken away in an ambulance to be checked over. And Burt rode with her. The other children are taken to the hospital as well, separately now, just to be looked at. Now, even though no one touched them, just to make sure. And plus they can't leave them in the house by themselves too. Certainly they gotta come. So at the hospital in Sac City, over in the big sack city, it's

[Jimmy Wissman]

where they've got all the best equipment.

[James Petregallo]

She looked in the bathroom mirror, she says, and noticed that her throat was swollen and red and that she couldn't swallow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And she can't swallow, can't swallow.

[James Petregallo]

She said adrenaline must have made it so you couldn't do it here. She also claims to not have known who she shot still. Oh, so it's at 3am they tell her that you shot Dustin, your neighbor. And he was like. She couldn't believe it. And they said, do you think maybe he was trying to help you since you know each other so well? And she said it was Dustin who was pulling on me. That kid was not coming in my house to save me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He was the one that was the assailant.

[James Petregallo]

That's what she says. She said I shot the guy who was pulling and choking me. So it's got to be Dustin, which is interesting. So then they find out too that from Mona, because they talked to Dustin's mom, Mona, and find out that Tracy had been asking Dustin to come over for the last couple of days to do some work. So now Mary Friedman members, or Marie, whatever her name is. The Friedman wife there, Mrs. Friedman, she was over there to sleep over and didn't have her sleepover. Now, Ray was driving home with the husband, Michael, here. And Ray's recalled how he and Michael were driving home from Minneapolis when they heard about the shooting at Michael's home. He said he let Robert's Michael drive his car home because he could navigate dirt roads faster. Michael can, yeah. He's like Bo Duke over here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's a backwoods guy. He knows what he's doing.

[James Petregallo]

I guess he's from the outback or some shit. He's. I don't know what's going on.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Not a lot of paved roads where he's from in Australia.

[James Petregallo]

I totally picture him, you know, fishtailing on this shit. Big on cunt behind him. Let's go now. Yeah, hang on, cunt. We're going fucking driving off.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Where are you going?

[James Petregallo]

Back there driving off. Yeah, fucking. That boss hog's a real cunt. Hey. All right, then. He's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Boy, this car's powerful, huh?

[James Petregallo]

Now, the Friedmans say they saw Tracy at the hospital and she was distraught and had red marks on her neck. And Marie said everything Tracy told me, it appeared to be that way to me. There was no question in my mind that she would not be telling the truth. She's being truthful. She got choked and shot some kid trying to break in her house. Now they talk to Mona again, Dustin's mom. She says that she has to come clean on some shit. Now, there's a man she's been having an affair with.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Mona has.

[James Petregallo]

Mona has an Iraq veteran who's got some mental issues, allegedly at the time, and was, I think, driving the Schwan's frozen food truck, which we have. That has come up so much in these episodes. Somebody driving a Schwan's truck happens to them.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I swans trucks so much.

[James Petregallo]

Ah, they're great. The food on them is wonderful, though.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's how I got. That's how I don't eat crab legs anymore.

[James Petregallo]

You don't get crab legs from a truck. What are you doing, Jimmy? That's rule number one. Don't buy crab legs from a truck that drives around your neighborhood. Number one.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. They said they had to get rid of them. Now I know why.

[James Petregallo]

I get it. Yeah. I get why they were on sale. The little fucking round frozen Red Baron pizzas they have are outstanding. They're good as shit. Yeah, those are good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I Don't know. I got steaks, hamburgers, and crab legs. I ate the hamburgers. Amazing. I'm sure they were terrific because they were big, fat ones. And you can make a patty and be full. And the crab legs. I don't know about the steaks because I didn't eat anything else after the crab legs almost killed me.

[James Petregallo]

Let's make a general. Don't buy shellfish from a truck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Probably for the best, wherever it's going.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, shellfish especially. It's extra sensitive. Specifically shellfish.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Whoops.

[James Petregallo]

So Mona said she has been having an affair with a guy named Jeremy Collins.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And she went to the cops because Jeremy Collins, hours after the shooting, breaks up with Mona. So Mona's like, oh, my God, my son's been killed. And he's like, yeah, I want to see other people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I can't do this anymore.

[James Petregallo]

You know, it's not you, it's me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

You know, blah, blah, blah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And so she, as a kid down the road, I got him sick with crab legs. I got to lay low a while.

[James Petregallo]

I got to lay low. The gutter that is. It's churning, man. So she told investigators that it's possible because she waited, like, two weeks. But she ends up saying that maybe he was the second intruder. Maybe it was Jeremy Collins. But she said she doesn't know. She doesn't suspect him. But she did think it was odd, the timing of the breakup, and she has nothing else to give them, basically. And this is all I have is, like, I know this guy. He was kind of up. He didn't want to be with me, so I guess he was not liking me. Maybe he did it. I don't know. She said, I have no reason to think he would or did. But just throwing everything out there for the investigation because they literally say anything. The craziest thing you could think of. Still tell us. Tell us when. They have no idea what happened. She said. I did not believe Jeremy was the second intruder, though I didn't think that seemed right. She also said that she found two strange Post it notes in her son's room. What were they after the shooting, One of them said, money in November. Just a post it note that said money in November.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Here we are in December.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. The other had a telephone number of a West Des Moines, Iowa, hotel where Jeremy Collins stayed during a date with Mona.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

So she's like, how the fuck does Dustin know the hotel that I fuck my boyfriend in? Yeah, well, I have an affair on his dad. Like, how does he know this? So that's why she goes to the police with this information. Cause she said, I found this. It doesn't make any sense. None of it makes sense. I don't even know how they would know each other like that. They know each other, but not intimately. Or they'd be hanging out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Maybe he's planning to blackmail me or some shit.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, so she doesn't know what's going on. That's why she goes to the police. To go here is some connection with Jeremy. Still don't think it's him though. Now, Dustin's uncle Bruce, this is, I believe, Brett's dad's brother. Yeah, Bruce and Brett got some manly names. You're going to be Bruce and you're going to be Brett. You two are going to be men.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Brett. Is that his name?

[James Petregallo]

This is Bruce dad's name. So Bruce said that Dustin was, quote, a super friend to Tracy and her family. He said they would go to church together. They'd been paintball. Been to paintball shooting competitions. He doesn't understand any of this. He says he wonders if his nephew was just tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time. Was this just a horrible mistake? He said, I think he walked in on something going on in the house. I think Dustin was coming to the rescue. And in the darkness and confusion, he ended up getting shot for mistaken reasons. So they think maybe Dustin was outside hanging out, he saw some strange activity over there, went over to look at it, scared the intruders off, and then. Cause somebody else came and then she ended up shooting him because she thought he was one of the intruders.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Accident.

[James Petregallo]

That's this guy's theory that possibly. Cause Dustin just doesn't seem like that kind of cat. Now the next day they find in Dustin's car, not only the computer, but a pink notebook.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Now this notebook. The police will not say they have this notebook or tell anyone of the existence of this notebook for 10 years.

[Jimmy Wissman]

10 years.

[James Petregallo]

Nobody knows. They said this is a piece of information we are going to keep. Because only the person who did this would want this. So this is one of those pieces of information. A lot of times in a homicide when they don't know what's going on or a killing or just any sort of murder investigation or death investigation, I should say. They hold back pieces of evidence so somebody doesn't come and have a confession, knowing all the shit they got publicly. Has to be something.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, this is something only the perpetrator might know.

[James Petregallo]

Something like that. So they don't know what significance this has. But they keep it. Now it's five pages written in Dustin's handwriting. Oh, okay. It was described later as sloppy. And one of the lines is, JP wants me to get force his ex TR now, TR is Tracy Richter or Tracy Roberts, and JP is John Pittman. Who is Dr. Pittman? That's what they're saying. So they're saying JP wants me to get forces XTR, make record of mysterious fellow who asked me to work for him. And then in parentheses, John Pittman. Okay. So the notebook identifies him as John Pittman, the JP He. Also the writing suggests that he's been hired by a mysterious fellow, John Pittman and all that thing. And then it also says, get force his ex TR to kill her son Burt and then commit suicide.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What?

[James Petregallo]

That's what it says. And then it also says plan B. Make it appear as though TR had committed the murder of her own son, then committed suicide. So either get her to do it or make it look like it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So Pittman, then, if this letter is accurate and is giving instructions, kill her and the baby so that I don't have to pay child support anymore.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, kill her and the 11 year old so I don't have to deal with either of them. Basically, that's what this was purported.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The next seven years scott free.

[James Petregallo]

Totally fine. Yep. So now they also have other details in here. The name of his divorce attorney, Pitman's divorce attorney, Stephen Comey of Chicago. So details that this kid shouldn't know or that aren't easily available. Details about Pittman's personal life also that nobody knows outside of. Very intimate details of things that nobody would know. So that's interesting. So they keep it and they say basically the notebook was. It's a dead man switch, the one guy calls it. If you knew it was in there, you put it there or you force someone to write it there. So they didn't tell anybody about it. The big question around town, because everybody remembers Dustin as a pretty mild kid.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So, like, is this in his character? Everybody doesn't get it, but I mean, it happened, so it must be. But they don't get it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's in somebody's character.

[James Petregallo]

Now, Mona acknowledges to the police, because the police are saying, again, you got to help us out here, that at one point Dustin had been in a fight with his dad over ownership of his dog. I don't know what that could possibly entail, but at one point, Dustin pulled a BB gun on his father during this argument.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nice.

[James Petregallo]

So that happened a couple years ago and another time he got In a fight with his little sister that ended up with her getting medical attention.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, so he's a bit of a loose cannon.

[James Petregallo]

So that's what that sounds like. The little sister fight. Siblings fight. I mean, that happens. You know what I mean? Whatever.

[Jimmy Wissman]

To medical involvement too.

[James Petregallo]

She could have tripped and fell and we don't know that he didn't take her and bash her head through a window. We have no idea what happened there. But whipping a weapon out on your dad's a little odd.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a bit much.

[James Petregallo]

That's a bit much. I'm just saying, benefit of the doubt, I can give you a sibling fight. Yeah. You shouldn't ever hit your little sister and all that kind of shit. But it happens. People get in fights. Siblings wise.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Medical attention probably should have been offered a few times that I fought my family.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean, that just was. Maybe they're just responsible with their medical care. That's all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Maybe so. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Otherwise it makes sense. So now Dustin's funeral comes around and his friends and family are all there and they're saying he loved music and movies and all that kind of thing. Hundreds of people come to this too, which is interesting because he's not being treated as like a pariah here. It's odd. Even Tracy has like, later on has kind words for the family and shit like that. Like, she seems sorry about the whole thing. So they said, this is the sheriff. Said we're still searching for clues. We don't know what a motive is. That's why we need to find that second intruder to find out what the fuck, why were they there? What was going on?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Essentially, fuck is going on?

[James Petregallo]

So three days after the shooting, Tracy wants to tell her side in detail and give everybody, you know, fill in the details here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

To who?

[James Petregallo]

Well, we'll find out. Not the police, I'll tell you that much. No, no. She shows up at the back door of Mary Cullen's house, which is in Storm Lake. Mary Cullen's husband is the publisher of the Storm Lake Times. The newspaper?

[Jimmy Wissman]

The local news.

[James Petregallo]

The local news. Tracy said she just wanted to get her story out, so that's what she did. And so the guy who owns the paper, the publisher, his brother Art is the paper's editor. He conducts the interview.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You.

[James Petregallo]

Here's what happened. She said Dustin came over, rang the doorbell early afternoon. We were close to him, all that kind of shit. My husband was coming home from the business trip, she said, an hour later, after this. So sometime her story is in that hour. Not Only Dustin came and left. But then that Marie Friedman came and left as well. And they had tea and talked and she talked about Dustin and all that. All that happened in an hour.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And her.

[James Petregallo]

Her telling here, she said she's getting Mason ready for the bath. She laid towels over the banister along with pantyhose. Her son was watching a video, just like we said. MAXINE BARKS she said, shut the fuck up out there, goddammit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Please shut up.

