Secrets Of Palm Beach

This story was first broadcast on Jan. 19, 2008. It was updated on Aug. 15, 2008.

Linda Fishman, a wealthy Connecticut widow, decided to uproot her life and move to sunny Florida to pursue a fresh start. But Linda, described by her family and friends as generous and giving, was also looking for love.

In early 2003, Linda was found murdered in her home, the house set on fire in an attempt to destroy crime scene evidence.

Did Linda's generosity and her quest for love contribute to her murder?

Correspondent Troy Roberts reports on the investigation.

Linda's older sister Bernice Ferency remembers that the marriage was very good. "He was funny, he always made her laugh," she recalls.

But their happiness would be short-lived: Milton died of heart failure just eight years into the marriage. Linda was 39, widowed and alone. Years later, determined to make a fresh start, she moved to Florida where she became a fixture on the charity circuit, even attending events at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach.

Barbara Wolff and Linda Marchese were part of Linda's inner circle of well-to-do women who were often part of the Palm Beach social scene. "If you were a person close to her, there wasn't anything she wouldn't do for you," Wolff recalls.

And one of those closest to Linda was her nephew, Michael Jamrock, who had also moved to Florida and made a name for himself as a radio disc jockey

Off the air, Jamrock had a reputation as a bit of a wild man, which sometimes got in the way of steady employment. "I like to go out and party, I drink a lot, you know, go out with a lot of girls. I'm just, sort of like, a party animal. …I'm like, sort of looked down upon as the lowlife radio guy," he admits.

That may be putting it mildly; Jamrock also had run-ins with the law, including two arrests for drunk driving, a jail term and a restraining order stemming from an old girlfriend who accused him of domestic violence.

But that didn't stop him from borrowing $40,000 from his aunt Linda to open the now defunct Jamrock Café. And when he was embroiled in a nasty custody battle, once again it was Linda who helped Jamrock out.

"This is a woman who, since I was a baby, has never said no to me about anything, for anything, ever. So if I needed money and asked her, 'There you go,'" he explains.

But did that generosity cost Linda her life?

"His alibi, he's about a mile away at a bar drinking heavily according to the people there," says Eric Keith of the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, the lead detective on the Fishman case. "So Michael is at the bar. His house is at the far end of Linda's home. And her house is right in the middle. So, he's passing by there, give or take, within 15 minutes of the murder."

And apparently Det. Keith wasn't the only one questioning Jamrock's possible involvement. "Some of the family members had some concerns based on the way he became isolated following the homicide. He wasn't socializing with the rest of the family. So, there were some definite concerns in the periphery of his family that he may have had some involvement," he says.

"It doesn't sound like he had too many defenders," Roberts remarks.

"No. No," Keith replies.

But Jamrock says, "I mean these are my family members. I mean, people don't understand that. It's my family that have known me since I've been born! You know, that's what the problem is."

To some degree, Keith says they, the family, all felt that Jamrock was using Linda for money, and Jamrock admits he was "always" in a tight position financially.

The detective believed Jamrock was capable of murder. "If she were to tell Michael 'Enough is enough, you know, the purse is closed. I've got my own problems.' You've got him inebriated. He's got the opportunity because he's passing by there at about the right time. It wasn't looking good. He's an obvious suspect at that point," he says.

Jamrock says that in the very beginning of the investigation he didn't have a clue he was a suspect. He agreed to take a lie detector test, but Keith says the result showed deception.

Jamrock says he can't explain those results. "It's a very bizarre process. They say 'Okay is your name Troy?' 'Yes.' 'Is this what you do for an occupation?' 'Yes.' 'Did you kill your aunt!?' Well of course you jump. It's sort of like you're on a carnival ride. And holy crap. Of course, you're gonna like freak out. But I don't have an explanation for that. I really don't. I have no idea," he tells Roberts.

A shaky alibi, a failed lie detector test and a possible motive -- together it was shaping up to be a powerful case against Michael Jamrock. But he says he didn't do it.

Just after midnight on Feb. 7, 2003, Lt. Tim McCabe and Chief Richard Loundsbury responded to a fire alarm at Linda's house. But even before the firemen entered the home, something did not seem right: the garage door was open and no car inside.

