Pasco man found guilty of '96 murder, rape

By CHASE SQUIRES

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 31, 2001

DADE CITY -- A Land O' Lakes pizza deliveryman was found guilty late Friday of the rape and murder of a 28-year-old woman.

Michael Peter Fitzpatrick, 38, showed no emotion when the verdict was read after more than six hours of deliberations by a jury of eight women and four men.

As his mother left the courtroom Friday night, she said she was stunned by the verdict.

"I'm shocked," Mary Lewis said. "We knew it was a possibility, but we never expected this."

Fitzpatrick was convicted of raping Laura Lynn Romines then slashing her throat and leaving her along Parkway Boulevard, where she was found wandering, naked and bloody, by passing motorists on Aug. 18, 1996.

She lived to gasp the word "Steve" while a paramedic tended to her, but she died in a Tampa hospital two weeks later.

Fitzpatrick was arrested in February 1997 and has been in jail since.

He could face the death penalty. The jury is scheduled to hear evidence and make a sentencing recommendation Thursday.

After a week of testimony, prosecutors and appointed defense attorney Bill Eble presented their final witnesses Friday, then exchanged three hours of legal salvos during closing arguments before handing the case to the jury.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors Phil Van Allen and Manny Garcia relied on scientific evidence to show Fitzpatrick's bodily fluids were found on Romines, and DNA confirmed the fluids belonged to him.

But Fitzpatrick said he paid Romines $25 for sex earlier in the day, and the debate became one of how long those fluids could have remained in the woman's body.

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