In the United States of America, the world’s most murderous prisoners are locked behind bars. The state with the highest number of inmates is Texas, and one of them is arguably the deadliest of them all: Billy Joel Tracy. Billy Joe Tracy is at a level of evil like almost no one before. Human life means absolutely nothing to him. He viciously attacked a 16-year-old girl. He choked her, he tried to smother her with a pillow, and he beat her into unconsciousness. Once she was subdued, Tracy basically dropped her out of her window.
Billy Joel Tracy is an opportunist. He waits and he plans, and it’s like a cat waiting to pounce. Even behind bars, Billy Joel Tracy poses a threat to everyone.
“Where did you stab her at?”
“The back. Turned around again, she fell down and stopped coming, and stabbed someone there. You stood in the face.”
“I don’t think he had any consequences for anything. I mean, honestly, when I grabbed him, I thought I grabbed the devil for a minute.”
His reputation is that of a cold, calculated killer. He hammered on him with a 20-inch slot bar, caved in the back of his head, and then threw him down the stairs. I don’t know if you can design a prison that’s so restrictive that he won’t find a way to defeat the security and kill someone. Tracy currently sits on death row awaiting his final punishment. Billy Tracy deserves the death penalty every day, and twice on Sunday. Some people don’t believe in the death penalty. I think the death penalty was made for Billy Joe Tracy.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has 104 prisons, known as units, spread out across the state. The Berry Telford unit, which opened in 1995, houses the most dangerous and volatile inmates. The Telford unit is a maximum security prison. It houses approximately 3,000 offenders. The Barry Telford unit houses inmates from G1 to G5. It’s a classification level for inmates, and then you have administrative segregation offenders. The worst of the worst would be a way to describe the prisoners that are in administrative segregation. They put you in administrative segregation when you have been deemed to be a threat to the institution’s safety and security, of staff or inmates, or both.
They’re allowed out one hour per day, and they’re placed by themselves into an individual recreation room. It’s loud, it’s chaotic, you deal with inmates with severe psychological issues, and you deal with inmates who have just given up on everything. They will hurt you if they had the chance. One prisoner who spent most of his time in administrative segregation because he’s classified as extremely dangerous is Billy Joel Tracy.
He managed to get ahold of a welding rod that he converted, you know, probably sharpened it to a point, and he used that to stab a guard in the shoulder. He can play a part where you kind of trust him a little bit and you think he’s a good guy, and I think he played that part a couple of times and convinced people that he wasn’t as dangerous as he was, and that’s when people got hurt. No one is safe when he takes a dislike to you. Tracy slipped a hand free of his cuff and continued to deliver blows into his head and face like one would wield a hammer. How he could just beat somebody until they’re lifeless and then walk back to your cell like you just went out for a smoke. Tracy is probably one of the most dangerous individuals on this planet. He’s shown sexual violence, and he’s shown physical violence. What makes Tracy so evil is that when you look at his victims, it really appears that no one is off-limits.
Billy Joel Tracy was born on November 30th, 1977, in Wisconsin. While still an infant, his parents moved him to Dallas, Texas. Billy Joel Tracy didn’t have the most perfect upbringing. His parents both suffered from mental health issues, there were allegations of physical abuse, and there may have been a lack of emotional support for him. When you have a dysfunctional household as a child, there is already a built-in instability in your life. You’re not sure where you’re safe or where you’re unsafe. You likely don’t have a lot of structure, direction, or rules. It has the capability of completely changing the trajectory of your life.
In his adolescence, Billy Joel Tracy’s mother institutionalized him in a psychiatric hospital. He didn’t seem to really have any clear indicators of a serious mental condition that would warrant hospitalization, but his mother put him there. If your family has shown you that societal norms don’t matter by the time you’re 12 years old and you’re in a psychiatric hospital, there’s a huge potential for you to already be rebellious. After spending his early teenage years making repeat visits to the hospital, Tracy eventually returned to live with his parents, but in 1994, at the age of 17, his mother kicked him out. He had to try to earn his own way, and he had to find a place to live. To have a 17-year-old with such a dysfunctional childhood come out of a psychiatric hospital, be kicked out by his mother, and now essentially be still a child thrown into the real world—that’s a recipe for disaster.
