Doused in Petrol & Burned on Church Steps - Unsolved

31-Year-Old mum of two was blindfolded, forced into a car then dumped on church steps, doused in petrol and set alight in Cheshire in the UK

This story shocked the whole nation, yet 26 years on the vile perpetrators of this heinous crime remain undiscovered and Tracey Mertens family are heading towards their 27th Christmas without her. 

Tracey's children are now adults they were 11 and 12 respectively when the tragedy struck their family after their mum set off from their new home in Rochdale in Greater Manchester heading for Birmingham to collect her benefits book. She had recently moved back to Northern England to be with her on-off partner Joey Kavanagh and their two children. 

It is quite important to note here that Tracey and her partner had originally got together when they were 16 but they had quite a disrupted and somewhat strained relationship and this was exacerbated by the fact Joey was a drug user and always owed people money.

Tracey Mertens had originally planned to travel to her old home in Birmingham and back to Rochdale in one day but ended up spending a night with her sister-in-law, planning to set off back the next day.

The next day Tracey went to her old house as arranged and was surprised within ten minutes to receive a knock at the front door. Two men burst into her home and demanded to know the whereabouts of Joey Kavanagh. Tracey refused to tell the men anything and she was then blindfolded and forced into a very old rough looking yellow Ford Escort car and driven some seventy miles to a village in Cheshire called Eaton. 

Some five hours after Tracey was snatched from her old house a person passing near the church in Eaton heard Tracey screaming and discovered her on the church steps on fire. It was a very cold winter night and Tracey's clothes were smouldering and there was a strong smell of petrol. She was so badly burnt that the witness initially thought she was wearing a Halloween type of costume. 

Tracey was able to give details of her horrific ordeal from her hospital bed before she sadly passed away on Christmas Eve 1994.  Doctors said that the burns covered 95 per cent of Tracey's body, so for the 12 hours that she fought to live I can only imagine that she must have been in excruciating pain. She described her abductors as big, fat and black, around 30 years old with Birmingham accents, but they actually spoke in a foreign language that Tracey did not recognise or understand for most of the time she was with them, detectives believe the language may have been Patois, a Jamaican dialect. They both wore long black leather coats and brown leather hats When detectives visited Tracey's former Birmingham home they noticed that the word 'death' had been daubed on the window with white paint.

Tracey's murder was reconstructed by BBC Crimewatch during which her family spoke of their deep pain at the loss of Tracey. Her daughter Kelly spoke to the programme saying "The happiest times of my life were with my mum, the memories that I have of her and the things that I have been through alone when she should have been there, she deserves to be at peace, but I don't think she ever will be until these dreadful people are caught"

This case was reopened by Cheshire Police in 2003 in hope that with the advances of technology and forensic science the monsters that killed Tracey may be brought to justice but 11 years on police are no nearer to finding the answers. 

Joey Kavanagh flatly denies that Tracey's murder could have been connected to him in any way but I personally do not believe that at all. Here was a man who was a regular drug abuser that had moved over a hundred miles away from Birmingham to Rochdale and when his partner returned she was abducted and murdered by men demanding to know his whereabouts.  It seems interesting that Joey could not offer any insight into who may have been responsible for the mother of his children's murder yet he owed many people money including I suspect drug dealers that he had double-crossed 

Detective inspector Kate Tomlinson from Cheshire police said "Tracey met a violent and horrific death at the hands of her killers. She was so brave and told detectives as much as she could before she died. That information was vital to our investigation team at the time and many lines of enquiry were pursued"

She went on to say "Over the years we have renewed our appeal and a number of people have come forward with information - I would like to thank them for their assistance. However, despite enquiries having been pursued, no one has been identified for Tracey's murder".

A Birmingham man was at one stage charged with conspiracy to murder but the charges were later dropped with no further action. 

I must say that it seems rather curious that even in 1994 the yellow car was not picked by CCTV somewhere en route between Birmingham and Cheshire, it could be a possibility that there was a vehicle change but as Tracey's information was quite detailed I would be surprised as she did not mention it. 

There is, of course, the question of why they chose that particular location to dump and murder Tracey, the area is quite rural so it is not a place people on a journey from one place to another, was this place known to them? Had they visited the church before? Do they maybe have a relative or friend in the area or even possibly know if someone buried in a grave in the churchyard? Maybe records of recent weddings, funerals, etc that had taken place at the church in the months leading up to the murder. 

There is also the big risk that they took in travelling some 70 miles with a woman in the back of a Ford Escort Mark 2, (hardly a big car with lots of space inside), particularly as she was wearing a blindfold and would have probably been moving around trying to get free. After all, a car with two big men inside being driven probably at speed with a woman in the back seat wearing a blindfold could have easily been noticed by other motorists. Something doesn't quite add up there, maybe Tracey was mistaken and the vehicle was an Escort van? Doesn't seem that likely but there is a lot to be learned from that part of the enquiry in my opinion.

As a point of interest Tracey Mertens apparently left Joey Kavanagh and returned to her home town of Rochdale in the summer of 1994 and whilst staying at her sister's house she taped up the letterbox, taped the curtains together so that they couldn't be opened and generally acted rather strangely. A family friend said that she believed that Tracey was afraid of seriously afraid of something or someone, maybe this lady was half expecting to be attacked or murdered? 

Finally, the police say that sometime after Tracey's murder they were approached by a couple that were drug users and informed that the couple had received a call warning them 'if you don't pay up, you will get what Tracey Mertens got'. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions on this one, though the reason for Tracey's murder seems pretty clear cut to me.

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