Lloyd Pat Fitzgerald was 27, a husband and father of three and an electrician for Burlington’s electric department, when he vanished after leaving a Van Patten Parkway home on the night of October 2, 1972. He had stayed to watch the end of a Red Sox game and left after 9 p.m.; his Chevrolet Vega station wagon was found the next day in the Lakewood Estates area with the keys still in the ignition. State Police bloodhounds followed a scent from the vehicle into nearby woods but the trail ended.

On March 4, 1973 two hunters found Fitzgerald’s body in a remote cornfield near the Ethan Allen Homestead, frozen under ice and slush about 104 feet from the Winooski River. An autopsy confirmed he had been shot to death; some reports described the body as bullet-riddled and the position suggested he had been dragged by his feet to the location. In October 1973 ballistics linked the gun used to kill Fitzgerald to the August 1972 murder of Raymond Lestage. Three men had been charged in Lestage’s death, but all three were incarcerated at the time Fitzgerald was killed and no arrests were ever made in Fitzgerald’s case.

Anyone with memories of Fitzgerald, who worked for the city and was known locally, or with information about that vehicle or the woods west of North Avenue is asked to come forward.