Just a few months later, Tracy had his first run-in with the law. He was facing felony charges, and he threatened a witness in the case. The most serious crime for which he was convicted at that point was retaliation. It can involve taking some sort of action against somebody in basically retaliation for something that they’ve done that you didn’t like. After serving 20 months of a 3-year sentence for the crime, Tracy was paroled in July 1996, returning to live in Dallas where he found himself an apartment. One evening, he invited a friend over for drinks, who brought with him his girlfriend, 16-year-old Casey Coon. He invited Casey Coon and her boyfriend over to his apartment to, you know, drink beers, smoke weed, and just generally hang out. Throughout that evening, Billy Joel Tracy had been making some sexual remarks to Casey. She just sort of blew him off; she felt safe with her boyfriend there. Later that night, Casey and her boyfriend left Tracy’s.
Casey returned home where she lived with her mom. She was in her bedroom, she was dressed for bed, and she heard some tap-tap-tapping on the window, and it was Tracy. She told Tracy, you know, “Go away,” but Tracy was able to gain access to her bedroom. He began disrobing, took off his shoes, took off his shirt, and she pled with him to leave, but he began to assault her. He choked her, he tried to smother her with a pillow, and he beat her into unconsciousness. He is showing signs of narcissism; his needs come first before anybody else’s. There’s also an element of a need for control and power here, because this is her private home, this is her bedroom, this is her body, and yet none of that factors into his decision-making.
Thinking Casey was dead, he dropped her out of the bedroom window and jumped out after her. He picked her up and carried her to his car, placing her in the passenger seat footwell before driving off towards Rockwall County. Billy Joel Tracy realized at some point that Casey was still alive. He stopped the car, assaulted her again, and then he drove her to a wooded area where we believe he was planning to kill her and conceal her body.
It’s in the middle of the night, and as he’s out there in the woods, just by chance, a couple of patrol officers happen to see the car parked at the side of the road. My name is Paul Britt, and I was a City of Rockwall police officer in 1998. I think I was about 6 months in on being on my own when I came up on Billy Tracy. I was on night shift; it was 4:13 in the morning. I was driving north on Ridge Road and happened to see a white Kia Sportage parked off in a field next to the railroad track, and so I pulled in behind it, let dispatch know I was there. As soon as I opened the door and stepped out, I heard someone say:
“Help me.”
And I had never heard something almost so forlorn and just desperate. I mean, it still makes my hair stand up just thinking about it, because I can hear it still. And I popped my flashlight up and looked into the tree line over by us, and I saw Billy Tracy.
Tracy approached Officer Paul Britt. Tracy lunged at him, and the two began to struggle physically. Tracy was a young 20-year-old man in excellent physical condition, with training as a boxer, prison fights under his belt, and he’s fighting with a police officer who was pretty young himself. I think at the time I was 30 or 31. I just remember we were fighting, and I’d call for backup and didn’t hear anything. We weren’t like going to sit down between rounds; we threw punches for 6 minutes, we threw kicks for 6 minutes. He cut me—I have a little divot right there—and I could feel the blood starting to run down. I was scared I was going to die, and that’s when my sergeant showed up.
Tracy immediately fled into the woods. Paul was ready to give chase but stopped when he saw Casey Coon move. I thought she was already dead, just almost a ghost. I’ve never seen anybody like that before, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff. I just remember her whole nightgown was coated in blood, and I really only remember seeing like one tooth in her mouth, and her face was swollen beyond belief. Casey was rushed to the hospital, and a manhunt for Billy Joel Tracy began. Alerts were issued throughout the Rockwall area whilst a helicopter was deployed to track him down.
