On May 4, 1991, 39-year-old Pattie Diann Fugate was ambushed and killed at her Lake Sinclair home in Putnam, Georgia. Her ex-husband, Wallace Marvin Fugate, III, who had been subject to a restraining order after their divorce, had broken into the house and was waiting in the basement when Pattie and her 15-year-old son, Mark, returned. Wallace confronted Pattie with a pistol; their son attempted to intervene with a rifle that Wallace had disabled. Wallace dragged Pattie outside, pistol-whipped her about 50 times, forced her toward a van, and shot her in the forehead as their son watched.

Wallace fled in the van but turned himself in the same day. At trial, he claimed the gun fired accidentally during a struggle, but Mark’s testimony helped the prosecution. The jury convicted Wallace of murder, burglary, kidnapping with bodily injury, two counts of aggravated assault, and theft by taking a motor vehicle; he was sentenced to death and given lengthy terms on the other counts.

Did anyone in the Putnam County area who knew Pattie or Mark come forward with information about their lives before that day?