Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Tracy Kirkpatrick

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

When 17-year-old Tracy Kirkpatrick is found murdered in March 1989, investigators struggle to find any evidence pointing to who killed her. Despite numerous efforts to dig up leads and strong tips through the investigation, the case has remained a mystery for nearly 40 years.If you have any information about the murder of Tracy Kirkpatrick, call the Frederick Police Department at 301-600-2102. Or you can submit a tip through their digital tip line here. Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit:  

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And the story I have for you today is about a teenage girl who was brutally murdered just before her life could truly begin and the search for her killer that has continued to stump investigators. This is the story of Tracy Kirkpatrick. It's about 10.40 p.m. on Wednesday, March 15, 1989. A security guard named Donald Barnes Jr. notices something strange

at the Westridge Square Shopping Center in Frederick, Maryland. All the lights inside the Eileen Ladies Sportswear Store are still on, even though the store was supposed to have closed almost two hours ago. And Donald had already seen the lights on when he passed earlier on his patrol, sometime between like 9 and 9.30. But at that time it wasn't weird. He figured that the employees were still like wrapping up for the night. But now something is telling him to go and check it out,

just to make sure everything's okay. And you see, Donald isn't just a security guard. According to reporting by Susan Nickel for the Frederick Post, he's also a deputy with the Frederick County Sheriff's Office. The mall security thing is just like a side gig. But those instincts of a deputy don't just turn off. So he walks over and pushes on the store's front door, expecting to find it locked.

But to his surprise, it opens like no resistance. Donald calls out into the store, but in eerie silence is the only response that he gets. So one step at a time, he makes his way through the brightly lit clothing racks, looking for anything that might be out of place. But he doesn't see anything. The store is just empty. Okay, that sounds creepy as f***,

but maybe someone just forgot to turn out the lights and lock up? Well, yeah, and at first, that's honestly what it seems like. That is until he reaches the stock room in the back. The door is cracked just a few inches, so he gives it a little nudge and it swings open, and he is met with a horrific scene. On the floor, there is a girl lying in a pool of blood. Donald's heart sinks as he realizes that he knows the girl.

Her name is Tracy Kirkpatrick. She is just 17 years old and works at the store part-time. And whatever happened to Tracy, it was violent. I mean, there is blood everywhere, and the sheer amount lets him know that she is already dead. He calls 911 to report what he's found, and by 10.50, the scene is bustling with activity. Investigators confirm that Tracy is dead,

and they find stab wounds scattered across her chest and back. But besides all that blood in the stock room, the only other piece of evidence that they can find in the store is a single blood smear on the back door, which fortunately, included with it, is a partial fingerprint. That door leads down a hallway and out to the loading docks behind the mall. Officers think it's probably the path that the killer took after the murder. But besides a few droplets,

there isn't any more blood in that hallway, and there are no signs of a struggle in the store room. And it's more of the same at the front of the store. I mean, it looks untouched. The cash register still has like 60 bucks inside, and all of the days cash receipts are stacked on the counter, almost like Tracy had just finished sorting all of them out. So it doesn't seem like just a robbery gone wrong then.

No, they ultimately don't think so, but there are a few things missing. So missing are the keys to the store and some personal items that you would have expected a teenage girl to have with her, a wallet or a purse or something like that. They don't see anything like that. Some other officers are searching the front parking lot, and that's where they find Tracy's car,

but her keys are missing. There's also no sign of a murder weapon there at the scene. So even though this most likely wasn't a robbery, it looks like the killer still took some stuff with them, although why they took what they took, because they took her wallet but left cash in the register, like it's not super clear. Right, so maybe Tracy was targeted then.

Well, that's what they're gathering, but the question then becomes, what did the killer want? Because they don't see any obvious signs of sexual assault on her body. But of course, you know, they have to wait for an autopsy to confirm that. But for now, they're thinking that someone killed her potentially for a different reason. And since this was clearly really violent, like a really personal attack,

they think that it was someone she knew. Before they can even start combing through every aspect of her life to find out who that could be, Tracy's parents, Diane and William, burst through the store's front door. Now, it's about 1130 at this point, and investigators can see the signs of worry on their faces. Diane is crying, and she starts begging them to tell her that Tracy's okay. But they can't do that.

