Thirty-one-year-old cafeteria worker Tracey Mertens had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with her boyfriend Joey Kavanaugh since both were teenagers. They had two children together, Daniel and Kelly, but Joey, it seemed, was not the most responsible father; he was an admitted drug addict, and often borrowed money from some unsavory characters in order to feed his habit.
In 1992, Tracey and Joey had moved from Rochdale to Birmingham, but things had gotten rather strained after that point. In the summer of 1994, Tracey returned to Rochdale with her children and spent some time staying with her sister Sharon. She told Sharon and their mother Barbara that she had left Joey, and that she didn’t want him to find her. According to her family, Tracey acted strange and fearful that summer, taping up the windows and sealing the mailbox shut.
A few weeks later, though, Tracey decided to get back together with Joey, and went back to Birmingham to be with him. In November, the couple moved back to Rochdale, perhaps to be closer to Tracey’s family.
A few days before Christmas, on December 22nd, Tracey drove back to Birmingham to pick up a few things, including a child benefits book, from her and Joey’s former home. Upon arriving in Birmingham, she first spent the night at the home of Joey’s sister, then went to the old house on Cattells Grove the following morning.
She arrived at a little before noon on December 23rd, and had only been in the home for about ten minutes when there was a loud knock on the door. When Tracey answered it, she was confronted with two overweight black men in their early thirties, clad in leather jackets and brown leather caps. They immediately demanded, “Where’s Joey?”
The men then snatched the terrified Tracey, blindfolded her, and hustled her into a car parked along the street. The vehicle was described as a bright yellow, Mark II Ford Escort with a stuffed animal stuck to the back window.
Tracey’s whereabouts were unaccounted for over the next several hours, but at around four-ten p.m., a woman walking near a church in Eaton, Cheshire—about sixty miles away from where Tracey had been kidnapped—heard someone screaming and rushed to help.
Tracey Mertens had been doused with gasoline and set alight on the front steps of Christ Church.
Though she was burned over ninety percent of her body, Tracey lived long enough to give police a description of her attackers, who she said spoke English with a Birmingham accent, but also spoke in a “foreign language” she couldn’t identify. Investigators suspected that the language was a patois spoken by Jamaican immigrants.
Twelve hours after being taken to the hospital, Tracey died from her injuries. It was Christmas Eve. Although detectives interrogated her boyfriend Joey Kavanaugh, surmising that his drug debts were the most likely cause of the vicious attack against Tracey, Joey denied knowing who had killed her, though he admitted owing money to several different individuals. As the investigation progressed, it was also discovered that there had been a break-in at Tracey and Joey’s former home only a few weeks before her slaying, and that someone had written the word “death” on a window with white paint.
A short time later, a Birmingham man was arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, but was subsequently released due to lack of evidence. The homicide investigation was reopened in 2009, and authorities are still convinced that Joey’s illegal activities contributed to the brutal murder of his girlfriend. Though a thirty-thousand-pound reward is still on offer, the case remains unresolved.
Crime Immemorial 