New book reveals ‘six personalities’ of vampire lesbian killer
A NEW book has revealed the six personalities and troubled life of lesbian vampire killer Tracey Wigginton. WARNING: Graphic.
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WARNING: Graphic content
OF THE six personalities that raged inside Tracey Wigginton’s head, the one that was in control on the night she was to commit one of Australia’s most barbaric murders was probably “April”.
Named after her violent adoptive mother, April was a “terrifying” character who had taken over after the disintegration of another of Wigginton’s alter egos, a boy called Bobby.
According to the new book Killer Instinct , forensic psychiatrist Donald Grant’s study of 10 murderers, April was pushing Tracey on the night of October 20, 1989.
That was the night that Wigginton would go from a sporadically violent young woman with a fascination for blood to being known as Brisbane’s vampire lesbian killer.
And it was Dr Grant who, on interviewing the accused murderer while she was in custody after her arrest, detected “a hint of relish … a degree of sadism” in the pain she inflicted.
On the night of the murder, Wigginton was an unemployed 23-year-old on a night out drinking Riccadonna Spumante with three friends.
Tracey’s new, secret girlfriend, Lisa Ptaschinksi, 24, and Kim Jervis and Tracey Waugh, romantic partners both aged 23, would later say they believed Wigginton was a vampire.
In the weeks before, they had picnicked at night in Toowoong cemetery in western Brisbane, and taken home a headstone.
Wigginton, who Grant said was a large woman with a commanding personality, had convinced them she had supernatural powers and could make herself disappear.
She made them watch repeatedly a video of someone’s head blown off by a shotgun and told them she wondered what it would be like to kill somebody.
Wigginton had spent time sharpening a knife, and had persuaded Ptaschinksi to cut her wrists and let her suck the blood.
The night before it all unfolded, Wigginton dyed her hair black; she told Ptaschinksi she had a “need to feed” on a victim’s blood.
At L’Amours, a lesbian nightclub in inner-city Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, the four young women plotted to pick up a man.
They left the club about 11.30pm and climbed into Wigginton’s green Holden Commodore to cruise the streets.
A short drive away about midnight, 47-year-old council worker Edward Baldock had staggered out after several beers with friends at the Caledonian club and was walking home.
The father of four was drunk and when the carload of females stopped and offered him a lift home, he took it.
Wigginton drove 7km to Orleigh Park, on the river in Brisbane’s West End, an area she well knew would be deserted.
Leaving the three others in the car, she led Edward to the park on the promise of having sex.
She removed her shirt, and left him to remove his clothes as she went to relieve herself.
He folded his clothes in a pile and pushed his wallet under the edge of the roller door of the adjacent sailing club.
Wigginton would later tell police that when she returned, Edward asked “what are you doing” and she would reply “nothing”.
She had gone to fetch Lisa Ptaschinksi.
Wigginton plunged a long-bladed knife up to its hilt in Edward’s neck, into his spinal cord.
She ordered Ptaschinksi back to the car and over the next minutes, Wigginton was like a “shark in a feeding frenzy”.
She plunged her knife 27 times into Edward’s back and neck.
She grabbed his hair and slashed his throat, but he was still alive, until she stabbed him again in the neck, nearly severing his head. Eventually, he lay still.
Wigginton sat down and smoked a cigarette and then threw the knife in the Brisbane River before washing her arms.
She brought Ptaschinksi and Kim Jervis down to view her handiwork, while Tracey Waugh stayed in the car.
The three other girls would later say they smelt blood on Wigginton’s breath when she came up to the car from the murder scene.
At 5am the following day, a jogger in Orleigh Park found the naked body of a man covered in blood and stab wounds.
Edward Baldock’s spinal cord was almost cut through; the two main arteries in his neck were severed.
Police found his wallet under the sailing club door and, next to his body, a pair of shoes containing a bank card with the name “Miss T Wigginton”.
Her behaviour that morning, according to Donald Grant and fellow forensic psychiatrists, indicated a personality disorder.
When she realised she had lost her bank card, Wigginton got the girlfriend she had been cheating on, Debbie, to drive her to Orleigh Park.
When she saw police there, she became said, “Oh my God, it’s real”.
Three hours later, they knocked on her door.
It took the police three interviews with Wigginton, and several with two of her “scared s***less” friends to elicit a detailed confession from her.
Wigginton told police there had been a third girl there on the night, Lisa Ptaschinksi, who she hadn’t mentioned because she didn’t want Debbie to know of her unfaithfulness.
Ptaschinksi told police that Wigginton claimed she would regularly buy pig and cow blood from the butcher to drink.
As detectives continued to investigate, several psychiatrists and one psychologist were allowed to examine Wigginton.
They would uncover a complex and disturbed young women.
As Grant writes in his book, the psychiatric assessors defined Wigginton’s six different “alters”.
Under hypnosis, unto which Wigginton readily succumbed, she would speak in different voices and manners of the six personalities.
“Big Tracey” was a confederation of them all. Bobby, an aggressive and callous 16-year-old, described Big Tracey as “a wimp”.
An observer called “ME” reported on the other alters: Little Tracey was a frightened child, the Host Personality was an amalgam and then there was the terrifying April.
Donald Grant interviewed Wigginton at Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre to help assess whether the young killer was mentally fit to stand trial.
Wigginton’s defence team argued she suffered from multiple personality sisorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder), and was therefore not guilty by way of insanity.
A judge ruled Wigginton was fit to stand trial; she pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life in prison.
Lisa Ptaschinksi also got life for murder, Kim Jervis received 18 years for manslaughter, reduced to 12 years, and Tracey Waugh was acquitted.
Dr Grant discovered Wigginton was from a troubled background, which led to her being adopted at the age of seven by her biological grandparents who she grew to despise.
Wigginton went to private schools and would eventually inherit property and assets from her grandparents, which meant she didn’t have to work to support herself.
She did work, however, as a bar attendant and bouncer, and had been studying a sheet metal course when she murdered Edward Baldock.
Wigginton had relationships with men and became pregnant twice.
When her romance with a male friend of her birth mother ended, she entered her first lesbian relationship with the man’s partner.
Grant writes that Wigginton’s “sexual and relationship history was chaotic” and that family and other relationships were blighted by a volcanic temper.
At the age of 15, after her grandfather’s death, she attacked a man trying to get close to her grandmother.
Wigginton fractured his nose, drove his hearing aid into his ear canal and slashed his fingers.
On another occasion, she “went berserk” destroying a houseful of belongings of her adoptive sisters.
Wigginton told Dr Grant she was “intellectually … opposed to violence”.
“She said that her anger took a long while to build up, but that when it boiled over she completely lost control,” Dr Grant writes.
“As she told me about her violent episodes, about what she had done to people, I detected a hint of relish.
“I thought this indicated a degree of sadism.
“In killing poor Edward Baldock, Tracey took revenge on all her past abusers.”
Now aged 52, Wigginton was released from prison in 2012 after serving 21 years.
Dr Grant writes that she had gained certificates to drive a bobcat and a forklift while behind bars, and completed a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and anthropology.
She walked from prison on crutches and planned to change her name.
“Her innate killer instinct was released by an overwhelming rage welling up from her past and influencing her present,” Dr Grant writes.
“Statistics would suggest that, by now, the risk of further violence, especially murder, is much reduced by her age and the effects of a long period in custody.
“Tracey … will be under parole supervision for the rest of her life.”
- Killer Instinct, Having a Mind for Murder by Donald Grant is out now through Melbourne University Press for $34.99.
Originally published as New book reveals ‘six personalities’ of vampire lesbian killer