By Elise Kaplan
Albuquerque Journal
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — When Don Fluitt returned home from visiting his mother in California with his 11-year-old daughter shortly after Christmas, something appeared to be amiss.
His golden Labrador retriever Buddy was scared and skittish. There was a pot on the stove – caked with congealed oil – that he hadn’t left there.
Still, he needed to get his daughter back to her mother, so Fluitt dropped her off and then returned by himself to his two-story home near Coors and Sequoia NW.
The next day, on Dec. 29, the 54-year-old former firefighter and devout Christian, was found brutally slain in his garage, his brother Dennis Fluitt told the Journal in an interview Thursday.
Police have released few details about what happened, including how he died or any possible motive.
Dennis said detectives asked him not to say how his brother had been killed, but he could say it was horrific. He said he doesn’t think just one person could be responsible.
“I couldn’t imagine anybody having to endure something like that,” he said. “It must have been a horrible last few minutes for him.”
Police don’t have any suspects, said officer Fred Duran, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department. He said they don’t have any reason to believe the public is in danger, but they still have very little information to go on.
A GENEROUS SPIRIT
Dennis said it was the routine for Don to phone his daughter every night before she went to sleep at her mother’s house. So when his daughter didn’t hear from her dad the night of their return, or again the next day, she called his work.
Two co-workers went to check on him and walked into a bloody scene.
Dennis said nothing appeared to have been stolen from the house and his brother’s truck was still in the garage.
“It didn’t seem like they had looked through the drawers,” he said. “His keys were on the counter, his wallet had money in it.”
Dennis said he has no idea why someone would kill his brother. He said detectives told his family that even a search through Don’s phone didn’t provide any hints.
“I think that makes it hard (to figure out what happened) too because he lived a clean life,” Dennis said. “It wasn’t like he was into drugs or messing around with different women.”
Dennis said Don had been a firefighter with the Gallup Fire Department several years ago and more recently with the Bernalillo County Fire Department in Los Ranchos before working for an organization that helped disabled adults get jobs.
Don regularly attended Sagebrush Church in Northwest Albuquerque and a couple of years ago originated “Spaghetti Sundays” to provide food to people in need.
“One night, (Don and his daughter) made dinner – spaghetti – and they made way too much, so they decided to take it and give it to a homeless person,” Dennis said. “And then it turned into this amazing huge, thing.”
Spaghetti Sundays became a weekly event, with people dropping off food, canned goods and clothes for Don, his daughter and other volunteers to take Downtown and give to homeless people.
Tributes to Don online and on social media frequently mention the dinners.
INVESTIGATION STALLED
Dennis said he and Don, who is his older brother by just two weeks short of a year, moved from their home town in California to Albuquerque in the 1980s. They remained close, but had drifted apart in recent years when Dennis moved to Arizona.
A month before Don’s death, Dennis had decided to return to Albuquerque.
Dennis said he had spent January at his brother’s apartment – cleaning, boxing up belongings and trying to figure out what to do with everything that was left behind.
“I’ve come to know Don through all the people at his church, and all the people at his work,” Dennis said. “When you’re moving your late brother’s belongings and his stuff, you learn a lot about him.”
He found a certificate Don recently received after training to be an EMT. And he found trinkets and letters to give to Don’s daughter as he packed up her purple bedroom so she wouldn’t have to come into the house herself.
Dennis scrubbed blood from the wall and the garage floor, until the only sign of what had happened was an unnaturally white area.
As he waits for the closure that might come when his brother’s killers are found, Dennis has been searching the neighborhood for a murder weapon that might have been tossed aside.
He has met with a homicide detective about every week but said the meetings are growing increasingly frustrating as the investigation seems to have stalled.
“It’s almost like living life in slow motion,” Dennis said. “You keep waiting for answers but I don’t know if we’ll ever know why somebody would do such a horrible thing. Don didn’t deserve it.”
Tips: Police ask anyone with any information about this case to contact CrimeStoppers at 843-Stop.
Copyright 2017 the Albuquerque Journal