Tracie Andrews is an English woman who murdered her fiancé, Lee Raymond Dean Harvey on 1 December 1996. She was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of murder at her trial in July 1997 and served 14 years before being released from prison.
Murder
Andrews stabbed Harvey over 42 times with a pen knife after they had stopped in his car following an argument on the way to their flat in The Becks, Alvechurch, Worcestershire, during the early hours of 1 December 1996. At a press conference on 3 December 1996, she claimed that Harvey was killed in a road rage attack, saying that a "fat man with staring eyes" had stabbed him over 30 times after getting out of a Ford Sierra in which he was a passenger. Over the next two weeks, police carried out investigations to track down the murderer of Lee Harvey. On 5 December, Tracie Andrews was admitted to hospital after taking an overdose, and was still in hospital two days later when police first questioned her about the murder. After being discharged from hospital, she was charged with the murder of Lee Harvey on 19 December 1996 and released on bail. Andrews appeared at Birmingham Crown Court charged with murder on 1 July 1997, and was found guilty on 29 July 1997. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a recommendation that she serve at least 14 years. Andrews appealed the sentence, claiming that she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice because of damaging publicity surrounding her case. In October 1998, the appeal was denied. In April 1999, Andrews admitted that she did stab Harvey to death, whilst still maintaining she acted in self-defence.
Release
Andrews was released in July 2011. She was banned from travelling within 25 miles of her victim's family without supervision. Andrews has a daughter, who was born in the early 1990s.
Media based on the case
The 1996 Catatonia song "Road Rage" was partially inspired by the murder. Maureen Harvey, Lee's mother, has written a book called Pure Evil: How Tracie Andrews Murdered My Son, Deceived the Nation and Sentenced Me to a Life of Pain and Misery. CBS Reality aired a documentary on the killing in 2018, entitled Evidence of Evil: The Road Rage Killer.