Once inside, the firefighters' instincts were confirmed when they found Linda's body near the front door. "I could tell something is around her neck," McCabe recalls. "What struck me odd was the way her body was laid out, just perfectly flat on her back, arms by her side with a blue cloth over her face."

Investigators believed the killer had arrived at the house some time before 10:30 p.m. that night.

Police learned Linda had been out that night for dinner and drinks with a friend in Palm Beach. "We went into the case initially believing that she knew the person based on the way she was dressed. She was in her pajamas," Det. Keith explains.

While there were no signs of forced entry, Keith did find some strange clues. "There's a broken plate of pancakes on the table. Linda had just eaten before she came home. Who are those for?" he wonders. "I mean, who's that hungry? Is it her who just ate or is it the guy waiting for her to come home?"

At some point, things turned ugly. The killer strangled Linda with a piece of twine, and placed a piece of cloth over her face. The killer also stole jewelry, paintings and attempted to set the house on fire.

"Her personal belongings appeared to have been put on a bed and lit on fire. Another small fire was set in the second bedroom in the house as well," Det. Kenneth Buss explains.

Buss thinks the fire was set up to cover up the murder. "It appeared that it was started by using rubbing alcohol, isopropyl alcohol that was also found in the house. Several bottles were found in the house. One of those bottles was even found in the living room chair next to where the victim's body was found."

Why is rubbing alcohol significant?

"It can also be used to destroy the evidence that we were so much looking for," Buss explains. "Alcohol if you think about it, doctors, medical examiners, they use alcohol to clean instruments during the performance of their duties and it destroys the DNA. It can destroy fingerprints, anything left behind."

Keith says investigators recovered no evidence -- not even a fingerprint -- that was valuable. The killer, investigators say, left absolutely no trace of himself before making off with Linda's car.

In the early morning hours, deputies tried to locate Linda's next-of-kin. That's when her nephew, who lived just minutes away, first appeared on investigators' radar screen.

"The deputies noted that he did smell of alcohol when he answered the door. And as I understand it, he basically was shocked that she was dead, but didn't necessarily inquire as to the means of her death or how she died. But was, you know, interested in whether jewelry was taken. Where her cat was, things along those lines," Buss recalls.

Asked if it's true that he inquired about his aunt's jewelry before asking how she was killed, Jamrock tells Roberts, "I don't remember. I could have. I know what she kept in her house."

"But you asked about the jewelry several times. That seemed to be a priority for you," Roberts remarks.

"I wanted to make sure that everything was secure in her house. 'Cause I knew what she had in her home," Jamrock explains.

"You know that that line of questioning raised some eyebrows," Roberts points out.

"I'm sure it did," he admits. "I'm sure it did."

"Does that mean we thought he did it? Not necessarily. Does it make us suspicious? Obviously," Keith explains.

Detectives learned that Linda was growing tired of financially supporting Jamrock and some other family members. Now they had a theory

"In his inebriated state, because he stopped by his aunt's house on the way home and he asks for money and she says no," Keith theorizes. "And in a fit of rage, he kills her. Sets the place on fire and then drives home. The problem with that scenario is the vehicle. Where does the vehicle go?"

Linda's stolen car was found at a train station, an 80-mile roundtrip from her home. It was a significant piece of evidence, just not against her nephew. Police couldn't figure out how he could have dropped off his aunt's car and made it back to Boca Raton by the time deputies arrived at his door

It was a roadblock, but cops continued to keep the heat on Jamrock. "I was walking out of the police station. And there was a uniformed police officer. And he yells out, 'Jamrock.' Of course, I turned around. 'Don't go far. You're goin' to jail.' That freaked me out," he remembers.

Despite their threats, investigators weren't solely focused on Jamrock. They were also digging into Linda's private life.

At 55, Linda was just hitting her stride after undergoing gastric bypass surgery and losing 70 pounds six months before her murder. Friends say it was a remarkable transformation in more ways than one.

