Authors: Carol Thompson
Betrayed
Betrayed
A Mother's Battle for Justice
To my beloved daughter, Tracey, whose life was cut short by senseless violence.
Tracey Thompson
21 August 1980 to March 2005
1980â1989
1990â1994
1995â1998
1998â1999
1999â2003
2003â2004
2004â2005
I first met Carol Thompson four years after her daughter Tracey died.
Although she still had many questions, she'd had to accept that mos
t
of them would probably never be answered. In the aftermath of Tracey's murder, Carol could have been forgiven for crumpling into lassitude, but she is a gutsy woman, a fighter. When she suspected that the police investigation was stalling, she egged on detectives and
pathologists, by turns badgering and pleading with police commissioners and magistrates, even hiring a private investigator to find the
answers she craved. I knew that her story would resonate with many
South Africans.
Four years on, Carol was still a woman on a mission. Some 50 people are murdered every day in this country but just 10 percent to 12 percent of the killers are ever convicted â one of the lowest conviction rates in the world. Carol wanted to shout Tracey's story from the rooftops to anyone who would listen, to train a spotlight on cracks in the system that failed her.
Together we began a harrowing nine months of delving into Carol's journals and notes, raking up past events and the ragged emotions that accompanied them. Together we coaxed out the intricacies of past conversations and correspondence, rehashing a nightmare that no mother should ever have to go through, let alone relive in detail years later. Through it all, she was patient, brave and honest in answering painful and probing questions.
Together we celebrated Tracey's life too, her pluck, her kindness, her vivacity. We didn't shy away from her anxieties and insecurities or even from her mistakes; we told it as it was. We laughed together and we cried together, but we got the story told.
ROXANNE REID
Tracey Thompson was one of my students from Grade 10 onwards, a bright and intelligent girl with above average ability to comprehend
and express herself intellectually. Unfortunately, with this came weaknesses, as it does in all of us. She had a giving nature and took on
the weaker members in her society. This trait was to be her downfall
, as the very people she tried to help took advantage of her.
I had the added privilege of getting to know Tracey's family. We remained firm friends through the desperate search when Tracey was missing and later, after she was found murdered. I watched them faced a harsh truth: all they had done for Tracey had come to this â a life so senselessly cut short. As they tried to find out what had happened and who was responsible, their heartache was intensified by the lack of real concern or care in many quarters.
They have used their tragedy to spread the word about the challenges young people face. Some people think, “This won't happen to me”. My hope is that this book will show them that such unimaginable grief can happen to any ordinary family, and that they can rise above it to make a positive contribution to others in similar circumstances.
MERCIA GOODCHILD
There are many people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude and it is impossible to thank everyone individually, but some people deserve
a special thank you. My mom, Iris Smyth, my husband Buddy and
my son Glen for standing together and supporting each other and
allowing me to open wounds with my words. My sister, who put her
life on hold to be with my family.
Carolyn Lee with her no-nonsense attitude when times got tough.
Declan Condon who went above and beyond our expectations and
has given us his continued friendship and support as the years have
passed. Linda Valjalo who stood by me and was my sounding board,
and is still willing to listen and give valuable support and help when it is needed most.
Cherrie Mielie and Jill Farkas who would not allow me to give up on
writing Tracey's story, for their encouragement and sense of humour.
Kat, Shaz and all of Tracey's friends who rallied round and kept
her memory alive by reminding me of small incidents I had forgotten or did not know about.
Delcan, Lyn and Mercia for their continued prayers.
Roxanne Reid who took on the humongous job of breathing life
into Tracey's story. Without her help it would be gathering dust in a cupboard.
Tafelberg who were willing to read and publish Tracey's story.
Many of the names of people in this book have been changed, but the
story of what happened to my daughter Tracey is the truth as I remem
ber it.
CAROL THOMPSON
December 2010
On 11 March 2005, the phone rang and an icy hand of fear gripped
my heart. It was too early in the morning for it not to be a harbinge
r of bad news.
“Hello?” I said, blood hammering in my head.
It was my nephew.
“Has your car been stolen?” he asked.
“No, it's parked in the yard right here,” I laughed, relieved. What
a warped sense of humour he had.
“Not the Corolla, the Corsa.”
My smile froze and fear prickled through me again. Although the
Corsa was registered in my name, it was my daughter Tracey's car.
Finding it abandoned on the highway just before the Tembisa off-
ramp
with my nephew's business card on the floor, the police had contac
ted him to find out if he knew who owned it.
Not long after this upsetting call, the police phoned to confirm th
e news. And that was how my life became shrouded in darkness and pain.
“Is there any sign of the driver?” I asked.
“No,” the officer said. “The keys were still in the ignition and there
didn't seem to be any sign of violence.”
