Andrews, a former model and
barmaid, attacked Harvey in his car after they had stopped following
an argument on the way to their flat in The Becks, Alvechurch,
Worcester. Andrews stabbed Harvey more than 30 times.
Andrews appeared at a Press
conference on 3 December 1996 saying Harvey had been the victim of a
road rage attack from a man with "staring eyes." Andrews took a
drug overdose the following day.
After a West Midlands Police
inquiry failed to find witnesses to the incident, Andrews was arrested
on the morning of Saturday 7 December, in Hospital. She was released
on Bail after being charged.
She continued into the court still
holding her road-rage defence, but was found guilty by a jury at
Birmingham Crown Court in July 1997 for the murder of Lee Harvey on 1
December 1996. She was sentenced to life imprisonment and a 14-year
minimum term was recommended, which would have kept her behind bars
until at least 2011 and the age of 42.
A subsequent appeal lodged by
Andrews, alleging that she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice
because of damaging publicity surrounding her case, was thrown out at
a hearing in October 1998.
During her imprisonment, Andrews
has saved the life of a fellow prisoner who attempted suicide, and
this sparked fears that she could be out on prison even sooner than
the trial judge had recommended. But the Home Secretary (who has since
been stripped of his powers to amend minimum terms) later ordered that
Andrews should serve no less than the 14 years that had been
recommended by her trial judge.
In April 1999 Andrews admitted that
she had carried out the crime. As a result a 2005 ITV1 docu-drama
resultantly gave an account of her relationship with Lee Harvey and
her conviction of his murder, starring Sarah Manners as Andrews.
In 2006 it was reported that
Andrews was hoping to be released from jail within months and planned
to marry, ending a series of same sex affairs, but Home Office sources
denied that she was due to be released imminently.
She was however moved from Foston
Hall jail in Derbyshire to Send prison near Woking, Surrey. An inmate
of the therapeutic wing, she receives one-to-one counselling, has
admitted again to murdering Harvey.
However, a prison source was quoted
as saying: "Andrews has moved to this prison and admitted to the
murder, which has surprised a lot of people. Although she has accepted
her guilt, nobody really believes that she feels much remorse. She
sees this as her first step on the way to parole. Andrews is
manipulative and devious. Officers believe she will say or do anything
to get out of jail."
Since moving to the jail, Andrews
has changed her name to Tia Carter, and also made friends with Jane
Andrews, the former aide of Sarah Ferguson who was jailed seven years
ago for the murder by knife attack of boyfriend Tom Cressman.
Tracie Andrews has never shown remorse for
murdering my son. Freeing her is the last twist of the knife, says
mother of Lee Harvey
By Helen Weathers - DailyMail.co.uk
July 28, 2011
Maureen Harvey has been counting the days to Tracie
Andrews’ release from prison. As the date neared, her anxiety mounted.
She has felt, she says, as if she was on the edge of a precipice.
From the moment Andrews was jailed for life on July
29, 1997, for murdering Maureen’s 25-year-old son Lee in a knife
attack, Mrs Harvey has been anticipating this day with dread.
She and her husband Ray, 66, tried repeatedly over
the years to persuade politicians to extend the 14-year tariff of
Andrews’ life sentence — arguing that life should mean life — but
without success.
So, trying to banish from her mind thoughts of
Andrews walking not only free, but defiantly unrepentant, Maureen is
planning to spend the day of release — likely to be today or tomorrow
— at her son’s graveside.
‘I go every week to talk to Lee,’ says 65-year-old
Maureen, her hands trembling with emotion. ‘Sometimes I tell him off
for ever getting involved with that woman. Sometimes I just stand
there and cry.
‘It hurts me more than words can say that Andrews
is not only a free woman, but still refuses to express any remorse or
regret for what she did to my son. I can’t even think of her as a
human being any more.'
Maureen was not surprised to read this week that
Andrews still refuses to take the blame for Lee’s death. A family
friend of Andrews told the Mail: ‘Her attitude is she has done her
time and the slate is now clean. She sees no reason to say sorry to
anyone.’
Indeed, nothing Andrews — who has changed her name
to Tia Carter and has had £5,000 of cosmetic surgery to correct her
protruding jaw — says or does has the power to surprise Maureen any
more.
But it still hurts. The wounds, Maureen says,
remain as raw as the day that Lee was murdered.
She has had to swallow back the bile each time new
photographs have appeared in the papers of Andrews out on day release
from Askham Grange open prison in Yorkshire in preparation for release
— particularly those of a relaxed Andrews on a shopping trip to York,
and laughing with a companion over a cappuccino.
More recently, she was pictured pushing a baby
buggy with her 21-year-old daughter Karla — who was seven years old
when Andrews was jailed — and her first grandchild.