"She was more outgoing, more positive, more peppy. She felt better health-wise. She felt like she could get up and go. She was back," remembers hairdresser Penny Chaimowitz, who helped Linda through her recovery. "I think her self-esteem was better, you know? She just, she had a little pick-me-up. She felt better about herself."

But those close to her say the newly confident and improved Linda was still missing something. "So, she was very happy. The only thing, she was very lonely. She wished she had somebody in her life," Linda's sister Bernice remembers.

According to Linda's friend Linda Marchese, the dating scene in Palm Beach is difficult. "Most of the women I know are single. As you get older in my group of friends, you're not dating as much," she explains.

And Bernice says her sister didn't have good judgment when it came to men.

Det. Keith was now focusing on Linda's social life, and that's when the investigation got interesting. "Some of the men that she dated, I mean, from our perspective were probably high risk type men," he explains.

Just days before she was murdered, Linda had gone to the movies on a first date. "Linda brought the popcorn bag back to her mom that night. Her mom still had it. So we collected it for fingerprint processing," Keith explains.

On the bag, police found fingerprints belonging to Linda's date, James Bell. She had met him just days earlier at a stop light.

Bell remembers Linda leaning out the window and talking to him. "She just says I was a handsome man and that they had a benefit ball and that I should've been there," he recalls.

Barbara Wolff was with Linda that night she met Bell. "He passed by in a truck. And, she was, I told you she was very outgoing. And, she was waving out the window, to him and I think she threw out her number -- she gave it -- she yelled it out the window and he called her. I didn't really know anything about him," Wolff says.

It turns out Bell had quite a past, with arrests for battery, DWI and more.

Asked if he told Linda about his criminal record, Bell says, "I don't think I really knew her that long."

And that night at the movies, he definitely didn't mention his guilty plea for attempted second degree murder years earlier. "He shot somebody following an altercation, up around a pawn shop that he either ran or owned, which showed a propensity for being a hothead. I mean, same kind of scenario. Did Linda do something to upset him? And he killed her in a fit of rage?" Keith asks.

At that point, with his history, Det. Keith says investigators thought he might be the guy.

Bell admits things weren't looking good and that this was a scary time for him. "I didn't know what was going on," he says.

Detectives questioned Bell, but when they realized he really had no motive, and didn't even know where Linda lived, they released him.

"From start to finish, it was like a rollercoaster ride," Keith recalls.

And there seemed to be no shortage of men from Linda's past to question. "And through investigation, it led us to a person named Donnie Saxon who the previous New Year's Eve, had actually spent the night over at her house," Keith explains.

Saxon was a man Linda had met during a night out in Palm Beach several months before her death.

Investigators brought him in for questioning. "Basically, he told us during his interview, 'The funny thing is I had another girlfriend that was murdered.' I think he said it was 30 years previous out in the Las Vegas area and I think it was an unsolved case. It may have been mob related or something like that. So here he is. And he's got another woman in his life that was murdered in the past," Keith recalls. "Now we have not one, but two people with circumstances of violence overshadowing them in the past."

"What does her dating history say about her judgment?" Roberts asks Det. Buss.

"That I think, she was a lonely individual," he replies. "But in the circumstances that we found, while doing our investigation, she, more often than not, ran across men that that weren't her type."

And that included men who were not always age-appropriate. Barbara Wolff says Linda had a tendency to go for the younger guys, and Michael Jamrock says it wasn't unusual to see his aunt in the company of a much younger man.

In Linda's case though there seemed to be several young suitors. "It seems like my sister went after somebody that needed her help, or her guidance," Bernice says. "If they asked for help, she always helped them. She trusted too much that was her problem."

"I think her hairdresser knew about some younger men she may have dated. But when it came time to tell her mom, to tell her family members, the ones closest to her, nobody could give us a name," Keith recalls.

One man Linda dated, and at one point lived with, was Frederick Gurney, a massage therapist 18 years her junior. Detectives could never find Gurney, but 48 Hours tracked him down in Texas. He is now unemployed and listed as a sex offender for indecency with a child.

Gurney wouldn't speak to 48 Hours on camera, but did say Linda was always a generous person. He claims he was living in Texas, and nowhere near Florida, at the time of Linda's murder.

