Murdered mum may lie beneath Bullring centre, claims daughter Killer of woman took secret of what he did with the body to his own grave
THE killer of Birmingham NEC security guard Michelle Gunshon died before revealing what he had done with her body – a secret that haunts his victim’s daughter to this day.
Tracy Richardson was at home three years ago when she heard news of the death that would extinguish all hope of finding her murdered mum’s body.
In 2004 her mother, Michelle, then 38, had been kidnapped, raped and killed by Martin Stafford.
While the killer had been jailed for life in 2012, with a minimum of 33 years to serve, he had refused to say what he had done with her body.
The family clung to the hope of being able to give her a proper burial until that day in 2015.
“I was at home with some friends when a car pulled up outside. I saw a woman step from it and walk up the path”, Tracy recalls. “She knocked on the door and I realised it was my victim liaison officer.
“She said Stafford had died in prison. At first I was relieved, but within a minute I thought what about my mum?”
Stafford, who was 47 when he died of pneumonia and liver disease, had taken the secret of Michelle Gunshon’s whereabouts to his grave.
Now, Tracy, 35, is backing a campaign for a new law which would deny parole to murderers who refuse to disclose the whereabouts of their victim’s remains.
Michelle had been staying at The Dubliner pub in Digbeth, while working as a security guard at The Clothes Show at the NEC in December 2004.
Her killer had a job collecting glasses at the same pub. He had a history of violence and within a few days of Michelle’s disappearance was a suspect.
But he fled to his native Ireland and changed his identity. It would be eight years before he was found, extradited and put on trial.
“I went to Birmingham and sat outside the pub, the last place my mum was seen”, says Tracy. “I sat there and said ‘Mum, he’s dead now. I don’t know what to do.’ I was feeling I couldn’t do any more and as if I had let her down.”
But, says Tracy, West Midlands Police told her they suspect her mother may actually be buried under Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre because construction work was going on there when she disappeared.
“I wrote a four-page letter to Stafford, asking him to tell me where my mum’s body was, but I never got any reply,” she says.
“I asked him ‘Why my mum?’ and ‘What did you do with my Mum’s body?’.
“I do know he read the letter. I wanted to visit him too. See him face to face. But I never got that chance because he had to agree to it.
“Because he had been extradited from Ireland, the police were not allowed to go into prison and quiz him about where the body was, as it breached his human rights and he had to agree to it. All the police were allowed to do was charge him. They couldn’t interview him about my mum.
“What about my mum’s human rights? She is lying out there somewhere.”
Tracy last heard from her mother Michelle at 10.30pm December 3, 2004. Hours after that final phone conversation Stafford was caught on a speed camera driving Michelle’s Ford Escort around Birmingham city centre with ‘something in the car’ strapped in the passenger seat. When her car was later found abandoned police discovered Michelle’s blood inside and genetic material from Stafford.
Stafford’s trial heard from a witness who described a conversation in which the killer said he would dispose of a body by burying it. Over the years, Tracy has retraced the route Stafford took on the night of the killing in her mother’s car.
However now, with him dead, she accepts it is unlikely she will ever get to say a proper goodbye to her mum.
“It is hard we can’t give my mum a funeral, and say our goodbyes,” she says. “We don’t know where she is. The only person who knew that was Martin Stafford.”
It is hard we can’t give my mum a funeral, and say our goodbyes Daughter Tracy Richardson