[James Petregallo]

Then she hears a noise and she thought it must be her husband and Ray who had gone to Minneapolis. So she looked down the dark stairwell and she said she saw the tops of two heads. This is why she knows there was at least two intruders. Yeah, the tops of two heads. One had dark wavy hair like Ray's. Ray Friedman. And the men start, that's why at a glance she thought it was them. But the men started to up the stairs and she got a look at one of the man framed by towels through the towels. She got a look through the banister and saw it wasn't Ray. And she said, we made eye contact. It wasn't a good look. Like, oh, shit, I don't know. It wasn't a good look's a weird way to put it. But you make eye contact with someone who shouldn't be in your house, you're like, oh, shit, it's on now. Generally, no, yeah, they know I know. So it's over. So she said she retreated with her daughter and shoved her daughter in with the other two kids. Then that's when somebody tugged hard at her hair and it jolted her back. So she yelled to Burt to lock the door. Lock the door, yes. Yeah. So she said someone, she thinks a man in a black leather jacket, not sure, choked her with the pantyhose that had been hanging from the banister. At that point, while this is happening, her prescription glasses get knocked off her face. And so the rest of this is a blur at this point.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Can't see shit.

[James Petregallo]

Can't see shit of what's going on. So she said she was dragged toward the stairwell and blacked out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Out.

[James Petregallo]

Now, Burt said this is while she's blacked out. Burt said he heard the men talking. He said that's how he knew Dustin was involved because he had gone paintballing with Dustin and knows Dustin's voice. Well, so he said he heard Dustin's voice. All right? Now, Tracy was unconscious at that point. She hadn't identified Dustin as one of the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She didn't even know that.

[James Petregallo]

She had no idea because she was unconscious when this talking was going on. So Burt later says that he heard Dustin call the other man, either Ross or Boss, one of the two. This is what Burt says. Okay. So Tracy said she was awakened to the sound of Burt armed with a baseball bat, screaming obscenities at one of the men, which. That's the best way to be woken up to your 11 year old screaming obscenities. That's a fun way to be woken up. You're like, wow. How do you know that term? That's pretty. That's pretty good. Wow. He must have heard that from me. Had to have. We don't have cable. This is tough.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Sounds like my doing. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I think that was me. So apparently that's what she heard. Bert later said that Dustin had told Burt, shut up or you're next.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

So Tracy said she struggled to her feet and was yanked back by her hair and grabbed under the armpits now and dragged. She said the attacker was definitely wearing a black leather jacket. Dustin was found wearing a suede coat when he was shot, so not a black leather jacket. So that must be the second guy, I guess. She said she used all of her might and weight to back up the man holding her and slam him into a wall. She said she tried that move to limp to just forcing herself back, which would surprise him and sell it backward. Yeah. She's a small woman, by the way. Tracy, this is not some big farm mama here. This is a smaller woman.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's a violent little small woman who's been arrested for it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Yeah. But it's always gunplay. Physically, she hasn't really.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, she usually doesn't use her body.

[James Petregallo]

She knows she needs a weapon to make herself forceful here. But when you surprise somebody like that, you can do it. And also the adrenaline she must have had, that'll really take you back there. So she said that she slammed him into the wall. She said, I'm not a tiny, dainty thing. She's not a big lady. Anyway, she's a gangster. So she said she threw him against the wall. He let go as she hit the wall. At that point, she ran as fast as she could the other direction. I guess he didn't reach out and try to grab her, which seems odd, but.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, it stunned him. The drywall in his neck, maybe.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, we don't know. Maybe it's stucco. Ow.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That hurt.

[James Petregallo]

Poked him a little bit. So she said she ran in the bedroom, dove between the bed and her dresser, and reached for the gun safe under the bed. Fumbling with the combination.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's not easy to do.

[James Petregallo]

No, she said as she dove there and is fumbling with the combination, that's when someone is on her back pulling her hair again and she's trying to get the gun safe open, as that goes. That's when she said it was Dustin who was pulling on her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Me.

[James Petregallo]

She saw him at that point. Well, she doesn't know it then, but she'll know it later when she finds out he's the one she killed because she killed the guy who was pulling on her hair at that point.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Understood? Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So this is later on, she said it was Dustin who was pulling on me. That kid was not coming in my house to save me.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Huh.

[James Petregallo]

That's when she said that. So anyway, she couldn't. I guess he couldn't get. Because where she is, between the dresser and the bed and all this, it was too tight of a fit for him to get his arms around her, so he yanked her on her feet. She said she held on to the safe door as he pulled her and it sprang open. So I don't know if she had just gotten the combination right and it comes open just at that point or if it's got some sort of faulty mechanism and just pops open if you pull it hard enough. I'm not sure. Doesn't seem like a good gun safe. If you can just yank it open.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, if you're being tugged backward and it just opens up, that's a problem.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So I think what she's saying is she got the combination just in time and yanked. And the timing of this is amazing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So usually if it's got a combination, it's got a hand pull that.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So she probably grabbed that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, she probably got the coat in, grabbed the whole hand pulling it open.

[James Petregallo]

So she said she grabbed the 9 millimeter semiautomatic Beretta and twisted back to fire. She did one of these, but nothing happened. Trigger wouldn't pull. Safety was on.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, shit.

[James Petregallo]

Safety's on. So she said she. She gripped it with both hands. She grabbed the. She was just grabbing around the gun. And she said something clicked, meaning the safety. She clicked on the safety eventually. Even in this panic while someone's pulling on.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fumbled around and accidentally got it.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, so she said she turned and squeezed the trigger.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Her.

[James Petregallo]

She said, I fired. I saw a noise. I saw the flash. It was a very loud noise. She said she closed her eyes and fired between her and the bed. Just closed and fired. She said she heard breathing and she heard someone run out and down the stairs. And she heard her children scream. So she said she climbed over something to get out, but she's not sure why because she couldn't see.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Probably the bed or the body.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, either one. She said, quote, I was scared to death. I needed to get to my kids. So she said she went back toward Burt's bedroom carrying the Beretta and the six shot.357 revolver from the safe. She said Bert almost hit her with the baseball bat in the dark hallway because it was dark. So she said she saw movement and shadows near her bedroom and told Burt to stay in the room with the other children. Children?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, stand down.

[James Petregallo]

So she said she yelled to the figure standing up, don't move, don't get up. And he said that's when he tried to get up again.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She hit him again.

[James Petregallo]

So she tried to shoot the Beretta, which was in her right hand. And she said it didn't nothing happen because it was out of bullets.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

So she fired the revolver that was from her left hand. And she said it was a big. Had a big kick to it. It's a.357.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, those don't play around. And she fired it in her left hand.

[James Petregallo]

Left hand. And she fired it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

She said a pool of blood formed and she didn't see any more movement. So she said she approached the bedroom and heard labored breathing. She said she closed the bathroom door. She said that the daughter, the one year old, picked up her glasses.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And that's when she grabbed them and grabbed the kids and made their way downstairs where Burt had already called 911. Then she was taken away in an ambulance. Burt rode with her. The other children were taken away. She saw in the mirror that she had a swollen red throat and couldn't swallow. And she found out. Yeah, she found out at 3am that it was Dustin who she shot. Who was declared dead of multiple gunshot wounds. Now she swears she didn't fire more than four shots.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Four. And he's hit nine times.

[James Petregallo]

Swears it. But, but this is a thing that goes on with. Even with trained police officers will say I let off two shots. And they got six missing. It happens all the time in their mind. They only let off two shots. They pass polygraphs saying I let off two shots. That's crazy. And they let off. Your body will forget shit. Your brain will go crazy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The thing about guns too, five round revolvers, five rounds has gone in a blink. And it feels like you only fired two or three. That's five.

[James Petregallo]

And that's in the chaos of a shootout or a situation like that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Can't imagine.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, it's way different than if you're at a range going, how many do I squeeze off? This is mass chaos. So this happens a lot. People not knowing how many shots they fired. She said, quote, a lot of things don't make sense. Why were they there? They never asked me for money or jewelry. Why me and why my family?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, good question.

[James Petregallo]

Now, Michael, he got home to find this mess.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yikes.

[James Petregallo]

And he said I'd taken him under my wing to help him out. He said, I don't understand it. And he said my 11 year old was protecting the two younger children and wouldn't let them in. So he said, you know, Bert's a real hero here. And he said that he believes the other man, whoever the second intruder was here was, that person should be charged with attempted murder as well because they tried to kill her. And he also says he thinks maybe Dustin was, quote, under the influence of the other person because it's not the kid. I know, exactly. Yeah. So it doesn't make sense. So the Sac county authorities, I mean, they, she's a hero. They come to the conclusion, they accept it's self defense. I mean, you know, people break into your house trying to fuck with your kids. This is why, you know, why you're allowed to have guns for shit like this. He said no charges were filed, case closed. Basically, that's that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She, a golden door lock and a key to the city.

[James Petregallo]

That's it. Well, it gets even better. She's gonna get a golden seat on the Montel Williams show here in a while. That'll be interesting.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is that right?

[James Petregallo]

Absolutely. So the sheriff said he can't see a motive again. He's still looking for it. And he said that Michael Roberts has offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the second man, the second intruder. So Tracy says that she worries about the family, Dustin's family. She said, I want the Wheaties to know or the weeds to know that we care about them and that our heart goes out to them. She also says at the end of this article that the family needs to get out of here for a while. They need to get away. And they're planning to leave this week for an Australian vacation.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, we're going to the outback.

[James Petregallo]

Going to get out of here. Far away from here as we can. The get out of yet, basically, and still be in some kind of civilization.

[Jimmy Wissman]

See a beach elsewhere.

[James Petregallo]

Michael's going to Teach me how to do that Duke boy driving that he does.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So we're going to fly 18 hours for a beach.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So they go to Australia, take a vacation. Now, there's an article on December 19, 2001, and the title of this article is Town at Odds Over Man's Death. Oh. So this, I'll read this. It said a family whose wife shot to death a family friend during. During a break in says he's disturbed by local residents speculation that the friend was trying to save her. Remember, the uncle said that a lot of people in town who knew Dustin said that must be what it is. They, they won't accept that Dustin was trying to harm her. Yeah, he says that, you know, he doesn't understand why they're doing this. Michael Roberts said Monday that he doesn't like to think that Dustin was threatening his wife and three children, but doubts that he was trying to save his family. He said it's very difficult to use the name Dustin when I talk about the man that shot my wife or the man my wife shot. Who was the man that had minutes before said, your dad's dead and when I finish with your mom, you're next, meaning to Burt. So he said, I can't really. I don't like this guy. So the authorities have released a description of the man, but they're waiting for Tracy to help make a sketch of the second man. This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp.com you know it, because we all have problems and we all have stresses and we all could use somebody to talk to and better help is the place to go. And especially when you're having financial stress that's bearing down upon you, that's. That's so much stress, you already feel terrible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And then the financial stress just makes you feel like even more worthless.

[James Petregallo]

You can't sleep at night. It's horrible. It keeps you awake. And really, it affects more than just your bank account. It takes a serious toll on your mental health and your relationships. 88% of Americans feel some form of financial stress starting out in 2026. That's crazy. And that's. It's tough, man. You gotta, it can, it can bring you down. And money worries bring anxiety, sleep disruption, depression, one of the leading sources of conflict for couples as well. That happens so much. So it's. So this month we want to normalize the emotional weight of financial stress and remind you, and remind everybody that struggling with money doesn't mean that you failed. Sometimes it's about Accessing the right kind of support and God, we know that therapy is. It's everything. It's incredible. And whatever your problems are, whether they are financial, romantic, health, anything that really, really helps family conflicts, it helps help so much just to talk to somebody. They have quality therapists at Better Help. They work according to a strict code of conduct. They're fully licensed in the US BetterHelp does the initial matching work with you to get you with a therapist that's gonna work for you so you can, you know, concentrate on what you're doing. They just do a short questionnaire, helps identify your needs and preferences. They have over 12 years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate. So they'll figure that out and who to hook you up with. But if they don't get it right the first time, doesn't matter. You can switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. It's phenomenal.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And with no additional charge either.

[James Petregallo]

That's the thing. They just want you to get some help and get better. Your financial stress doesn't need more stress because you don't like your therapist. You know what I mean? With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. They've served over 6 million people globally and it really works. They have an average rating of 4.9 at of 5 for live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% [e-mail] Small Town Murder that's Better H lp.com Small

[Jimmy Wissman]

Town Murder now back to the show.

