Point Blank

0:09October 15, 2003 was the worst day of my life.

0:18I woke up around 4.45 in the morning. I took a walk, walked two miles, and came home and took a shower. When I turned the water off in the shower, I heard like a moaning sound. I listened at the door and the moaning got louder. So I opened up the door and the bedroom was completely dark, but I could see my husband laying in the bed.

0:48I walked around the bed and I touched his legs and I said, honey, are you okay? And he didn't respond to me. And I walked on up to the side of the bed. He had the pillow over his head and I moved the pillow. and that's when I just saw the blood.

1:12911, can I help you? Please, my head must have shot himself. Where did he shoot himself? In the head. In the head? Yes. I was just like, oh my God, what have you done? What happened? Why did you do this? You don't talk to me. Please talk to me. Nothing.

1:36And I thought about my children, and they could not see them like that. And I ran and got them out of bed and out of the house.

1:48My name is Tracy Rohde, and I'm Scott Rohde's wife. I asked my mom if my dad was okay, and she told me, no, he's not, honey. Shane asked me, is daddy okay? And I said, no, honey, he's not okay. Daddy's very, very sick. I couldn't tell him.

2:16Scott Rohde is not a man that would have taken his own life. Scott Rohde is a man who was a driven professional and a doting father of his three children. This was an intricate puzzle to put together. We had to put the pieces together to show that this indeed was an elaborate staged crime scene. I took one look at that gun and I knew in my mind this was not a suicide. My name is J.D. Robertson. I'm with the Texas Rangers.

2:53I examine physical evidence and from that physical evidence I tell stories. I told the story of the murder of Scott Rohde. It was a very difficult story to tell. In all the years that I've worked in law enforcement, I've never seen an outcome like this.

3:15Point Blank, tonight's 48 Hours Mystery.

3:36I could never have imagined what all would have transpired. There's no way to even think that any of this stuff was real. But all of it happened. October 15, 2003. The life Tracey Rohde knew was over. As Scott Rohde lay dying with a gunshot wound to the head, his wife Tracey's ordeal was only just beginning. My husband is dying. They're in the hospital and they're taking me away to be questioned. Before we ask you any questions, Ms. Rohde, you need to be aware of what your rights are. I was shocked when they asked me to go to the police station. I had already told him all that I knew that had happened.

4:24I mean, I wasn't there. I didn't see it. I didn't hear it. I only know what I found.

4:32I moved the pillow back, and I saw all the blood. And his eyes was all swollen. And I touched his face, and I said, Scott, can you hear me? I kept asking the police officers, please, let me go be with my husband. He's dying. Can I please tell my children, my children don't know what happened. Just a few more minutes and we'll let you go. Just a few more minutes and we'll let you go. By mid-afternoon it was clear Scott was brain dead and would not recover. And something else was clear too. These people think I harmed the man I had loved for 20 years of my life that I spent my life with? It's not even a possibility.

5:20Tracy says she can barely remember a time without Scott. They met in their early teens and became high school sweethearts in Fort Madison, Iowa. Scott was an only child from a troubled family. In Tracy, he not only found the love of his life, he found a home, says Tracy's mom, Vicki Lear. You'd have to send him home at 10 o 'clock at night. But, I mean, they spent their time together, and he became part of our family.

5:54Tracy and Scott were married in 1990, only a few years after Tracy's high school graduation.

6:03Storybook. They were just so much in love, and you could really tell when they would look at each other.

6:13Scott put himself through college, became an engineer. Tracy would go on to become a nurse, specializing in birth and delivery care. The three things that she ever wanted in life, be married, be a nurse, and be a mom. She got her whoosh times three. Hi, sweetheart. Shane, Nicholas, and Dalton.

6:42Go, Shane. Go! Go, Shane! Go, go, go, go! In home videos, the Rhodey seemed to be the picture-perfect family. Scott, the picture-perfect dad.

7:00But there was another side to Scott Rhodey, says Tracy, and it was slowly destroying their marriage. Was Scott a jealous man? Very jealous. Did he accuse you of having affairs? All the time. He was obsessed. She was almost like a possession. Rayna Cant and her husband Kyle have been close friends of the roadies for years. She'd always tell me that Scott was saying that she was cheating and having an affair with the different doctors that she worked with. Is there any chance that she was cheating with these doctors? There was no way that Tracy had an affair with any of these doctors. But there was no convincing him, says Tracy.

7:39She remembers one awful night when she had to stay a few hours late at work to help deliver a baby. I went home. It's midnight. I get home. My husband's not there. My kids aren't there. As I'm calling the emergency room, thinking the worse, I hear the garage door open. and I go running out to the garage, you know, what happened, what happened, is everybody okay? And he's screaming at me, you tramp, you whore, where the hell have you been? And he said he went looking for me so he could show our children what a tramp they had for a mother. And I lived like that for years.

