A woman has told how her beloved Staffie saved her from being murdered by a hitman hired by her ex.
Tracy Devonshire was woken by her Staffordshire bull terrier, Princess, to find old friend, Trefor Jones, looming over her.
He confessed that Tracy’s ex-boyfriend, Mukhtar Lail, had offered to pay him £15,000 to kill her by injecting Tracy with a fatal dose of heroin.
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Tracy says: “Mukhtar, or Mac as I called him, thought I was still using the drugs he’d got me hooked on when we’d been together two decades earlier. He imagined I’d be living in squalor.
“But Trefor found me living in a spotless flat. I cooked him homemade meals.
“After Princess woke me up, Trefor couldn’t go through with it. He said I wasn’t a bad person at all. Mac hadn’t accounted for me turning my life around.”
Last week, Mukhtar Lail was jailed for life, while Jones was given an eight-year sentence for the deadly plot. Now, Tracy is speaking out for the first time.
Tracy, 45, from Hitchin, Hertfordshire, began a relationship with Lail in the early 2000s. She fell head over heels for Mac, a drug dealer, now 53, but it wasn’t long before the cracks began to show.
She said: “I was so in love with Mac,” Tracy remembers. “It was part of the reason I turned a blind eye and never reported him when he became violent and controlling.
“I didn’t feel I had a choice. Mac was a dealer and he forced me to shoplift to pay for the drugs I quickly became dependent on him for.”
It was only after seven years together that she and Mac finally split.
Tracy added: “It felt good to be free of him, but the damage was done. I spiralled into a life of addiction and crime to fund my, by then crippling habit.”
But things turned sour after she bumped into him on the street in 2021 and she shouted at him in rage as he stood with his young daughter.
She said: “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Mac had his little girl with him, she would have been around four or five. But that monster made my life hell for years.”
Tracy thought nothing more of it but it clearly riled Lail, because that’s when he ordered the killing.
A few days later an old pal turned up on her doorstep and she offered him a place to stay.
One night she was awoken by a howl from her Staffordshire Bull Terrier Princess, to find Trefor standing over her.
Tracy says: “When Trefor told me he was there to kill me, I thought I was hearing things. He went on to say that Mac wanted me dead and that he’d offered him £15,000 to kill me.
“I couldn’t believe that after our silly showdown in the street, Mac had decided that I deserved to die.
“Trefor was distraught. He said I’d been a lovely hostess and he couldn’t do it. He was a hitman, hired to kill me, but I actually thanked Trefor for telling me. I was grateful. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead.”
“I was so relieved,” says Tracy. “My story sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie but to know that people believed me meant so much.
"Princess saved my life that night. I’m in no doubt that she’s the reason I survived my evil ex’s £15,000 plot to kill me."
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