Tracy was on the run, and he hid in a variety of places. He was just breaking into houses during the day; he would slip in and he would steal cash, he would steal jewelry, and he would take some food. 11 hours later, Tracy was discovered hiding in a house in Rockwall, 55 miles away from the scene of the attack in the woods. He had hidden in a closet, I mean, and even like made himself a little pallet to sleep on, and was discovered when the homeowner and her daughter came home one afternoon. He did not attack them, but obviously, they alerted authorities. Tracy ran out of the house and along a road through the neighborhood with authorities hot on his tail.
At 3:00, dispatch called me and said, “We got him,” and that he took off and was a straight shot. People were chasing him across to the other house, where he climbed onto the roof. Law enforcement surrounded the house. Rather than surrender, Tracy shouted:
“Bye-bye!”
And did basically like a backflip off of the house, falling and injuring himself. There was a tree, there was a freshly tilled flower bed surrounded by concrete everywhere, and he hit the tree and the freshly tilled flower bed. Tracy was arrested and taken into custody.
Miraculously, 16-year-old Casey survived. She was unrecognizable after that attack. She had a broken orbital bone around her eye, there were cigarette burns on her ankles and feet, and she was beaten and bruised. They had to put a metal plate in her face. What she went through was absolutely horrific. There’s no doubt in my mind that it will probably affect her for the rest of her life.
20-year-old Billy Joel Tracy was placed in Rockwall County Jail. He was charged with the kidnapping and aggravated assault of Casey Coon, as well as assault on Officer Paul Britt. He was a straight pain in the ass in the jail. He would make human waste bombs, he would pee and put feces in cups and throw it at people, he would try to fight the jailers, he would throw things at them, and just wear out the call button in the dispatch of the jail.
6 months later, in July 1998, Tracy’s trial began. Officer Paul Britt was brought in to testify. I just stared at him. He didn’t want to look at me. I think he never expected to be caught, and he’s mad he got caught and he couldn’t beat me. Billy Joel Tracy was sentenced to two life sentences for the attack on Casey Coon, and an additional 20 years for the attack on Paul Britt. He was sent to the Allred prison unit based near the town of Wichita Falls.
There’s no denying that Texas has one of the most scary prison systems in the United States. There are units that don’t have air conditioning, and in the summertimes in Texas, the stifling heat is killing inmates. They are tough, and the worst of the worst wind up in them. I believe there are about a hundred different prisons in the state of Texas, probably one of the largest in the United States. At the Allred unit, Billy Joel Tracy at first was allowed to live in general population. Tracy began to really show that assaultive side, and he kept winding up in administrative segregation. He would just get into altercations with an inmate; if they had a dispute over something, it would wind up physical. As for the staff, he would make their lives a living hell by doing things like flooding his cell. I think he just was generally menacing.
This is not somebody who’s going to say, “Well, I got caught, I’m in prison, I should now change who I am.” For somebody with a criminal mindset, that’s only going to flare up more. If anything, it gets exacerbated because now you’re in a controlled environment, so now you’re angry because you’re not free, you’re being told what to do all the time, and you’re in a confined space. Prison for most people is a deterrence; not for Tracy. Inmates take great pleasure in guards’ discomfort. It was not unusual back in the day, when we had Zippo lighters and lighter fluid, for guys to squirt lighter fluid on the back of a guard’s uniform as he walked by, and somebody down the road would throw a match and set him on fire. Tracy committed at least 27 assaults. It was just misconduct after misconduct, misbehavior after misbehavior. When you are serving a life sentence, I think it was pretty easy for Tracy to look at what have I got to lose.
Following an attack on a correctional officer, Tracy was transferred to the Clements unit in Amarillo. He would behave for long enough to get into a less restrictive environment within the prison, but once in that less restrictive environment, it was only a matter of time before he did something that left someone injured.