8:26Why did you stay in the marriage so long if you were constantly being accused of having affairs with other people? I loved him. I loved him. And, I mean, as bad as our bad times were, there were still good times. He was the father of my children. Thank you, Daddy. He was my husband. To me, it was worth working out. But Scott didn't make things any easier. Tracy says her husband was so afraid of losing her to another man, he moved the family five times in 13 years. There would be stops in Merrillville, Tennessee, Kennett, Missouri, and Batesville, Arkansas. Finally, ending up in Brownsville, Texas in 2003.

9:20And there was never anyone. I never looked at anyone. I never talked to anyone. I've never, nothing until Brownsville. It was here, far away from friends and family, that Tracy really did meet somebody. His name was Shawn Michaels. Shawn was a big flirt with everybody at work. And I would tell him, you know, I'm married. And he's like, I know, I'm just kidding. Over time, I could tell that it was more than just kidding. One afternoon, they arranged to meet in a parking lot to talk. We just stood there talking, and then he gave me a hug to leave, and he kissed me. I was shocked. Shocked, but yet, it was good to have somebody pay attention to me.

10:08And then, one week later, Scott confronted Tracy in their bathroom, once again accusing her of cheating. That's why you're all sweaty. That's why you're in here washing your face. You've been having sex. And I said, no, I haven't. I've not been having sex with anybody. In the heat of the moment, Tracy blurted out her feelings for Shawn. And I said, for the first time in my life, there is somebody. It's not about sex. Somebody's paying attention to me. Was he upset? He was very upset. And he just looked right through me and said, you have no idea what you've just done.

10:48But police didn't buy Tracy's story, any of it. I'm telling the truth. The truth, they say, is that she committed cold-blooded murder. Tracy Rohde grabbed a gun, grabbed a pillow, put the pillow to his head, the gun to his head, and shot him.

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12:00October 15, 2003, I was called out to a suicide. Initially, it was reported to me that Scott Rode had suffered a self-inflicted gunshot within hours Brownsville detective Sam Lucio's investigation had changed course the investigation turned from attempted suicide to a possible homicide investigation

12:27it had all the ingredients of a classic murder plot says Lucio a love interest jealousy and a pretty young wife who was behaving suspiciously. She's a nurse, but she gave no first aid to her husband whatsoever. And the reason she says she didn't give any first aid was because she was in shock. In shock, says the detective, yet she had the presence of mind to call work and say she wouldn't be coming in. Who would be thinking about, I need to call work so they can get a replacement for me at work today, because my husband got shot. Even more troubling to Detective Lucio, she washed her hands in front of a police officer.

13:10What was she washing off? Gunshot residue? I just could smell blood. I'm a nurse. I'm sensitive to the smell of blood. And I just had my hands up there and I just walked over to the kitchen sink and I just ran hot water over my hands and I just stood there crying. Crying, says Tracy, from the trauma of seeing her husband with his head blown apart. Someone might say, why didn't you try to do something else you were a nurse? What could I do? He didn't need CPR. He was breathing. My thought was, get the paramedics here. Get into the hospital. Let them see what they could do.

13:52It was not only Tracy's behavior that aroused the suspicions of Lucio and his partner, Detective Thomas Clipper, it was also what they learned that day about the final weeks and hours of Scott Rohde's life. Were there problems in America? Problems that led detectives to the other man, Shawn Michaels, the unit secretary at the hospital where Tracy worked, the very same hospital where Scott Rohde would die. The detectives also learned that Scott had hired divorce attorney Nat Perez. They were about to play hardball. He was a man who had a plan and wanted to implement that plan. Just one day before the shooting, Scott took Tracy to Perez's office and blindsided her with his plan.

14:45I said, Scott will have custody of the children, but you would have liberal visitation. She just basically yelled out, what? Looked at Scott and said, you never told me that. You never told me that I was going to have the boys. And if she chose to fight, they made it clear they would use Shawn Michaels against her. I said, you know, that didn't matter to me. I would do whatever to fight for my children. I didn't feel like I should sign away my children. I love my children. I was a good mother. And she told Scott, we need to go home and we need to talk about this some more. Back home, emotionally drained, they stopped fighting and started talking, says Tracy.

15:25I told him I wanted joint custody of our kids. I wasn't doing anything wrong. I didn't deserve to lose my children. Tracy says both agreed they didn't want to put their kids through an ugly custody battle. But later that night, Scott's mood changed again. My wife made me goofy. Tracy says he suddenly flew into a rage in the laundry room over Shawn Michaels. He went and got a ball bat. And he wanted to know where Shawn lived because he was going to go bash his head in. And he's screaming at me, you know, tell me where he lives. I don't know. I've never been to his home. I don't know. That's when he got physical with me, grabbed me by the throat, put his fist up to me, told me he was just going to knock the out of me.

