Fitzgerald Trial Testimony Begins

Posted on August 7th, 2008 at 7:37 PM By John R. Ellement No Comments

Reprinted by courtesy of the Boston Globe

Woburn — August 6, 2008 — Sometimes weeping, the widow of a Wakefield man today described the illicit love affair that Middlesex prosecutors contend led to her husband’s murder and the killing of a second man in 2006. Michelle Zammitti testified against her former lover, Sean Fitzpatrick, in Middlesex Superior Court where Fitzpatrick is on trial on two counts of first-degree murder. Fitzpatrick, of Freedom, New Hampshire, has pleaded not guilty.

Fitzpatrick is accused of murdering Michael Zammitti, Jr., 39, in his family’s concrete pumping business in Wakefield on March 13, 2006. Also killed was 54-year-old Chester Roberts, a sometime employee whom prosecutors contend was shot as a witness to Zammitti’s killing.

On the stand today, Michelle Zammitti said she and Fitzpatrick became close as her marriage to the father of her three children foundered. They talked constantly, met in New Hampshire where the Zammittis had summer homes near Fitizpatrick’s home on Ossipee Lake, eventually had a physical relationship and fell in love. The relationship evolved between 2002 and into 2006, she testified.

Michelle Zammitti testified that at one meeting toward the end of 2005, she told Fitzpatrick the only barrier to their being together was her husband, with whom she has three children.

“He wanted me to leave Michael for a couple of months…. (but) the only way that he and I would have the opportunity to be together was if something happened to Michael,” Michelle Zammitti recalled telling Fitzpatrick, who gave his lover a self-published book of poems called “inspirations of love” to memorialize his feelings.

Michelle Zammitti said she later made it clear to Fitzpatrick that their affair was over and she was returning to her husband.

The week following the shooting death of her husband, Michelle Zammitti was cooperating with law enforcement and made a two-hour telephone call to Fitzpatrick, who was unaware he was being secretly recorded.

During the conversation, played for the jury today, Michelle Zammitti pushes Fitzpatrick to explain where he was at the time of the killings, discovered around 8 a.m. Fitzpatrick said his truck was seen by a neighbor at 6:45 a.m. and that he was seen by a neighbor around 9:30 a.m. in New Hampshire.

“I was seen,” he said. “I was here.”