Police identify body found in South Carolina home, and the person is not who they expected

By Jay Croft, Josh Campbell and Tina Burnside, CNN

When a neighbor went to check on 70-year-old James Fitzgerald on November 6, they found a decomposing body inside the home Fitzgerald had lived in for the last 15 years in the town of Seneca, about an hour outside of Greenville, South Carolina.

Police used autopsy results and fingerprints to positively identify the dead man, and it turns out his name, in fact, was not James Fitzgerald.

And he was no ordinary neighbor.

Authorities identified the body as belonging to Frederick McLean, a fugitive on the FBI’s 15 Most Wanted Fugitive list, the US Marshals Service announced in a news release on Friday.

Mclean had been on the run for 16 years. He was wanted by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department in California on multiple counts of sexual assault on a child and was deemed at high risk for sexually assaulting young girls. One alleged victim, now an adult, reported McLean assaulted her more than 100 times, starting when she was 5 years old and ending about seven years later.

An arrest warrant was issued for him in 2005 and he was added to the fugitive list in 2006.

“The discovery of Frederick McLean’s body marks an end to the manhunt, but the investigation continues,” said US Marshals Service Director Ronald Davis in the release

Marshals and local authorities continue their investigation to see if McLean had any help to avoid the law.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.

CNN’s Josh Campbell and Tina Burnside contributed to this report.