Richard Dabate, centre, appears with lawyers Hubie Santos, left, and Trent LaLima while being arraigned in Rockville Superior Court. Photo / AP
Richard Dabate, centre, appears with lawyers Hubie Santos, left, and Trent LaLima while being arraigned in Rockville Superior Court. Photo / AP
A man in Connecticut, US, has been charged with murdering his wife after police allege that his story that she was killed by a burglar was untrue - as based on evidence from her FitBit.
Richard Dabate, a 40-year-old computer technician, told police that he had dropped off their sons, aged 9 and 6, at the school bus stop then returned to his home in Ellington, after receiving an alert that an alarm was going off.
He said that, arriving back about 9am, he was confronted by a stocky 1.9m masked man "with a Vin Diesel voice" rifling through their belongings, the Daily Telegraph reports.
Dabate said he wrestled with the man, then heard his wife, Connie, return home from her spin class - and yelled at her to run.
Dabate said the man incapacitated him by using pressure points on his wrist and then ran down the stairs after his wife, who was shot dead by the burglar.
But, piecing together the evidence from the morning of December 23, 2015, police began to suspect that his version of events could not be true.
At 9.23am the activity tracker, idle for nine minutes while she drove home from her gym, became active again at the same time alarm records show the garage door opening at their home. State police believe that is when she arrived home.
Connie Dabate, a pharmaceutical sales representative for Reckitt Benckiser, then posted two videos on Facebook using her iPhone and then posted a message to a friend through Facebook. The IP address is assigned to the couple's house.
And at 10.05am - an hour after Dabate said he had disturbed the burglar - her Fitbit registered its last movement.
The panic alarm was hit at 10.11am - the only time alarms sounded at the home. Dabate had said that he returned home earlier that morning after alarms sounded.
Connecticut district attorney Craig Stedman said using a FitBit to investigate crime was unusual, but that the device could provide solid evidence.
"To say it is rare to use FitBit records would be safe," he said yesterday at a press conference to announce the charges.
"It is an electronic footprint that tracks your movements. It is a great tool for investigators.
"We can also get the information much faster than some other types of evidence such as DNA tests."
Richard and Connie Dabate. Photo / Facebook
Police later found that Dabate had been having an affair, and his mistress was seven months' pregnant.
They also found the couple, who had married in 2003, rowed frequently about money, and that Connie Dabate wrote on her iPhone notes shortly before her death: "Why I want a divorce", listing reasons she wanted to end her marriage.
The list included claims that her husband took money "from a lot of accounts that don't belong to him", was an unfit parent, was uncaring towards her, didn't come home on time and "acts like a kid constantly", according to the warrant.
Asked by police about the state of his marriage, Dabate admitted that another woman was pregnant, but said "a lot of cheating [was] going on in the beginning on both sides". He acknowledged that the pregnancy was "unexpected".
"This situation popped up like a frickin' soap opera," he said.
Five days after his wife's death, Dabate tried to cash in her US$475,000 ($685,000) life insurance policy. He also, in January 2016, withdrew US$93,000 from her investment account.
Dabate denies killing his wife and is on bail. His next court date is scheduled for Friday.