[James Petregallo]

She said. The sheriff said, that's why we need to find the second intruder so we can find out why Dustin was in there. So they said that they don't know if the missing intruder was an acquaintance of Dustin or if Dustin was trying to help. But they either way, he's dead. The reverend at the funeral, at Dustin's funeral said there can be a moment of shock, disbelief, and even anger when one learns of the violent death of a loved one. Dustin enjoyed his short life. He graduated high school in 2000 and had been a member of the student council in school. High school, that's not good. Still, that's okay. Yeah, they said, the guy here says this is the pastor. He said, this is such a tender, delicate hour. Probably for the Robertses too. It's a time to acknowledge a fractured community, a town once known for its safety that suddenly reels for answers. Now, Michael was supposed to be a speaker at the funeral But I don't think it happened. The family took him off the program when he was saying, hey, don't say that. He's trying to help. Now, late January, early February, Tracy has a visit with Mary Higgins. Remember her friend, the farm lady, Mary Higgins?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Mrs. Clark.

[James Petregallo]

Mrs. Clark. She says, quote, I wanted to let her know that I stand by her. Mary says, I just wanted to help her. And she said that Tracy recalled the shooting in detail. She said it was very emotionless, though it was weird, she said, like she was telling me her grocery list. She basically had no emotion to it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. She said that she told Mary she had unloaded the gun while being grabbed. She said she got. She. Then she got up, stepped over what she thought was dirty clothes, but it turned out to be Dustin's body, checked on the children, and then she said that she walked back over, the body was moving, and she. And Tracy told her that she stood over Dustin and said, stop moving or I'll blow your fucking brains out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my.

[James Petregallo]

And then she shot him again.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's what Mary Higgins said.

[James Petregallo]

That's what Mary Higgins said Tracy told her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy.

[James Petregallo]

Stop moving or I'll blow your fucking brains out. And then shot him again. Now, Mary says, while Tracy is retelling this story to Mary, Burt walked into the room, heard his mother talking, walked over to the table and started banging his head against the table, which is a wild reaction. And he then said to his mother, according to Mary, quote, why did you go back up there? You didn't have to shoot him. You didn't have to kill him. That's what Burt says out loud. According to Mary, Tracy then screamed at him, bert, goddammit, blah, blah, blah. And he left the room, and that was that. So police end up talking to Tracy about the second assailant. And they said, now that you've had some time and you had a nice Australian vacation, maybe you could help us work up a sketch so we could maybe catch this fucking guy. So she said, 35 years old, ish, white male, tall and had wavy brown hair. She said that he. So they asked Tracy to attend a meeting in February to help the expert draw the composite sketch so they could put it out there and maybe get an identity on this guy. But her father, who's at this time a retired homicide detective, called and said she won't be participating in this, that she's busy today, she's not gonna do it. She's not doing it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Dad called.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. One of the investigators said he indicated he did not think they were reliable. And caused problems in court, which I did not understand. He said, look, I'm a homicide detective. Trust me, the sketches will end up hurting you more than they're helping you. Because if it doesn't look just like the guy, you get in court and they go, see, it's not the same guy. So we're not doing it. It which it's not his case. Let them run the case how they want to. And if they want a sketch, let them have a sketch.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, but he's our dad, right?

[James Petregallo]

And he knows. Yeah, and he thinks he knows better here. So the investigator said that he turned his attention away after that from the case because it was just kind of a dried up case. If she's not given a sketch, they're not going to have very much luck finding this other guy. And he said he ended up. He said the leads were dwindling. This investigator, the lead guy, and he was then assigned to join a joint terrorism task force that was formed after the September 11 attacks. So he just basically said, well, that's case closed. And moved on. Where's Osama? Now I'm moving on from the second assailant to bin Laden. So Mona and her husband Brett, shortly after this, they get a divorce.

[Jimmy Wissman]

As you might imagine, the marriage couldn't survive this.

[James Petregallo]

Well, the loss of the son. And he found out that she was fucking Jeremy Collins too. And that whole mess. So he said, I'm done here. Then Tracy appears on the Montel Williams Show.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What is the theme of this?

[James Petregallo]

The theme is a brave woman defending her children with violence.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Dear Lord.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. So she portrayed herself as a brave mom acting in self defense, as a home invader for a daytime talk show. This is red meat.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a big deal.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, you're throwing red meat at them. This is a bunch of, at the time, a bunch of ladies sitting at home scared to be home invaded. And they have kids. And that's your audience, basically. So the audience loved it. And she appeared on the show with Michael, who held her hand the whole time. And the episode presents her as a heroic mother. Tracy said, I did what I had to do to protect my family on the show. And the audience applauded. Yay. You know how talk shows, you get a good applause line and they would applaud back then. Yeah, she said, I was screaming at him not to move, to stay put, not to get up, not to get up. And she did her thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, this is clapping.

[James Petregallo]

They're all clapping. Montel called it justifiable homicide and called her a hero. So yeah, Montel said that and. Yeah, so April 2002. Remember Mary Higgins? Well, yeah, she's interviewed by the cops again and she didn't say anything to the investigators about some stuff she knew especially about. She knew about the notebook. How? That's a good question.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She says later on that she didn't mention the notebook because she assumed they already knew about the notebook. How the fuck do you know about the notebook? Nevermind what they know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, we know a lot. How do you know?

[James Petregallo]

She also said she didn't really want to get involved in all this because quote, I was afraid for myself, I was afraid for my family and I was afraid for Tracy. I knew none of this was good. So she says nothing. Now what had happened was Tracy had told Mary there was a notebook. And in the notebook there was proof that Dustin was there to murder them as a hit for her ex husband.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right? Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Mary doesn't say shit about that. Now Dustin's family's also divided in this whole thing here. Very much divided. The Robertses describe him as a troubled youth. They had tried to befriend to help. One thing Michael Roberts does say is that maybe the second intruder was the one that Dustin into doing this. No one thinks even the victims here are saying that he couldn't have done this. It doesn't sound like him. It had to have been somebody else talking him into it. But the death breaks up the family. They get a divorce and all that kind of shit. Then not quite a year after the murder, the next or after the death, the November, Thanksgiving week. Basically Thanksgiving of 2002, Brett, Dustin's dad, goes to visit his son's grave. And it's Thanksgiving Day actually. He wrapped his arm around the headstone and shot himself in the head. Killed himself.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh my God.

[James Petregallo]

Right at his son's grave. Yeah. This is fucking horrible.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy shit.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, no joke, man. With a 22 caliber he did it. Which is pretty risky. You gotta, you gotta hope that thing bounces around on than Thanksgiving. He went and did.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn it.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. He left four suicide notes here on the kitchen table telling relatives what they already suspected. He said he couldn't live anymore with this broken heart. He said he's cried every day since December 13th of last year and couldn't take it anymore. And holidays are hard for people, especially the first one afterwards.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So this is the first Thanksgiving. And then, then I have to. I'm gonna go through this shit, then I'm gonna have Christmas. And it was so close to Christmas. Fuck that.

[James Petregallo]

None of this Is getting better. A motorist who had stopped at the cemetery to use his cell phone to pull over to make a phone call noticed the body and called 911 and the sheriff said, it's a sad situation. So now Dustin and his dad are both dead. They bury Brett right next to him. Two headstones right there. Yeah. So 2004, Michael Roberts files for divorce from Tracy. Now, once this all goes on, she starts a website. Yes. To call him a deadbeat dad. Like michaelsalooser.com basically is what she starts a website for.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The man's buried.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, no, this is the other guy, Tracy's husband. Yeah, The Australian guy calls him a piece of shit and also alleges on the website that he may have been the second intruder, even though he was in a car with another guy driving.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Another man physically involved in the Minnesota wilderness. Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. He told police that she tried to kill him twice. But the police just dismissed it as he said. She said, these two are in the middle of a divorce. Give me a fucking break. Never mind. So 2004 comes around. Mary still has this secret of I know some shit that I don't know that I should know and stuff like that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Pittman's the first husband, actually the one that was that she's going through the battle with.

[James Petregallo]

Pittman is. Yeah, this is Michael, the Australian we're talking about.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, not Michael Pittman.

[James Petregallo]

No, you're thinking of the running back for the Arizona Cardinals years ago. This is a much different guy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm gonna marry two guys together and make a running back and insert him into this story. I can't wait for the.

[James Petregallo]

That's perfect.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Mr. Emmett and Mr. Smith, to be honest.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, we know what's gonna happen there. Barry Roberts and Johnny Sanders are gonna come together and we're gonna know what's happening. So Mary here talks to Tracy again and you know, talks to her about all this type of shit. And she said, told me about that notebook. And I just feel weird about that. It's crazy. And you can't believe that your ex husband would make him would orchestrate all this. And it's just horrible. Now Mary says Tracy pointed her finger at her, literally pointed it in her face and said that she needed to forget about that pink notebook. She said, forget that shit, Mary. Don't make me come over there. Maribare, it's happening. No fucking talk. So Mary said, later on, it frightened me. Tracy could explode. And then be calm. She said, you forget about that notebook. Anyway, more sugar. She was, wow. So she said she Was really frightened at that point. So she reverts to her maiden name, Tracy does, which is Richter, and moves to Omaha, Nebraska.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, now she's going to move again.

[James Petregallo]

Moves again. She's got to get out of this little town.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This 500 people will not shut the

[James Petregallo]

fuck up about her. No, they all know her. Now she ends up getting another fiance. Really, A guy named Russ Schurz. S C H E R T S C H I wonder what his nickname was in high school. That's pretty obvious. So they're together and he loves Tracy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What's he do? Do we know?

[James Petregallo]

Not sure what he does. Not a doctor, I don't think. Okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Now as this goes on, Tracy lives in Omaha. While she's there in 2009, she tells police that her Lexus had been broken into. And she says it's my fucking ex husband Michael that's who's responsible for this. They find no evidence of a break in, but learned that she had carried out a scheme to assume a fake identity. So she called the cops in, who then investigate her claim and find out she actually did something fucked up. And she ends up getting arrested for it. None of this would have happened if she wouldn't have. She just shut up, tried to set her husband up. Apparently she had altered her divorce decree to give herself a fabricated maiden name, which she then used to obtain a driver's license, a new Social Security number and a new package passport. Straight identity theft and just making one up. So she pleads no contest to welfare fraud in Nebraska and is convicted of vehicle licensing perjury in Iowa as well

[Jimmy Wissman]

and was getting benefits based on it.

[James Petregallo]

Based on something here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Jesus.

[James Petregallo]

So this is a lot. Now she's also still fighting custody battles over her two younger two youngest children with Michael Roberts, the Australian guy. So it is 2009 before anybody looks at this again. Really nobody looks at it anymore until 2009. And in this, a team went back to the home where the shooting occurred to try to recreate the events. Like we've never done a crime scene recreation on this. And everything seems a little janky and a little unwieldy and we need to figure this out. They found that bullet trajectories and blood spatter contradicted some of Tracy's statements. I mean, they say things happen fast and we get it. Some of the shooting stuff, you really have to kind of know where you were. Tracy said that Dustin was getting up when she fired her final shots. But the report shows forensically that Dustin's head was on the ground when the last three shots were fired, into the back of his head and neck.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And she said he was getting up.

[James Petregallo]

She said he was getting up and she was threatening him to stay down or she would. They said that at the same time here. They said that the investigator was struck by the fact that Tracy fired in the dark without her glasses.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that's another good point. She had no glasses on.

[James Petregallo]

He said she connects nine out of 11, and that's exceptional accuracy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's amazing.

[James Petregallo]

They said that's a huge red flag. Yeah, that's very accurate.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And one through the fucking eyeball.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, that's what I mean. This is. You know. What is she fucking Wild Bill Hickok over, like? I mean, honestly, who the hell is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'd like to say I'm a pretty fucking good shot under duress. I've never been. I don't know that I'm going to hit somebody in the fucking eyeball repeatedly, over my shoulder, in the dark, with no glasses. Fuck. I won't find my gun without him

[James Petregallo]

feeling around and shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'll shoot myself before I shoot them.

[James Petregallo]

Here's my question. How do you do the combination without your glasses?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Impossible.

[James Petregallo]

Impossible in the dark. I don't know how you do that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's why I have a press button.

[James Petregallo]

That makes more sense.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I have a keypad. Much easier.

[James Petregallo]

Much easier. But this is also 2001. Probably less accessible than bank vault guys. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

The bank manager has a hard time with it. I would never be able to.

