Richard Dabate a 40-year-old Connecticut man has been charged with his wife Connie’s murder after authorities recovered her FitBit. Information gathered from the device was used to track her final movements. Interestingly, Connie's FitBit showed she had been moving more than an hour after Dabate claimed an intruder had shot her around 9am.
District attorney Craig Stedman regarding the FitBit records, “to say it is rare to use FitBit records would be safe. It is an electronic footprint that tracks your movements. It is a great tool for investigators to use. We can also get the information much faster than some other types of evidence such as DNA tests.” FitBit, a fitness device that tracks your steps.
Dabate told police his wife had been killed an hour earlier with a magnum .357 he had recently bought when he called 911 at 10:11am to report the murder. Detectives now believe the CCTV footage from the gym Connie had been exercising at, data on Connie's FitBit and the timing of her Facebook posts reveal Dabate’s timing to be significantly off.
Connie Dabate memorial. Connie’s FitBit tracked 1,217 feet between 9:18 a.m. and 10:05 a.m. The total distance it would take Connie to walk from the car to where her body was found in the basement was no more than 125 feet. She also posted video to her Facebook account at 9:46am. Dabate home in Ellighton, CT.
Initially, when detectives surveyed the home for evidence it was surprisingly orderly given the struggle Dabate described, as a masked home invader had shot his wife dead in the basement during a chase through their home. Dabate descibed a man sounding like Vin Diesel who "manhandled" him.
Dabate claimed he used the same blowtorch the killer had used to torture him to burn his face after he had been tied up at which point the intruder fled from the home. Furthermore, during investigation three dogs were unable to to pick up anyone else’s scent on the property, and detectives were unable to locate any point of entry for the intruder.
During interrogation Dabate admitted to having an extramarital affair that ended in an unplanned pregnancy. When asked whether his wife knew about the affair or unplanned pregnancy outside of their marriage he was vague with police and claimed his wife and he wanted to have a child but that Connie was unable to conceive. Records show he spent $1,200 at a strip club and at a local hotel. The same secret credit card he used to pay for the strip club and hotel was also used to pay for flowers for his girlfriend.
Just five days after the murder Dabate attempted to claim a $475,000 life insurance policy on his wife while had had cancelled his own policy 2 yeas prior. On April 14th Richard Dabate was arrested at his home in Ellington Connecticut. He has been charged with tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, providing a false statement and murder.