Silenced witness
40 years on, the bystander the police ignored
Memory can be the cruellest of human abilities. A callous magician making precious moments slowly vanish; a hot poker searing in our minds the things we’d rather forget.
For Gary Ross, his ability to recall events from throughout his 73 years is a point of pride.
He recalls in great detail standing on a verandah at his grandparents’ place in Thames watching the local pub burn to the ground. At the time he wasn’t even four years old.
A former cricket player and umpire, he chats enthusiastically about matches and innings he’s witnessed. It’s as if he has his own personal play-reel in his mind showing highlights of top players like the late, great batsman Martin Crowe.
Ask what he remembers of Crowe and it’s like a challenge to recall as far back as he can – and that’s a long way.
‘‘I can remember him wandering around the outfield in his nappies,’’ says Ross. ‘‘His father, Dave, was my senior captain when I played for Suburbs. The day after John Kennedy was assassinated, I can remember Dave Crowe said to me, ‘have you heard the news? A terrible thing has happened’.’’
You get the picture: there’s a lot Gary Ross doesn’t forget.
Like the evening of January 29, 1976, specifically what he saw on the streets of Henderson in Auckland’s west – a man leading a young girl along by the elbow.
‘‘There was hardly anyone else in Henderson at the time, it was almost deserted and he was escorting her by the elbow, and she wasn’t struggling but he was hassling her along the road,’’ he says.
‘‘I’ve thought about it a lot.’’
There are many others who can’t forget that night either. About 9pm on that summer’s evening 40 years ago, 13-year-old Tracey Ann Patient set off for home from her friend’s house in Henderson. She never made it.
The next day, her body was found dumped in a bush by the roadside on Scenic Drive, the winding tarmac spine of the Waitakere Ranges. The cold, medico-legal language of the coroner recorded that her death was ‘‘due to homicide by strangulation by a ligature’’.
She’d been strangled to death with her own stockings, wound tight with a twig at the back of her neck.
The killer has never been found and it remains a festering mystery for those who loved her.
Her older sister, Debbie, was on her way to a concert that night and the pair walked up the road together, Debbie off to the Doobie Brothers, Tracey to her friend’s house.
‘‘When she said ‘bye’ – she was just walking up the road just slightly behind me, and I never turned around, I just went ‘oh, ok bye, see you later’ and went off,’’ Debbie says in a video released by police in January to mark the 40th anniversary of the murder.
‘‘And I just so, so regret not turning around.’’
Later that night Debbie and her father went out in the car looking for Tracey but there was no sign.
In the police video, Debbie recalls what happened the next morning when she, her mother and younger sister Denise were in the living room.
‘‘Denise was on my lap and Dad came home. You could see he was really upset and Denise said: ‘When’s Tracey coming home?’ and my dad said: ‘She’s not’.’’
John Patient, a roofer who had brought his family out from England for a new life in New Zealand, had the grim task of telling them why not. ‘‘Someone killed her,’’ he sobbed.
As those first waves of grief overwhelmed the Patient family in the lounge of their home that morning, police were swarming the neighbourhood.
Who had seen Tracey after she left her friend’s house in Chilcott Rd and walked towards home in Dellwood Ave about 2km away? How did she end up dead in the lonely Waitakere Ranges less than 12 hours later?
A homicide team of about 30 police set up temporary headquarters in a local Scout hall, piecing together her movements, figuring out suspects.
The friend she’d been with, a schoolmate from Henderson High, recalled how the pair had spent the night together gossiping about boys, including one who had given Tracey a signet ring.
She remembered Tracey phoning home to say: ‘‘I’ll be home in half an hour, mum.’’
They walked together halfway, saying their goodbyes about 9.30pm at the corner of Great North Rd and Edmonton Rd, ironically then the site of the Henderson police station.
From there, Tracey’s trail became less clear. Reports at the time said she was last seen outside the police station, by a couple walking their dog. Police said that, after asking them the time, she then ran up the road towards home.
There were various clues over the years – for instance, the discovery in 1977 of the signet ring Tracey had been wearing, found in a waste-paper basket in Avondale after a tip-off.
But all police efforts drew a blank, every reported breakthrough fizzled out. The original officer in charge, then Detective Inspector Bruce Scott, candidly admitted to the Sunday
Star in 1991: ‘‘I’m not making excuses for myself or the police but we never had much to go on.’’
But what if they’d missed something?
Not having much to go on, though, does not mean the police didn’t keep going on. A cop with an unsolved file on the desk is a cop with a toothache. It’s there as a constant reminder, the gnawing pain of a gaping hole.
