A South Side Slopes man pleaded guilty Thursday to first-degree murder for the stabbing death last year of his estranged wife.
William Fitzgerald, 51, will be sentenced May 13 to a mandatory term of life in prison with no parole by Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Elliot Howsie.
According to Deputy District Attorney Ryan Kiray, Pittsburgh police were called to the 2100 block of Arlington Avenue on Jan. 5, 2023, by a man who found his daughter stabbed and unresponsive in her home.
Officers found Tarae Washington, 47, on the kitchen floor. She had been dead for some time, Kiray told the court.
Washington had been stabbed nine times, and her hands were shackled behind her back.
Detectives, the prosecutor said, found blood throughout the two-story house and a bloody knife in an upstairs hallway. They also found a bloody jug cut into the shape of a funnel near the victim’s head. It was not clear what the jug was for.
Kiray told the court that Washington had been in the process of divorcing her husband, although they still lived together.
On the day Washington’s body was found, Kiray continued, her cousin received a text message from Fitzgerald that had pictures of Washington with her former husband, Mark Washington, on a recent trip to Baltimore.
Then, on Jan. 6, 2023, Mark Washington received a message from Fitzgerald’s phone number that had a picture of her dead body.
The text read: “This is what y’all got her.”
Fitzgerald was arrested four days later along Interstate 79 near Morgantown, W.Va.
