Jury: Man should die for 1980 killing

Despite defense arguments that Paul John Fitzpatrick's past warped him, jurors recommend the death sentence for the murder of an art teacher 20 years ago.

By AMELIA DAVIS

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 23, 2000

LARGO -- Paul John Fitzpatrick was an abused child who grew up in a crime-riddled Boston neighborhood, family members said. In addition, a Tampa psychologist said Fitzpatrick is brain-damaged either from a blow to the head or sniffing gasoline fumes.

Despite the testimony, a jury Tuesday worked up little sympathy for the man convicted Friday of first-degree murder in the 1980 killing of former Belleair art teacher Gerald Hollinger.

After deliberating one hour and 45 minutes, the jury recommended 8-4 that Fitzpatrick be sentenced to death.

Pinellas Circuit Judge Lauren Laughlin has set no date for Fitzpatrick's sentencing. She is required to give great weight to the jury's recommendation.

Fitzpatrick, 42, showed no emotion when the recommendation was read, although public defender Kandice Friesen and a female juror wiped away tears.

His mother, Margaret Fitzpatrick, and brothers Jackie and Kevin, who had been in the courtroom earlier in the day, were absent when the jury recommendation was read.

After a clerk polled the jury, Paul Fitzpatrick took off his belt and handed it to another of his public defenders, Bob McClure. He was escorted from the courtroom by several bailiffs.

"We are extremely disappointed," McClure said afterwards. "Both with the verdict of first-degree murder and the jury's recommendation."

But not everyone was.

In closing testimony, prosecutor Glenn Martin told the jury that Hollinger, the victim of what investigators had described as an extremely brutal and bloody murder, "had paid the ultimate price, death. It was done in a pitiless . . . and torturous manner," Martin said. "Now Mr. Fitzpatrick needs to pay the price."

A mail carrier found Hollinger's body in the kitchen of his Belleair home on Feb. 8, 1980. He had been stabbed at least 41 times with a butcher knife from his kitchen. Investigators found plenty of fingerprints and footprints in both Hollinger's home and his Cadillac, which Fitzpatrick stole after the killing and later abandoned on the Courtney Campbell Parkway. They also found a receipt from a Tampa hotel and a registration card with a fake driver's license number that yielded more fingerprints.

But after an initial investigation, the case stalled. In 1995, a Pinellas County sheriff's detective, Mike Ring, picked it up again. Police in Jacksonville had arrested someone for robbing gay men and stealing their cars, and someone suggested that case might be connected to the unsolved Pinellas County homicide. It wasn't, but in reviewing the records of the Belleair police investigation, Ring saw a way to reopen the case. A former police officer from Massachusetts, he recognized the fake license number for what it really was: a Social Security number for someone from Massachusetts. So Ring shipped the fingerprints to the Massachusetts state police, where a match was made with Fitzpatrick's prints.

Eight days before the Belleair murder, Fitzpatrick and a friend had used a knife to assault a gay man in Massachusetts and steal his car. Fitzpatrick was convicted of that crime and served 2 1/2 years in prison for it. During Ring's investigation, Fitzpatrick's friend told Massachusetts state police he was in Florida with Fitzpatrick when Hollinger was killed. The friend told police Fitzpatrick told him, "I got in a fight and I slit his throat."

Fitzpatrick maintained his innocence during his trial and accused the friend of killing Hollinger. But Fitzpatrick's prints, not the friend's, matched those found in Hollinger's home and Cadillac. Also, Fitzpatrick's footprints fit those left on the floor of Hollinger's kitchen and on a carpet in Hollinger's bedroom, investigators said.

After the jurors were dismissed, two members, Richard Sanderson and James Johnson, said the decisions they had made were the toughest of their lives. Both men had voted for the death penalty.

"It was tough," Sanderson said. "Even though a life had been taken, it was hard to decide to take another one. But based on the evidence, I don't think I had another choice."

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