In November of 2005, while at the Clements unit, Billy Joel Tracy was in general population, and the inmates were all sort of milling about outside of their cells. Officer Katie Stanley is simply walking by doing her job, and Tracy just leaps on her and is just pummeling her, brutally attacking Officer Stanley. Tracy stabbed 39-year-old Katie Stanley with a shank multiple times, puncturing her lungs and leaving her fighting for her life. He lost the knife in her body. He proceeded to kick and stomp on her, leaving shoe imprints on her face and body. He attacked her, and then he tried to throw her over that railing, but was unable to do so. I think before he ran off, she was so covered in blood that when her fellow officers arrived to render aid to her, they didn’t know if they were treating a man or a woman—that’s how messed up she was physically.
When questioned about his motivation behind the attack, Tracy said that his toothpaste had been confiscated. Can you believe that? Asssaulting her was a way to remedy the problem. It’s not going to solve the problem; it’s just a little bit of a way to say, “You know, guess what, man, I can strike back too. Nothing’s always free; someone’s got to pay for it sooner or later.” This is a woman in a position of authority who’s capable of telling him what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. He already has a hatred for women, he’s already violent, and he already hates authority, so a female correction officer is really the perfect target for him. I believe Tracy intended to kill Katie Stanley. Tracy has a penchant for picking out people he deems to be vulnerable, people he thinks he can for sure get the upper hand with. Despite her injuries, Officer Stanley made a full recovery, continuing to work as a correctional officer. Tracy was transferred to the Robertson unit in Abilene.
The prison began to handle him even more carefully. Billy Joel Tracy’s life was lived completely in administrative segregation. He had these security designations that were there to put the correctional officers on alert that he was an extremely dangerous inmate, and that he should be handled with caution and not by an officer alone. For the attack on Officer Stanley, Tracy was sentenced to an additional 45-year prison term. Tracy is capable of behaving when he wants to behave, and then waiting for the exact moment to pounce when he can attack and do the most damage.
Now locked up in solitary confinement, Tracy was no longer seen as a major threat until he found a way to attack again. In January of 2009, while at the Robertson unit, Correctional Officer Brian Lis was there to transport Tracy back from the shower area to his cell when Tracy attacked Officer Lis with a weapon he had constructed from plastic disposable razors that inmates are given to use. He slashed him all over his face. Doctors had to use over 200 stitches to put him back together. He’s got scars from being slashed across the face with razor blades; Officer Lis’s face will never be the same. Tracy, now 33 years old, was convicted of assaulting a public servant. Another 10 years was added on to his sentence. Tracy was moved again, this time to the Hughes unit in Gatesville.
He’s just racking up more and more time as he’s shifted from unit to unit to unit within the state of Texas. I can’t imagine that that 10-year sentence for assaulting Brian Lumis had really any impact on Tracy whatsoever. I think he probably wanted to kill, but I also think that he wanted to inflict harm, pain, and torture. Whether he kills them or not is almost inconsequential to him. Billy Joel Tracy was now serving two life sentences plus an additional 75 years for ongoing violent assaults. Following a failed prison escape in April 2014, Tracy was moved for a fourth time to the Telford unit based in New Boston, Texas.
The Barry Telford unit can house approximately 2,900 inmates. There’s an administrative segregation and there’s general population; it’s more known in the state as a rougher prison. My name is Mark Anthony Adcock Jr., I was the video surveillance sergeant at the Barry Telford unit where Billy Joel Tracy was incarcerated. My father had worked there, and I was working on my criminal justice degree. My name is Mark Adcock, I am a former captain of corrections at the Barry Telford unit. I was pleased when my son went to work for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. We were one of the first prisons in the state of Texas to have full access to video surveillance. I want to say there’s 3 to 400 cameras on the Barry Telford unit. The cameras are designed to deter dangerous activity from inmates. Under the watchful eye of the security cameras and Mark Adcock was 36-year-old Billy Tracy, who was being housed in administrative segregation in complete isolation.
