Sunglasses perched on her blonde head and carrier bags in hand, Tracie Andrews could not have looked more carefree, browsing through the stores of York city centre last Saturday.
In her pink cardigan, she could have passed for any fashionable forty-something out on a sunny weekend shopping spree.
For who would recognise convicted murderer Tracie Andrews today, her features softened by £5,000 of cosmetic surgery to realign her protruding jaw — an operation carried out last year on the NHS.
Andrews — or Tia Carter, as she now likes to be known — is due to be released on licence next year after serving 15 years of a life sentence.
On Saturday, she was allowed out from Askham Grange open prison in preparation for that day.
But as she wandered through the city’s market district with a female friend, one wonders if she spared a thought for Lee Harvey, the fiance she brutally murdered in December 1996.
As she laughed over a cappuccino, did she feel any remorse for the man she stabbed 42 times during a furious row as they drove down a quiet, leafy lane in Worcestershire?
Did she consider the feelings of Lee’s parents, Maureen and Ray, and his sister Michelle, all of whom she lied to after the murder, insisting Lee had been the victim of a crazed ‘road rage’ killer?
If she did, then she kept it well hidden. Which makes Andrews’s imminent release all the more distressing for Lee’s family, who feel justice has simply not been done in this case.
True, they had been warned by the authorities that Andrews would be going out on day release, but that makes it no easier. Bitter does not even begin to describe how they feel.
And while the Ministry of Justice this week said of inmates’ resettlement schemes ‘Only those assessed as representing minimal risk of escape or risk of harm to the public are eligible’, the Harveys are equally eloquent about the lack of understanding for victims’ families.
'When she got angry with Lee she'd attack him and kick him our of her flat, and he'd turn up at Mum's house covered in bites, cuts and bruises.'
For 14 years, Lee’s sister Michelle Harvey-Gill has borne her own grief privately. The 41-year-old married teaching assistant and mother of two has never spoken publicly about her brother’s murder, but she has lived with the trauma of it every day since.
The word forgiveness is not in her lexicon when it comes to Tracie Andrews.
‘Life should mean life, not 15 years,’ she says. ‘Why should she get a second
chance when my poor brother gets none?
‘When she murdered Lee she ruined all our lives, so how come she’s the one getting all the help rebuilding her life, going on shopping sprees?
‘No one helped us re-integrate into the community or rehabilitated us. We had no support.
‘What does it say about our society when criminals are treated better than victims? Our life sentence, which began the day Lee died, will never end.’
Lee’s mother Maureen, now 64, had to close down the hairdressing salon she ran with daughter Michelle because of the stress of the murder trial.
For two years after the trial, Michelle suffered panic attacks and, for a while, had to be prescribed antidepressants.
Last year, Lee’s daughter from a previous relationship, 18-year-old Danielle, wrote to Andrews in prison demanding to know why she killed her father.
Danielle was five when her father was murdered. Seemingly, she received no reply.
Even Andrews’s closest friends — who cannot accept she killed in cold blood — admit she refuses to talk about Lee or what happened that night.
She once reportedly told a fellow prison inmate that there was no point in ‘crying over spilt milk’.
It wasn’t until 21 months after her conviction, having failed in her appeal, that Andrews finally confessed to the killing in a letter from prison, later claiming she acted in self-defence when Lee attacked her.
Lee’s mother Maureen has one answer to this.
‘There were 42 wounds on Lee’s body,’ she says. ‘One of the stab wounds was to his back, and I believe that was the first. I think she lunged at him as he was walking away from her. There were little nicks around his neck, which makes me think she taunted him before inflicting the stab wound which killed him.’
What kind of woman could do such a thing? The Harveys believe they know. And regardless of what the parole board may think, they remain unconvinced that she is a reformed character.
Lee, an easy-going and fun-loving bus driver, met Tracie in a nightclub in 1994. She was a glamorous single mother (her daughter, Karla, was then aged four) who ran a market stall selling perfume and had big dreams of becoming a model.
Michelle recalls: ‘When I first met Tracie, she seemed very friendly and my first reaction was “Wow, she’s attractive”.
In fact, I said to Lee: “How did you manage to pull her?” I’d never seen Lee so excited about a girl before. He kept saying how great she was — he thought she was fantastic.
‘But very soon I had my doubts. She seemed very insecure.
'I'd never seen Lee so excited about a girl before. He kept saying how great she was - he thought she was fantastic.'
‘I had her whole life history in half an hour. She kept saying how tough her life had been. Her father had left her mother when she was young. She didn’t get on with her stepfather, and she said she’d had a bad time with her ex and his family.
‘She was slating almost everyone in her life, and I started to feel very uncomfortable hearing her criticising people we didn’t even know.
‘Then, in 1995, my husband Steve and I decided to announce our engagement at a family party, but instead of being happy for us, Tracie went into a complete strop and stormed out, shouting: “Trust her to get in there first and announce her engagement before me!” ’
Lee’s mother Maureen adds: ‘I welcomed her into my home and tried to make her feel one of the family, but she was a Jekyll and Hyde character. One minute she could be sweetness and light, and the next she’d throw a tantrum.’
