Background
Fitzpatrick was born April 25, 1955 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Fitzpatrick was born April 25, 1955 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
She received her Bachelor in physics (1976) from Rice University, and her Master of Arts (1983) and Doctor of Philosophy in nuclear physics (1983) from Duke University.
She is best known for helping identify remains found in the crash site of Northwest Flight 4422 that crashed in Alaska in 1948. She worked on high resolution optical measurement techniques at Spectron Development Laboratories, after which she founded an optics company that did contract research and development, Rice Systems, in her garage in 1986. The company grew to employ seven scientists but closed in 2005 after National Aeronautics and Space Administration dropped a project on which the company depended.
At a loss for what to do next, she finished working on a book about forensic genealogy that she had started writing in 2002, and after publishers didn"t accept it, she self-published the book in 2005 and started selling it at genealogy conferences.
She set up a corresponding website, and started writing columns on the topic for magazines and websites. In 2006, she was asked to find a missing person by someone who wanted to buy land, but the title owner could not be foundation
This work led to her next venture, Identifinders International, which uses the techniques of forensic genealogy to find missing people.
She is a Fellow of the Society of Photoinstrumentation Engineers (International Society for Optical Engineering) and an Associate Member of the American Academy of Forensic Science.