This surprised me because the back window had been smashed th
e day before and the shattered glass hadn't been cleaned up yet. Did a smashed window seem normal to them? I let it go, focusing on more important things.
“How was the driver's seat positioned?” I asked, trying to work out
whether or not Tracey, who wasn't very tall, had been the last person
to drive the car.
“Er  . . . we don't know.”
Stunned by the news, but still very much in the dark, I had just
replaced the receiver when it rang a third time. It was Tracey's
friend and housemate Trudy, asking if Tracey had slept at home the
previous night. And that's when I knew with a certainty that couldn't
be shaken that my life had changed forever.
Panic propelled my husband and me into action. First I phoned the
local police station to report Tracey missing. Then Linda, a work col
league and friend, helped me to make the worst phone calls of all â
to all the hospitals and mortuaries in the area to try to find any news
of an unidentified patient, an unidentified body. Nothing. Now all I could do was sit and wait for the police to arrive so I could fill out a
missing person's report.
Waiting was torture. I wanted to get out on the road and search fo
r her but had to wait for the police. I was chilled to the bone, haunted
by visions of Tracey lying hurt and calling for help. Or dead. There
was a giant wave surging inside me, driving me round and round
the room, unable to sit still, never finding peace, repeatedly picking up the phone without any idea of who to call for help, cups of coffee growing cold and grey on my desk.
When the police eventually arrived with the forms to report
Tracey missing, my mind went blank. I couldn't think straight,
couldn't even give a simple description of my own daughter. Linda
had to provide most of the information. Age twenty-four, five foot two
inches, short blonde hair, blue eyes and a tattoo of a dragon on the
back of her left shoulder. Last seen wearing blue board shorts, blue T-shirt, grey pullover, baseball cap and pink flip-flops.
“Do you need a photo of her?” I asked, briefly lucid.
“No, that won't be necessary.”
Doubt nagged at my brain. “How will you be able to identify her without a photo?”
This seemed to make sense so they agreed that I should bring a
photograph to the police station later that afternoon.
The day blended into hours of numbed actions that seemed to lead
nowhere. After several telephone calls and many confusing stories
about the whereabouts of Tracey's car, I tracked it down at the po
lice
pound. But more important than fetching it right then was for me to
get to Tracey's cottage to find out what her housemates Wally, Trudy and Wilma could tell me.
I drove through the huge, black gates towards the simple cottage on a farm plot, part of a row of old labourers' cottages that had been done up to be rented out by the owner. I felt the trees closing in on
me, the crunch of wheels on gravel the only sound breaking the
stillness. Bushy shrubs divided the cottages, handkerchief-sized
patch
es
of grass lining the path to the front door, which was standing open.
I had no idea what to expect from the three youngsters, whom I
had met only once or twice before. I had called ahead so they were
waiting for me, but didn't invite me in. A small dog yapped in the
distance. Tension weighed heavy in the air. I stood at the bottom of
two small concrete steps that lead up to a brick patio as Trudy and
Wally walked towards me. Wilma hovered by the front door and a
young boy peered over the dividing wall but kept his distance.
”What happened last night?” I asked without preamble.
Their eyes refused to meet mine. They volunteered very little in
formation, but Wally confessed that he had borrowed Tracey's car
and
returned it with no petrol in the tank. That seemed a bit odd.
Although the housemates had no transport to get to work and T rac
ey
had been their ride, I knew she didn't like other people driving her
car. Then again, she had always been a soft touch when it came to
helping people out, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
A few days earlier, Tracey had told me she wasn't comfortable wi
th her situation. Her temporary job had come to an end. Without any money coming in, she could no longer afford to pay rent or pay for fuel to take Wally and Wilma to work, as she had been doing. She had asked if she could move back home, bringing Trudy to stay with her. I had agreed and she had promised to tell me more when she
saw me in a few days' time. She had explained to her housemates sh
e would be moving out over the weekend.
I knew that Wally was a drug user and that Tracey herself had a history of recreational drug use, so I asked Wally to call his dealer to find out if he had seen Tracey the previous night. She had been in rehab and had been clean for a year, but I had to face the possibility that she may have relapsed.
”I don't do drugs,” said Wally, all innocence.
“And I don't have time to listen to your denials and evasions,” I shouted. “Tracey's life is at stake, for goodness sake.”
He changed tack.
“I haven't got any airtime on my phone,” he mumbled, so I handed
him my phone to make the call.
He twisted away and keyed in a number, speaking very softly so
that I couldn't make out what he was saying. Then he only half
turned back to me and said over his shoulder, “He says he hasn't s
een or heard from her for a long time.”
When he returned my phone I checked the outgoing calls. No call
had been made. I said nothing, but made a mental note to tell the
police that Wally might know something about where my daughter was or what had happened to her.
