On an autumn evening in Burlington, Vermont, 27-year-old White/Caucasian male Lloyd Pat Fitzgerald, a husband and father of three, finished a wiring job at a home on Van Patten Parkway on October 2, 1972. An electrician for the city's electric department, Fitzgerald was a well-regarded and dependable member of the community. After completing his work, he stayed to watch the end of a Red Sox game, leaving the residence after 9 p.m.
That was the last time he was seen alive.
The following day, concern grew when Fitzgerald failed to return home. His Chevrolet Vega station wagon was discovered parked in the Lakewood Estates area, west of North Avenue. The keys were still in the ignition, but a sense of foreboding settled over the discovery as there was no sign of Fitzgerald himself. State Police bloodhounds were brought in and followed a scent from the vehicle through nearby woods to a dead-end dirt road, but the trail went cold, leaving investigators and his family with no immediate answers.
For months, the disappearance of Pat Fitzgerald remained a painful mystery. The harsh Vermont winter came and went before a grim discovery was made on March 4, 1973. Two young hunters stumbled upon a man's body in a remote cornfield near the Ethan Allen Homestead. The body, frozen under inches of ice and slush 104 feet from the Winooski River, was identified as Lloyd Pat Fitzgerald. An autopsy would later confirm he had been shot to death, with some press reports describing his body as "bullet-riddled." The positioning of his body suggested he had been dragged by his feet to the secluded location.
The investigation into Fitzgerald's murder took a startling turn when ballistics testing in October 1973 revealed that the weapon used to kill him was also used in the murder of another local man, Raymond Lestage, in August 1972. Three men had been charged in connection with Lestage's death. However, this promising lead quickly became a frustrating dead end, as all three suspects were incarcerated at the time of Fitzgerald's murder. Despite the efforts of the Burlington Police Department and the Vermont State Police Major Crime Unit over the years, no arrests have ever been made in connection with the death of Lloyd Pat Fitzgerald, and his case remains an unsolved homicide.