My first interaction with Billy Joel Tracy was he had gotten a disciplinary case for something fairly minor, but I had to go get his statement. All offenders who come in, I look over their records, so I was pretty well versed in what he was capable of. Billy Tracy was not a very tall inmate; I would say he’s probably 5’8″ or 5’10”, but he was very hulking, very muscular, very fit, probably not a lot of body fat content on him, and worked out a lot. He had probably spent a total combined number of years in administrative segregation. What did he have to do for 24 or 23 hours a day? It really seems to me that he used his time to work out, bulk himself up, get very, very strong, and to think of new and inventive ways to attack and assault.
Working alongside the Adcocks was Officer Timothy Davidson, a 47-year-old father of two from Chicago. My name is Ken Davidson, I’m the brother of Tim Davidson. My brother and I were very close growing up. Tim was my younger brother by 9 years, and we would go fishing, and we would take my daughters camping, and we spent a lot of time together. He was a man of honor, and he loved his children. He was the type of person that would give you the shirt off his back; he would help you in any way he could. Tim had relocated to Texas after securing a job as a correctional officer at Telford Prison. His brother Ken was already working there teaching inmates. One of Tim’s colleagues was Mark Adcock Jr. I was an instructor in the training course, so I met him right at the beginning of his training. You could tell that he was just a decent, good human being, and then after he got through training, he went to work on my dad’s shift. Mr. Davidson came to my shift, and he was a quiet man, he never complained, he always showed up for work on time ready to work, and he was always eager to learn. He was a joy to me to work with. Tim had never worked in a prison before; it was long hours, they were 12-hour shifts. He just constantly talked about spending time with his kids, and I got the sense that Tim was enjoying his job and that he had a passion for helping people. While working in administrative segregation, the solitary confinement section of the prison, Tim had had fleeting interactions with Tracy.
On the morning of July 15th, 2015, Tracy was in the exercise yard. He had gone outside for his 1-hour rec, and then his 1-hour rec was over. Mr. Davidson handcuffed him and escorted him back toward his cell, and it was only like maybe 30 feet from the recreation to his cell. And then right when he got to his cell, he had slipped out of his handcuffs somehow, and that’s when the attack started. They were biting back and forth some, and then the slot bar that he held fell off Mr. Davidson’s body onto the floor, and the offender was on top of Mr. Davidson. He grabbed the slot bar and started beating him with it. That metal tray slot bar is a pipe about that big around and it’s about 16 inches long; you’re talking about a piece of steel. The pipe is used to insert into a hole next to a slot in the inmates’ prison cell doors, and it causes the little slot window to pop open. I mean, it’s like hitting someone almost with a hammer; it’s brutal, it’s a very effective weapon. I don’t know how many times he hit him; I try not to think about it.
After beating him into unconsciousness, Billy Joel Tracy picked up Timothy Davidson’s body and hurled it down the stairs towards a gathering crowd of other correctional officers, and then sprayed the air with pepper spray so that it would be difficult for them to walk up there. He just walked like he was taking a walk in the park up to his cell. He didn’t slam the door; he just shut it, so he was very calm. Mr. Davidson was not a very big guy, so he chose him, I think, because he thought he was going to be an easy target.
Tim Davidson was rushed to the hospital by helicopter. The prison was immediately placed on lockdown, and Tracy was taken to a secure holding cell. Video surveillance Sergeant Mark Adcock Jr. was immediately called in. I got through the security checkpoint, and they kind of briefed me, “Hey, this happened, go lock down the cameras.” I got on my camera system, I backed up the time, and I looked at what happened. There were camera angles of here, here, here—all angles of the camera. You could just see everything from six different angles as it was happening. That’s the first time that anybody had ever seen the incident.
