Tracey gets 25 years in Gibson murder

Updated: 9/29/2010, 9:20 a.m.

William Tracey will spend at least the next 25 years in jail for the March 2009 murder of his stepmother, Denise Tracey, in Valley Stream. Judge Meryl Berkowitz handed down the sentence Monday afternoon at the Nassau County Court House.

In June, a jury convicted Tracey, 27, of murdering his 42-year-old stepmother in their Dartmouth Street home in Gibson last year. Tracey beat her to death, and then left her body in a dumpster behind a row of stores on Dubois Avenue.

During the sentencing, the judge heard from the victim’s mother, Helen Simon, who said she didn’t want to believe that Tracey committed the murder. But after sitting through the trial, Simon said, she had come to terms with the fact that he did. The death of her daughter, she said, had left a big hole in her heart.

“While I cannot hate you,” Simon told Tracey, “I cannot forgive you either.”

Lisa Simon, Denise’s sister, said that although Tracey and his three brothers were stepsons, Denise loved them as if they were her own children and worked hard to support them. In the end, she explained, her sister was betrayed by someone she trusted. “William took Denise’s life without any care or regret or remorse,” she said. “He will suffer in prison for this.”

Lisa Simon said that every time Tracey came up for parole, she would be at his hearing, fighting to keep him in jail. “He’s not to see a single day of freedom if I can help it,” she said.

Tracey, who maintained his innocence, and his attorney, Joseph Lo Piccolo, pushed for a 15 years-to-life sentence instead of a 25-year minimum prison term. Lo Piccolo said that Tracey’s actions, according to the prosecution, were a “crime of the moment,” not a premeditated act. That means he should have been charged with manslaughter, not second-degree murder, Lo Piccolo said, and the sentence should reflect that.