Editor’s note: This story is a combination of two published in The Palm Beach Post on June 9 and June 12, 2007.
Linda Fishman was the widow of a judge and living comfortably in suburban Boca Raton when she was strangled in the living room of her Boca Winds home in February 2003.
Now her case is being featured in a true crime podcast posted June 26 from 48 Hours.
Police figured that Fishman, 55, knew her killer. There were no signs of forced entry, and she was wearing pajamas.
The killer set two fires in the three-bedroom home and fled in Fishman’s 1989 Lincoln Town Car. He also took several pieces of her jewelry and artwork.
Linda Fishman’s nephew ‘two days away from being charged’
Sheriff’s investigators had plenty of potential suspects, according to hundreds of pages of reports detailing their probe. They tested saliva for DNA from friends and acquaintances of Fishman, including her brother; a felon she dated once after flirting with him at a traffic signal; and another man she knew socially who was questioned 30 years earlier about a possible contract killing of a woman in Las Vegas.
Then there was Fishman’s nephew, former Y-100 disc jockey Michael Jamrock, who lived a few minutes away. After he took a polygraph examination, a sheriff’s detective accused him of killing his aunt, who financially supported him. Jamrock denied it.
“I was the number one suspect,” said Jamrock, 39. “They made my life a living hell for about a year. I was two days away from being charged.”
He wasn’t, however.
The killer was known for abusing cough syrup
Linda H. Fishman on 2/7/03 was found dead in her home in Boca Raton, Florida. There was an attempt to set fire to the house. Her vehcle was stolen from the residence and is described as a 1989 four door Lincoln Town Car, white with a black top.
On June 11, 2007, the man eventually charged with the crimes, a felon with a fondness for older women and for abusing cough syrup, pleaded guilty to reduced charges — second degree murder and first degree arson. Fred Kretzmer was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
It was only after a sheriff’s detective got an anonymous letter four months after Fishman’s slaying that authorities had an inkling that Kretzmer was involved. And it would be two years and eight months after the murder before he was indicted — just as he was about to be released from prison after serving two years on robbery and battery charges in a St. Lucie County case.
When Fishman was found strangled with twine, investigators painstakingly reconstructed her life, looking for clues. They learned that she moved to Florida around 1993 after her husband’s death in Connecticut. She often dined in Palm Beach and Boca Raton restaurants — sometimes with friends, often alone.
Fishman liked to wear expensive jewelry. She recently had been on a “date from hell” with a man who kept staring at her rings. A man working on his fourth divorce had spent New Year’s Eve at her home. She had used the services of and befriended a psychic.
Investigators also learned that Fishman was generous to charities and to individuals when she was in the manic phase of her bipolar disorder. When siblings had her committed involuntarily under the Baker Act for a psychiatric evaluation twice in 1998, she revised her will and left her possessions to her mother.
Former roommate’s friend fingers Fred Kretzmer
WEST PALM BEACH – Fred Kretzmer turns to offer an apology to the family of Linda Fishman after pleading guilty to second degree murder and first degree arson June 11, 2007 in Fishman’s 2003 murder.
These leads and others were followed up. Then came the typed letter to sheriff’s Detective Eric Keith: The night of Fishman’s murder, “I heard a guy named Frederick Kretzmer was driving her car and had a few pieces of her jewelry with him. I do not have any proof; I just want to point you (in) the right direction.”
Six weeks later, Keith met Mario Segura at his Palm Beach Gardens home. Kretzmer had once been his roommate and was visiting him from New Jersey at the time Fishman was killed. Segura said Kretzmer called him at 1:18 a.m. in the hours after Fishman’s murder and asked him to pick him up at the Mangonia Park Tri-Rail station. That’s where Fishman’s car was ditched.
Segura said he found Kretzmer holding several bottles of liquor and some art work that he claimed somebody had given him. The next day, he found jewelry in Kretzmer’s room. His house guest flew home to New Jersey later that day, leaving the paintings with Segura.
Investigators later learned that Kretzmer and Fishman had had a previous sexual relationship — one that Kretzmer told a friend he was in “for the money.”
The investigation eventually led detectives to Gissele Ospina of Sunny Isles. She was friends with Kretzmer. At a party at Segura’s home four months after the Fishman murder, Segura told her he suspected that Kretzmer was the woman’s killer and explained why.
Ospina urged Segura to contact authorities. But he now feared Kretzmer, so Ospina mailed the anonymous letter to Keith.
Investigators continued to learn more about Kretzmer. He had a history of drug use and getting stoned on over-the-counter cough medicine. And Fishman wasn’t the first older woman in whom he was interested. Segura learned that his friend had attempted to lift up his mother’s nightshirt. And Ospina said he expressed an interest in having sex with her mother.
How and why Fred Kretzmer killed Linda Fishman
WEST PALM BEACH – Linda Fishman’s sister Bernice Ferency and Ferency’s son Michael Jamrock talk to the press after Fred Kretzmer pleaded guilty to second degree murder and first degree arson on June 11, 2007.
At his plea hearing, Kretzmer described how he arrived at Fishman’s home and waited for her on the patio. He entered her home through the garage and surprised her in her bedroom. Then he strangled her and concealed the evidence.
“I went at her and took her from behind,” he said. “There was no struggle.”
When she came out, “She didn’t recognize me,” Kretzmer said, and screamed for him to leave.
Kretzmer said he tried to retreat while looking for her car keys, then grabbed a cord off her kitchen table and strangled her. He poured alcohol on her neck and hands and set two small fires in the house to conceal evidence, he said. He claimed he took liquor and artwork from the home only to make it look as if a burglar killed her. Then he stole her car.
He was released in 2022 and is now 51 years old.
Jamrock and other family members were present for Kretzmer’s plea.
“We’re kind of happy it’s over,” Jamrock said beforehand. “We have our happy thoughts about Linda and remember her the way she was.”
Larry Keller is a former courts reporter for The Palm Beach Post.
Holly Baltz, an editor at The Post who writes about true crime, contributed to this story. You can reach her at hbaltz@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: 48 Hours podcast: Murder of judge’s widow Linda Fishman in Boca Raton