‘I can only visit my child at the cemetery and Lee
can’t see his two grandchildren,’ says Maureen. ‘They will only read
as they get older what happened to their grandfather, which isn’t a
pleasant story to have to tell them.’
Indeed, it is not. It was on December 1, 1996, that
Andrews, then a 27-year-old bottle-blonde market stall seller with
aspirations to become a model, murdered her fiancé Lee.
A bus driver with a four-year-old daughter,
Danielle, from a previous relationship, Lee suffered 42 stab wounds in
the frenzied attack.
The crime might have receded from memory by now had
it not been for Andrews’ infamous attempt to cover up what she’d done
with the most brazen of lies.
At a police press conference, a bruised Andrews
clutched Maureen’s hand as she described how a road-rage assailant
stabbed Lee following a cat-and-mouse car chase through the leafy
lanes of Worcestershire as the couple drove home from the pub.
It was, as we all know now, a complete fabrication.
Jealous, possessive and volatile, Andrews had attacked Lee during a
violent row, one of many he’d endured during their two-year, on-off
relationship.
Despite forensic evidence confirming her guilt, she
still denied the charges at trial.
It was only 21 months after she was convicted that
she confessed to killing Lee, claiming self-defence, in a letter to
her solicitor. This, despite Lee sustaining a stab wound to his back.
So it is with a bitter sense of resignation and
acceptance that Maureen is looking to the future — both hers and
Andrews’, for they can never be separated.
‘Some people might say Tracie has served her time
and deserves a second chance, but she’s ruined our lives,’ says
Maureen, a former hair salon owner. ‘There’s no second chance for Lee,
or for us. We are the ones who will be serving a life sentence until
the day we die.
‘She can change her name and appearance. She can
dye her hair red, blonde or black, but a leopard doesn’t change its
spots.'
Instead, this week as Andrews is released on life
licence, a fresh nightmare looms. Where will her son’s killer live?
It is believed that Andrews will stay in a secure
‘approved residence’ in the North of England with CCTV and a night
curfew for her safety, but Maureen has received no such assurances
from the parole board.
Indeed, she is not allowed to know the slightest
detail of Andrews’ location. Murderers, it seems to Maureen’s
frustration and anger, have more rights than their victims’ families.
For years Maureen and Ray have fought for a 50-mile
exclusion zone to prevent Andrews from coming anywhere near the family
home on her release. But last week they were told by the parole board
it would be 25 miles.
‘I feel totally let down by the justice system. I
feel I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall for the past 14
years,’ says Maureen.
More significantly, Andrews’ daughter Karla Marie
Tilston, a waitress, lives just three miles from Maureen’s home, near
Birmingham. Mother and daughter are, despite Andrews’ appalling crime,
far from estranged.
Last September Karla spoke briefly of her love for
her mother, saying: ‘If people knew her like I know her, then you
would see she is not the psycho killer that she is made out to be.’
Maureen says: ‘I was told there was a possibility,
after her release, that she might be able to visit her daughter,
provided she followed a set route. That, to me, would be totally
unacceptable. It would be devastating for me if I ever saw Tracie
again.’
‘Victims’ families should be treated with more
respect. What we need is a change in the law to allow us more
information. I don’t want revenge, I just want to make sure I never
set eyes on Tracie Andrews again. All this worry will send me to an
early grave.’
I meet Maureen at the neat house she shares with
Ray, her husband of 44 years who works as a part-time lorry driver.
Lee grew up in this home from the age of four. His pictures remain
proudly on display.
‘Sometimes, when I look at Lee’s picture I want to
shout: “Why did you fall in love with Tracie?” Because if he hadn’t,
Lee would still be alive,’ says Maureen. ‘But you can’t choose who you
love.'
Maureen admits she took an instant dislike to
Tracie when she met her all those years ago. ‘Within 20 minutes I had
her whole life story. She was slating her family, her ex-boyfriend,
everyone. She wasn’t the kind of girl I would have wished for my son,
but Lee loved her, so I tried to get on with her.’
Which wasn’t easy when Lee would return home,
battered and bruised, having been kicked out by Tracie after another
one of their arguments — his clothes chucked out of the bedroom window
in black bin-liners.
‘They weren’t good for each other and I had many
heated arguments with Lee about it,’ says Maureen. ‘Once, he came home
with a bite on his neck. She’d flown into a rage seeing him talk to a
barmaid in a club and attacked him.
‘I remember Tracie saying to me: “I know, we just
can’t live with each other and can’t live without each other either.”
I don’t know why Lee kept going back to her.’
Maureen last saw her son Lee a week before he was
murdered. To his parents’ utter despair, he was packing his clothes
to return to Tracie following another one of their bust-ups.