16:14And I said, if that makes you feel better, just do it. I'm not having an affair.

16:22And I went into the bedroom, and I started packing his suitcase. I was just going to go stay in a hotel. But he started crying, and he begged me not to go. And then he said, come lay down here with me. And I laid with my head on his chest. It wasn't anger anymore. It was just a loving couple just trying to work out our problems. The next morning, Scott Rohde was found with a gunshot wound to the head. Till the day I die, I will never accept that Scott committed suicide.

17:01What I believe is that he really felt like he was losing me. We were all each other had. I mean, he didn't have a relationship with his family. It was just me, him, and the boys. That was it. It was better for Scott and Scott's mind to take his own life than it was to live without Tracy. He loved her that much? He loved her that much. Tracy's friend, Raina Cant, believes that after all the years of accusations, Scott found himself facing the real possibility there was someone else. And it was more than he could bear. He loved her enough to move her from state to state to state, thinking she was cheating in every state, to get her to the furthest point he could, so he had her all to himself in Brownsville, Texas.

17:49I could see him easily at that point saying, you know what, I can't handle this anymore, enough is enough. But Detective Lucio says Scott was no broken man. He was going to take custody of his kids and move on, leaving Tracy with a double motive for murder. I think that the motive was clearly she was losing her children, she was losing her home, she was losing the life she was used to. And the only way she was going to have a relationship with Shawn Michaels is if Scott Rode was out of the picture. Believing it was one thing, proving it another. The detective spent the next two years hunting for physical evidence linking Tracy Rode to the crime.

18:33They swapped every drain in this house. There was no blood anywhere. They checked all my trash cans. There was no evidence. I didn't kill my husband. But the investigators kept digging until finally a break. A Texas Ranger noticed a piece of evidence that had been staring him in the face all along. What does the evidence in this case tell you? That Tracy Rohde shot Scott Rohde? On August 11, 2005, on what would have been her 15th wedding anniversary, Tracy was arrested for the murder of her husband, Scott Rohde. While he was asleep? While he was asleep.

19:32Reeling after her indictment for murder, Tracy Rohde turned to the only place in Brownsville she felt welcomed, the Vineyard Christian Fellowship. And those people were just amazing. They're just so giving. We have to continue to pray for Tracy. Most of us felt in the gut there was some injustice going on here. Jim Odebasian is not only Tracy's pastor, he is a lawyer and a former assistant district attorney. This is a false charge. This is not right. I believe that Tracy's innocent. Thank you so much. Odabassian believes Tracy has told the truth about that dreadful morning when she got out of the shower and discovered her dying husband.

20:25And when I lifted the pillow, all I could see was just blood. And as I'm dialing 911, I saw the gun. That gun and where it was found would become one of the most disputed issues in this case. The gun was in between his hands, somewhere on the bed. In every good lie, there's a little bit of truth. Prosecutor Chuck Mattingly spent two years gathering evidence for his indictment against Tracy Rohde. Tracy Rohde is a cold-blooded, calculated killer. A killer, says Mattingly, who orchestrated the final moments of her husband's life down to the feathered pillow she placed over his head. I believe the pillow was used in an attempt to muffle the sound.

21:14I also believe she used that pillow to prevent any back spatter from coming back and getting on her hands. And thirdly, she used that pillow to disassociate herself from her husband before she killed him. Police recreated their theory of the shooting and brought in Texas Ranger J.D. Robertson to help prove their case. Suspects and witnesses lie. The evidence does not. It tells the truth. Robertson, a forensic bloodstain analyst, poured over police photos taken at the scene. I took one look at that gun and I knew in my mind this was not a suicide. That gun was removed from Scott by Sergeant Pablo Flores, one of the first officers on the scene.

22:03I entered and as I was removing the handgun, that's when EMS arrived. I put it on a hope chest. When he removed it, says Flores, the gun was lying in Scott's hands. The handle of the gun was resting on his left hand and the barrel on his right. He also said there was no blood on Scott's hands, and the gun did not come into contact with any blood on the bed. The gun was not touching the bedding, the mattress, the sheet, the mattress cover, the comforter. The gun never came into contact with anything that had blood on it. And yet, there was blood around the handle and a thick glob of it in the mechanism of the gun.

22:50Robinson wanted to know how it got there. There was no blood in his hands, but yet there's a mass of congealed, coagulated blood in the hammer in action. We have to find that source. That source jumped out at him while studying this photo. An enlarged print of the blood-stained carpet next to the bed.