Instead, they have to tell the couple what no parent ever wants to hear. Wait, police hadn't notified her parents yet? Well, no, not yet. They had only been there at the scene, processing it for like 40 minutes. So her parents just randomly showed up there? Yeah, yeah. Well, so here's the thing. So once officers get them kind of calm down,

or, I mean, as calm as you can be in that situation, what they learn is that the parents came to the mall because they were worried about Tracy. Like, again, she's 17. It's super late. They knew she was due home. She hasn't come home yet. So they thought maybe she was held up because she was having car troubles.

Maybe she needed a ride. Like, her car wasn't that reliable. So they thought maybe it broke down. But the weird thing is, as they're talking, the conversation takes a strange turn. According to an article by Jane Smith and David Simon for the Baltimore Sun, William says that it wasn't just their suspicion about her unreliable car that had him worried.

He says that Tracy had told him if she wasn't home by 11 that night, he should assume something was wrong and come and get her. Uh, I'm sorry. What? No wonder they just showed up. But here's the thing, William doesn't clue police in on anything in Tracy's life that would cause her to say something like that. And my source material never brings it up again.

So I don't know if he was concerned by that or if there's some context that we're missing because I'm certainly concerned about it, but I have no idea what it means. Yeah, this seems huge. Like, your murder victim told someone she was worried something bad might happen that night. That night, yeah. Then boom.

She's found murdered? Yeah, it baffles me. Which is again, making me think that either we don't have the full context for that conversation or police know something that they're just not releasing. It honestly, when I first read this, it reminds me of Karina Homer all over again. Like, it's what we told listeners way back then in 2018-19 whenever we covered that case. For the love of God, like if something is going on, you got to tell someone

and don't think that nothing bad could ever happen to you. If you have that thought enough for you to say something like Tracy said to her father, add some context, I am begging you. Yeah, just give us some context. Yeah. Something. And again, maybe she did and that's a key part of the investigation that they don't want to release, but I don't know.

Anyways, her dad goes on to tell them that this actually isn't the first time that Tracy had been home late from work. Apparently, the previous night, the Kirkpatrick's had made the same trip to the mall when she didn't show up at home. Again, thinking that she had some car trouble. When they got there, they found Tracy still in the store, safe and sound, but she wasn't alone. According to reporting by Gina Galucci-White for Frederick magazine,

William says that he found Tracy inside the store talking to her ex-boyfriend, 19-year-old John German. Okay, so we've got a murdered girl and an ex-boyfriend who was seen at the store with her the night before. This has got to be something, right? Well, don't get too excited about that because it turns out they'd actually decided to get back together the night before, which is why they were talking for so long.

And did he visit her on Wednesday night, too? So here's the thing. Just like that suspicious statement about asking her parents to come get her, this mention of John is the only time he comes up. I don't know where he was at the time of her murder, what their relationship was like. I don't even know if police ever interviewed him. I mean, I assume they do because my source materials say that they spend the next like two days interviewing everyone who knew Tracy,

like all her friends, family, neighbors, teachers, presumably the boyfriend. Right. And I don't know for sure. But what I do know is that they're slowly able to get a clearer picture of who Tracy was through all of those interviews and how she spent the last day of her life. Everyone who knew Tracy said that she was a good kid, an honorable student only three months away from graduating high school.

Her friends tell police that she got along with everyone and didn't have any enemies. And she wasn't involved with any bad crowds or sketchy activity that anyone knew of. Once her mom Diane's ready to talk again, she tells investigators that Tracy was really excited to start the next chapter of her life. She was going to study accounting in college. She was even working two jobs to help pay for her degree. Now, one of those positions was part of a work study program

that let her leave school early, which is what she did on that Wednesday. Diane says that Tracy headed to the shopping mall at around 1pm to start her shift as a clerk. Then at 4pm, she switched gears and clocked in at the sportswear store next door. Diane tells police that she had actually stopped by sometime between 6 and 7.30 that night to bring her daughter some dinner. And at that time, Tracy was alone, just kind of lounging around. She was like at the counter reading a book and she seemed totally normal.

