[3][4] She lectured at Sam Houston University for two years, before working on a laser radar system at Rockwell International and then high resolution optical measurement techniques at Spectron Development Laboratories.
[6] In 2006, Hebron Investments asked her to find a missing person because someone wanted to buy land, but the title owner could not be found.
Her next venture, Identifinders International, founded with her late partner Andy Yeiser (an engineering and business management consultant),[9][10] she uses the techniques of forensic genealogy to identify victims and perpetrators of violent crimes, as well as Jane/John Doe cases where the body has been left unidentified for as long as decades sometimes.
In 2020, Dr. Fitzpatrick of Identifinders International and The Porchlight Project helped Ohio police identify James Zastawnick as a suspect in the 1987 murder by strangulation of 17-year-old Barbara Blatnik.
[9] In 2015 Fitzpatrick, Cece Moore and a team of adoption researchers helped Benjaman Kyle, an amnesiac since 2004, find his identity (William Burgess Powell) and family members.
[19][20] In 2020 she helped Orange County, California police identify the body of a young woman who had been found in 1968 beaten, raped and her throat cut near Huntington Beach as 26-year-old Anita Louise Piteau.
[49] and a Jane Doe in Phoenix, Arizona (Ginger Lynn Bibb) [50] and was involved in the identification of Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
She is a Fellow of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)[51] and an Associate Member of the American Academy of Forensic Science.