Family Still Seeking Justice 49 Years After Teen Was Strangled Walking Home From Friend’s House

A male caller, who was never identified, led police to a ring Tracey Ann Patient was wearing the night she was killed.

Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash

Tracey Ann Patient was a 13-year-old English girl living with her parents and two sisters in Henderson, a suburb of West Auckland, New Zealand. The family had left Britain three years earlier, and the children were finally beginning to settle into their new surroundings.

The girls often had friends over at their house and enjoyed going to the beach, cinema, and local record stores. Tracey loved being around horses, so she had been working at a local stable. According to her sister Debbie, who was 15 years old at the time,

“She spent a lot of time there; mucking out the stalls, cleaning the tack and grooming the horses, in exchange for the opportunity to ride their horses. She was good at sports too, including netball and athletics.”

On the evening of January 29, 1976, Tracey left her home on Dellwood Avenue and walked about twenty minutes to her friend Lynette’s house on Chilcott Road.

The teens spent the evening gossiping about boys before walking together to the intersection of Great North Road and Edmonton Road. There, Lynette turned back, leaving Tracey to walk…