1
980â
1
989
It was early on a summer's morning in 1983 when I took three-year-old
Tracey for the first time to the day-care centre close to my office in Kempton
Park. She was looking sweet and clean â at least for the moment â in blue shorts and a red-and-white T-shirt. Although I had little choice about putting her into day care, since I needed to work to supplement the family income, I wasn't worried. She was a naturally friendly child who loved people and I was sure she would fit in well.
The front door opened before we had a chance to knock and a pudding-faced elderly woman invited us into a house that smelt of furniture polish and freshly baked cookies. Known to the children she cared for simply as Ouma, the day mother offered me a cup of tea and Tracey waddled off with her assistant for some juice and cookies in the kitchen. Ouma poured our tea and settled back into her chair, tucking a wisp of grey hair behind her ear.
“Now, tell me about Tracey,” she said with a smile.
“She's a bit of a handful, I'm afraid,” I confessed, scone and jam balanced
on my knee. “Although she's well-disciplined, she's hyperactive but I'm not medicating her for it because I don't believe it will help her in the long run.”
“That's no problem. I've had to deal with active children in the past.” She asked lots of questions about Tracey and answered mine about the centre, then took me on a tour of the play area, the kitchen and the sleeping area. Everything was sparkling clean and well maintained. Outside a thick, thorny hedge hid a wire mesh fence that surrounded the yard to keep the children safe.
Tracey didn't bat an eyelid when I left. She was way too busy playing
with her new friends. The morning passed quickly and she was bubbling over
with excitement when I fetched her.
“Mommy, I played with a cat, Ouma has lots of toys, we played outside, we had cookies and juice but we had to sleep and I didn't want to.” That was our Tracey, talking non-stop, barely pausing to take a breath, definitely not interested in sleeping when there was fun stuff to do. She couldn't wait to go back again the next day.
About mid-morning on the second day I was at my desk at work when my phone rang.
“Tracey and some other toddlers are missing,” Ouma sobbed.
“What do you mean?” I asked, stupidly.
“They've gone! The children have gone.”
“I'm on my way,” I said, already grabbing for my car keys.
I found her looking worried and old, but I was more concerned about the children.
“Where were they when you last saw them?” I prodded.
“They were playing in the back yard one minute and the next they had just disappeared.” Her face crumpled again in distress.
I strode around the yard searching for a place where they could have got out and noticed a spot in the hedge that looked a little battered. Looking more closely, I saw that there was a small hole, big enough for a toddler to squeeze through.
“That's how they got out,” I shouted, running towards my car so I could drive around to the street that the hedge faced onto. And there, about a
hundred metres from the house, I spotted a crocodile of toddlers holding hands. With Tracey in the lead, they were marching solemnly down the
road. She looked up with a huge grin as I pulled up next to them.
“Mommy!” she shrieked.
“What are you doing?” I yelled, jumping out of the car.
“I found a magic hole and we went through it.”
“What for? You know you're not allowed out on your own.”
“We wanted to explore,” she pouted. “Then we got lost. Now we're going to the police station.”
“Why?” I asked, relief, anger and laughter all bubbling up inside me.
“My friends got scared. The police will help us.”
“Look at me, Tracey. You know I'm very cross,” I told her, frowning.
“Sorry, Mommy.” She hung her head and tears glistened in her eyes. “But we just wanted to explore.”
Fast forward eighteen months to nursery school where the teacher explained that she thought Tracey might have conjunctivitis. She asked me to get her checked and keep her at home because it was contagious. The eye was inflamed and Tracey was like a little fly, continuously rubbing it with the heel of her hand.
“Trace, your hands are dirty. You're going to make it worse,” I admonished.
“But it's itchy,” she complained.
“Come, we're going to visit Dr Trickie.” She was fond of the family doctor and called him Dr Trickie because she couldn't pronounce his name correctly.
She clambered onto the examination table, chattering away like a magpie, barely allowing the doctor to get a word in edgeways.
“I don't think it's conjunctivitis,” he said eventually. Explaining that he wanted a second opinion, he left the room to call his partner while Tracey lay quietly singing to herself. The partner agreed that she needed to see a specialist and we made an appointment for two days later. In the meantime Dr Trickie gave us a prescription for eye drops to reduce the itching.
It was a long two days' wait, trying to get Tracey to stop rubbing her eye, afraid she would spread the infection, worried what was wrong with her.
“Your daughter has a virus in her eye that will require daily monitoring,” the eye specialist told me. “Once there's some improvement, her visits to me will become weekly, then monthly.”
“For how long?”
“I'm not sure, but we need to make sure it doesn't spread to the other
eye.”
“Has it affected her vision?”
“Not much at this stage. She's lost some peripheral vision from scarring but my concern is that if it moves over the pupil, then she'll be blind in that eye.”