TRACIE ANDREWS, accused of the roadside murder of her fiancé, Lee Harvey, allegedly tried to commit suicide after his death because she was “consumed with guilt”, a court was told yesterday.
Detectives were seen repeatedly challenging Miss Andrews about her claim that Mr Harvey was killed in a dispute with another motorist in two hours of videotaped police interviews shown to Birmingham Crown Court.
Asking her about a suicide attempt shortly after Mr Harvey's death, Detective Sergeant Michael O'Donnell inquired: “Why did you try to kill yourself, Tracie?” Sitting with her arms folded, she did not reply and her lawyer advised her not to answer “grossly improper” questions. In the interview, on December 19, 18 days after Mr Harvey's death, Sergeant O'Donnell continued: “You tried to take your own life because you were consumed with guilt”. She replied: “It was because I wanted to be with him.” Sergeant O'Donnell then said: “You are riddled with guilt really, aren't you Tracie?” She replied quietly: “No”.
She added: “I just feel so helpless. You are just saying all these things to me ... I've just lost my boyfriend. I wanted to be with him. If I had done this and was trying to get away with it, why would I try to kill myself? My whole life has been turned upside down. I know it's selfish to take my own life. I said in the hospital that I just wanted to be with him, that I could never be with anyone else.”
Miss Andrews, 28, who sat hunched and with her arms folded tightly across her body for most of the video, admitted that she had a “stormy” relationship with Mr Harvey, with whom she shared a flat at Alvechurch, Hereford and Worcester. She said: “I know we had a stormy relationship. I know we had our ups and downs but we really really loved each other.”
She agreed that they had split up several times but pointed out that they had always reunited. She explained that their arguments were usually over the father of her daughter, Karla, who often visited, and about Mr Harvey's daughter, Danielle. She said: “It's hard when you have kids from different relationships and you live together and you are out of work.”
Earlier, Sergeant O'Donnell challenged Miss Andrews to admit murdering her 25-year-old fiancé during a row on the journey home from an evening in a pub a few miles from their home.
He said: “You and Lee have had an argument and you have gone over the top. At the end of it and when you realise what you have done, you wait around there thinking a story up. I bet you stood there and thought ‘God, what have I done?’ There were over 30 wounds in his neck Tracie, that's a frenzied attack ... and those wounds have been caused by you.” She replied: “No”.
Later, the court was told by Ronald Thwaites, QC, for the defence, that five informants, including one “respectable middle-aged man”, had named the same person, known as Mr X, as responsible for the murder of Mr Harvey. One had seen Mr X, a drug dealer with criminal convictions, following Mr Harvey out of the pub on the night he died.
Mr X was known to be unable to drive and to travel as a passenger in a dark-coloured Ford Sierra; Miss Andrews claims that the passenger of such a car killed Mr Harvey. Mr Thwaites accused Detective Superintendent Ian Johnston of West Mercia police, who led the murder inquiry, of “attaching little importance” to Mr X, despite information that he and Mr Harvey may have been involved in a dispute over drugs. Mr Johnston denied this, but admitted he had never interviewed Mr X.
Miss Andrews denies murder. The trial continues.