Peter Kensler was shot twice with a shotgun and left dying in the snow of his own driveway in Manchester, Michigan on Feb. 4, 1976. Fifty years later, no one has ever been prosecuted for his murder — but a deathbed tip this fall sent FBI agents and Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputies jackhammering through concrete beneath an old horse pool, hunting for answers that still haven’t come.
A Tip, a Barn, and Three Days of Digging
Kensler, a 36-year-old estate attorney, was found fatally shot outside his home by his sister, Patricia Fitzgerald, according to MLive.com. Fitzgerald, now 94, returned to the Sharon Township property where her brother died in May, decades after the shooting that has never produced an arrest. Police have pursued leads over the years but never prosecuted a suspect in his death, per the same outlet.
The renewed activity began Oct. 7, when FBI agents and sheriff’s deputies arrived at a Sharon Township farm and spent three days, through Oct. 9, jackhammering and sawing through concrete beneath a dormant, 11-foot-deep swimming pool once used to exercise horses in a barn on the property. Investigators were searching for evidence that could link the farm’s previous owner, Neil Baggett, to the unsolved killing, the outlet reported. Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Lt. Shane Peltier said the search stemmed from a deathbed tip, though he declined to identify the tipster.
Second Search, Same Empty Result
The Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it is taking another look at the case with assistance from the FBI, according to The Sun Times News. Investigators returned to the property on Oct. 29 for a second search — this time with about seven deputies arriving while current owner Matthew Albert was at work. Albert, who bought the farm and roughly 20 acres with his wife in December 2024, said deputies spent about five hours searching the entire house, focusing particularly on the heat vents.
Albert told detectives it would make sense to him if he knew what they knew, and he said investigators told him the information prompting the search came from Baggett himself — a secondhand account that doesn’t establish whether Baggett was ever formally considered a suspect. Peltier said the second search sought crime evidence that may have been left at the residence before Albert took possession, but ultimately no evidence related to the investigation was located. Peltier added that investigators currently have no reason to conduct further searches at the property.
Who Was Neil Baggett?
Baggett and his wife, Paris, bought the Michigan horse farm in October 1964 and later acquired adjoining acreage, where Baggett dug a homemade horse track, sometimes training horses by towing a sulky behind a pickup truck. Neighbor Eric Cooper, who bought property next to the farm in 1986, estimated Baggett moved off the land in the mid-1990s, though the couple continued to own and rent the property for decades afterward, per MLive’s reporting…