|
The case has been memorialized in a song by Davis’ daughter,
Sharlee Davis—of the folk music duo Davis and Devitt—called “Murder
Ballad”:
Her
Mama called her, said she was dead
Her
best friend of 40 years, blood from the head
The authorities
came and took her away
They
said she had died in a natural way
It
wasn’t till later that same afternoon
When
the coroner found the 14 stab wounds
Her
Mama called her, said it was murder
Her
only son was the only one who could possibly hurt her
It’s in
the books of Sherlock Holmes
In the
books he read and studied and owned
Taught
him how to hide a clue
Never taught him to say I love you. . . .
The
final bit of weirdness is Tracy’s grave. It’s in the Chief Tecopa Cemetery
in Pahrump, Nevada. The brief obituary on the Findagrave.com Web site says
that funeral services were held on May 24, 1996, and were handled by the
Neptune Society of Nye County, which is a cremation organization. As you
can see in this photograph, his grave marker consists of a piece of wood
stuck in the ground with his name printed on it by hand in what looks like
crayon.
The
March 2002 issue of the Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collection,
University of Minnesota newsletter says that “Jack Tracy was a
complicated man whose achievements are vital to Sherlockian writings. At
the same time, his opinions and statements were not always in agreement
with others. . . .” In The Baker Street Journal 2001 Christmas Annual
Christopher and Barbara Roden put it this way: “Some loved
him; others loathed him; the majority had, perhaps, come to accept that
Jack was Jack, and accepted him for that. He was a notorious bad payer—of
bills and royalties. Several projects were withdrawn from him—in one case,
relations with an author became so strained that the author pulled his book
after it had been published.” [That was David L. Hammer’s The
Game Is Afoot.] On the other hand, the Rodens say, “The achievement of The
Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana alone surpasses what most Sherlockians
produce in a lifetime; but Jack has also
|
