A BLOODY imprint inside a woman's high-heeled ankle boot matched the knife used to stab her boyfriend 30 times, a court was told yesterday. The prosecution said the murder weapon was never found because Tracie Andrews put it in a hospital waste bin when she washed her fiancé's blood from her face and hands.
Birmingham Crown Court was also told that when she was found covered in blood at the murder scene, Miss Andrews had made no attempt to raise the alarm. Some of her hair was later found in the right hand of her fiancé, Lee Harvey. Another clump was found near by, indicating that it had been pulled out by Mr Harvey in a struggle.
David Crigman, QC, for the prosecution, told the court that there was “unequivocal evidence” that claims by Miss Andrews that Mr Harvey had been the victim of a road rage attack by an unknown man were false.
He said the couple, who lived together in Alvechurch, Hereford and Worcester, had a “volatile and turbulent” two-year relationship and that Mr Harvey, 25, had moved out to live with his mother several times. Police had been called to their flat on several occasions. Mr Crigman said that on the day Mr Harvey died Sunday, December 1 last year the couple had had a long argument overheard by neighbours in the flat above.
That evening they went to the Marlbrook Arms pub in Bromsgrove where “it was apparent to onlookers that there was an air of unease between the defendant and Lee Harvey”. They left in Mr Harvey's Ford Escort.
Mr Crigman said: “It is the prosecution's case that during that journey home their volatile relationship again exploded and a frenzied and vicious argument broke out. It started in the car. It led to the car being stopped. When they were out of the car it is the case that this defendant launched the most vicious attack on Lee Harvey.
“The evidence will show that the attack is with a penknife, an imitation Swiss Army penkife. It is only small but, potential ly, and in this case, lethal.”
Mr Crigman said Mr Harvey, 25, was stabbed 30 times in the neck, face, head, chest, shoulder and back. The carotid artery and the jugular vein were severed, which would have caused rapid, huge loss of blood and “quickly rendered him defenceless”.
He went on: “After the attack she was to claim the death was caused by the occupant of another car in the course of a driving dispute. Evidence will show there never was another car. There never was some mystery murdering motorist. It was her.”
Miss Andrews, 28, who has a six-year-old daughter by a previous relationship, had been found at the scene by Richard Main, who had been visiting a friend at a nearby house. As he walked to his car in the drive, illuminated by a security light, he had heard her ask him for help. Mr Main had run back to the house and asked his friend to call an ambulance.
When he returned, Mr Crigman asked, where was the defendant? “Was she tending the body of the man you see in the pictures? No, she was not. Was she running to the house for help? No, she was not. She was standing behind the driver's door with her back to the car. The door was not quite shut and she was covered in blood.
“He asked her: ‘Has there been an accident?‘ ‘No’, she said. She was plainly distressed. He spent some minutes trying to establish what had happened. She mentioned no other car, no other motorist.”
Miss Andrews had been taken to Princess Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, where she had been treated for a black eye. It was there, according to Mr Crigman, that she disposed of the knife she had concealed in her boot. He said a hospital sister would give evidence that she spent a long time in the lavatory and made several subsequent trips.
On the first, the hospital sister had waited in the corridor. Mr Crigman said: “A long time passed. The defendant seemed to remain in that lavatory for an unnaturally long time. So long, indeed, that Sister Mitchell became worried for her and knocked on the door. She asked if she was all right. The defendant said ‘Yes’ and she emerged having washed off some of the blood.”
Her clothes were then removed for analysis. Scientists had found a blood stain two and five eighths of an inch by one inch on the inside of her right boot. Asking the jury to examine a photograph of the stain, Mr Crigman said: “Such a mark could have been made by contact on the inside of the boot with a blood-wetted object.”
Holding the boot up, he said: “You may think in due course that the curved shape of that blood stain provides telling evidence of what was tucked down the inside of that boot.” Although no knife had been recovered, police had found parts of a penknife at the scene.
Miss Andrews's account of the incident did not, Mr Crigman argued, match the location of bloodstains at the scene. Her jumper was also covered in splashes of blood, which could only have been caused by her standing close to Mr Harvey as it spurted from his veins. It was not consistent with her claim that they were caused as she cuddled her fiancé as he lay dying.
Miss Andrews denies murder. The trial continues.