The Unsolved Murder of Tracey Ann Patient

Chapters

• 0:00 The Night Tracy Disappeared
• 1:36 Body Found And Early Clues
• 3:16 Reconstructing The Final Walk
• 5:35 Leads, The Ring, And 126040
• 7:55 New Tips, Witness Memory, And Missed Chances
• 10:12 Grief, Time, And An Open Plea

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

She was thirteen, a quiet, bookish girl who'd just started to spread her wings. On a summer night in 1976, Tracy Ann Patien walked out of a friend's house in Auckland, New Zealand, and vanished into the dark. Twenty-four hours later, her body was found. Dumped in thick bushland off Scenic Drive in the Whiteacre ranges, a quiet, forested area far from where she'd last been seen. She'd been strangled? Her shoes were missing. So was her watch. And her killer? Never found? I'm Thomas, and this is Human Wreckage, a podcast that examines the fragile lines between ordinary lives and unimaginable violence. Today, we're opening the file on one of New Zealand's most haunting unsolved murders, the brutal slaying of Tracy Anne Patient. It's a case that's tormented a community for nearly fifty years. Tracy wasn't the kind of girl who made enemies. She'd recently immigrated from the UK with her family. She was kind, well liked, thoughtful, so how does someone like that end up strangled in the bush, left like discarded rubbish? There were clues a mystery phone call made to police three years after the murder. An anonymous man claiming to have information, and a chilling message left with Tracy's sister decades later, all pointing to a killer who might have been closer than anyone wanted to believe. But with no arrests, no confirmed suspects, and evidence that's degraded over time, the case remains cold. Officially. Unofficially, though, people still talk, whisper, wonder. Who killed Tracy Ann patient and why? In this episode, we'll revisit that night in January 1976. We'll walk Tracy's final steps, explore the timeline, and unpack the strange details that still puzzle investigators today, and we'll ask the question that no one has yet been able to answer Is it too late for justice? This is human wreckage, the unsolved murder of Tracy and Patent. The family had immigrated from England to start a new life, one that her father believed would be more beneficial to the family. On the twenty ninth of January, nineteen seventy six, Tracy's mother agreed to let her go to her friend's house for the evening. Debbie was heading to a Doobie Brothers concert at Western Springs, and her mother thought it was only fair that Tracy would be allowed to do something fun too. Both Debbie and Tracy walked up the road together. When she said bye, she was just walking up the road slightly behind me, and I never turned around, I just went, Oh, okay, bye, see you later, and went off, Debbie said. And I just so, so regret not turning around. This was the last time that Debbie ever saw her younger sister. Tracy left her friend's home on Chilcott Road that night at around 9 30 PM. She called her mother before she left to let her know she'd be home shortly. Tracy, however, never made it home. As ten PM rolled around, Tracy's parents became worried. Debbie and her father climbed into his car and rode around the streets looking for Tracy and calling her name, but to no avail. When they returned home, they called the police to report her missing. It wasn't like Tracy to just disappear without letting her family know where she was going so understandably, they thought the worse. The following morning, Debbie and Denise were patiently waiting in the living room for some good news when their father came home with a solemn expression on his face. He had the grim task of telling his family the news that every family fears. Tracy was dead. Someone killed her, sobbed John to his family. Tracy's body had been discovered that morning by a woman out walking her dog. Simone Graham was alerted to the body by her pet Doberman. At first glance, Graham thought that Tracy was just sleeping. There was a young woman, she was very slightly down a bank. She was slightly curled, she could have been asleep in a very loose sort of position her knees were up, her legs were up, but not hugging up to her chest and her head was bent over, and she was facing towards my left, and I could see the side of her face and her hair, she said. However, upon further inspection, it was evident that she was deceased. Tracy had been strangled to death with her own pantyhose, which had been wound tight around her neck with a stick. Afterwards, her killer dumped her body in a bush in the lonely Waytaker ranges. A team of thirty police officers was assembled and set up temporary headquarters in a local scout hall. Here they pieced together Tracy's last movements and scoured the area for any evidence which could lead to her killer. After Tracy left her friend's home that evening, her friend walked with her to the corner of Great North Road in Edmonton Road, where the Henderson Police Station was situated. From there, her friend walked back home while Tracy carried on walking towards her own home. What happened next continues to be a mystery to this very day. What is known, however, is that somewhere during that short, lonely walk home, she met somebody who would kill her. I've always believed she was picked up by someone she knew who wanted to take advantage of her and things got out of hand, said Detective Bruce Scott, one of the first on the scene. She was probably killed in that car because there was no evidence at the scene that she had been killed there. She was not raped, and there was no evidence of indecent assault. With very little evidence or leads to go on, the case gradually went cold. The following month, however, a fresh lead gave the patient family hope when a telephone counseling helpline received an anonymous phone call from a young woman who