Right now, you’ve got Billy Tracy; he’s being escorted up the stairs by Officer Davidson, who’s holding onto him. He’s going up to the thing, telling him to roll the door, and you can see when he’s coming up those stairs that he’s fidgeting with his right arm behind his back. It’s hard to say what he’s doing or what he’s not doing. He has handcuffs on. When the cuffs were put on, they were not double-locked as they’re supposed to be, and you know, Tracy obviously had decades of experience with handcuffs, and somehow he managed to defeat those cuffs, slip a hand free, and then he comes around, and when Davidson turns his back to open his door, cell number 66, he attacks him. It was the worst thing I’d ever seen.
For Tim’s brother Ken, the day had started like any other. July 15th, 2015, I got up at about 6:00 in the morning, had a cup of coffee with my brother, and he went off to work. Then, late morning, my phone rang and it was my wife; somebody had told her that he was hurt and I needed to go to the hospital to see him, and it just all spiraled from there. I just thought maybe he had a knock in the head and he was going to be fine, and we’d be laughing about it tomorrow. When I got to the hospital, I was there maybe 20 minutes, and then I hear my hysterical wife screaming running down the hallway and said he was dead. I just never thought that he would be dead. The staff as well as the entire unit was absolutely devastated. Devastated. It’s heartbreaking to lose a fellow officer, and to lose him in that way made it 100 times worse.
They got him to Christus St. Michael Hospital in Texarkana, Texas, which is the closest medical facility there was. I think he was pronounced dead, you know, within an hour or so of arriving at the hospital. His injuries were just too extensive; they were not survivable. They put seven pints of blood in my brother in the helicopter ride to the hospital, and it all poured out of the back of his head. What was the need in this? What was the purpose of this? Why did this get to this point? It makes you realize that this is a real job and this is something that could happen every single day in the United States.
37-year-old Billy Joel Tracy had just brutally killed father of two Correctional Officer Tim Davidson. He was now being held in a holding cell. We had staff monitor him, you know, 24 hours constantly, and he was running his mouth how bad he was and how, you know, “I’m going to do it again.” Wasn’t remorseful or anything. He was taken for questioning.
“He hit me in the head with my head bust open, and then from that point on it went farther than I expected it to go. Then I was pissed off and I hit him with the bean bar.”
“Where’d you hit him at with the bean bar?”
“In the head.”
“How many times did you hit him exactly?”
“I’m not sure, but I would guess six. At least six.”
He doesn’t attribute value to human life. He’s not capable of thinking, “Oh my gosh, I just ended a man’s life, what is his family going to think?” He has an inability to feel empathy or remorse.
“Then what happened?”
“I threw him down. I was really upset, and at that point, I had no idea the significance of his injury, and they didn’t didn’t realize that he was going to die.”
“So how do you think they’re going to perceive that video when they see it?”
“It’s going to look completely premeditated.”
“And you’re saying it wasn’t?”
“Well, I mean, the assault was, of course, obviously, yeah, the assault was premeditated, but we’re trying to chip them.”
Billy Tracy knew what he was going to do that morning when he woke up. He knew he was going to, if he could and the opportunity presented itself, he was going to attack an officer. The reasons for that, I do not know.
News of the murder soon reached the press. I was in the newsroom at my former job and we were all shocked. I believe this is the first time that a correctional officer with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had been killed in seven or eight years. It certainly had never happened at the Telford unit, not in my experience as a reporter.
Tracy was charged with the murder of Tim Davidson, whose death affected everyone in the community. Timothy’s funeral service—it was heart-wrenching, it was humbling, it was about 3 or 4 thousand people showed up for that. There were people there that really cared. After his death, the governor asked for the flags to be flown at half-staff until he was laid to rest. They awarded him the Medal of Honor; he earned the right to have that type of funeral. Everybody was somber, and the community was still in shock about it. Timothy Davidson was a good man who was killed by an evil person, a coward, an opportunist. A grand jury indicted Billy Joel Tracy with capital murder. After 2 years of pre-trial proceedings, his trial began.
