On the evening of Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 1983, eleven-year-old Tracey Waters waved goodbye to her mother and headed out from her home in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland, near Glasgow, to go to a nearby youth club. It was the last time she was seen alive.
When her daughter didn’t return, Tracey’s mother Margaret walked around the corner to check at her own mother’s house to see if perhaps the child had gone there, but she had no luck. Growing desperate, she marshaled other family members to search the surrounding streets for the girl. The police became involved as the night started to close in, but they found nothing either, and the family stayed up all night to hunt for the child.
The next morning, Margaret turned on her radio to discover that police had found a little girl’s body under a hedge in Shanks Crescent, about half a mile from the Waters family home. Margaret knew immediately that this must be Tracey. The girl had been viciously beaten and then strangled to death. She had not been sexually assaulted, but investigators theorized that the killer had been intending to do so, but had been interrupted.
To the shock of the entire family, the prime suspect in the murder was Margaret’s brother and Tracey’s uncle, Adam McDermott. He was arrested and charged, serving seventy-seven days on remand, but the charges were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence.
There the case stood until 2001, when McDermott, the father of three children, told his family he was going to the post office to collect his benefits. He was wearing a small backpack as though he was going hiking but wasn’t dressed for walking in the hills. After setting out from his home near Kilbarchan, McDermott completely vanished.
A massive search was undertaken, but no trace of McDermott was ever found. Authorities speculated that either guilt about the murder or the public scorn he lived under as a suspect caused him to disappear; they further surmised that he may have gone off to commit suicide, as no sign of him has turned up in more than twenty years.
Margaret Waters, though initially skeptical that her brother was the culprit, told the media in 2020 that she is now convinced he was the one responsible. However, she does not believe that her brother is dead, but rather that he is in hiding somewhere.
Tragically, much of the original forensic evidence in the Tracey Waters case has been lost, making it far less likely that the crime will ever be solved. Despite this, her mother still hopes that she will someday see justice for her daughter.
Crime Immemorial 