There were leads pursued over the years – appeals for cars seen acting suspiciously in the area, publicity about an identikit picture of a man seen in the area, the offer of a $10,000 reward. In all, more than 850 potential suspects were looked at, but none gave the police reason to lay charges.
Early this year, 40 years on from the killing, police launched a new publicity drive. The officer now in charge of the cold case, Detective Sergeant Murray Free, and his boss, Detective Inspector John Sutton, announced that police had resumed working on it full time.
‘‘Despite 40 years having passed, someone out there knows who did this,’’ said Sutton. ‘‘To this day we still have people who ring us with information, and I’m pleased to say we are following new leads.’’
Exactly what those new leads were wasn’t stated – which is not unusual. To catch a killer, the element of surprise is a notunknown weapon in every canny detective’s cache.
Intriguingly, in the police announcement of the new investigation, they noted the last sighting of Tracey was outside 295 Great North Road – some 300m up the hill from where police in 1976 said she was last seen (outside the police station).
At his home on the other side of Auckland, Gary Ross read of the developments with interest. For years, he’d been trying to tell the police about what he’d seen in Henderson the night Tracey disappeared – how he’d seen an older man leading a young girl along by the elbow. For years, he felt he’d been ignored.
Gary Ross certainly doesn’t strike you as anti-establishment. A retired businessman, with a trim grey beard, he plays bowls regularly and still loves his cricket and rugby league. He has a wide circle of friends, one of whom described him as ‘‘a hell of a good guy’’.
It was through one of those friends that he approached StuffCircuit, frustrated that, to his mind, he hadn’t been listened to by the police over the years.
‘‘The day after she disappeared I rang the police,’’ Ross said. ‘‘I rang at least three or four times [since]. I haven’t bothered ringing this time because it just seems as though they’re not interested.’’
Insofar as his assertion that they’re not interested, the police beg to differ – but we’ll come back to that.
First, what did Ross say he actually saw?
He remembers the evening clearly. It was a Thursday and he and a friend were in Henderson.
Ross and his friend (who passed away years ago) were leaning against the car parked on the side of Great North Road.
‘‘While we were chatting, I saw a young girl being hustled along the road by an elderly, well a middleaged to elderly, gentleman wearing a hat. He was holding her by the elbow . . . she wasn’t panicking at all but she looked directly at us as she passed.
‘‘I think that was her that was being escorted away, I’m quite sure it was her that was being
I rang at least three or four times since. I haven’t bothered ringing this time because it just seems as though they’re not interested. Gary Ross
escorted away by this guy. Absolutely. I was three or four metres away from them.
‘‘I’ve seen her photographs in the newspapers and I’m quite sure that was her. And it was about 9.30 at night and Henderson was virtually deserted.’’
Ross says that the next day, when he heard on the radio that Tracey had disappeared from Henderson, he rang the police. He said the person he spoke to took down his details and said they’d be in touch. But nobody rang.
He tried to pass on the information several more times over the years, most recently in 2011 when he saw that Free was now in charge of the case. As they chatted, Ross figured out that he used to know one of Free’s uncles through cricket. With that in mind, he thought he’d have more luck getting heard this time. But no. ‘‘I outlined what I’d seen and he told me he’d come and see me – I’m still waiting.’’
What Ross saw is significant for a number of reasons, it would appear. Never before have there been reports (at least publicly) of a girl fitting Tracey’s description being seen led away by a man. Never before (at least publicly) have there been reports of a girl fitting Tracey’s description in the vicinity of the Henderson shops that night.
Remember that according to the original police accounts, she was last seen at the corner of Edmonton Rd and Great North Rd, and in the latest police account she was outside 295 Great North Rd.
Both those locations are several hundred metres east of where Gary says he saw Tracey that night.
So wouldn’t it be worth the police talking to him in greater detail than several (mostly brief) conversations over the phone?
We approached the police to speak to them about the case. Initially, we got back a flat, yet polite, rejection. ‘‘The investigation into Tracey Patient’s murder is ongoing and though we appreciate the ongoing media interest, at this stage we are respectfully declining requests for any media interviews,’’ a spokeswoman said in an email.
We went back with specific questions about what Ross says he saw and his dealings with the police. What followed was a series of written responses from Sutton.
He confirmed that Free spoke to Ross in 2011 and provided a description of a girl who fitted Tracey’s description with an older man.