[James Petregallo]

Impossible. I just pictured it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And he knows his motherfucker. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

On the big vault doors. Yeah. Like the big Price is Right one,

[Jimmy Wissman]

and you spin the wheel. I. I'd never. I'd never be able to do it.

[James Petregallo]

No. So then there's a new county attorney in 2010.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

His name's Ben Smith. He's the Sac County Attorney.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And this sack is gonna. He's gonna really make his. Make his name on this.

[James Petregallo]

He's going to make his juices out of this one here. He's 33 at the time of the trial. He's a very young man in the world.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

On his second day in office, a special agent named Trent Valletta stops by to welcome him, but also says, I want to tell you about this one case that I'm interested in. And he said, yeah, sure, whatever. But this Valletta guy said, no, no, you really got to know about this. He said, I'll send you photos of the crime scene and all this shit. And he does, and it peaks this is Ben Smith's interest. So Smith decided that he would spend a weekend reviewing the case. And he said he was in, he was hooked. He goes, this is wild shit. Yeah, my sack is tingling. I need something going on. So he was. My sack senses are tingling. He said he worked late nights and through the weekends and went through years of files putting together what he would call 10 years of motive for the shooting. And 10 years of twists and turns since what he said.

[Jimmy Wissman]

10 years of motive.

[James Petregallo]

Okay, yes. Now he's gonna try to get this. He's never tried a jury trial before, by the way, the new county prosecutor. So he just had beat the previous prosecutor who had declined to bring charges here.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Cause he said everything was fine, it was just, just a self defense. So he reopens the case though, and with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation within months of taking office here. So they go back to the evidence, they do the crime scene reconstruction, they hire ballistics people, they hire all sorts of people here. And they look at the trajectory of the shots, the position of the body, the angle of entry, and they concluded who basically, if basic physics exists, that the final three shots were fired while he was lying face down on the floor. Which is a big fucking deal. Tracy's claim requires her to have been firing in fear and chaos and terror. If someone's face down on the floor calculated, there's not a lot of fear in that. You know what I mean?

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can aim.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, you can aim. So they said that while someone's on the floor, prone and wounded and not attacking you, you can't shoot them again. And that's not self defense at that point.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, that'll get you life in prison.

[James Petregallo]

That's what they're looking at. So they said that later on Ben Smith will say to the press, and this makes sense, she's dangerous. And everybody keeps underestimating her. Everyone in her life has underestimated her. She keeps coming. Yeah. So 2011, this is March. Mary Higgins again. Clark, or not here. Mary's husband had become church friends with Ben Smith. They just happened to become buddies at church. Wow, okay, so this is small town shit, you know what I mean? So finally she ends up telling Ben Smith what she knows because it's her husband's church friend, so she trusts him here. So Smith met with her at their. At Mary's home here Higgins house. And she told him, I didn't want any part of this. But when he asked if she knew about details, she responded, do you mean that stupid notebook? Now he's Intrigued. How the fuck do you know about the notebook? She later said, when I told him about the notebook, the blood drained from his face. I'd never seen anything like that before. He just went on the ground and sat on the floor and leaned up against the kitchen cupboard.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He didn't even. Wow.

[James Petregallo]

He was like, holy shit. This is because his whole thing is he's been reviewing these files and he thinks something's amiss. And then he goes over here, and she says, what about that notebook? And he goes, how do you know? What the fuck?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Where'd you hear about it?

[James Petregallo]

So he's like, he has to go stand. Yeah, re. Fucking settle himself here. So now the notebook here. Like I said, they've kept it secret. And they considered the timeline. Tracy described the note notebook's contents to Mary Higgins. Within months of the shooting, the notebook had been a police secret. No one who didn't create it should have known anything about it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Petregallo]

So the Division of Criminal Investigation, Forensic Document examiner, said that several pages of the notebook that claim that Pittman was hiring him and had all that Hitman shit were consistent with Dustin's handwriting. Oh, Dustin wrote it all. But he said one page filled with apparently random numbers deep inside the notebook was written by somebody else. Doesn't know who. He said impressions that he lifted from the first page of the journal suggest that someone had either torn out an earlier page or written on a sheet on top of the notebook, also in a different handwriting style than Dustin.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Also gone.

[James Petregallo]

Also gone. Now, he said he could not determine whether any of the writings in the notebook were consistent with Tracy because samples of hers that he was given did not have a good internal consistency. Her handwriting's all over the place. A fingerprint expert says that he was able to match 10 fingerprints lifted from the notebook to Dustin's fingerprints.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All of his. Oh, I get it. Yeah. Ten different fingerprints. Could be one finger. Got it.

[James Petregallo]

All right, yeah. Three other prints lifted from the notebook were not Dustin's. He said that one of them did not match Tracy's prints, but he couldn't make a determination on the other two. They weren't perfect. Perfect prints. So, no, Tracy's prints aren't on the book or anything like that. July 11th, Omaha, Nebraska, or July 2011, Omaha, Nebraska. Tracy's arrested in Omaha.

[Jimmy Wissman]

For what?

[James Petregallo]

For murder. Oh, this murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Of Dustin.

[James Petregallo]

Of Dustin? She was living with her fiance. She's extradited to Idaho. I did it. See, I told you. God damn it, I told you to do it. Once she's extradited to Iowa?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

She pleaded not guilty and filed a notice of affirmative defense of justification. So self defense is what she files. This is bullshit. She said I did nothing wrong. That's why I've been free for 10 years. This is the county trying to come against me for some reason.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But if she's being arrested, they've got some evidence.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, we'll talk about it. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

She moved to California. I'm sorry? Michael had moved to California with the children. After Tracy's arrest, Michael, living with the two younger children, said, thankfully for her, victim's past, present and future, her make believe house of cards is about to fall. I don't rejoice in her downfall, but I cannot deny the relief.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's a fun one to say.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Think about it. She made a website saying that he was a fucking murderer and a piece of shit. Interesting. He also described Dustin. He said it was very sad and he was simply a prop in her big game. So they do move the trial out of Sac County. There is not enough people here to get a jury that doesn't know about this. 400 people. Yeah. It's a county of 10,000. The whole county has 10,000 people.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All of them know all of them.

[James Petregallo]

And they said, you can't get a fair trial. The judge agreed. It was moved to Webster county, to the town of Fort Dodge. So here we go. Pretrial, there is a psych evaluation of Tracy. Okay. This is done by the defense. She's not claiming insanity. So this is a strange thing to have a psych evaluation.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Well, it's an opportunity for them to find something that she doesn't even know she has.

[James Petregallo]

That's possible, too, sometimes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's what crazy is. They don't know that they're fucking crazy.

[James Petregallo]

That's the truth. But they're doing this in a different way. They're not trying to find. They're not looking for mental illness particularly, or at the end of it, they don't come up with mental illness. This is crazy. So I'll let you know here. The expert is a clinical psychologist, Dr. David Grove. He interviewed her for about two and a half hours one month before the trial's supposed to start. In late 2011, the court granted her request for this expert assistance at the state's expense over the prosecutor's objection. Now, Grove evaluated whether her trial description of the home invasion and shooting had psychological implications and whether the content of her story was congruent with her emotions and body language. His whole thing is he was going to sit down with her and see if she's lying.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Basically based on answers and body language.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So based on the interview, he diagnosed her with acute stress syndrome and ptsd.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay. She's got ass.

[James Petregallo]

Apparently she's got ass and ptsd. What's your ptsd? Ass. That's what she's got.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's got a little bit of some ass. All right.

[James Petregallo]

A little bit of some ass. They said this is specifically tied to the 2001 shooting. Now, he said he would testify that her account was consistent with someone who experienced a credible traumatic threat. So her responses are normal. Her non verbal cues like crying and shaking matched those of a trauma survivor. And he explicitly stated he was not opining on whether he was truthful, but on whether the described event would produce such symptoms. That's why they got him. Just to see if someone did do this in self defense and did all this shit, would. Should they be consistent with what Tracy is now?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Now. September 2011, during an interview, Tracy Richter's dad, Bernard, he worked for 27 years as a homicide detective in Chicago. He indicated that the allegations against his daughter were taking a toll. He said, I see what they put in the paper. They don't put anything about the poor family. He means him, not. Why does he not Dustin's family?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Why does he want to be?

[James Petregallo]

He said, they don't say that. We're suffering too. It's all about this other shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's all about this victim who's got a dead family member.

[James Petregallo]

It's all about the shooting and the dad who blew his brains out on his gravestone. All this. You know how it goes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

As a homicide detective, he should be very well aware of that.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he definitely should. He should know a lot of things about this, this. But we'll find out about him too. October 11 or October 2011, the trial comes up, will the psych eval be allowed?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Did it help?

[James Petregallo]

Well, the court here, the, the, the judge excludes that testimony. Oh, he ruled it was quote, essentially. Basically saying she's telling the truth about this and would improperly bolster her credibility while potentially opening the door to other life events which had been excluded by emotion. So not only are you gonna do that, you're gonna open the door to other shit. You don't want defense? Because then we can bring in other shit. And if we're gonna talk about a psych evaluation, well then we gotta let them have a psych evaluation and we gotta see what they can pull out of it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You don't wanna talk about that time. She Fired a gun in her fucking living room.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. You wanna bring her ex husbands in here and have them talk about it? So they said this was not a court ordered competency or sanity evaluation. No public records mention any. Any prosecution requested psych evaluation or anything like that. And the defense's expert report and interview were only documented. Were the only documented psych eval for this entire proceeding. So that's how this goes. So the jury will. And the judge rules all this inadmissible, so that can't come in.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

Waste of time and money for everybody. The prosecution here, they say that Tracy, facing the loss of her son and her child support income from an upcoming custody hearing, which was just about to happen, she was going to be deposed soon. She would create a fake murder for hire plot against herself, which would not only get her ex husband off her back, it would solve all the problems now, basically. Because then she could delay shit here and she could say that her ex husband set her up to have her murdered, which would mean that she would get custody and there wouldn't be a problem anymore.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

I don't think he'd be paying child support anymore. So that's the one argument that makes it a little weird. So they say that she lured Dustin with the promise of work to the house and he had no reason to fear her. They say she forced him at gunpoint to write in the pink spiral notebook. She told him what to write and held it at gunpoint? Yeah, they said that's why it's so sloppy, because he's probably really scared because he's got a gun to his head, which is to make somebody write a full thing at gunpoint is fucking diabolical. That is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, but how'd she get him to grab her by the hair and choke her and stuff?

[James Petregallo]

Well, that's the other thing they talk about here. They say she told him what to write and when the notebook was complete, she shot him and that was that. She then staged the crime scene, had her son call 911, told her story, and then flew to Australia. They say the pantyhose mark, quote unquote, they say on her neck, was later found by forensic analysis to be inconsistent with ligature strangulation and looked more like a self inflicted friction mark.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, she just rubbed her neck, just

[James Petregallo]

did this with it like she was like drying a bowling ball. She did one of those on her neck and made it. But it's not the pulling and the bruising isn't there. It's just the abrasion of it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Just superficial.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. So the defense, they have a different take on it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Tell me.

[James Petregallo]

December 13, 2001, was a nightmare for Tracy. And this nightmare is not over yet.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's not even done yet.

[James Petregallo]

No. Now she's sitting here going through this accused, you say, that was great.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, they're coming back. They're gonna.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, no. Jesus. They're coming. Comes through the door. Holy shit. He's been hiding the whole time. The defense lawyers paint Dustin as a mentally troubled and violent young man. They claim he stopped at the home that day uninvited, looking for work, and that Tracy was glad he left because he made her uncomfortable. That's what she told her friend. Anyway. They have two main arguments. First, they argued that the forensic evidence is ambiguous. It's not. They can say that they thought this or they thought that. By the way, they're saying that the last shots to the head were at least 15 minutes after the first shots. They said they were long enough to where blood was congealed before she shot

[Jimmy Wissman]

again in the gunshot. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. So if someone's been in a spot and down for 15 minutes, they're good.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can't shoot that person.

[James Petregallo]

Can't shoot that person. But the defense says that the shot trajectories could be consistent with Tracy's account of firing from a crouching or unusual, unusual position. And she might have been off of exactly where she was because she had no glasses on. She was scared and it was dark, and her kids were screaming and the dog's barking, and who knows? Second, he argued that the investigators had failed to follow leads that could have identified the second intruder. So they're doing that on purpose. And they said, do you know who that second intruder more than likely was?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who?

