THE father of Tracie Andrews, the woman accused of murdering her fiancé, told the jury at her trial yesterday that she was still “spaced out” when she gave police crucial information used in her prosecution.
John Andrews said that, although his daughter gave detectives details of the route she and her fiancé, Lee Harvey, took on the night he was killed, her mental state “just wasn't with it” and she could have said anything.
Andrews, 28, the mother of a five-year-old daughter, denies murder and says Mr Harvey, 25, whom she was due to marry this weekend, was stabbed by a motorist who pursued them after a road rage-style altercation.
The route that car chase took has become significant because two witnesses say they saw Mr Harvey's car with no other vehicle in sight. Andrews says she is no longer certain that the route she originally described was correct, but the prosecution have accused her of seeking to confuse the jury.
Her father, who divorced her mother, Irene, in 1975, joined her at a hospital in Redditch, Hereford and Worcestershire, about an hour after Mr Harvey's death.
Mr Andrews said: “Tracie was totally spaced out and really upset. She just wasn't with it. She was extremely dazed.” He was told by police at 2.30am that his daughter would have to make a statement. “I wasn't very keen because of the state she was in,” he said.
The 22-page document was completed during the night before she was allowed to leave for her home in the nearby village of Alvechurch. Two days later he and his daughter accompanied detectives on a drive to retrace the route that she said she and Mr Harvey took from the Marlbrook pub.
Mr Andrews said: “She was still in a very, very dazed state. She was still sullen, lethargic. She definitely wasn't a normal person. The state she was in she could have said anything.” Earlier Andrews completed her evidence on the 12th day of the trial in which she denies stabbing Mr Harvey to death on Dec 1 last year.
Taking the witness box for the third consecutive day, she told Birmingham Crown Court that she had no explanation for a bloodstain inside a boot she wore on the day Mr Harvey died. David Crigman, QC, prosecuting, said the shape of the stain corresponded to that of a Swiss Army knife, the weapon with which Mr Harvey is believed to have been stabbed.
While giving evidence, Andrews complained about remarks from the public gallery where members of Mr Harvey's family, including his parents, Ray and Maureen, were sitting. Pausing midway through a sentence in which she said she had only ever hit her fiancé in self-defence, she protested: “I'm sorry, but I can't put up with that while I'm giving evidence.”
Asked what had distracted her, she said: “The family are making remarks and it is not fair.” The judge, Mr Justice Buckley, said he had not heard any remarks.
Stephen Rodenhurst, a businessman, told the court that that he was threatened in a road-rage altercation by two men in a Ford saloon just hours before Mr Harvey was murdered. Mr Rodenhurst, who told the jury he ran “one of the largest demolition companies in England”, said he was driving a Bentley on a roundabout off the M42 near Bromsgrove, to which Andrews has referred in evidence, at about 5pm when he was chased by another motorist and threatened.
He said the E-fit image of the driver prepared by police with Andrews's help bore similarities to the driver in his case. The passenger laughed a lot and appeared “absolutely mental”. The driver grabbed an object and told Mr Rodenhurst, “I'll stick this in your neck”, the court heard.
He said the car was a dark red Ford - a Granada not a Sierra, as Andrews has described. Mr Crigman dismissed the evidence as unreliable, accusing Mr Rodenhurst of having a grudge against the police as a result of numerous criminal convictions, including two relating to perverting the course of justice.
“You are a man whose word, I suggest, is worthless,” he said. “You are one of those people who likes to make trouble.”
Mr Rodenhurst denied this, describing the suggestion as “ludicrous”. He admitted that he had been brought to the court under arrest yesterday, saying he objected to the way lawyers had sought to “bully and intimidate” him to give his evidence.
The trial continues.