claimed she witnessed Tracy climbing into a brown car which was driven by a man in a brown suit. Several months later, a road map with Tracy's name written on it was found in a Ford Thames van which matched a description of a van in the area at the time Tracy vanished. The van's owner was cleared, but he had purchased the van after the murder and investigators were unsuccessful in identifying the previous owner. It wouldn't be until the following year that another lead in the case came to surface. When Tracy was discovered, it was noted that her beloved signet ring was missing from her finger. In November of 1978, police received an anonymous call from a man claiming that her ring could be found in a waste paper basket at an Avondale shopping mall. When police officers rushed to the scene, they found Tracy's ring exactly where the caller had said it would be found. The caller also provided the number one two six zero four zero and said that this number was related to the case. Police were unable to trace the call or decipher the meaning of the number. It was initially believed that this could have been the breakthrough to crack the case and lead to a suspect, but once again it was just another dead lead. Over the forthcoming weeks, months and years, investigators continued to follow what few leads trickled in, but the investigation was put on the back burner. There were other crimes that needed the investigators' full attention. Nevertheless, police sporadically urged people to come forward with any information they may have that could lead to Tracy's killer. At one point in the investigation, police considered that Tracy may have fallen victim to an unidentified serial killer who targeted teenage girls in the 1970s. Mona Blades and Olive Walker, both 18, were also murdered in that decade. While there were similarities in the three cases, there was no evidence which could conclusively link them to one another. In 2010, a woman identified only as Rose came forward to claim that her neighbor's 21-year-old son killed Tracy after he was released from prison. Rose, who was just 11 years old at the time of Tracy's murder, claimed that following Tracy's murder, the neighbor's car was cleaned, repainted, and then sold. Rose also claimed that she saw the signet ring belonging to Tracy in her neighbor's house, and that she also heard a confession from the mother. Nevertheless, investigators said that Rose's testimony was not credible. In 2016, it was announced by Detective Sergeant Murray Free that police had resumed working on the cold case full time. Shortly afterwards, police publicly announced that they had new leads and that over 150 people called the Operation Tracy number with tips. A high percentage of those calls came from people suggesting what the number 126040 could relate to. Another call came from a man named Gary Ross, who called to relay what he had seen on the evening of the 29th of January 1976. He said that he was at 295 Great North, rode up the hill from where Tracy left her friend when he spotted a man leading a young girl along by the elbow. There was hardly anyone else in Henderson at the time, it was almost deserted, and he was escorting her by the elbow, and she wasn't struggling, but he was hassling her along the road, he said. Ross could recollect the evening with great detail, even remembering that it was a Thursday. He described the man as middle aged to elderly, adding that he was wearing a hat. Ross said that when he heard about Tracy's disappearance on the radio the following day, he called police to tell them what he had seen that night. He said the person on the phone took down his details and said they'd be in contact, but nobody rang back. He said that over the ensuing years he tried to pass on the information several more times, but the police never seemed interested in what he had to say. Following Tracy's murder, her family moved back to Britain. Her parents became the founding members of a support group named Parents of Murdered Children. Her sister Debbie told the Weekend Herald that the family never recovered, but held out hope that one day justice would be served. Nothing will bring Tracy back or make our grief easier to bear. But nobody should get away with murder, especially the murder of a child, she said. Over four decades have passed. More than eight hundred fifty persons of interest have been profiled, but as of yet, the killer of Tracy Anne Patient has evaded justice. Nearly five decades have passed since Tracy Ann Patient left her friend's house and never came home. In that time, cities have changed, people have aged, technology has advanced. But the question that mattered most who killed Tracy still hangs in the air, unanswered. Tracy should have grown up. She should have had a career, fallen in love, maybe had a family of her own. Instead, her life was stolen in a moment of violence that still feels senseless, and the person who did it has never faced justice. We're left with fragments, a missing watch, a pair of vanished shoes, a cryptic phone call, a chilling note delivered decades later, and a family Tracy's family who has carried this unbearable weight every single day. Someone knows what happened that night. Maybe they were there. Maybe they heard something. Maybe they've stayed silent out of fear or guilt or shame. But time doesn't erase the truth, and it doesn't make the herd go away. If you know something about the murder of Tracy Ann Patient, no matter how small or insignificant, it may seem speak up. Silence protects the guilty, but the truth, it might finally bring peace to the innocent. Thank you for joining us. This has been Human Wreckage. I'm Thomas. If you found today's story important, please share this episode. Someone somewhere may hold the missing peace. Until next time, stay safe, stay curious, and never forget the wreckage we leave behind.