[James Petregallo]

Jeremy Collins. Back to him again. A local man, an Iraq war veteran who worked as an ice cream delivery driver, and among other things, things poisonous crab legs and good little pizzas. Who, according to the defense's theory, was having an affair with Mona. Also, according to Mona, that was happening. And the defense suggested that Jeremy Collins was the second intruder, or at least may have been the second intruder. They said that that's how it was. They said that this Jeremy Collins later developed speech and memory problems after serving two tours in a row and denied having anything to do with this home invasion either. But they're going to bring him up anyway.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Who knew the Schwann's guy was getting so much dangerous squish? Who knew a lot.

[James Petregallo]

Well, I mean, he's like the modern day milkman. You know what I Mean, I guess so.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

He's going from house to house.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Swans.

[James Petregallo]

Guy slinging poison crab legs. That opens up real legs at that point.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Poison crab legs and huge dick.

[James Petregallo]

That's what it is, man. Slinging little frozen pizzas and dick.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Frozen penis.

[James Petregallo]

That's right. Frozen penis. He knocks on the door, frozen penis. The defense also suggested maybe Michael Roberts was involved in this. Her husband at the time, the Australian

[Jimmy Wissman]

guy, he may have organized the whole thing.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they said there was a suggestion Michael found insulting. He found this very insulting and made a public statement about it. How dare you accuse me of any of this shit? So the defense lawyer noted that Michael Roberts, who was investigated in the connection to the shooting but never a suspect, planned the business trip and gave Ray Friedman a $5,000 bonus and a $20,000 raise right afterwards.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay, okay, maybe he paid Freeman for it. Friedman.

[James Petregallo]

So who the hell knows? That's what they're saying. He paid him off to give him an alibi is what they're suggesting. I guess Friedman bristled at the suggestion that he was paid off, saying that he was bringing the company $1 million in sales and asked for a raise to match his previous job salary. And he said he later left after he grew tired of the Roberts antics. Meaning Tracy and Michael. He said, you just never know what was going on there. I didn't like the roller coaster ride there. I live a very peaceful life, and I don't want to be involved in other people's issues or chaos. Well, yeah, they're always fighting. They're in a fucking divorce problem here. So the notebook, they bring it in. They say the defense will say there's no proof of Richter's. Of Tracy's fingerprints or handwriting found in the notebook. The notebook is read aloud in court. The photocopies are distributed to all the jurors. The five pages that are important here, they were read line by line while the jurors followed along, including that JP Wants me to force, get force, his ex wife, doctor, and all that shit. So the state's crime scene reconstructionist testifies that the trajectories of the bullets and the wounds to Dustin indicate the initial shots could have been fired from an area in the southeast corner of the master bedroom near the gun safe, and that the shots could have been fired as Tracy was crouched or kneeling. He later stated the shots to Dustin's head would have had to be fired from above and that there was congealed blood on his face, indicating a shot was fired into his head well after he was deceased. Enough time for the goddamn blood to congeal. Now, Mary Higgins, who describes herself on the stand as a reluctant witness, she's like, I just don't want anything to do with Tracy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Scares me here today.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, Tracy scares me, and I don't want to do this. She said she once enjoyed Tracy's company, but later saw her as a dishonest woman who treated her children poorly and could explode in anger.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, my.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, she testifies that. She told me, I'll blow your fucking brains out. Not her, but told the Intruder that described it like a grocery list. She said she had no emotion. She also talks about when she talked to Tracy about the notebook. And she said, you forget about that fucking notebook.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Don't you worry about the notebook.

[James Petregallo]

You don't know shit about that notebook. So she recounted everything. A Visit in early 2002. All the. Her telling her about it. She recounted Burt walking in and banging his head on the table and saying, why, you didn't have to kill him. And her telling Burt, yelling at him and him running away the warning about the notebook. And she said Tracy could explode, then be calm. She also testified about fear. She said she had been afraid for herself and afraid for her family. And afraid of Tracy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, and of her.

[James Petregallo]

Of her. So, yeah, they say basically that the first several shots hit Dustin in the right arm, the abdomen, and the butt. That's how they put it in court. The butt. Okay, so he's hit in the ass in the abdomen and the right arm while he was standing. But the last four struck him while his head was on the ground. The last four.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

He said one of those four shots struck Dustin near the shoulder, and two others went through the back of his neck. And the blood patterns from all the wounds were consistent. So they said that's what happened of a dead man. Can't argue with that. Yep. He said the ninth and final shot came 10 to 15 minutes after the previous one, though. That's the big one. He. He said it splattered particles of drying blood across the room and onto the ceiling and dresser. And they could tell all that shit

[Jimmy Wissman]

there was already drying blood. And that drying blood is elsewhere now.

[James Petregallo]

Yep. That's crazy. Wow, That's a lot to go on. Now, they did a pretty cool presentation in court. The newspaper said some jurors appeared amazed as Englert, he's the crime scene guy, gave a crash course on blood patterns using fake blood on a white board to illustrate what causes different types to. He's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What is this fucking science museum? This is a Great time.

[James Petregallo]

This is great. It's the first episode of Dexter. It's a lot of fun. Here he's showing you how it all works. It's good shit. Yeah. He said this would be so much fun as a juror.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fuck yes.

[James Petregallo]

It's fucking show and tell day. He said that this guy's an international expert in the field and wrote the book Blood Chronicles of a Crime Scene Reconstructionist.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He must have laid some blood out, out in the air at different time intervals and then splashed them to show you what happens.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, yeah. And they're showing different angles and yeah, he's shown using fake blood. That must have been so much fun that day. I can't imagine the jurors are like, can I have one of those sheets you use that'll take that home.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Can I have one of your paintbrushes, please? Sign it for me.

[James Petregallo]

Mona testified.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

And she says that she wondered whether Tracy tried to have Jeremy Collins distract her so she could lure Dustin to her home. She said she got a phone call from Collins hours before the shooting, even though he knew she was out Christmas shopping. See, I told you Christmas shopping would come up. She testified he must have dialed the wrong number. That's what happened. And not tried to distract her. Other witnesses, all the ballistics experts and everything like that. Tracy's pattern of fraudulent behavior as well later on, that all comes into this. To show that she's capable of all this, they bring in a retired detective here. And this is, I believe, is a defense witness. The defense calls him. He retired in 2006. He testified he arrived at the house hours after the shooting and was immediately skeptical that a break in and assault had occurred. He said. He said investigators found no signs of forced entry. No items in the house had been knocked over or were out of place, which is usually a sign of a struggle. But during cross examination, okay, he was for the prosecution. During cross examination, he acknowledged law enforcement officials viewed the killing as a self defense at the time. And he said, yes, we did. We were told this was a self defense case and we didn't necessarily see anything that disagreed with that. Basically, it could have gone either way. And they were like, well, I mean, if she's got a great story and he's dead, I guess that's what happened.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that's kind of the point of why you keep firing. So that there's only one story.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. So the former Sac County Sheriff's lieutenant also testifies telling jurors he also initially believed Tracy's claim of self defense and Thought the bruises on her neck, hands and legs were concerned. Consistent with her story. He said that Tracy appeared concerned and perhaps scared when he interviewed her at a local hospital, though he said we took Tracy's information at face value. That's all there was, he said. One thing that bothered me about the story was the way she used two guns, ending up with one in each hand.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right.

[James Petregallo]

He said. In a self defense home case, he said, literally, I've never seen nor heard of that before.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Never.

[James Petregallo]

I reviewed case files looking for. Never found. No one has two guns blazing. Even the self defense, even the OK

[Jimmy Wissman]

Corral, they did one gun at a

[James Petregallo]

time at a time at a time.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can't aim.

[James Petregallo]

No.

[Jimmy Wissman]

With two guns, you can't do it.

[James Petregallo]

You only do two. When you're doing some like shooting exhibition, when it was like a can and you're gonna keep it in the air

[Jimmy Wissman]

or something or you're just blasting like crazy. Yeah, you can.

[James Petregallo]

I guarantee you shoot out.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If I put two gun, one gun in each hand of yours, you're not hitting 90, you're not hitting nine targets.

[James Petregallo]

It's going to knock your alignment, you're going to miss. But her story is she shot, emptied the one first, then just unloaded the second one with her left hand. She's a story where she wasn't shooting at the same time. It seems ridiculous. It really does.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No way. Not going to happen.

[James Petregallo]

Got to agree with you there. So they had her ex husbands, Michael and Pittman there both testifying to her history. And she's not to be trusted. Dr. Pittman takes the stand because one of the, one of the defense's defenses is what Dustin wrote was true. And Dr. Pittman wanted to have her killed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So he's got to come and look like a guy who doesn't want to have his wife killed if they don't want the jury to be suspicious of him. So he was asked directly, did you ever meet Dustin? And he said no, never. He said, did you know about this notebook? And he said, no, never. Did you hire anyone to kill your ex wife and son? No. They said, did your ex wife Tracy despise you?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fuck, yes.

[James Petregallo]

And he laughed and said, I think so. You know. So he said, I didn't know anything about the notebook. The prosecutor asked whether his personal details, the name of his divorce attorney, the details about his life that appeared in those five handwritten pages could have come from anyone else but Tracy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Could you. Is there any way Dustin could know that shit without Tracy? And he said, said only Tracy and her family would have known that much detail about my personal life, period. Cross examination tried to suggest that Michael Roberts, who also feuded with Pittman because they were exes there, might have had access to that information as well. And Pittman acknowledged that possibility. But he's like, well, me, I don't, I don't know shit about that. All I know is wasn't me and only Tracy and them knew that shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So I didn't.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, the defense has to. She's not going to testify.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No.

[James Petregallo]

Which seems crazy for a self defense case.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Does it? Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Fuck yes. That's the one time where you testify when it's self defense.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Self defense is you've got to tell the story and if it's convincing, we all walk out of here and go home.

[James Petregallo]

That's it. Most self defense cases, obviously you don't have to testify, but their lawyers would love them to get up there and tell a great story and end the whole thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

If you're going to tell this world that you killed somebody in self defense, you got killing is. That's the. You can't just do that.

[James Petregallo]

No. That's last resort. So we need to know why.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Tell us what happened. To get you there.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. And if the story makes sense, it should be fine.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Should be easy.

[James Petregallo]

It should be easy. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. This should be. Yeah, there should. It should be. The easiest thing you've done is tell the story.

[James Petregallo]

Story. Even Sarah Boone got up there to try to claim that shit and that. And she zipped a guy up in a suitcase and made fun of him on video.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We were having a good day.

[James Petregallo]

We were having a good day. So I can't wait to talk about Corey Richards because she said almost the exact same thing. So Bert testifies.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Now he's an adult now, Bert. And he testified, by the way. Since then he has gotten a very large tattoo on his rib cage, on the side of his ribs of his mother defending them at the home invasion.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What do you mean?

[James Petregallo]

It's like a giant woman who's got like, you know, things. It's not, you know, completely accurate depiction, but it's like this giant protective woman with like little kids hanging off her, like she's protecting them and she's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Does she have guns?

[James Petregallo]

Oh, of course she is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, yeah.

[James Petregallo]

But that's what he said. This is his mother's defending him right there. And tattoo on his body. Holy Burt gives testimony about the home invasion. Same thing his mother said. Choked with. His mother got choked with pantyhose. There's two Intruders. He testified he was there. He said that his mother was choked. He described himself as being armed with a baseball bat. That he gave vivid detail which supported everything Tracy said. He also said his stepfather might have been involved in the attack. Oh, yeah. Which is weird because he was out of town, and it's very strange. So the defense attorney then suggests that we got to bring Jeremy Collins back into this. They said that he had an affair with Dustin's mom, and so they bring Collins in there to testify that he had nothing to do with any home invasion. Didn't know shit. Barely knew Dustin. I don't know shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right?

[James Petregallo]

Okay. November 3rd, by the way, during his testimony, Tracy cried and, like, asked the court be stopped and, like, left the courtroom.

[Jimmy Wissman]

During her son's testimony?

[James Petregallo]

No, during Jeremy Collins testimony.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, really?

[James Petregallo]

I think she's trying to say, like, oh, my God, that's the guy. I can't.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You know, I can't be near him.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, I'm freaking out. I hear his voice.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He's triggering my ass.