She was just tired and told her mom that she wanted to go straight to bed when she got home. So they chatted for a minute or two, but then after that Diane just left her to power through the rest of her shift. You mentioned that Tracy was alone, like there weren't any customers or she was the only one working. So actually both. But police talked to the store's manager and found out that they had actually also stopped by to check on Tracy that night too at around 8pm.

And even they say there weren't any customers then and everything seemed under control, so the manager was only there for a couple of minutes before they headed home as well. That same article by Gina Galucci-White for Frederick Magazine reported that when police get records from the store's computer system it shows that the register didn't record any sales after 8pm. So unless someone came into the store but just didn't buy anything,

Tracy should have been alone for the rest of the night. And I'm assuming there aren't any security cameras that could have caught someone coming in. No, no cameras. But there was Donald, remember, that security guard slash sheriff's deputy so they're hoping that maybe he saw something that can like point them in the right direction. So they go talk to him, but he tells them the same story he told them when they first got there.

He doesn't remember hearing or seeing anything suspicious aside from the lights being on. Just to cover all of their bases, they ask if he's willing to take a polygraph. He does, and he passes with flying colors. Was there anyone else around the mall that night, like other employees at other stores who, you know, might have noticed something? I don't know. From what I can tell, all of the other stores closed by night.

Again, in this mall, it was the same at the mall we grew up at, right? Like everything shuts down at the same time. Right, the mall is closed, not just the stores. Right, so everyone should have been leaving around that time. The only other person that they're able to verify was at the mall at that time was this man who was seen in the parking lot at around 9pm that night. And I don't know how police tracked him down, but apparently when they interview him,

they learn that he was parked there waiting for his girlfriend to get off of work. And when she was done, they just drove off, and neither one of them saw or heard anything suspicious. And they confirmed that alibi with his girlfriend? Honestly, I don't know. I'd like to think that they did, because they seemed to clear him almost immediately, so there's got to be something that backed up that story, but if they did, whatever that was, it's not reported on.

So witnesses here are a bust, but that's when Tracy's autopsy results come in. The medical examiner found that her time of death was close to 9pm, and according to reporting in the evening sun, she was stabbed a total of seven times. She also had some defensive cuts on one of her hands. There were no signs of sexual assault, but her wounds were super deep, so the medical examiner backs up police's theory

that this was likely an angry personal attack. And since there was no forced entry and no signs of a struggle, they're thinking that maybe Tracy knew her killer and let them into the store to just hang out while she finished closing, which we know she did with her boyfriend. Yeah, but again, investigators never labeled him as a suspect or even a person of interest. Okay, what if she didn't know her killer?

I feel like they're basing their whole theory off of the lack of forced entry, but I feel like someone could have easily gotten in by saying they had a delivery and then forced her in the back, or it could even have been a customer who came in while the store was open and took advantage of this opportunity. The door was never locked, the lights were on. It's not like the store was actually closed up. Yeah, but the only thing I get kind of stuck on is

they had mentioned that she's already starting to like sort the receipts, so you would think that they were. Okay, but if the store was slow that night, she easily could have started before they closed so that closing would go faster when it actually came time to do it. That's true. I mean, I know when I worked, you know, back in the day, like Cold Stone stuff, we would do stuff like that. But the thing is, from what I can find in my research,

investigators never discuss any theories other than the idea that she knew her attacker. Again, to your point, she's not sitting at home in this like private place. She's in a place where they want strangers to come in and could have easily. But again, police never even throw that out there, at least not publicly. And by the time Tracy is buried on March 20th, the case already starts to feel cold. It remains stagnant until a few months later when police are contacted by the producers of a TV show called Confession Hotline.

Now, this is a national broadcast of recorded calls from people who pay to anonymously spill their secrets. People pay to spill their secrets? To me, it's a weird concept. Honestly, if anyone wants to spill their secrets to me for free, like, I will start a podcast. That sounds amazing. Well, I was going to say, it sounds like therapy, but public. That sounds terrible.

Terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also, I would listen to that podcast. But here's the thing. The thing sounds like it was actually pretty successful. Like, at least for a little bit. But anyways, the producers tell police that they get this call in June that they think the police need to hear. So they send them a tape recording of the call.

And when they hit play, their blood goes cold. In the message, a man who introduces himself as Don confesses to Tracy's murder. I'm going to play you just like the quickest snippet of that call. I know this is going to sound surprising, but three months ago, I stabbed the call to death. Uh, full body chills. The rest of the call is just as unsettling. According to an article by Paul Duggan for the Washington Post,

Don gives a few details about the murder. Like, he says the girl was working in a women's sportswear store and he killed her in a stock room. And at the end, when he's apologizing for the murder, he even calls Tracy by name. Now, the thing that stands out to me the most is that he says he'd been to the store several times to talk to Tracy when she was alone. He says their conversation that night had turned hostile,

so he decided to attack her with a knife that he always carried in his pocket. All of this is obviously disturbing, but it also totally fits police's theory that Tracy knew her killer. Just instead of this guy being like close to her, she probably knew him as this kind of creepy guy that bothers her at work all the time. Yeah, I feel like she probably didn't consider this guy a friend. No, totally. Now, Don kind of wraps up his call trying to justify his behavior.

He's like, well, what's done is done, can't bring Tracy back, so I might as well be allowed to live my life. And he also decided not to turn himself in because Marilyn has the death penalty. Okay, but if he doesn't want to be caught, why risk making this call and also paying to do it in the first place? Yeah, well, he says that he isn't worried about the call being traced back to him because, quote, there are a lot of guys named Don in Frederick, end quote.

Including Donald, the security guard that found Tracy. Dude, that was my first thought, too. But police say that they already cleared Donald. And according to that same article by Susan Nicholl for the Frederick Post, Donald never goes by Don. All of his friends and family call him Donnie or even Charlie, which is his middle name. So they're thinking that the fact that this caller's name is Don is just like a weird coincidence. Okay, or he could have just given them a different wrong nickname.

Well, totally. Although if he was doing that, why not leave the name out entirely? Or I don't know, not make the call in the first place. True, but maybe wanting recognition for the crime. I don't know how these guys' minds work. Yeah, so the fact that the name's the same is strange, but police are pretty quick to be like all coincidence. It is not the same person. The public, though, is a whole different story. People at the time start speculating that caller Don is security guard Donald.

And even though police are super clear that he has nothing to do with Tracy's murder, the speculation doesn't go away. And in fact, to this day, the internet is overflowing with theories about Donald, the most prominent of which is that he killed her and that the police all covered it up. Probably just because he's a sheriff's deputy? Yes, but not just any deputy. Now, this has never been proven, but some people speculate that Donald is actually the son of the former Frederick County sheriff,

Donald Charles Barnes Sr. Now, you got to take this info with a grain of salt because I couldn't confirm it in any official sources. In fact, the first time I saw it was when it was mentioned on some web sleuth and Reddit forums. But we know Donald's middle name is Charlie, right? He goes by Charlie. They have the same last name. If it's true, though, that could be a huge cover-up, but I couldn't find anything to back up these claims. Nothing. Right, right. Let's just say all the Donald stuff is just a coincidence.

Do any other leads pop up from the call? Okay, so a little bit. They are able to trace the call, and they track it to a pay phone outside of a supermarket in town called Walkersville. And Walkersville is like eight miles northeast of Frederick. But from what I can tell, they don't find any evidence at the phone, which is not surprising. They're not going to get fingerprints off of a public pay phone. Right, it's like a hotel or a taxi. If there are fingerprints, how many people have touched that?

Yeah, and there's no security cameras, nothing like that, so there's no way to tell who made the call. Now, police try and get in touch with the killers. Clearly, he wants to talk. So they release a letter to the killer in local newspapers, pleading with him to turn himself in. And that does bring in a few tips, but nothing substantial. So pretty soon, the case hits yet another wall. It's not until a few months later, in the fall of 1989, that they get anything solid to go on.

