Pamela Ann Pitts, 55, known in East Baltimore’s Latrobe Homes as Auntie Pam for her generosity, was found dead after a fire in her Abbott Court apartment on September 14, 2021. Firefighters discovered her body during the blaze, but a medical examiner’s autopsy later determined she had been shot and ruled the death a homicide.

Attention quickly focused on a neighbor and intimate partner, 52-year-old Keith Fleming. Surveillance footage from the housing complex showed Fleming leaving Pitts’s apartment around the time the fire began and later returning to his own unit. Fleming told detectives he had been at Pitts’s home earlier that morning watching football and playing cards with her and her brother and said she was alive when he left.

In October 2021 Fleming was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and arson and held without bond. He later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, arson, firearm use in a felony, and five counts of reckless endangerment; sentencing was scheduled for September 2023.