Episode 178: The Murder of Mary O’Hagan
On September 10th, 2010, three men: Richard Fletcher, his half-brother Keith Baird, and Fletcher’s cousin, Michael Norrie, found themselves hanging out in a vacant lot in Sheffield, Vermont. The trio were enjoying some methamphetamines while they hung out, and soon they realized that they would soon run out of the drugs and needed to find a way to get more. Their solution was to rob someone, and the men recalled an elderly woman who lived nearby.
78-year-old Mary “Pat” O’Hagan lived close to the vacant lot, and the trio had been acquainted with her as they had done work for her in the past. This meant that they knew where she kept her extra key - underneath her front doormat. So, with their plan in motion, after doing more drugs, the men split up and went to their respective homes to get guns. Fletcher thought it would be better if only one of their guns was loaded, his, because he wasn’t as high as his friends. Norrie and Baird both got .22 caliber handguns, while Fletcher had his shotgun already in his truck.
The men returned to the vacant lot before they enacted their plan, which they decided would take place at 12:30 a.m. to ensure that Mary would be asleep and that they could go in and out, stealing money and any medication she had with no one getting hurt. Unfortunately, they did get high one more time before the plan was to be put into place, and due to their states of minds, they all got impatient and decided to go through with it at midnight, at least half an hour early.
Norrie and Baird entered the home from the front door, only wearing gloves as protection, and Fletcher entered through the back, wearing gloves and a mask. As soon as Fletcher walked inside, he made the horrifying discovery that Mary was actually still awake, watching television. Before anyone could make any decisions, Norrie ordered Mary on her knees on the kitchen floor. The grandmother-of-nine cowered on the ground, begging for her life, telling the men to take whatever they wanted. When Fletcher and Baird went off to search for money while Norrie kept his gun that the other men thought was unloaded trained on the back of Mary’s head. The men then suddenly heard two gunshots come from downstairs.
Norrie had shot Mary twice in the back of the head. This caused a brief fight in which Fletcher nearly shot Norrie himself, shooting a hole into the ceiling. The men attempted to clean up the crime scene and then transported Mary’s body a few miles away into the woods of Wheelock, Vermont. It didn’t take very long for Mary’s disappearance to be noted, as she was a prominent member of her community, constantly volunteering and being active in her church.
Just three weeks after she disappeared, on October 3rd, 2010, Mary’s body was found by several bird hunters. She was unburied, and she was not wearing underwear or pants. There was evidence of sexual assault.
It would be several years before any sort of answer would come for who was responsible for the murder of Mary. However, the information investigators were looking for came in an unexpected way. In 2013, Michael Norrie was being questioned on unrelated firearms charges when he made some self-incriminating statements regarding Mary O’Hagan’s murder. In his interview, he also managed to incriminate Baird and Fletcher, ultimately taking them down with him. When Fletcher was interviewed, he did not help himself by giving the police information and details that hadn’t been made public yet, such as the bullet hole in the ceiling. Baird, on the other hand, offered inconsistent stories to investigators when he was interviewed several times. What didn’t help the men’s cases was that they were all already serving time for separate, unrelated crimes. Finally, after a year of investigating the new leads, the three men were arrested in March of 2014.
Richard Fletcher had been serving time for child pornography and sexual exploitation of a minor charges and received an additional 15 years and eight months for the exploitation charges, then Mary’s murder. Michael Norrie pleaded guilty to burglary, kidnapping, and first-degree murder in July of 2015, receiving 23 to 50 years in prison, with probation indefinitely following his release. Lastly, in April of 2018, Keith Baird pled no contest to burglary and kidnapping charges, allowing for the first-degree murder charge to be dropped completely thanks to a plea deal. He was sentenced to 15 to 30 years for the burglary charges, and an additional 15 to 30 years for the kidnapping charges.
Mary’s family was rightfully frustrated by the lack of severity in the men’s sentences and the eventual reduction of the murder charges due to the men taking plea deals. They wish to have Mary known as someone who would do anything for anyone and always gave to her community.
Image sources:
caledonianrecord.com - “Mary ‘Pat’ O’Hagan Obituary”