[James Petregallo]

There you go. My ass is just beeping right now. It's going off. I gotta run my ass off right now. Get my ass out of here is what I gotta do. So. November 3, 2011. Mom testifies. This is Tracy's mom, Anna. Yeah, she testifies for the defense. And, you know, just that her daughter's a nice person and that she didn't know anything about any of this other nefarious. Then they bring in the former county prosecutor, the guy who this Ben Smith had beat in the election, and he testifies for the defense. He said he made mistakes in the initial investigation and other circumstantial details made it difficult to know what had really happened. That's why he never filed charges, which is a pretty good witness for the defense to have.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that's actually impressive that he just said, we. We made a lot of mistakes, and therefore we fucked it up.

[James Petregallo]

He said there was some shit in the initial investigation. And, yeah, I didn't have enough to go on is the reason why I didn't press charges. I don't know what this guy thinks he has, but the thing is, number one, he has Mary knowing about the notebook, which this guy didn't have. He didn't know that. So to me, that changes everything. When Mary says she knew about a notebook, I go, oh, everybody back to one. Something's not right. Something's not at all up. So during the closings, the defense noted here that the previous prosecutor testified for the defense. The guy who would have Been in charge of doing this. Said there was no reason to press charges. So they didn't. This is just an overzealous young prosecutor. This is his first jury trial. He's trying to make a name for himself.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Trying to get into it. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

And what better way to do it than to skewer some poor mother who is defending her children? That would not be the best way to make a name for yourself as a prosecutor. If she was innocent, by the way. I'm going to railroad a mother who was defending her children. That'll do it. That'll get me some attention.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And drag her neighbor through the mud that was getting the Schwann's Schwanz.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, the Schwann swans.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Drag that affair through the courts.

[James Petregallo]

So he said that this is bad. This is not a ringing endorsement here for the prosecution's case. So it's three and a half hours of deliberation and the jury returns a unanimous verdict. They find her guilty.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

Of first degree murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, first degree.

[James Petregallo]

They're saying she planned it. She had to. Well, you have to. Yeah, that's everything. The prosecution said they believe it's either one or the other. Yeah, it has to be.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What the hell's her point in doing this, though?

[James Petregallo]

That's what's crazy. The she. I think she wanted to set her act. That's why she wrote, the point of

[Jimmy Wissman]

murdering this young man is to show that he was in cahoots with this man. Hired to ruin me and take my thousand dollars a month so she can win.

[James Petregallo]

She's proven she'll do anything to win.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And that is a bananas way.

[James Petregallo]

That is diabolical. Doesn't even begin to fucking start it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She sacrificed a young man to get $1,000 a month for the next six years.

[James Petregallo]

Maybe. Maybe. And if he's in prison, you're not getting that anyway, so that makes no sense. But he. Think about the. Think about. She had to come up with that initially and go, what if I. What about the kid a couple doors down? Dustin, I'll get him over here. I'll think about her.

[Jimmy Wissman]

To put this on, she sacrificed a young man for 70 grand. Over time.

[James Petregallo]

Over time.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's absurd.

[James Petregallo]

And she also. I mean, that's. Like I said, if he goes to prison. You're not even getting that. So that doesn't even make sense. So she had this kid come over. She told the mother, have him come over to do work. He came over and here we are. So this is wild.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's unbelievable.

[James Petregallo]

Her fiance Russ, and her son Burt and her mother, Anna, all hugged and cried when she got found guilty. Mona said, I knew that was what we should get. We thank everyone for seeing through the lies and hearing the truth. It's what we are all waiting for. Now, Michael, the ex husband, said, pray for healing for my children, for both the families involved. Pray for a hedge of protection around Tracy in prison. That's an honor to pray for. I'm not praying for that. Fuck herself. She's gonna get fucked. Yeah, who cares?

[Jimmy Wissman]

She sacrificed a young man for nothing.

[James Petregallo]

Nothing. And that through this experience, she might trust in God. He's like, I'm hoping she finds Jesus is what he said. So, yeah. Now, the day after the conviction, day later, before sentencing, her dad, the retired police detective, was found dead outside his rural Iowa home.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He did it too?

[James Petregallo]

No. Well, they think it might be natural causes. He was found dead at 11:50am on his property by sheriff's deputies sent to check on him after relatives said they hadn't heard from him since Sunday morning. They said that it appears that he died of natural causes, but that they're going to conduct an autopsy just in case. They said the discovery of the body the day after the conviction appears to be purely coincidental.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow. Bag of Portillo's laying next to him.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, he's a little chunky. They said he was sick in the last few months. All right, and so this. I mean, your daughter got convicted of murder. That might have pushed the whole thing over the edge, they said. We're still trying to piece together the timeline. The investigation is still ongoing. And they said that it appeared that the body had been where it was found, face down on the ground for 24 to 36 hours before they arrived. So they're saying he might have been dead before the verdict came in. She might have. Amazing. Her luck might be so incredible that she gets convicted of first degree murder and her dad dies on the same day. That's pretty.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Her luck and behavior may have killed him before the jury even said guilty.

[James Petregallo]

That's amazing. So can Tracy get any more depraved?

[Jimmy Wissman]

She's a real asshole, man.

[James Petregallo]

Is there a basement to her actions?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is there?

[James Petregallo]

There really isn't. Days after the verdict, before sentencing, she tried to send a letter to a sex offender. Oh, okay. She's awaiting sentencing. She wrote a letter to a Wisconsin inmate named James Landa. He was a convicted child sex offender of fucking. Convicted kid fucker.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

The letter was intercepted by jailers before Tracy's mother, Anna, could deliver it because it was to her mom to be delivered to this guy. A photograph of the letter was found in Landa's prison cell. Later though, somehow he got a hold of it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She got it somehow.

[James Petregallo]

Somehow. Now, the letter contained hand drawn diagrams of her former home in early and the car where the notebook was found.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Personal information about Dustin. Personal information about the man the defense had suggested was the second intruder. Jeremy Collins. Michael Roberts. Social Security number. Michael Roberts date of birth. Michael Roberts physical description. Michael Roberts home address and pictures of her own children. Why? Okay. And in Tracy's words it said, my trust must be earned over time. And actions speak louder than words. The statute of limitations has run out on assault and burglary. So there's nothing to lose if someone feels bad and wants to do the right thing.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What does that mean?

[James Petregallo]

I think it means she's trying to get this guy to kill her husband and children is what they think it means anyway.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And the children?

[James Petregallo]

Why would there be pictures of the kids in there? Yeah, why would you give pictures of your kids to a convicted fucking kid fucker? Number one, Whatever anything else is. That is crazy right there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, so she's telling him he hurt my children, go kill him, apparently. But why kill the kids?

[James Petregallo]

We don't know. We're not sure. We don't even know if that's what she wanted, right? We're not positive. We don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But Michael certainly go get him.

[James Petregallo]

I mean, he's got all his information. So Ben Smith, the prosecutor, told reporters he was concerned enough to alert Michael Roberts attorney that, hey, watch out, out. Because we don't know if this is the only person she's reached out to. She might have five different people out there looking to catch up.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And even if this is the only guy, maybe he reached out to people that he's known in here that are now out there.

[James Petregallo]

That's what I mean. There are other people besides him, possibly. So they worried. Yeah, totally. So he said he believed that Tracy was soliciting testimony to win a new trial. He was also worried she was setting up Michael Roberts to be located and possibly harmed. So possible witness tampering and possibly another murder set up. Ben Smith said she's dangerous and everyone keeps underestimating her. I feared for Michael and his kids. The intentions were clear. She's not stupid. This is her. Doug Flutie, toss in the end zone. He is making a very extremely specific sports reference to a game played, I believe in 1985 between Boston College in Miami, where you do. Doug Flutie threw a Hail Mary pass. He went back there and threw it with every little bit of his 5 foot 2 might. He fucking chucked this thing. And a Boston College receiver came down with it. And they beat the number one ranked Miami. He brings that up.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And he's saying this in 2013.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. Almost 40 years later, he's bringing that up like everyone's going to go, oh, yeah, the Doug Flutie toss.

[Jimmy Wissman]

A fluty flutie flicker.

[James Petregallo]

Wow, that is amazing. And he said it was alarming because it included a photograph of the children and personal information about the ex husband.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, that's frightening, that is.

[James Petregallo]

Now, Anna Richter, her mom later said, told the judge in the custody case that her daughter had asked her to, quote, check out Landa's background. He's a pedophile. There's your background. What else do you need to know?

[Jimmy Wissman]

So he's gonna diddle Mike, what are you doing?

[James Petregallo]

What are you gonna do? Come fucking. Yeah. So she said that she didn't remember the letter. Anna said. And she wrote to the judge, no way did Tracy ask me to give a pedophile information on my grandkids. But she did though, is the problem, because she sent the letter to him with information. So you can say anything you want. The judge is going to have their say. When this judge says, you, ma' am may fuck off. Life without parole.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, boy.

[James Petregallo]

Over there is where you are.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And we'll say stick around there trying to figure out how to. To hurt people from in there.

[James Petregallo]

Now, the same judge, the sentencing judge also ruled on a related matter. Tracy was owed back child support from Michael Roberts. He rules. But. There's a big but there. He ruled that the payments, $2,000 in outstanding support, would not go to Tracy but to Dustin's family as restitution.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

The court ordered $150,000 in restitution to Dustin. And they said she no longer has any dependent children. She doesn't need the money for herself. It goes to them. So that's pretty interesting. So, yeah, I can't believe still about the letter to the pedophile.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's crazy. That's just diabolical. Doesn't describe it, James. That's fucking vile.

[James Petregallo]

If everything the prosecutor said happened, happened here, which it pretty much seems like it did. Holy. Holy shit. Is this one of the most diabolical, sick, twisted plots I've ever like. She needs a hobby to sit around thinking about this shit, dude. Lose yourself in some TV or something. Holy fuck, man.

[Jimmy Wissman]

My question though, James, is everybody seems to be underestimating her. Is she crazy hot or no?

[James Petregallo]

No, she's not normal woman. She's normal. Just normal.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Is she just one of those like, like forgettable people?

[James Petregallo]

Not even that. I don't know what it is. She's just really manipulative and I don't know what it is about, you know, her dad's a homicide detective. I don't know if that has something to do with it. Some sort of.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I don't understand why she keeps getting a pass.

[James Petregallo]

Well, a lot of times, like kids who have parents who are like cops or like the school principal or something like that, they're the. Or pastors. They're the biggest fuck ups of them all.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Like they're trying to go against their parents a lot and their parents have like a try to have a grip on them so they buck that shit like that happens quite often.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's either that or they're a fucking

[James Petregallo]

dork or they're a dork or they go along with it and they, I want to be a cop too, like my dad. Or they're this. We never know. So. Remember Dr. Joseph Laspiza, this poor bastard.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Who had a typewritten. That's the other thing is she's no stranger to typing out things and saying other people did it or basically. Basically using other people's words and to

[Jimmy Wissman]

try to set everything she does. There's so much collateral damage.

[James Petregallo]

It's a lot. Oh, she has a lot.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She never has a targeted strike. It's always just a carpet bombing of a metropolitan city.

[James Petregallo]

It's all it is. It's not even that. It's just press the button and see

[Jimmy Wissman]

what, you know, see what happens.

[James Petregallo]

But it's the carpet bombing of a metropolitan evaporation

[Jimmy Wissman]

with no intelligence behind it. Just like hope that's where they are. Jesus Christ.

[James Petregallo]

Of just hucking a grenade out of a, out of a trench. Just out of a trench. Just throwing it up there, hope that. Throwing it out there, hope that hits something. So La Speza said that quote, his history with this is what a reporter said, that his history with Richter is in some ways even more bizarre than the stories emerging from this testimony in this trial. That backstory is even crazier the more people got into Tracy. They were like, oh my God, what the fuck, man? So anyway, six months into her life sentence, now it's 2012. She appears on a two hour Dateline NBC special about this kid. Two hours.

[Jimmy Wissman]

One hour about the case, another about how much of a diagnosed ass she is.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, well, we're doing three, so we can't really fault them for Doing two.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah, but we can sit around and talk about other shit. True.

[James Petregallo]

We can dick off. Keith Morrison can't do that. He can't do that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Keith Morrison can sit there with his nutsack.

