On a warm summers evening on January 29, 1976, Tracey Ann Patient a 13 yr old girl would disappear. She would be found less than 12 hours later, strangled to death and her body dumped by the side of the road. Tracey and her family had moved to New Zealand just two years earlier from England.
Tracey had been at a friend’s house on the evening of the 29th Jan 1976. The friend was a schoolmate from Henderson High. The friend recalled spending the evening gossiping about boys and Tracey showed her a signet ring that she had recently been given by her boyfriend. She remembers Tracey phoning home to say ” I’ll be home in half an hour Mum”.
Sometime around 9pm, the girls left her friend’s house in Chilcott Road, Henderson, Tracey was due home at her parent’s house in Dellwood Ave at 9:30pm. It was about a 5 minute walk. They walked together about halfway, saying their goodbyes and parting ways at the corner of Great North Rd and Edmonton Rd. Tracey set off up Great North Rd heading towards home.
But Tracey never made it home.The last known sighting of Tracey was outside number 295 Great North Road by a couple walking their dog.
Later that evening, when she didn’t return home, Tracey’s father and sister went out and looked for her, but there was no trace of her anywhere.
The following morning, a man walking his dog found Tracey’s body dumped in a bush area on Scenic Drive, on the fringe of the Waitakere Ranges. The Coroner ruled her death was ” due to homicide by strangulation by a ligature”. Tracey had been strangled with her own stockings, wound tight with a twig at the back of her neck.
A large-scale investigation was launched. A homicide team of about 30 police set up temporary headquarters in a local Scout hall. Police looked at hundreds of persons of interest over the following months and exhausted numerous lines of inquiry.
March, 1976: An anonymous woman calls Youthline saying she saw a blonde girl, thought to be Tracey, on Great North Rd with a man in a brown suit. Both got into a brown car which drove off just after 9.30 pm. Despite public appeals, the woman caller is never found.
There were many leads pursued over the years. The police appealed for sightings of any cars acting suspiciously in the area, and a reward of $10 000 was offered. A description and identikit picture were published and the man was found, but he was later cleared.
Twenty-two months after Tracey’s murder in November 1978, police received a phone call from an anonymous person, who told the police that a signet ring belonging to Tracey could be found in a rubbish bin outside a chemist in Avondale. The caller gave the call-taker the number “126040” and said he would call back later. He never called back.
Officers went to the rubbish bin and found a ring inside, which was identified by Tracey’s boyfriend as the ring he had given her. It was believed that Tracey was wearing the ring when she disappeared.
On June 02, 2004, Police released a statement following a story of the ‘cold case’ by the Holmes TV show the previous night. Waitakere police were inundated with phone calls, voice and emails about Tracey’s case and that “they were going to have to set up a small inquiry team to deal with it all”, said Officer in charge, Detective Sergeant Murray Free. “Its too early to comment on any potential new leads at this stage, we have to first collate the information, compare it against the original file and then assess if we have anything new”, Free says. However, no suspect was named and no one was charged following this investigation.
Jan 10, 2006: An episode of Sensing Murder was aired in which psychics investigated the case.
Feb 1, 2010: Revelation police have interviewed a man in connection with the case. Detective Senior Sergeant Stan Brown, head of the Henderson CIB, said police had questioned the man, but he would not comment on whether the man was being treated as a suspect.
January 2016, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Tracey’s disappearance, police revealed that since November, a team of 8 investigators based at the Waitakere Police Station had been working full-time on the Tracey Patient case. Detectives followed new leads and appealed for anyone with information on the case to call the dedicated 0800 number – 0800 000 111. Detectives made inquiries and spoke with over 200 people about the case even as far away as Australia.
Detective Inspector John Sutton, Waitemata Police says “Despite forty years having passed, someone out there knows who did this. To this day we still have people who ring us with information, and I’m pleased to say we are following new leads. ”
Det Insp Sutton continues “For forty years, the Patient family have lived with the absolute trauma of what happened to their daughter and sister, they have never known who took Tracey from them or why. It is still incredibly fresh to them, as if she was stolen from them only yesterday.”
“The West Auckland community remember this well. It was horrific; a 13 year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her, just minutes away from home and brutally murdered. Someone out there knows who did this, and we are as determined to solve it now as we were back then” he says.
An 8 minute video was released to the public, “Speaking on camera for the first time ever, Tracey’s older sister Debbie has filmed an interview with Police to help with our public appeal” says Sutton.
The 0800 number for Operation Tracey is 0800 000 111.
Since the announcement that the case had been reopened, police say they had received almost 100 calls from the public.
“We’ve heard from people who have never called police before and have told us that they’ve thought about the case for the past 40 years,” says Detective Inspector John Sutton.
“We have quite a number of suspect nominations and pieces of information from people about suspicious behavior they witnessed at the time.”
People had also come forward with various theories about what the number 126040 means, Det Insp Sutton said.
A pensioner named Gary Ross claimed he saw a man leading a young girl along by the elbow the night 13-year-old Tracey Ann Patient disappeared more than 40 years ago. He told reporters that he made numerous calls to the police, from the day after Tracey’s disappearance and several times up until 2011, but gave up as he felt ignored by police.
25th October 2016, Detective Inspector John Sutton said they were winding down the investigation.”The investigation has been progressed, but unfortunately, it has not resulted in anyone being arrested and charged with Tracey’s murder.”
Police had spoken to Tracey’s family, he said.”Whilst they share our disappointment, they are appreciative of our efforts.
“They have also been comforted at the ongoing public assistance with Tracey’s case, and the fact that she has not been forgotten by hundreds of people in the west Auckland community.” “The case would remain open but police would no longer actively investigate it unless they received new information”, he said.
Tracey’s sister talked to a reporter after the police announced that they were winding down the investigation. She says she hopes the killer has had a “horrible life”.
Tracey’s sister Debbie Sheppard told Newshub the family is disappointed police were not able to arrest anyone.
“We would love the investigation to continue – obviously we would. We would love this person brought to justice, but we fully understand the police can’t continue to commit the resources to Tracey’s case after all this time.”
As of 26th January 2018, only a few days from the anniversary of the disappearance of Tracey Ann Patient, no suspect has been named and no one has been charged.
Someone or someones have this on their conscience, and we can only hope that they reach a point where they can’t live with it anymore. I hope that the one day Tracey’s family get the answers they deserve.
The internet is a minefield of articles and stories about the case. I have added below the links to articles where I have obtained my info for this story and others that you may like to check out if you are interested in reading more.
Be a voice for Tracey and her family. Share their story. Just maybe the right person will see it!
Tabatha
NZ Police – Tracey Ann Patient
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11580855
A lawyer checks the information from the Sensing Murder episode
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11667997
https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/316454/mystery-of-40-year-old-murder-case-continues
New Zealand Mysteries 