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.
Baggett eventually returned to Stewart, Tennessee, where he died at age 89 on Feb. 22, 2026, according to his obituary from McReynolds-Nave & Larson funeral home, which described him as a lifelong Houston County resident and a talented horse trainer by trade. Neighbors who knew him in Tennessee offered conflicting impressions: Doreen Fryman said Baggett owned many properties and a pizza shop that operated until a couple of years before his death, and recalled him telling her he would never return to Michigan, while Cora Ross described him simply as a real nice guy.
A Case Full of Old Dead Ends
The investigation into Kensler's death has circled several threads over the decades without resolution. A Washtenaw County sheriff's detective told the Ann Arbor News in 1985 that investigators had determined a bitter power struggle over control of an area bank — which Kensler had joined businessmen in trying to take over via proxy fight — was not the motive for his killing, even though the bank's then-president remained influential locally. Separately, Harold Kerr said investigators at the time suspected someone connected to Kensler's Detroit-area life may have brought another person to the house to carry out the killing.
The case remains open five decades after Kensler died in the snow outside his own front door, with the most recent searches of the Sharon Township farm turning up nothing investigators have described as connected to his death. Peltier's statement that there is currently no reason for further searches leaves the question of who killed Peter Kensler — and why — unresolved.