[James Petregallo]

That's wild. This bitch is crazy. Right? And he turns to the other people on Dateline. They're like, I don't know about that. I don't. I don't know. This bitch is crazy. But it's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Did you say that acronym was Ass?

[James Petregallo]

Ass. So she is interviewed by Dateline from prison. They get to talk to her. She spoke with correspondent Dennis Murphy, maintaining her innocence the whole time. Damn it, not me. She stuck to the home invasion story. Her son Burt appeared on the show to back up her account and show off his crazy fucking tattoo. I wanna see those tattoos. Oh, it'll be on social media. Don't worry. It's on there. I got a picture of it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Amazing.

[James Petregallo]

So this is in Mitchellville, Iowa. She's sitting in a prison cell, essentially doing pr, basically just trying to make everybody think she's a nice person. It's crazy. So here's some quotes here. The interviewer said, did you lure Dustin Wheaty over to your house that day and execute him in a cold blooded fashion? She said, no. She said, I was in the corner. The person had to follow me into the corner to get to me. You couldn't have gotten more further away in the house and been in a more defensive position than huddled on the ground in a corner shooting at him. And she said, that's not true. Because they said shooting at him. And she said, that's not true. I know. I was in the corner and the person was coming out at me. That I know. I mean, I will take that to my grave. And then they talked about her neck injury and they said, did you fake it? Did you do that to yourself? And she said, no, no, that's ridiculous and it's hurtful. Oh, now we've hurt her feelings. I'm sorry, My bad. I'm hurt.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm hurt.

[James Petregallo]

You know what it is right here. My heart is where you got me. That's what hurts. Now it's right here. Not any of this. Not here. Not right there, Dennis. Right there, buddy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

God damn it, Dennis, you son of a bitch. Mr. Murphy.

[James Petregallo]

I hurt, God damn it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

He said, and I hurt.

[James Petregallo]

If you cut me, I don't bleed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You cut me and I hurt and

[James Petregallo]

I hurt and I bleed. She said, I didn't. I honestly never. It was never a concern. She said, to start that sentence a couple of Times. Yeah. I didn't. I honestly never. It was never a concern. The only person that benefits is Michael Roberts. Now she's still pushing that. It's Michael that did this.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

And it benefits Michael Roberts because if I died while he was out of town and he was going to collect, you know, several million dollars in insurance on me. Don't know if that's true or not. He was going to be the number one suspect. And you think that today? And you think that today, no matter what. I think it more today than I ever have. Meaning that it's open and shut to her. Michael Roberts did this to her to collect insurance money. He's diabolical. I'm a fucking victim and now I'm

[Jimmy Wissman]

in prison because of him.

[James Petregallo]

Bullshit. Right?

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm a victim.

[James Petregallo]

Victim. January 2013 Iowa Court of Appeals. The court finds there was substantial evidence that the killing was not justified. Issues about excluded expert testimony, mainly the psychologist, the Dr. Grove who said she showed PTSD and ass. Ass, DSD, our whole ass. All those were rejected. The court ruled that there was enough evidence of staging that the jury could reject self defense. Affirmed.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

Okay. Now there's a website called ripoffreport.com.

[Jimmy Wissman]

what is that? Oh yeah, I know what that is.

[James Petregallo]

Okay.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Consumer Protective.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah. It had dozens of user submitted complaints and updates primarily authored or updated by contributors to this site that we're doing this regularly. It aggressively claimed Tracy was wrongfully convicted of murder.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Consumer Report did this.

[James Petregallo]

Did Ripoff report starting as early as 2012, notably in report number 9380 and follow ups like 1049232 and 1095021. Jimmy, I know you were waiting for that one. It's still there. You know it. Old5002. 1.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You tell me the website you can go to to say the ass of these Levi's ripped and that's bullshit. Is the same one that's defending her.

[James Petregallo]

You complain if you think the police have convicted you on a conspiracy theory. Yeah, same one. I'm complaining about this. Sac county fucking whatever. So they portrayed the Sac County, Iowa case as a textbook example of prosecutorial corruption, evidence tampering, witness intimidation and a tainted trial.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It's a real ripoff.

[James Petregallo]

She's got ass and tainted trial. She's in deep trouble. One search on the site for Tracy Richter or related items surfaced dozens of interconnected reports, videos, documents and rebuttals. A 2017 post even tied them to a federal civil rights settlement that we'll talk about here. Okay. Now they say that she shot Dustin while protecting her young children. Initial investigators and the prior prosecutor found no basis for charges and viewed her as a heroic mother, they said. Nearly a decade later, this Ben Smith comes in, reopens the case and gets a life sentence despite no evidence linking her to the crime.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Okay.

[James Petregallo]

They said Michael Roberts was the real perpetrator. Orchestrator. This is what the website said. They said Roberts allegedly had motives, drug debts leading to quote, street level justice. That's what they said. Violent thoughts confessed on secret recordings, child related issues, whatever that means. And a desire to eliminate Tracy in a cross custody battle. He reportedly or he purportedly hired Dustin. Planted evidence. The pink notebook. That's Michael. Planted that before he went to fucking.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Before he went to Minneapolis. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Paid his alibi witnesses, the guy in the car with him sent crime scene photos including the top secret evidence to others and fled to Australia with the children against court orders. Roberts was placed in witness protection which they called a sham and testified for the prosecution. Instead of being investigated, they said he failed a polygraph. They said 99% deceptive on key questions, per some claims. Yet Smith relied on him. There's no claims. I haven't seen any.

[Jimmy Wissman]

And no sources cited there.

[James Petregallo]

I don't know where that is.

[Jimmy Wissman]

These are just all wild ass claims.

[James Petregallo]

Literally, per some claims is not enough to put something in writing. The prosecutor, Ben Smith, they say engaged in gross misconduct and conflicts of interest. It's gross.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So gross. She said she shot him.

[James Petregallo]

Man, that doesn't matter. It's Ben Smith's fault. Maybe Ben Smith shot him. I think maybe that's. They said that Smith was a close friend of the Roberts is which we don't know that at the time the thing happened. He was 23 years old. So I don't know how he would have been a close friend there. They said prior to that he helped Robert's prior child abuse conviction, advised him on dodging child support and jointly applied for business financing with him. This is all later on, they said when that failed, Smith allegedly charged Tracy to cover it all up. It's a real big stretch. Wow. They said that Smith married the daughter of Mary Higgins who later gave the.

[Jimmy Wissman]

There's 400 people here connect.

[James Petregallo]

They all know each other.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Don't take this person's married to that person. Don't do that.

[James Petregallo]

As long as the jury isn't married

[Jimmy Wissman]

to one of them, I wouldn't give

[James Petregallo]

a fuck, it's fine. But this is all. Yeah, they said that raised perjury and bias issues, suppression of exculpatory evidence. They claim that they ignored or hid Dustin's own handwritten notes claiming that Michael Roberts hired him to kill Richter. Withheld discovery documents, dismissed the failed polygraph of Michael Roberts. Roberts while using paid ones.

[Jimmy Wissman]

They say this is a lot of claims with zero evidence. You can just type this on the Internet.

[James Petregallo]

You could type this on the Internet and it's.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You're allowed to just say that.

[James Petregallo]

It seems like, especially if it's about a person. If you say some person orchestrated this and murdered, that should be libel. Threw away if there's no evidence to back it up.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's crazy. You can't just say that.

[James Petregallo]

Especially if it's been adjudicated completely and in a different way. Makes no sense. We can say she's a murderous asshole because the jury said that. So that's now fact in the world. And if you wanted to sue us, you would have to prove you didn't kill someone, which you obviously can't do.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Which is because you're in the shape,

[James Petregallo]

because you're in prison for killing someone

[Jimmy Wissman]

that we're calling you a murderous asshole about.

[James Petregallo]

Exactly. So that's how that works. Kind of. So they also say that they claim witness intimidation. They say they threatened former prosecutor Earl Hardesty and others with arrest to suppress evidence and filed a motion to squash, which I think they mean quash.

[Jimmy Wissman]

No, it's legally. It's squash.

[James Petregallo]

I think it's squash. To block Meade from sharing proof with Richter's attorneys. They also claim retaliation. They used over 100. They said used over 100 investigative subpoenas on Ripoff report, Eccentric Ventures and Mead to silence critics violating privileges and launching a civil rights abuses campaign.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh.

[James Petregallo]

Also saying the trial and conviction were tainted based on an arrogant and baseless assumptions, perjury and propaganda, eg, misleading dateline coverage. That was after the conviction. Six months after sentencing, as a matter of fact. So I don't know how that would change retroactively. It's very arrogant. That Keith Morrison, he's known for it. They said Smith sought fame, not justice. Exculpatory material was never presented to the jury. Smith is the prosecutor, by the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nobody knows who he is, so didn't get that fame.

[James Petregallo]

Here's some key quotes from the posts. An innocent woman is sent to prison for life without the possibility of parole for protecting her children during a brutal home invader. Based on information and belief Michael Roberts orchestrated the deadly home invasion. He planted evidence, a pink notebook, paid alibi, witnesses and much more, quote, unquote. Wow. Then Mead pointed out that notes in Dustin's handwriting claim that Richter's first ex husband, Tracy's first ex husband had hired Dustin to kill Richter. That's the Pittman one. This ex husband had been a witness for the prosecution against Richter instead of a suspect. So that means he's guilty, obviously. According to them. They also report secret audio of Roberts confessing his motives. Michael Roberts videos discovery documents and public records offered to law enforcement and the media. Updates through 2018. Report number 938843, updated January 17, 2018. Celebrating the dismissal of criminal charges against me need with prejudice and tying it to Smith's failed retaliation. So the ripoff report framed the Post as protected consumer speech exposing corruption. But you could say what you want about a prosecutor and his job.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That is protected speech.

[James Petregallo]

You can say this. If you don't agree with what happened. You can say you think the prosecutor did this, this and this. And. And that's perfectly legal to take a pro. Fuck yeah. You are the prosecutor of the county. Everything you do is under the microscope. And anything I want to say about you is ball game.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Except for saying he covered something up. Right.

[James Petregallo]

How often do you hear that?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Constantly. That's constant.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You can say he threw away.

[James Petregallo]

Fuck yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really?

[James Petregallo]

It seems. I don't know if they can sue you or what. Or what the legalities of. But no one seems to ever get sued for that. So people tend to say these prosecutors did this and they did that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. I guess the prosecutor's so busy he doesn't have time to be chasing down libel shit too.

[James Petregallo]

It's gotta be that it's legal because you're a public figure being the prosecutor and you've. You can disagree with the case. That has to be part of it. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Unliable. You're unable to be liable.

[James Petregallo]

I don't. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Well, if you're a public figure, people can have whatever opinion they want. That's part of it. So. Or certain cases. But. And you work for. Also you get paid by taxpayer money. I think I can say whatever I want about you. I pay your salary.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Wow.

[James Petregallo]

That's the other thing. So why not? But a private citizen like Michael Roberts, you can't go off saying he's planning murders. That's fucking crazy. So when Smith investigated them, meaning the ripoff report as potentially defamatory and harassing to other people, the site fought back in federal court leading to a preliminary injunction and a $750,000 settlement paid by Sac county in 2017 without admitting wrongdoing. So you can say whatever you want about the Prosecution. I think that's what it means.

[Jimmy Wissman]

The county paid the website.

[James Petregallo]

Yes. $750,000 settlement. The platform offered to remove false statements if Smith proved them, but they said he never did. They said, well, tell us what's false and we'll take it off. Prove it. Show us in the Then the ripoff report's coverage turned the Tracy's case into a high visibility online crusade against alleged prosecutorial abuse. The complaints painted Tracy as innocent, Roberts as guilty and Smith as corrupt. Jesus. Yeah, they said many of the original posts remain on the site or are referenced in updates, though some content's been edited or supplemented over time.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So that's amazing.