That's when investigators get a call from a woman in Massachusetts claiming to be a psychic. And I can literally feel everyone listening, like, rolling their eyes. But just wait, she says that people often reach out to her about loved ones' deaths. So when she got a call from a man named Sean, she didn't think it was odd when he asked for help finding Tracy's killer. But slowly, she realized that Sean might not be a friend or a relative. Like, he was obsessed with the case to, like, an unhealthy level. And when the woman asked him to provide her with more information about the case,

he mailed her newspaper clippings that he had kept from, like, the very early days of the investigation. Okay, maybe a security guard dialed in to clear her after all. Yeah, it made her super suspicious. So she went with her gut and called police. Investigators were hopeful about the tip, but before they could get too excited, they asked the woman if she would be able to recognize Sean's voice. And she's like, yeah, for sure. Like, we've talked a couple of times.

So what they decided to do is they actually played Don's call. Because just because they'd have different names, police have this sneaking suspicion. They might be the same person and they play the call. And right away, she's like, yeah, that's the guy I spoke to. Investigators don't waste another second. They get the return address from the newspaper clippings that he mailed. And wouldn't you know it? He lives in Walkersville, the same town that Don's call was made from.

But when they go to the house on the return address, what they find isn't what they're expecting. Investigators knock at the door and when it opens, they're greeted by a young man. Now, according to an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, this guy does live at the address and he fits all the descriptions given to them by the psychic. But he says that his name isn't Sean or Don. Okay, so who is this guy? I would love to know.

Basically, all I know is they're able to confirm that he is the one who called the psychic, but apparently his real name isn't Sean and investigators never release his real identity because he refuses to cooperate. So total mystery guy. Though for the sake of clarity, when I talk about him, I'm going to keep referring to him as Sean. So they go ahead and dig a little more into this guy's life. But they can't find any actual connections to Tracy or the shopping center. Nothing to do with the murder.

Okay, do they at least think he made the call to the hotline now? I mean, it wouldn't be the first time we've seen someone insert themselves into an investigation with false confessions, prank calls, stuff like that. So yes, investigators determined that he did make the hotline call. But they also say he wasn't the one who murdered Tracy. Now, they don't share any details of how they came to this conclusion. But like you said, false confessions can be a common occurrence, especially in a case where all the details were pretty readily available to the public.

I mean, again, he had all the newspaper clippings that he was collecting. So he really was just a creepy guy who was way too invested in this case. That's what investigators say, which puts them right back at square one. And the months start flying by. The New Year comes without any developments and suddenly it's March 15th, 1990, the one year anniversary of Tracy's murder. At that time, police decide to go out on a limb and they get four local radio stations to broadcast Sean's call that day. Though I'm not sure why they're broadcasting it, right? Like if they had already debunked it or debunked him as the killer,

I don't know what the point was or what they were asking people to listen for. I mean, maybe it was purely to keep the case fresh in everyone's mind. Yeah, I mean, that call is definitely something. I mean, it would get people talking. And it does because after the call airs, they get several new tips, but only one seems really promising. Now, unfortunately, there is a huge discrepancy in the source materials about this tip. Some say that it refers them back to Sean and they end up questioning him again,

but others say that this call leads to a different man who is actually living in Frederick. And since they supposedly already cleared Sean, it makes me think that the latter one is accurate. But either way, allegedly, when police go to whoever this guy's home is, he refuses to speak with them. Now, I don't know if they had other information from the tip or what, but for whatever reason, they aren't willing to give up on this guy and they return to this home at 1 a.m. with a warrant in hand. If they have a warrant, there has to be something, right? You'd think, especially because it isn't just a warrant to search his home.

It's also for his DNA. Oh. So investigators take hair and blood samples as well as his fingerprints and scrapings from underneath his nails. You said DNA. I thought they didn't find anything at the scenes besides that partial fingerprint. Well, according to the source materials, they didn't have DNA, at least not yet. And the only other evidence from the scene was stuff uncovered in what they assumed to be Tracy's blood.

