Tracey Roberts of Iowa: Dustin Wehde’s Murder and the Pink Notebook

Tracey Richter Roberts is an Iowa woman convicted of first-degree murder in the December 13, 2001 shooting death of her 20-year-old neighbor, Dustin Wehde, in Early, Iowa. For nearly ten years she told police she had killed Wehde in self-defense during a home invasion. In 2011, prosecutors charged her with murder, arguing she had lured Wehde to her home, forced him to write a fake journal implicating her ex-husband in a murder-for-hire plot, and then shot him nine times to keep him quiet. A jury agreed. She is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.¹²

The Night of the Shooting

On the night of December 13, 2001, Richter called police from her home in Early, Iowa, and reported that she had just killed an intruder. The dead man was Dustin Wehde, 20, a young neighbor who had worked in a home computer business run by her second husband, Michael Roberts. The Roberts family had befriended Wehde, taking him to church and to play paintball, though Richter later described him as “socially awkward.”³⁴

Richter told investigators that Wehde and a second, unidentified man had broken into the house and strangled her with pantyhose until she blacked out. She said she broke free, reached a gun safe, and shot Wehde to protect herself and her three children. When Wehde tried to get up, she said, she shot him again with a second gun.⁵

The account drew public sympathy. Some gun rights advocates held her up as a mother who had defended her family, and Montel Williams featured her on his television show. For almost a decade, no charges were filed.⁵

Why the Self-Defense Story Fell Apart

Investigators found problems with Richter’s account from the start. There were no signs of forced entry. No physical evidence of a second intruder was ever found.⁶⁷ A medical examiner later concluded that the red marks on Richter’s neck were friction burns, not ligature marks, and their position over the thyroid cartilage would have prevented strangulation to the point of unconsciousness.

Wehde had been shot nine times with two different guns, a 9mm handgun and a revolver. Three shots entered the back of his head and neck. Crime scene reconstructionist Rodney Englert testified that trajectory analysis put the head shots coming down from above while Wehde was face-down on the floor. Blood spatter analysis showed that at least one shot was fired into coagulated blood, meaning Wehde was already dead or incapacitated when the last rounds went in.⁶⁷

The Pink Notebook and the Frame-Up

The single most damaging piece of evidence was a pink spiral notebook found inside Wehde’s car, which was parked in Richter’s driveway. Five pages, all in Wehde’s handwriting, described a plot in which “J.P.” had allegedly hired him to kill Richter and her older son Bert, or to stage a murder-suicide. “J.P.” was Dr. John Pitman III, a plastic surgeon and Richter’s first husband, with whom she was locked in a long-running custody fight over Bert.

The notebook contained specifics a young man from rural Iowa had no way of knowing on his own: Pitman’s profession, his father’s surgical practice, and the name of Pitman’s Chicago divorce attorney, Stephen Komie.⁸ Prosecutors argued Richter fed Wehde those details and coerced him into writing the entries so she could produce the journal after killing him and use it to frame Pitman.

A hearing on primary custody was scheduled for February 2002, and a judge had ordered Richter to be deposed just days before the shooting.⁹¹⁷

Investigators kept the existence of the notebook secret for years, on the theory that only someone involved in the killing would know what was in it. When Richter later revealed knowledge of the notebook’s contents to others, that secrecy became evidence against her.⁶

The Trial

Richter was arrested in July 2011, and a trial information charging her with first-degree murder was filed in Sac County on August 5, 2011. The trial was moved to Webster County and held in Fort Dodge before Judge Kurt L. Wilke. Sac County Attorney Ben Smith led the prosecution, with Assistant County Attorney Doug Hammerand and Assistant Attorney General Kyle Hanson.⁶

Pitman testified that he had never met Wehde, had not hired him, and knew nothing about the notebook, pointing out that the personal details in the journal were known only to Richter and his own family.¹⁰ Wehde’s mother, Mona Wehde, told police that Richter had specifically asked her to send Dustin to the house alone on the day of the shooting.⁴

A former close friend, Mary Higgins, was central to the state’s case. Higgins testified that Richter had described the shooting to her without any emotion, “like she was telling me her grocery list,” and had admitted standing over Wehde and saying something like “stop moving” or “I’ll blow your fucking brains out” before firing until he stopped. Higgins also said Richter pointed in her face in 2004 and told her “to forget about the pink notebook.”⁸¹¹

Richter’s son Bert Pitman, then 21, testified for the defense. He said he had heard his mother screaming and choking, later saw pantyhose around her wrists, and saw Wehde still moving on the floor when she fired more shots. On cross-examination, prosecutors confronted him with his own police interview from hours after the shooting, when he was eleven. In that interview Bert had not mentioned choking sounds, banging in the hallway, seeing Wehde move, or hearing his mother warn Wehde to stay down. He conceded that the 2001 interview was his “most accurate recall.” Higgins told jurors about an earlier moment when Bert, listening to his mother recount her version of events, had banged his head on a table and said, “Why did you go up there? Why did you go back up there? You didn’t have to shoot him. You didn’t have to kill him.”⁶

