Tracey Diane Neilson was found murdered in her Moore apartment on January 5th, 1981.It was her twenty first birthday.

It is believed that Tracey, who was a newlywed of about five months, was killed around noon that day due to several witnesses seeing her arriving home just before that time and several phone calls from friends and family members around noon that went unanswered; however she wasn’t found until her husband came home around 5:00pm that evening. She was found stabbed to death in their bedroom, her throat had been slit and she had been stabbed multiple times. No sexual assault could be determined to have occurred during the attack. A motive could also not be determined as nothing was really missing from the home.

It is believed that the last person possibly to have seen Tracey alive could have been a cable repair person. A cable trouble ticket book left behind at the Neilson apartment shows work done at the home at 11:51am that morning, however authorities have never been able to identify the owner of the ticket book. The OSBI has said there are fingerprints from the scene that have remained unidentified- even though the Neilson family themselves fought to convince legislators to fund a computer for the OSBI to process fingerprint evidence back in 1990. Also missing from the murder scene was a personalized key chain belonging to Tracey- it has never been recovered, and it is believed that the key chain might possibly have been taken as a trophy.

At the beginning it was believed that Tracey was a targeted victim, though her husband now believes the killing might have been a random act. Shortly after Tracey’s murder, two different composite drawings were released of a man that neighbors of Tracey’s had seen entering the Neilson home around the timeframe her murder is believed to have taken place- though it is important to note that a cable worker is believed to have been in the home around the same time and the man simply might have been the cable worker and not the murderer.

Tracey’s memory remains at the forefront for many. For her husband, for her family, for her friends. And her killer remains at large- 39 years later. Its time for them to be brought to justice.

If you have any information regarding the murder of Tracey Diane Neilson, please contact the OSBI at (405) 848-6724.