[James Petregallo]

They also bring in a private investigator from Arizona. Yeah, AZ DPS license. I'm like, you got an Arizona Department of John Brewington, owner of Paladin Investigations, sometimes styled Paladin Civil Rights Investigations or JFB Acquisitions, based in the Phoenix Scottsdale area. He became involved in the tracing Richter murder case indirectly as an investigator hired or acting as an agent for parties aligned against the post conviction Innocence Campaign, including connections to prosecutor Ben Smith's side or witnesses like Michael Roberts who was the ex husband. He said he's not a party to the criminal case, but played a role in the surrounding controversy over RipoffReport.com's coverage of it. Jesus He Brewington, the detective here conducted extensive private investigation work tied to ripoff reports handling of the case, including producing or obtaining 60 hours of secret audio recordings involving ripoff report owner Ed Magadison, associates, for example, individuals using aliases and others. The recordings allegedly captured Magadson directing or scripting content, financial arrangements and tactics related to complaints including those about Richter's conviction and the prosecutor. They also creating or orchestrating a video which ripoff report later called a failed blackmail plot or bogus videotape intended to pressure the removal of the Richter related posts. Ripoff report accused Brewington of guiding participants to rephrase statements for the recording.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh boy.

[James Petregallo]

So this is a lot. Yeah. The blog posts did not primarily relitigate the underlying murder evidence, ballistics and all that shit. Instead they focused on discrediting ripoff reports platform and of the Innocence Campaign itself. Now the blog appears to have been active primarily during the 2012-2015 litigation period, meaning his blog, the private Investigators blog and nowadays does not load any relevant content so you can't get it. Now they said that Brewington was named in federal court filings as one of Smith's quote agents with plaintiffs seeking orders related to materials he received or distributed his work and blog fueled accusations from ripoff report of witness intimidation, evidence tampering and counter campaign and retaliation.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

Holy shit. 2014. Anorect Tracy's mom. Reports emerged that Anna is under investigation for allegedly harassing prosecution witnesses online.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Holy shit. These people are a nightmare.

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, they seem like they're all class, huh? 2017, she appeals again based on shit. Among her arguments were that the defense team at trial failed to point out an error on a model of of Dustin's body when discussing the shooting and that one of her attorneys should have withdrawn because she wanted to call them as a witness. The court of appeals rejects all of her shit and says keep fucking off.

[Jimmy Wissman]

But I wanted to have a talk,

[James Petregallo]

but I want it to work for me now. Tracy remains incarcerated at Mitchellville, Iowa, in the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women. She maintains her innocence to this day. And Michael Roberts and the two younger children had relocated. And Burt's out there with a really stupid tattoo. So, yeah, that's what's going on there. That everybody is early Iowa, and you can see why this really stirred the town up a lot. Not only is it a murder, but crazy shit. Crazy fucking crazy shit. So if you like that story, get on whatever app you're on and definitely tell the world about it. Give us five stars. It helps a ton. We don't know why. Head over to shutupandgivememurder.com get your tickets, everybody, for live shows. Come out to them. They're so much fun. You're going to love it. Trust us. It's so much fun. Next one with tickets available is May 2nd in Denver. There's a few left for that. And Then Royal Oak, Michigan on May 30th. Buffalo and Salt Lake City are sold out. We also have shows after the summer in September. September 18, the Milwaukee. September 19 in Minneapolis and then Dallas. And then we have San Jose, Sacramento, Tarrytown. Boston comes out to a show, come see us. We can't wait to see you out there. Shut upandgivemerder.com follow on social media. We are SmallTownMurder on Instagram, SmallTown Pot on Facebook. So you can definitely do that. Get yourself Patreon do that for sure. Patreon.com CrimeInSport Just like the name of our other show that you should definitely listen to. Just had a crazy murder plot from this boxer.

[Jimmy Wissman]

So much fun. Yeah.

[James Petregallo]

So brutal. Check that out now with Patreon. Anybody? $5 a month or above. You get everything we put out. I mean, every damn thing we put out. As soon as you subscribe, you get hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before. Then you get new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder and you get every damn drop of you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

You get a whole deal.

[James Petregallo]

This week here we are going to talk about the Corey Richens trial and that whole story from Utah, which is a wild story of a woman who killed her husband, then wrote a book about it. A book about her husband to help her children grieve.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Petregallo]

It's wild.

[Jimmy Wissman]

A book about grief for children, children's children, teaching them how grief is brutal.

[James Petregallo]

Which by the way, here's just a foreshadow of how annoying she is. She thought that that didn't exist in the world. There was never anybody else who wrote a book about children's grieving that she literally, that was her big selling point. She went on TV and everything. It's wild shit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This doesn't exist out there. You're not going to believe it.

[James Petregallo]

Never. And for crime and sports, we're going to talk. We're going to do part two of old timey articles and weird ads and shit like that. Those are the most fun. So this is a really good week for.

[Jimmy Wissman]

She might be right though, James. A murderer may not have ever written a grieving book about their.

[James Petregallo]

That's probably true for their kids, about their dead. About their dead father who they killed. Probably not. So yeah, crime and sports, I don't even know where I was.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Crime and sports,

[James Petregallo]

those are a lot of fun there. So do that and join up. And you also get everything we put out, which is all of the shows we put out all ad free as well. And then on top of that, you also get a shout out at the end of the show, which is right goddamn now. Jimmy, hit me with the names of the best fucking people in the world who always come through for us and. And have done wonderful things and get to hear tons of great content. Hit me with him right now.

[Jimmy Wissman]

This executive producers are coral.

[James Petregallo]

Corporal.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Corporal Carl. God damn it. Corporal Carl Kirschner. The man put down his cat and I can't even say his name. Poor bastard.

[James Petregallo]

Sorry about that.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's so sad. Sorry, Corporal Carl. Hope you're on the upside of things

[James Petregallo]

are Cs, by the way.

[Jimmy Wissman]

What is it?

[James Petregallo]

Those are Cs, by the way in there.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yes.

[James Petregallo]

Two Cs and a K. It's not one K. Yeah, Kirschner is K. Yeah.

[Jimmy Wissman]

His cat evidently loved catnip like you love weed. That's what I'm told.

[James Petregallo]

Terrific.

[Jimmy Wissman]

That's A lot of catnip.

[James Petregallo]

That's a lot. He's putting it down. It's a big bar card.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Peyton Meadows, Gary Howard in Cleveland, Texas. Happy Hour in New Caney, Texas. They're both in Texas this week. Watch out for each other. God damn. Honk as you pass each other.

[James Petregallo]

Honk, honk.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Right?

[James Petregallo]

Yeah, right.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Really, as you're. As you're driving down the. Down the road, Gary, just pump your fist at every trucker and hopefully Happy Hour says hello.

[James Petregallo]

Maybe you'll hit the right one. We don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Andrew Frisch and his dog, Crypto. Siobhan Kalman and Larry Butterfast. Thank you guys all so much.

[James Petregallo]

Thanks, Larry. Good to see you too, Larry.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Oh, Larry, so good to see you.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you, brother. Definitely.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Such a good guy. What a fucking. A big fucker. Hugs. Grand.

[James Petregallo]

It does. It'll hurt your neck. It's good. I like it.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Yeah. Other producers this week. Panthea Renee. Nicole Zurdetsky. Oh, Happy Hour just wanted me to say that name. For whatever reason, he enjoys that. Ryan Bender. Janice Hill. Lauren Mercurio. Natalie Legrand. Legrand. Charles Holtzclaw. Bean with no last name. Caleb Sweet. Lauren Landon. Kenny from Iowa. Mera Tanner. Courtney Kreckelberg. Sensical with no last name. Kevin with no last name name. Ash Kent. Lyle with no last name. Josh Cabow. Lindsay Huta. Mark Twain. I doubt it. Kelly Goodman. Annika. Damian, Hrunka James with no last name. Josh Covington. Zach with no last name. Nick Johnson. Ashley Cross. Amanda Falk. Danny Lockwood. Astute Fruit skip with no last name. Danielle Lockwood. Heather Jimison, S.D. like Sandy. A Stacy Bird. Win Cody with no last name. Christy Gardner. Erica Klein. Mackenzie Dixon. Caroline. Caroline Birch or Carolyn. Caroline, Right? Is it Caroline? Have we agreed on that?

[James Petregallo]

Go either way on that one. It could be Caroline or Carolyn, depending on who you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

All right.

[James Petregallo]

I just want to make sure Carolyn is with a Y, but sometimes.

[Jimmy Wissman]

See, yeah, two ends and an E. I don't know. This is just Caroline. Like Norris. Yeah, more sweet. Brandon Brown. Gary Landry. Andrea Soup. Harley Marshall. Brian Pearson. Kim Murray. Kate Arango. Leah Ownby. What is this? Clifford way Raven. Wow. Raven Walraven. Walraven Wall. Raven. It's like Walgreens but also Raven Walraven.

[James Petregallo]

Come on down. There's sales.

[Jimmy Wissman]

I'm trying to look to see if that's an I or an L. I'm going to have to start using bigger vault. That's embarrassing. Rachel Marks, Jackie Pascoe.

[James Petregallo]

So close to the screen. Guys like mouth open Like I got real close.

[Jimmy Wissman]

It looks exactly the same as back here.

[James Petregallo]

Put his glasses up and down. Did one of those. Like a Mr. Magoo. What the is happening here?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Chris Patterson, Dustin Brown. Is this a. Was this one of those visual. What do they call those?

[James Petregallo]

I don't know.

[Jimmy Wissman]

When things look different, but they're not.

[James Petregallo]

Optical illusion.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Fingo.

[James Petregallo]

There you go.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We'd be so good on that. Pyramid. Isis Jackson, Chris Patterson and Dustin Brown. Kevin Newberry. Travis with no last name. Del Nagy. Dale Nagy. Nagy. What was the pitcher's name? Was it Nagy or Nagy?

[James Petregallo]

Charles Nagy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Nagy. So it's Dale Nagy. Moxley would know last name. Ashley would know last name. Amanda Craft. Alex would. No last name. Michael Gruber. Jeanette Gallagher. Snana. What is a Snana? No last name. I don't know if it's a first or last name. Julia Shriner. David Fox. Scott Johnson. Adam White. Candace Flower. Michael M. Shaden. Milne Sparks. Vanessa Meyer. Colo. Doc. I imagine that's a color dock, like a colorectal doc.

[James Petregallo]

Oh, boy.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We got to go get our asses checked. By the way, Corey Samus, you're doing Seth with no last name. Kat with no last name. Kelly Hipwell. Janice Lamond. Michelle Schmalle. Mark Rouse. Alexis Stankey. All right. John with no last name. Rachel. Lindsay. Rachel with no last name. Possibly somebody with two patrons. Thank you. Lindsay. Rachel. Lindsay. If you meant to do that.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you. Thank you.

[Jimmy Wissman]

Otherwise, check and make sure that you only have one. Ben Shamel. Nicole Royer. Sarah Jackson. Americus would know last name. Terrence Matthews. Kim Garrett's. Sherry Lynn. Ben. Ben Whittle. Constance Adams. Did I say? Nope, sir. Sure didn't. Kylie with no last name. Lindsay with no last name. Sherry with no Last name. Ash OSS31. Sam Setterston. Steph Saleen. I wonder that she's related to the people who do the saline cobras and shit.

[James Petregallo]

Are you related to that?

[Jimmy Wissman]

Do we have saline money now? Noah Gascon. C rag. That's gross. Max Huisman. H U I S. Huisman. That's fascinating. Casey Michalik. Mark Chandler. Rebecca Jones. Beth Hudson. Kevin Schlemmerhorn.

[James Petregallo]

Schlemmerhorn.

[Jimmy Wissman]

April Rose. Archangel. Otaku. Otaku. Emmanuel Alexander. Cody Austin. Bradley Camano. Rhonda. Rhonda Anderson. Brandon Loveday. India Russell. Ronald Pachen. Grace Somerville. Just Brie Machiavelli and cheese. Fascinating. Big Wally Rochelle with no last name. Cynthia Berry. And all of our patrons. You're the fucking best.

[James Petregallo]

Thank you so much, everybody. I can't tell you how much I appreciate. We appreciate every goddamn thing you've done for us over the years. You want to follow us on social media? Shut upandgivemerder.com has drop down menus that'll take you every damn place you could possibly want to go. Keep coming back and seeing us week after week. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Running a business means more than chasing invoices or fixing the shipping label printer again. It means leading, growing, selling, shipping, serving, scaling. That's why there's ICCU for business. With smart tools like vendor bill pay, payroll, and business lines of credit.

[Jimmy Wissman]

We handle the money stuff so you

[James Petregallo]

can handle the big stuff. Iccu. You mind the business, we'll mind the banking. Schedule a free business review today. Insured by NCUA.