was under arrest for the murder of dustin wehde. ten years after she told police she had been attacked by the teenager, she was charged with dustin wehde murder. the news was overwhelming to dustin s mother. i just kind of went blank and was like, what? i was so heavy and i was like, it is unbelievable. because i never thought that that day was going to come when i would be told that she was actually arrested for murder. but that day did come on a mild october morning in fort dodge iowa. tracey, standing trial for murder as tracey richter, she had entered a plea of not guilty. ben smith sat at his table, next to a recently assigned veteran, steve s attorney. it was such a bizarre set of facts, it would be difficult to show that this was a setup versus a home invasion. at the heart of the prosecution s case was its assertion that dustin was no home invader.
kind of thing? yeah. he broke my nails at one point. for not cleaning up horse crap at my bare hands. and along with the beatings, he said, there was constant humiliation. one of the worst ones was when i was older, and just psychologically, i mean, i was like 13 at the time. and he was beating me, and i was crying. and since i was crying, i was mayor baby. and at the little baby needed his bottle. so he made me drink out of a bottle. are you okay with this? he s your little boy. i wasn t happy with it, but i found when i ejected it made it worse. bert said his mother remained blinder which is something that was becoming clear unclear to him. it wasn t his biological dad who had plotted the murder. he now believed, it was his stepfather. so you think that michael, your stepfather, was involved in? this orchestrated? it planned? it fully involved. looking back, bert thanks michael gave himself away at the hospital the night of the attack.
had fired from, that gave mary pause. it was just too tight a squeeze for tracey to have dived to the gun, safe shot over her shoulder, and then turned around to keep firing. there is no way she could keep it in between the bed and that wall. i thought, this is not adding up. but i did not know. i didn t know. cold case investigator, trent doubted tracy story too. after doing a background check on her, he was convinced that the home invasion was just one more live from a woman who had conned people her entire. life she was a tornado wreaking havoc everywhere that she went. so had tracy gotten away with murder by pretending to be a victim? it was not an entirely new idea. investigators had discussed it back in the day, but bad in 2010, agent valletta found someone willing to listen to his wild theory. he would send me little teasers and continuously call me. what do you think about? that the newly elected sack county prosecutor, ben smith,
that john pigment had hired him to kill tracey. the prosecution had decided to clear that up once and for. all to do our ask dustin weedy to set up a plan to kill tracey richter or your son? god no. because the cops had long believed that doctor pittman was innocent of any murder for hire scheme, they kept the journal secret, thinking that anybody who knew about it was probably behind the moment vision plot. enter mary higgins, the prosecution star witness. even though she was testifying for the prosecution, she was still desperate to make a connection with a woman who had been her friend. the whole time i m in the stand, i want to look at tracey, i wanted to see her eyes. i wanted to see if the tracey i knew was still in there. she told the jury about the moment tracy had mentioned to her the journal. she said that, in the car,