Andrews, say the family, had a pathological need to be the centre of attention.
Maureen recalls a time when the whole family were watching the film Fatal Attraction, starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close as a married man and his vengeful mistress, who tries to kill him when he rejects her.
‘We were all sitting there with our popcorn enjoying the film when Tracie suddenly picked up a cushion and viciously hit Lee, saying: “If you ever do that to me, I’ll kill you.”
‘It wasn’t a joke, she was deadly serious. She was practically snarling.
‘Afterwards, I said to Lee that there was something wrong with Tracie, but he just laughed it off and said: “She’s mental, but I love her.” ’
Jealous and possessive, Andrews would fly into a rage if she wasn’t always at the epicentre of Lee’s world, and during their volatile two-year relationship they split up many times.
According to Michelle, Andrews felt particularly threatened by Lee’s amicable
relationship with Anita, the mother of his daughter. She wonders now if Andrews killed Lee because she was terrified they might reconcile.
‘When she got angry with Lee, she’d attack him and kick him out of her flat, and he’d turn up at Mum’s house covered in bites, cuts and bruises.
‘He’d say “That’s it, I’m not going back” — but he always would.
‘I warned him time and again that one day she’d really hurt him. I told him he was stupid to stay with her, but he loved her and would do anything for her. He bought her jewellery and he even paid for her to have a boob job after she moaned that her breasts had been ruined by motherhood.’
Maureen adds: ‘After a big row, Lee would say he’d had enough and would start going out with his mates again, but Tracie stalked him. She’d trawl every nightclub until she found him, and then went berserk if he so much as looked at another woman. If she couldn’t have him, then no one else would either.’
In May 1996, Andrews banned Lee from attending his sister’s wedding. It was done in a fit of spite after Michelle, during one of Tracie and Lee’s ‘off’ periods, withdrew the invitation to Tracie’s daughter Karla to be a bridesmaid at her wedding.
‘On the morning of the wedding, Lee turned up at my mum’s house with a present,’ says Michelle. ‘He gave me a hug, told me loved me, but said he couldn’t come. It completely tainted my big day.’
The final straw for Michelle, however, came a few weeks later when Andrews had bitten a chunk out of Lee’s neck during yet another vicious row in a nightclub. Furious at her brother’s refusal to see sense and end the relationship once and for all, Michelle stopped talking to him.
Michelle was three months pregnant with her second child when she heard on the car radio that a man had been killed in a road rage attack.
Later that night, her devastated parents told her the victim was Lee. She recalls: ‘Straight away I said: “She’s done it.” My mum had been to the hospital and spoken to too, was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. But I said: “I’m telling you now, Tracie did it.” ’
Maureen’s husband Ray, a retired lorry driver who is now aged 66, also had his doubts about Andrews. Why, he asked, had the road rage attacker let Tracie live when she was a witness to murder?
It was Maureen who held Andrews’s hand for moral support at the Press conference, when, in a brazen act of duplicity, she tearfully described the fictitious road rage killer.
And it was Maureen who, a few days later, rushed to comfort Andrews in hospital after a failed suicide attempt, when she wrote notes saying she couldn’t go on without Lee.
The Harveys now believe Andrews’s overdose was an admission of guilt. Indeed, at the hospital she said ‘Sorry for what I have done’ to Mr and Mrs Harvey. That day, the police had questioned her about glaring discrepancies in her story. Witnesses had come forward to say that they’d hadn’t seen a Sierra chasing Lee’s Ford Escort that night after the pair left the Marlbrook pub, a two-mile drive from Tracie’s flat in Alvechurch.
Another witness to the confrontation said they’d heard only two voices arguing on the roadside — a man’s and a woman’s.
And a black hat seemingly dropped by the road rage attacker at the scene had cat hairs on it belonging to Andrews’s mother’s pet. Meanwhile, the pattern of blood splatters on Andrews’s clothes suggested it was she who had wielded the murder
weapon — an imitation Swiss army knife which Andrews would eventually admit she’d disposed of at the hospital.
The bloody imprint of a knife blade was found on the inside of Andrews’s boot, and a clump of her hair was found in Lee’s hand.
'I think she honestly believe she would get off and spent most of the trial shooting us venomous looks.'
Former boyfriends of Andrews revealed how she’d attacked them too. Yet still Andrews denied everything.
Michelle, who had her second pregnancy induced two weeks early so she could attend the trial, says: ‘I’ll never forget the first day when Tracie dramatically pointed at us sitting in the gallery and shouted: “I want to be where they are sitting, so I can see justice done, too.”
‘I think she honestly thought she would get off, and spent most of the trial shooting us venomous looks.’
So, no, the Harveys — given their experience of Tracie Andrews — do not believe her to be remorseful, let alone reformed. And even if she were, should she serve just 15 years for Lee’s murder?
‘My mum has tried to be strong, but I have heard her sobbing in her room,’ says Michelle. ‘I have heard my dad crying, too, and that’s a terrible thing to hear.’
There is nothing they can do to prevent Andrews being freed, but they have begged the Probation Service to ensure she does not live within a 50-mile radius of their homes.
The last thing they want is to bump into Lee’s murderer on one of her shopping sprees.
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