‘All he could say was, “Mum, I just love her”,’
recalls Maureen. ‘That was the last thing he said to me.’
Maureen is a petite, well-groomed woman. Before Lee
was murdered she ran a thriving hairdressing business with her
daughter, but she lost that when she suffered a breakdown in the
aftermath of his death. For a time she and Ray even split, though she
insists they are ‘fine’ now.
It is not easy to listen to Maureen’s distress. She
remains fixated on Tracie Andrews and her grief still has that raw
quality of someone who has not moved on and may never do so.
‘I could lie to you and say I don’t hate her, but I
can’t lie to myself and God about what’s in my heart. I can never
forgive her,’ says Maureen. ‘You think the tears will stop with time,
but they don’t.
‘I used to be a private person, but my life is not
my own any more. I am public property. I have lost my identity and
will always be Lee’s mum. Our lives will never be normal.’
The closest Tracie Andrews ever came to apologising
to Maureen was from her hospital bed after she had taken an overdose —
before her arrest — when she said: ‘I’m sorry for what I have done.’
Maureen says: ‘I didn’t know if she was apologising
for the overdose or for killing Lee. I think now it was the latter,
but at the time I really wanted to believe she was innocent. Ray
thought she was guilty from day one, but I gave her the benefit of the
doubt.
‘When the police came to tell me she’d been
arrested on suspicion of murder, I collapsed shouting “No, no, no”. I
didn’t want to believe it.’
What makes the heart bleed for Maureen, as much as
her loss, is her desperate and — at times — futile attempts to contain
her emotions and present a more detached, rational, campaigning
persona.
She has learned from bitter experience that people
find such naked displays of grief uncomfortable. There is a selective
deafness when it comes to the long-term suffering of victims once the
initial sympathy starts to fade.
Which is why she now feels her voice alone is not
enough and she has taken on a lawyer to put her case across and help
her campaign for victims, using the kind of language people in
authority will listen to.
Maureen tells me she was inconsolable when she
attended Andrews’ last parole board hearing in 2009, when — she claims
— a Home Office official instructed her to read only parts of her
statement.
‘She kept tapping my leg under the table to shut me
up,’ says Maureen. ‘I just carried on anyway and read it all, and
added my true feelings, but she was not happy with me. Is this the
procedure? Can’t I have my say?’
There is no doubt that these are tense, unbearably
distressing times for the family. Not least because Lee’s daughter
Danielle, now aged 19, has established Facebook contact with Andrews’
daughter Karla.
When Andrews and Lee were a couple, the children
played together, often at Maureen’s house, and got on well. Danielle
has said that although she will never forgive Tracie Andrews, she has
no animosity towards Karla.
Maureen stiffens and says: ‘It’s not for me to say
who Danielle can and can’t be friends with. She’s 19 now and old
enough to make her own decisions, but it’s not something I could
encourage.
‘Only two people know what really happened that
night. Lee is dead and all that has come out of Tracie’s mouth to date
has been lies.
‘But I don’t want to be like this, full of hatred.
I just want a normal life now. I want to draw a line under this and
get on with my life.
‘There are a lot of families worse off than us;
people who still don’t know who murdered their loved ones; families
who have had no justice. Every day you switch on the TV and there’s
another murder.’
She adds: ‘I want to campaign for the people it
could happen to today, tomorrow, next year. It’s already too late for
us.'
No remorse as ‘road-rage fantasy’ killer is set
free: Victim’s family grieve... but Tracie Andrews cites human right
to a new life
By Claire Ellicott - DailyMail.co.uk
July 26, 2011
One of Britain’s most notorious murderers walks
free from jail this week after serving her sentence for a crime which
robbed a family of a much-loved son.
But Tracie Andrews refuses to apologise for the
brutal stabbing of her fiancé Lee Harvey.
Andrews, 41, insists it is now her ‘human right’ to
get on with her life.
She will go by the name Tia Carter and has had
£5,000 surgery to alter her distinctive jaw and dyed her blonde hair
brown.
The former barmaid was jailed for life for killing
Mr Harvey, 25, in 1996 during a row as they drove in a country road.
She cut his throat and stabbed him 37 times with a
penknife in the back, face, neck and chest.
After leaving him to bleed to death, she concocted
a story about a road-rage incident and blamed the other driver for the
attack.
Two days after the murder, Andrews went on
television holding the hand of Mr Harvey’s mother Maureen to appeal
for information to catch the killer.
As her release grows closer, her family has urged
her to repent publicly but she continues to insist she owes no one
anything and wants to pick up her life where she left off.