At first, Sutton said Free had taken a statement from Ross but later acknowledged it was a job sheet. A statement is generally a signed document in which a witness provides an account of what they have seen whereas a job sheet is a police document in which an officer records notes from a conversation with a witness or other investigations undertaken on a case.
This may sound like splitting hairs. But it confirmed that police had never sat down with Ross to take a statement from him, a full, formal account of what he saw. Why not?
Sutton replied: ‘‘Detective Sergeant Free made an assessment on the information provided by Mr Ross against the large amount of material provided by witnesses and gathered over the years. Detective Sergeant Free’s assessment was made based on his vast insight of this case, on information that Mr Ross, nor the public, are privy to.
‘‘Detective Sergeant Murray Free has overseen the inquiries into the Tracey Patient case for the past 12 years, and has an intricate knowledge of the many hundreds of inquiries that have been conducted since Tracey was killed in 1976, including the timings of the confirmed last known sightings of Tracey.’’
For the avoidance of doubt, Sutton reiterated that it wasn’t that the police didn’t believe Ross when he says he saw a girl fitting Tracey’s description.
‘‘However from the assessment of information from other witnesses who have reported seeing Tracey we believe the female Mr Ross saw was highly unlikely to have been Tracey.’’
Later, we obtained the job sheet document under the Official Information Act.
In it, Free suggests Ross’s memory about the night is unreliable. This is based on the fact he says Ross said in their phone call that he was in Henderson that night after training for the league team he was helping coach. ‘‘29 January is the height of summer and in 1976 summer sports and winter sports had a clearer demarcation,’’ Free writes in the job sheet.
‘‘Unless Ross was playing at a high level, pre-season training in January would be very early.’’
We check with Ross ourselves. He tells us the club he coached actually did have pre-season training at that time of year. And besides, he says that with the passing of time, he has always said it was either after league training or cricket (which is consistent with what he told us right when we first started dealing with him). Either way, the important point to him is that he was in Henderson that night.
Besides, it seems an unusual assumption for Free to make, particularly when using it as a basis upon which to dismiss a potential witness in a murder investigation.
The job sheet also captures Free’s thoughts on what Ross said about trying to contact the police early on in the inquiry. ‘‘I find it difficult to believe that if he had phoned the station with this information on Day 2 of the investigation that it wouldn’t have been documented and attached to the file,’’ wrote Free. ‘‘He claims that he may have seen the victim being walked through Henderson by an older man which would have been highly relevant.’’
In other words, Free didn’t believe that Ross had rung then, dismissing the possibility that whoever took that original call had made a mistake.
Surely, in those early days of the investigation, when calls flooded in, it’s not impossible that something might have been missed.
And if what Ross says he saw was ‘‘highly relevant’’ at the time of the disappearance, why isn’t it now?
So, in summary, here’s the police position: yes, we have spoken to Gary Ross. No, we have never taken a formal signed statement from him. Yes, he told us he saw a girl fitting Tracey’s description with an older man in Henderson that night.
No, we don’t believe it was Tracey, based on what we think we know about her movements that night.
But here’s the counter to that: Tracey’s killer has not been caught. Wouldn’t you keep an open mind about what happened to her?
For the sake of Tracey’s family, we sincerely hope the police are right – they are, after all, the professionals, they know best.
Here’s hoping they’re on the verge of arresting the killer (or at least identifying who it was).
Her family deserves that. Tracey deserves that.
We go back to Gary Ross with the result of our inquiries to the police. He’s at home with his partner. She offers us a cup of coffee as he shows us a magazine from 1988 with a picture of him umpiring while New Zealand cricketer Danny Morrison bowls.
He’s a man who is proud of his past, and likes to recall the years. What the police have to say about his memory have not shaken his confidence.
He’s philosophical about their response, but it hasn’t eased his mind about the Tracey Ann Patient case. If anything it makes him feel more uneasy. And it certainly hasn’t made him any more likely to forget that night in Henderson all those years ago.
‘‘It’s not something I want to forget – it’s something that annoys me because it niggles me that they haven’t done anything about it.
‘‘The place was deserted, it’s not as if you have got hundreds of people walking around the street looking similar. It’s highly unlikely there would have been two young girls of the same description in the same deserted street.
‘‘I’ve been haunted by it for many years. It’s not as if I’ve kept silent for 40 years – I’ve been telling them.’’
Stuff Circuit is a new team producing video-led, quality longform journalism for Stuff. The team includes Paula Penfold, Toby Longbottom and Eugene Bingham, who have a background in highprofile investigative stories.