Cold Case Tuesday: 1970 Murder of Carol A. Fitzmaurice is still a mystery

On October 20, 1970, someone walked into a house in Buffalo, New York, and brutally stabbed a 23-year-old nurse who had no known enemies. Her name was Carol A. Fitzmaurice. Her husband found her body lying face-up on the living room floor when he returned home from work. Nothing was stolen. No motive was known. 

The nearest neighbor was a quarter-mile away from their house. A woman who was in the area at that time saw a man near the home around the time of the murder. She described this man as a 6 feet tall, narrow-faced thin man. Investigators never learned the identity of the narrow-faced man.

State Police Investigator J. Thomas Stofer, now 86 years old, calls the case “one of those cases that haunt you the rest of your life.” Five decades later, Stofer told Buffalo News: “When you look at the ferocity of the attack – a woman stabbed again and again – you think there had to be a personal reason behind it…There was no evidence of a sexual attack. We never found out who did it and never found out why."