Keith was hitting a lot of dead ends, until four months later, in June 2003, he received a bombshell anonymous letter that would turn the Fishman murder case on its head.

Linda was a woman with many secrets, especially when it came to some of the men in her life. There was the financially strapped nephew, there was a former lover, now a registered sex offender, and there were some men she met that could have used a background check.

But then there was the biggest secret of all: a man 27 years' Linda's junior named Fred Kretzmer. "She kept Fred pretty much below the radar screen. He never really surfaced as far as being a name of someone that we knew that Linda dated or had a casual relationship with as a friend," Keith says.

And Kretzmer probably would have remained a secret, if not for the anonymous letter written by a former girlfriend of his, Gissele Ospina.

"I heard that night February 6, 2003 a man named Frederick Kretzmer was driving her car and had a few pieces of her jewelry…I do not have any proof. I just want to point you in the right direction," the letter read.

"You have that feeling inside that it's the right thing to do. It's not something that you can, you know, so I wrote the letter," Ospina told Roberts, speaking publicly for the first time about her difficult decision to tip off police.

The letter, Keith says, was critical. After four months of dead ends it finally gave detectives a red hot lead into who might have killed Linda.

"So basically we start peeling back the onion on Fred Kretzmer," Keith says. "Fred had a troubled childhood, had some possible molestation issues when he was younger. Some possible alcohol abuse in his family. He had some substance abuse issue with cough syrup and other drugs. At some point I think he came to Florida to try and distance myself."

A man named Mario Segura became close to Kretzmer when they worked together after Kretzmer moved from New Jersey to Florida in the mid 1990s. He quickly fit in with Mario's family and friends, which is how he met Gissele

Kretzmer made ends' meet through various odd jobs, including working as a maintenance man at a Marriot hotel. Police learned it was there that Linda met him in 1999, when she and her sister Bernice stayed for a weekend arts festival.

"And see, I went back up to the room around 10 or 11. She went down to the cocktail lounge, and I don't know, maybe she met him down there later," Bernice remembers.

Later that night, Bernice woke to Kretzmer knocking on their door. Asked what he said, Bernice says, "Nothing, he just says, 'Is Linda there?' That's all. And I said, 'No, she's sleeping.'"

Bernice had never seen Kretzmer before, nor did she know Linda would continue a relationship with him.

"I think he was probably using her. She was vulnerable because she was a lonely person. And, you know, open to that," Keith says.

By 2001, Linda and Kretzmer's relationship had fizzled out. He was still working odd jobs, when Mario urged him to leave Florida and join the Navy.

But just seven months into his service, while stationed in California, Kretzmer's life went off track when he was arrested after a high speed chase with a police officer and charged with being under the influence of controlled substance, resisting an officer, drunk driving and petty theft.

Kretzmer was discharged from the Navy and served eight months in a California state prison. To his friends back in Florida, Kretzmer seemed to have just fallen off the map, until the winter of 2003 when he called from New Jersey to say he was coming for a visit.

Gissele says Kretzmer looked like a "different human being" to her. "You know that look that someone has when someone hasn't slept for days or taken a shower or something. Dirty, like tired," she recalls.

Kretzmer's personality had changed dramatically as well. He was withdrawn and appeared troubled, even telling Gissele he was hearing voices in his head

"There was something that happened that week, that I never knew until two, three months later, when something happened with him and my mother. And my mother never told me," Mario remembers.

That week, Mario's 70-year-old mother says Kretzmer made a pass at her when they were alone. "He sits her at the edge of the bed and proceeds to lift her blouse over her head, to which point she slaps the blouse down and said, 'What are you doing?'" Keith explains.

Kretzmer's odd behavior continued when a few nights later he was staying with Gissele's family in Miami. "The very horrible thing he said is like he wanted to have sex with me and my mother," Gissele remembers.

Her reaction? "I told him he was sick. The next day I put him on the train again and that was it. That was the last time I saw him," she recalls.

Prosecutor Angela Miller says Kretzmer's behavior then went from disturbing to dangerous. "He was in Port St. Lucie looking for a girlfriend that he had had a relationship with. And when he didn't locate her, he ended up committing a crime of violence on a convenience-store clerk who wouldn't give him a pair of sunglasses for free," she says.