Extra security was required to contain this unpredictable and volatile prisoner. They installed a giant bolt to the floor underneath the defense table in the courtroom so that they could shackle Tracy while he was sitting at the table, so that he could not get up and run—that’s how concerned they were about his behavior. I think everybody expected him to be convicted. I think the only question was would the jury impose the death penalty or would they give him life without the possibility of parole.
Being in the same room with him, I don’t know, maybe I’m struggling for the right words, it’s an emotion that people shouldn’t have to have. When I saw Billy Joel Tracy in a courtroom, it kind of made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, I have to admit. Something about him, he just gave off a vibe like, “I’d sooner kill you than look at you.” He did not seem remorseful at all. He just sat there; he didn’t really say nothing or had no emotion, he just looked like he was at a movie or something. You know, Tracy’s reasoning that he gave for attacking Timothy Davidson was that he claimed Davidson owed him a cell phone and that he had paid him $500 for it, but there was really no evidence to support that.
The video surveillance footage of the attack was screened to the courtroom. When we pushed play to the time the video ended, you could feel like there was a different energy in the room. They just witnessed something that nobody should have to witness, but they’d also, I think, it made the trial real at that point. It was very quiet, but there was a palatable just sense of revulsion and of sadness. I can still see that video playing in my mind’s eye; it will never leave my mind, and it is one of the most, if not the most, disturbing piece of video footage I have ever watched in my life. But you also heard a few gasps; some of the jurors were literally wiping tears from their eyes, heartbroken to watch that video. When you see somebody you love and care for that they’re so disfigured from a beating, nobody should have to go through that.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice implementing the video surveillance system and it coming to the Telford unit when it did was one of the greatest things that could have happened as far as procurement of evidence against an offender in probably TDCJ history. There’s no way somebody could look at that and be like, “I don’t know if that’s him.”
After a 5-day trial, Tracy was found guilty of capital murder. In the sentencing phase, the jury deliberated for less than an hour before sentencing the 39-year-old to death. What else do you do with him? He is the textbook example of a case that in Texas is ripe for the death penalty. Billy Joel Tracy was stoic when the verdict of guilt was read.
It was a good feeling, it’s hard to say it wasn’t a good feeling. Happy, everybody’s hugging, justice for somebody whose life was taken from them. Our family kind of all congratulated everybody; that people felt relieved, we felt that maybe the healing process could start, but, um, yeah, you don’t get your brother back, so Tim’s gone for good. I think that if you feel the person is so bad you can never, ever, ever, ever let him out again, I think the death penalty is far kinder to them and far cheaper for society than to keep somebody on death row. If they can’t live in the society and you can’t have them out of the society, what do you do with them?
For those who knew Tim Davidson, his death has had a lasting impact. I can’t help but feel a little bit responsible because he worked directly for me, and I made the rosters out that placed him that day on that pod. Every year on that day, I think about it pretty much all day. The loss of my brother is like a hole in my heart. I feel so fortunate to be able to take my brother the weekend before he died up to see his daughters for the last time. I got to snap one picture of him hugging his two daughters. It’s such a tragedy to have him taken from you like so suddenly that I don’t know that you’re ever totally healed from that.
Tracy is currently being held at the Polunsky unit in West Livingston, where he’ll remain until his death warrant is issued. The day of his execution, a moment two or three seconds after it, I’ll say, “Okay, it’s good now.” But right now, he’s still living on Texas taxpayers’ dimes, so he hasn’t gotten what he deserved yet, but he’s close. I have two family members that if we’re allowed to go watch the execution, they would wish to be there; I have other family members that don’t want to. I’d like to have a front-row seat. I just hope I don’t die of old age first.
If you look at Billy Tracy’s modus operandi, every incident he’s ever had in the state of Texas always involves women, older guys, 16-year-old girls. That’s what he does—he’s a coward, he’s not a tough, strong man. I believe that Billy Joel Tracy is a danger to everyone he meets. He may act like he’s your friend for a little while, he may follow all the rules to a T, but eventually, he’s going to strike, and he’s going to strike with a plan, and he’s going to strike with a deadly plan.