But from what I can tell, they had never actually tested it before, whether that's because the technology was still developing or it was just overlooked. I don't know. But it's around this time again when they're collecting DNA samples that they're also sending everything to the Maryland State Police Crime Lab in the hopes that they can find even the smallest trace of her killer's blood or his DNA mixed in with Tracy's. And so I think now they're like collecting samples just in case something comes back

and they have something to test the samples against. And I assume they compare his fingerprints to that partial they found. Great assumption, but oddly enough, none of the source material ever mentions the fingerprint. That might be because it was a partial, so maybe it wasn't good enough to compare, but I don't know for sure. Now, it takes a couple of months for the other results to come back, but when they do, it's not what investigators were hoping for. According to another article for the Frederick Post by Susan Nicholl,

they find that all the physical evidence at the scene belonged to Tracy. So there wasn't anything for them to test the other samples against. This is beyond frustrating. I know, right? And the worst part is that's kind of where the case goes cold for good. I mean, Tracy's story was eventually featured on TV shows like A Current Affair and Unsolved Mysteries, and both generated a few calls, but like no real substantial leads.

I know in 1998, investigators submit more of Tracy's blood for testing, still hanging on to the thinnest thread of hope that the killer's DNA might be mixed in. They even explored the idea of touch DNA, but they come up with nothing on both back then. Over the years, Tracy's case is presented to several third-party cold case review panels, most notably the VDoC Society in 2012. Now, if you're unfamiliar, that is a volunteer organization of forensic experts and current and former law enforcement officers that consults on cold cases.

They actually played a big role in identifying Dorothy Howard in the Boulder Jane Doe case that we covered in our fan club back in December. So investigators are hoping that maybe some fresh eyes might be able to stir up something new, and the VDoC Society does tell them that the case is totally solvable. I mean, they even give them a to-do list of recommended tasks that will hopefully renew the investigation, but as far as I can tell, none of that actually results in anything new. Now, I do know that there was some kind of development,

but the details are super fuzzy or really non-existent, and so let me just give you the scoop. That call that we played from who we now know is this Sean guy, we're calling him Sean. I actually heard the full call from the clip that we played in like a bunch of places, but it was from other sites, there's lots of music underneath, so I asked someone from our team, I'm like, hey, clearly the department is sharing it with people like Unsolved Mysteries or whatever. Can you just reach out to the department, do a FOIA, see if we can get the whole call?

One of our writers reached out and made contact with the detective, and long story short, they don't have the cassette tape anymore. So we couldn't get the full call, but during the conversation, the detective just mentioned that they have suspect DNA. Now, he wouldn't say anything about, yeah, where they got it from, when it was found, and we didn't get like a full sit-down with him about this case. We have been pulling everything on this episode from publicly available source material, so the only thing I can infer is that, again, somehow in retesting, they got a sample,

or maybe they've had it all along, I don't know, but clearly it hasn't been matched to anyone, or I assume there would have been an arrest. Is it in CODIS? I don't know. Do they have more DNA that could be used? I don't know. Despite the lack of progress, Tracy's family continues to fight to keep her legacy alive. They've also been really critical of police in recent years, because according to them, a lot of mistakes were made in the initial investigation. Like what kind of mistakes? Well, they say that there were slip-ups at the scene that first night,

like police never really searched that back hallway in the loading docks beyond just like an initial sweep, so they definitely could have missed evidence. And investigators also allegedly waited too long to subpoena the store's phone records, so I guess by the time they did do that and got them in, the phone company had erased the records from the 15th. And according to an article by Teresa Franklin for the Frederick Post, they also didn't properly record every tip that they got, like some were lost in the paperwork shuffle or just never followed up on.

But it seems like the new investigators aren't letting the events of the past hold back the future of the investigation. And they're currently starting from scratch, reinterviewing anyone who knew Tracy back in 1989 in hopes of finally getting justice for her and her family. But the only way they can give the Kirkpatrick's closure is if someone comes forward. Someone with information that will finally shed some light on what really happened in that stock room on that fateful night. So if you're that person, you can call the Frederick Police Department at 301-600-2102. We'll also have a link to their digital tip line in our show notes and at crimejunkiepodcast.com. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?