Man Reported Missing From Newtown Located In Tennessee

By Andrew Gorosko

A two-week search for a local man ended on Monday, April 4, in Knoxville, Tenn., when police there located William Fitzgibbons, 56, who had been reported missing from his Fox Run Lane South home on March 21 by his wife, Newtown police said.

Newtown police said that on April 4, they were contacted by officials from the University of Tennessee’s Knoxville campus that the missing Mr Fitzgibbons had been found.

University police located Mr Fitzsimmons’s 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee on the university campus and then found Mr Fitzgibbons at a nearby Starbucks coffee shop, according to Newtown police.

Before his disappearance, the last time that Mr Fitzgibbons had contact with his wife, Jayne, was at about 5 pm on March 21, when he called her from a service telephone at the Big Y supermarket at 6 Queen Street. Mr Fitzgibbons told his wife that he was having vehicle problems and that he would be home late.

Ms Fitzgibbons reported him missing to police at 9:30 pm that night. Police verified that Mr Fitzgibbons was at the Big Y through review of its video security recordings.

Mr Fitzgibbons had left his cellphone at home that day and thus police were not able to electronically identify the locations where he would be using that cellphone, complicating their search for him.

Police, however, did widely publicize that Mr Fitzgibbons was last seen driving his Jeep SUV bearing Connecticut marker plate 709-EFK. Newtown police contacted other police departments to alert them of the man’s unexpected disappearance.

Friends of the Fitzgibbons family distributed “missing person” leaflets bearing Mr Fitzgibbons’s photo and identifying information in area towns shortly after his disappearance.

Mr Fitzgibbons, who is self-employed as a financial trader, works at home.

After two weeks of no updates on the story, Police Chief Michael Kehoe announced during the morning of Monday, April 4, that there had been a confirmed sighting of Mr Fitzgibbons by a hotel clerk some days earlier when he had spent four days as a hotel guest in an undisclosed major Midwestern city.

Police realized that Mr Fitzgibbons had been there after checking a parking ticket that had been issued on his vehicle for a parking violation near the hotel. But police never made contact with Mr Fitzgibbons in that city.

On April 6, Chief Kehoe said that Newtown police have not determined why Mr Fitzgibbons unexpectedly disappeared from Newtown on March 21.

Chief Kehoe noted that Mr Fitzgibbons has family members living in the Knoxville area and that he had formerly attended college there.

After Knoxville officials located Mr Fitzgibbons, he was joined by his family members from that area.

Mr Fitzgibbons appeared unharmed, but was taken to a hospital there for an evaluation, police said.

The Fitzgibbons family is working together to resolve the matter, according to police.

No criminal charges were present in connection with Mr Fitzgibbons’ disappearance and the case is considered closed, according to police.

Attempts to reach Ms Fitzgibbons for comment were unsuccessful.