transactions are public but if no one knows that a public key is yours it's difficult to trace. and like you said, there's tools to anonymize your bitcoin transactions completely
The laundry scheme isn't tied to Bitcoin, that's why I think it's wrong to say that one of Bitcoins advantages is anonimity.
So make a new key, and tumble the Bitcoins until you feel safe again.
EDIT https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14918545 This just started getting popular if you want to talk more about tumbling.