The jury returned a first-degree murder verdict on November 7, 2011. On December 5, 2011, Judge Wilke sentenced Richter to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Speaking to Wehde’s family at sentencing, Richter said, “I didn’t murder your son.”¹²

Appeals

Richter’s appeals have all failed. On direct appeal, the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed her conviction on January 9, 2013, finding “substantial evidence” that the killing was unjustified and that the force used was unreasonable.⁶ Her application for postconviction relief, which raised claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and prosecutorial misconduct, was denied, and on March 8, 2017, the Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed that denial.¹² A subsequent appeal also failed, with a three-judge panel citing “overwhelming evidence of Richter’s guilt.”¹³

The Harassment Campaign From Prison

In 2014, Sac County Attorney Ben Smith filed a 120-page search warrant application alleging that Richter, from inside prison, had directed a “systematic and ongoing campaign of cyber/Internet harassment and defamation” targeting trial witnesses, Pitman, and Smith himself.¹⁴

According to Smith’s application, which relied on hundreds of hours of recorded prison phone calls and monitored visits, Richter coordinated with her mother, Anna Richter, to have defamatory posts placed on the site Ripoff Report. The posts accused witnesses of theft, perjury, fraud, child molestation, murder, and terrorism, and were written so they would appear at the top of search results for the witnesses’ names. Pitman alleged that false posts calling him a child molester and drug abuser cost his Virginia plastic surgery clinic an estimated $600,000 in lost business.¹⁴

On July 8, 2014, authorities executed a search warrant at Anna Richter’s condominium in Urbandale, Iowa, and seized a computer and multiple flash drives.¹⁵ Based on the available reporting, no formal criminal charges were filed against Richter for witness tampering in connection with the campaign.¹⁶

Restitution and Where She Is Now

Smith obtained court approval to divert funds from Richter’s prison commissary and phone accounts toward court costs and restitution owed to Mona Wehde. Those accounts held more than $40,000, much of it child support paid by Michael Roberts. Smith’s filing said Richter had been using her phone privileges for criminal purposes and cited “a reasonable concern for public safety.”¹⁷ A separate order directed the Iowa Department of Corrections to confiscate “all monies” belonging to Richter.¹⁸

Michael Roberts, who took custody of their two children and moved back to Australia after Richter’s arrest, was ordered to pay $250 per month toward a balance of roughly $45,000 in child support and $60,000 in property settlement and attorneys’ fees. He called the payments “unjust and unaffordable” but said he and his wife were “happy that at least it’s going to a good cause,” referring to the restitution for the Wehde family.¹⁹ Mona Wehde had earlier filed a wrongful death suit against Richter but dropped it at the request of investigators, who said it could interfere with the criminal case.¹

Richter is incarcerated at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville. Her only route to release is a governor’s commutation. Her fiancé, Russell Schertz, and her mother continue to assert her innocence and have called for an independent investigation by officials outside Iowa.¹⁸²⁰

1
CBS News. Hero Claim Rejected: Iowa Mom Guilty of Murder
2
Deseret News. Iowa Mom Gets Life in Prison in Neighbor’s Death
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WJLA. Is Tracey Roberts Heroic Mom or a Shrewd Killer
4
Oxygen. Iowa Mom Tracey Roberts Fatally Shot Neighbor Dustin Wehde
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ABC 7. Iowa Mom Murder Trial Opening Statements
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Iowa Court of Appeals. State v. Richter, No. 11-2124
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NBC News. Iowa Mom Convicted of First-Degree Murder
8
San Diego Union-Tribune. Ex-Friend: Iowa Murder Suspect Showed No Emotion
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Twin Cities Pioneer Press. Heroic Mom or a Shrewd Killer
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San Diego Union-Tribune. Iowa Murder Suspect’s Ex Denies Hiring Hitman
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ABC 7. Iowa Mom Murder Trial Notebook Evidence
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Justia. Richter v. State, No. 15-1800
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KCRG. Appeals Court Upholds Iowa Mom’s Life Term for 2001 Shooting
14
Des Moines Register. Tracey Richter, Mother Linked to Witness Harassment
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KCCI. Police Search Home of Inmate’s Mother
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Storm Lake Times. Sac County Attorney Smith Claims Richter Reaching Out From Prison
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Storm Lake Times. Smith Shows His Hand
18
Des Moines Register. Editorial: Mentally, an Inmate
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Des Moines Register. Judge Orders Child Support, Restitution for Tracey Richter
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KETV. Fiance, Mother Maintain Richter Roberts Innocence