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<\/p>\nA woman has told how her beloved Staffie saved her from being murdered by a hitman hired by her ex.<\/p>\n
Tracy Devonshire was woken by her Staffordshire bull terrier, Princess, to find old friend, Trefor Jones, looming over her.<\/p>\n
He confessed that Tracy\u2019s ex-boyfriend, Mukhtar Lail, had offered to pay him \u00a315,000 to kill her by injecting Tracy with a fatal dose of heroin.<\/p>\n
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Tracy says: \u201cMukhtar, or Mac as I called him, thought I was still using the drugs he\u2019d got me hooked on when we\u2019d been together two decades earlier. He imagined I\u2019d be living in squalor.<\/p>\n
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\u201cBut Trefor found me living in a spotless flat. I cooked him homemade meals.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter Princess woke me up, Trefor couldn\u2019t go through with it. He said I wasn\u2019t a bad person at all. Mac hadn\u2019t accounted for me turning my life around.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t long before the cracks began to show.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cI was so in love with Mac,\u201d Tracy remembers. \u201cIt was part of the reason I turned a blind eye and never reported him when he became violent and controlling.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI didn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was only after seven years together that she and Mac finally split.<\/p>\n
Tracy added: \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cMaybe I shouldn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tracy thought nothing more of it but it clearly riled Lail, because that\u2019s when he ordered the killing.<\/p>\n
A few days later an old pal turned up on her doorstep and she offered him a place to stay.<\/p>\n
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One night she was awoken by a howl from her Staffordshire Bull Terrier Princess, to find Trefor standing over her.<\/p>\n
Tracy says: \u201cWhen 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\u2019d offered him \u00a315,000 to kill me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t believe that after our silly showdown in the street, Mac had decided that I deserved to die.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrefor was distraught. He said I\u2019d been a lovely hostess and he couldn\u2019t do it. He was a hitman, hired to kill me, but I actually thanked Trefor for telling me. I was grateful. If it wasn\u2019t for him, I\u2019d be dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so relieved,\u201d says Tracy. \u201cMy story sounds like something out of a Hollywood movie but to know that people believed me meant so much.<\/p>\n
"Princess saved my life that night. I\u2019m in no doubt that she\u2019s the reason I survived my evil ex\u2019s \u00a315,000 plot to kill me."<\/p>\n
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