By Frank D. Roylance , frank.roylance@baltsun.com|March 16, 2009
Tracey Lynn Kirkpatrick would be 37 today, a wife and mother, perhaps, and maybe an attorney.
Instead, she is mourned by her parents, her family and friends. Twenty years after her murder, she is also never far from the minds of the Frederick police investigators, who have worked since March 15, 1989, to solve the mystery of her violent death.
The Kirkpatrick family and Frederick police marked the anniversary of Tracey's killing with a brief vigil last night at the Westridge Shopping Center, where she was stabbed to death at 17.
Police hope that fresh attention to the cold case might finally bring them the final clues they need to bring the killer to justice.
Tracey's two sisters and a brother remain in the area, as do her parents, William and Diane Kirkpatrick.
"Everybody says, 'It's been 20 years. Don't expect too much, because it's been 20 years,' " Diane Kirkpatrick told The Frederick News-Post. "I look at them and say, 'Not for me.' It was yesterday for me."
She can't comprehend how the killer could live with such a secret for 20 years. "How can someone just go on with their lives like it's nothing?" she asked.
Frederick police say their continuing work on the case can be understood in the context of a smaller city which, even today, sees annual homicide counts in the single digits.
"You have to go back 20 years," said Lt. Shawn Martyak, 49, the commander of the department's criminal investigation division and a Frederick policeman for 24 years.
"Frederick probably had half the population, maybe 30,000," he said. "And while we got a murder now and then, this was a 17-year-old girl who was, according to friends and family, very squared away, very conservative. She made good decisions about her life and was planning for college.
"This shocked the entire community. It's not something anybody expected to occur in sleepy little Frederick," he said.
With retirements and reassignments, four Frederick detectives have worked on the case over the years.
"Every detective that has been assigned, from the very beginning, has taken the case personally," Martyak said. And each one has consulted with his predecessors, reviewing the case file annually, discussing new developments and considering new ideas.
The case was featured in 1990 on the TV programs A Current Affair and Unsolved Mysteries, and Frederick merchants put up most of a $5,000 reward, without success.
