It seems that future rewatches of Captain America: The First Avenger will contain a fairly disquieting moment. In the scene where Dominic Cooper’s Howard Stark appears on stage with some glamorous ‘Stark Girls,’ one of them gives him a hug and a kiss (check it out here). The person playing her is Mollie Fitzgerald, who also served as production assistant to director Joe Johnston on the movie. Now, however, it seems that she may soon add ‘convicted murderer’ to ‘MCU bit player’ on her resume.
On December 20th, cops responding to an armed disturbance found Fitzgerald’s 68-year-old mother Patricia lying dead inside her home with a knife sticking out of her back. Fitzgerald was also at the scene and was taken to a local hospital with injuries of her own, before she was arrested on suspicion of murder. Now, in criminal affidavits unearthed by TMZ, she’s arguing that she killed her mother in self-defense.
Fitzgerald claims that her mother came at her with a knife, forcing her to defend herself by stabbing her in the back. She says her story is backed up by her own defensive wounds, including cuts on her palms and a bite mark on her arm. Adding a disconcerting wrinkle to all this though is that Patricia had defensive wounds of her own, with one slash nearly severing her thumb, as well as bruising on her face, lip and neck.
The documents also reveal that the Johnson Country Medical Examiner “did not find any injuries consistent with Patricia having delivered any strikes or having been in control of the involved knife.” No word yet on when the case is set to go to trial, but it seems that her innocence or guilt will depend on whether a jury believes that the Captain America actress is the aggressor or not.
