A 27 yrs old is found in a remote cornfield near the Ethan Allen homestead In the fall of 1972, a young Caucasian man named Lloyd "Pat" Fitzgerald, a 27-year-old electrician for the City of Burlington Electric and Light Department, vanished without a trace. On the evening of October 2nd, after completing a wiring job at a home on Van Patten Parkway in Burlington, Vermont, he seemingly drove off into the night and was never seen alive again.
The following day, his Vega station wagon was discovered parked in the Lakewood Estates area, west of North Avenue, but there was no sign of Lloyd. For months, his disappearance remained a baffling mystery for his family and local law enforcement.
The grim answer to his whereabouts came on March 4, 1973. His body was discovered in a remote cornfield near the Ethan Allen Homestead in Burlington, a mere 104 feet from the Winooski River. The scene told a grim tale; his body was found frozen, and it was evident that he had been dragged by his feet to the location where he was left. An autopsy would later confirm that Lloyd Fitzgerald's life had been ended by gunshots.
The investigation into his murder took a perplexing turn when ballistics testing on the murder weapon, a. 22 caliber revolver, connected it to another homicide. The same gun had been used in the murder of Raymond Lestage in August of 1972. Three men, Frank Berard Jr., Ray Rebideau, and Bernard Woodmansee, had been charged in connection with Lestage's death. However, this promising lead only deepened the mystery, as all three men were incarcerated at the time of Fitzgerald's death, leaving investigators with more questions than answers. The chain of custody for the firearm was also convoluted, further complicating the case. Despite these leads, no arrests have ever been made in the murder of Lloyd Fitzgerald, and his case remains an unsolved homicide, a cold case that continues to haunt the Burlington community.