‘She categorically refuses to take the blame,’ said
a family friend. ‘Her attitude is she has done her time and the slate
is now clean. She sees no reason to say sorry to anyone.
'Her family wanted her to make a public statement
on her release, for the first time fully admitting what happened and
expressing her regret and sorrow over Lee’s death.
‘They take the view that unless she shows public
remorse, she will be a target for hate. But she has refused to listen
and has said repeatedly, point-blank, that she will not say anything
to anyone. She says that, having paid her debt to society, it is her
human right to be left alone.’
Andrews is expected to be released on Thursday from
Askham Grange open prison, near York, where she has spent the last
part of her 14-year term.
At her trial in 1997, she stuck to her story about
a ‘wide-eyed maniac’ who had attacked Mr Harvey, but she was
convicted.
Andrews, who lived with her fiancé in Alvechurch,
Worcestershire, later confessed to her crime in a letter from prison
but refused to apologise or accept full responsibility.
The changes to her appearance follow the refusal by
the Ministry of Justice to grant her lifetime anonymity.
This was given to Maxine Carr, who became her
friend in jail. Carr gave a false alibi to her boyfriend Ian Huntley,
the killer of Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in
2002.
Instead, Andrews will be kept under observation
until early next year.
It is believed that she will stay in a secure
‘approved residence’ in the North of England with CCTV and a night
curfew for her safety.
Under a ruling won by Mrs Harvey and her husband
Raymond, Andrews will not be able to stay within 50 miles of their
Birmingham home without informing them and the police.
This means she cannot stay with her mother Irene in
Warwickshire or at her 20-year-old daughter Karla’s home in Walsall.
Yesterday Mrs Harvey declined to comment. But in
the past, she has said: ‘All we have left are memories and a grave
while she’s ready to carry on as if nothing happened. She is evil.’
Lyn Costello, who runs the support group Mothers
Against Murder and Aggression, said: ‘In terms of the law, she is
right about her human rights. But in terms of morals and decency,
she’s wrong. This must be terrible for the family.'
Dyeing to get out: Knife-killer Tracie Andrews
tries range of hair colours and new name as she prepares for prison
release
DailyMail.co.uk
June 27, 2011
This is the latest image of vicious knife-killer
Tracie Andrews, who is regularly dyeing and restyling her hair as she
anticipates freedom from jail before the summer is out.
In July 1997 Andrews, 42 was given a life sentence
with the judge recommending that she serve at least 14 years for
stabbing fiancé Lee Harvey, 25, to death in December 1996.
She knifed Harvey more than 42 times in his car
after they had stopped at the side of the road following an argument.
Shopaholic prisoner Andrews is preparing for her
release by trying out a range of new hairstyles and colours using
donations from the public to buy beauty products and fashion items.
Letters from well-wishers arrive with funds at
Askham Grange women's open prison, near York - where the
ex-hairdresser is now housed after a parole board meeting last week
that could see her freed from prison before the end of August.
Andrews, who now calls herself Tia Carter -
although her fellow lags still refer to her as Tracie - was featured
on TV sobbing and bruised after concocting a story that Lee was killed
by a mystery driver in a road rage incident as they drove home to
their flat in Alvechurch, Worcs.
Members of the public use the jail's hair salon,
where inmates are studying for hair and nail qualifications, and
Andrews is understood to have taken an interest when stylists from the
Benson Hefti Partnership in Guiseley, North Yorks, presented a
tutorial for hairdressing students at Askham Grange.
Only recently Andrews - seen here wearing a
fashionable new £70 suede style gilet - was passing on hairdressing
tips to con pals as they bought beauty products in York's Boots,
Superdrug and Poundland stores.
An eye-witness said: 'She was passing on tips about
which products are best and telling her friends from jail about the
most suitable dye for their hair types.
'She gets money off pen pals who somehow feel sorry
for her and she spends those funds on shopping expeditions into the
city.
'It is sickening and relatives of Lee must be
wondering how one of Britain's most reviled prisoners can be getting
such fantastic treatment and where the money is coming from.
'She even practises her dying techniques on her own
head of hair and has changed from blonde to mousy brown to dark
brunette in recent months.
'She is clearly keen to try and pick up where she
left off with the hairdressing and rumour has it that she has even cut
the governor's hair to curry favour inside.
'She wants to quietly slip back outside and blend
in with the rest of society.
'People would be horrified if they ended up in a
hair salon and Andrews was holding sharp scissors giving them a trim.
'She is clearly as deluded as some of her so-called
fans if she really believes she can go back to her old profession when
she is released.'
The parole board is set to make a decision in three
weeks and she could be released from Askham Grange open prison a
fortnight later. For the first three months it is understood she would
be forced to live under curfew at a bail hostel.
