Golden — Michael Fitzgerald testified this afternoon that he watched his friend, Michael Tate, kill his father, Steven, by hitting him eight to 10 times in the face with a shovel.
Fitzgerald and Tate, who were 17 and 16, respectively, at the time of the November 2004 murder, hid Steven Fitzgerald’s body behind some trash cans and then trashed the family’s Westminster home to make it look like a burglary, Fitzgerald testified in the trial that is expected to last at least two more weeks.
“Dad tells me to help him out,” Fitzgerald testified. “I started hearing my voices … they started yelling at me to hurt my dad.”
Fitzgerald, who said he was “kind of” angry with his dad, said he threw a posthole digger “like a spear,” hitting his father in the stomach. Steven Fitzgerald swung the posthole digger at Tate, who was wielding a shovel.
Though detectives said the father was stabbed several times in the chest, Fitzgerald said he didn’t see a knife.
After Steven Fitzgerald lay motionless on the garage floor, the two boys went into the house. Fitzgerald said he gathered up clothes and Tate appeared in the doorway eating cookie-dough ice cream.
Earlier today Michael Fitzgerald identified Tate as the murderer.
“Did you kill your father?” prosecutors asked Fitzgerald.
“No,” Fitzgerald replied.
“Who did?” they asked.
“He’s in the courtroom,” Fitzgerald answered. Asked to describe the person, Fitzgerald said without looking at Tate, “He’s wearing a white shirt.”
The person who killed his father, Fitzgerald responded when asked, was “Michael Tate.”
Fitzgerald was sentenced in March to 62 years in prison on charges of second-degree murder and second-degree burglary.
Fitzgerald testified against Tate as part of his plea bargain. Tate has been charged with first-degree murder in Steven Fitzgerald’s death.
The two boys broke into the Fitzgerald home to steal a car, documents said. Steven Fitzgerald apparently surprised them.
Michael Fitzgerald told of how he met Tate in a group home, talking of a shared appreciation for “death rap” music, such as by the Insane Clown Posse.
The two ran away from the facility, “spaging” or begging for money, stealing food and living in a shed behind the house of an acquaintance who befriended them on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder.
The two smoked marijuana several times a day and made $50 each for handing out a candidate’s flyers, according to Fitzgerald’s testimony.
Before the trial broke for lunch, Fitzgerald said that he learned his fiancée was pregnant, that Tate carried a Satanic bible and said he talked with Satan, and that they broke into the acquaintance’s house to steal cigarettes, CDs, kitchen knives and a class ring “because I liked it.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