And then came his last night in Florida, when Kretzmer decided to look up one more old friend. "And I think Linda Fishman was the final stop," Miller says.

It was just after 1 a.m. when Mario heard from Kretzmer, who called and wanted him to pick him up from the local train station.

That train station, Keith says, is where Linda's car was found.

Mario says Kretzmer also had a bag with some pictures in it.

At that point Keith says, "We knew Fred was our guy."

And it wasn't hard to track him down: four months after Linda's murder, detectives found Kretzmer in a Florida jail for the store clerk beating. Kretzmer was charged with the first degree murder of Linda Fishman. But with no forensic evidence linking him to the crime, could they get a conviction?

It took four years, but in June 2007, Michael Jamrock was finally vindicated in the murder of his aunt. "It's been very difficult for me for four years, everybody thinking that my son did it and everything. It was awful. I mean that was his godmother! I mean, she was like his mother," Bernice says.

Although the case against Kretzmer was mostly circumstantial, prosecutor Angela Miller was confident. "We didn't have a concern about winning this case at trial. We knew that our work was cut out for us," she recalls.

At the top of her witness list was former roommate Mario Segura, whose account of the morning after the murder was invaluable. "Mario walks into Fred's room and sees media coverage of the murder on the TV and sees Fred holding a jewelry box. Fred tries to cover up the jewelry. And at that point, Fred turns off the TV and the wheels start spinning in Mario's mind, 'Did this guy just kill this woman?'" Keith explains.

"It took me many, many weeks and many months until I kind of said, 'Is this real? Is this real?' And it was affecting me, my mother, everything. You know, it's just something that I couldn't take anymore," Mario recalls.

Mario says he remained silent for so long because he was scared. "Well, you know, I don't want someone to come and maybe burn my house, or come and do something to my mother or myself."

Too afraid to tell police, Mario instead confided in Gissele, who then bravely wrote that letter.

Mario and Gissele stood ready to testify against their former friend, until an unexpected development would change everything.

According to his public defender, Kretzmer wanted to take responsibility for his actions and agreed to a plea deal of second degree murder and first degree arson, and to give a full confession in open court.

In court, Kretzmer said he returned to Linda's home to "rekindle" an old friendship, that there was no sexual contact in the context of the crimes that he committed, and that he wasn't interested in money when he went to her home.

"And, she came out of her bedroom and that's where I seen her for the first time," Kretzmer told the court. "She was frightened because she didn't have any recollection of me. She didn't recognize me."

That's when Linda threatened to call police. The walls were closing in on Kretzmer. After a week in which he alienated old friends and savagely beat that store clerk, Kretzmer knew he could go back to prison and panicked.

"I was caught, very, very emotionally and I didn't know what to do, so I went at her and I took her from behind," he told the court. "I strangled her."

"There was no struggle. It was more, she was turning to move away, still just in a threatening way, just loud, yelling and upset, very upset," he recalled.

He also talked about pouring alcohol on her hands and neck because he had touched her to cover the crime scene. And he says he tried to close her eyes; when that failed, he covered her face with an arm chair cover.

Just before sentencing, Kretzmer offered a surprising apology to Linda's family, saying, "I'd just like to apologize. I don't know where you are sitting out there. I'm sorry."

Michael Jamrock also received an apology from Det. Keith. "I did what I had to do. Was I wrong? Yes. Did I apologize? Yes," he says.

But no amount of apologies will ever really be enough for Michael Jamrock, who lost so much more than his aunt that night; he lost his family. "I'm a perfect example of family just throwing you right in front of a bus," he says. "What they did is just -- it's unspeakable."

"Do you thank God that you're walking, a free man?" Roberts asks Jamrock.

"I just always think of my aunt. And I always think that how strong she was and how positive she was," he replies. "As bizarre as it may seem, I don't think she would have ever allowed it to happen. She's taken care of me my whole life. You know, call Auntie Linda. And everything's gonna be all right."

Michael Jamrock and Gissele Ospina have become friends.

Produced By Mary Noonan