It was a murder that made headlines around the United States – not just for a mother’s tragic death and the romantic betrayal surrounding it, but for how technology ultimately helped detectives solve the case.
Connie Dabate, a Connecticut mother of two, was found shot to death in her basement, two days before Christmas Day in 2015 — a murder that left the 39-year-old’s family “at a loss for words,” Connecticut Insider would report seven years later when her husband, Richard Dabate, was convicted and sentenced for her killing.
Prosecutors laid out a damning theory during Richard’s trial, but to this day, Richard still claims innocence, despite the physical and digital evidence that debunked his alibi. Approaching a decade since the killing, PEOPLE is looking back at what led to Connie’s murder and how an unexpected piece of modern technology led to her husband’s conviction.
A ‘Really Solid Couple’ with an Idyllic Life
Connie Dabate and Richard Dabate.
Ten years of marriage, two children and a house: the Dabates seemed to live an idyllic life at the time of Connie’s death. Connie and Richard were “a really solid couple,” one of Connie’s friends Allie Clarke told us in 2017. “Like, a really together couple that had made it work,” Clarke said.
“I never saw this coming, never in a million years,” Clarke added. “They really did seem to have it all.”
But Richard would later tell police: “There was cheating going on in the beginning, on both sides.” And when investigators dug into Richard’s texts, they uncovered secrets that shattered the illusion of perfect love.
In the months after Connie’s death, electronic records recovered from Richard’s phone revealed the depth of his tryst. Richard would eventually tell detectives that he was having an ongoing extramarital affair, which resulted in his girlfriend becoming pregnant.
In the arrest warrant later obtained, police revealed that Richard’s cellphone records showed he texted his girlfriend the day before his wife’s murder: “I’ll see you tomorrow my little love nugget,” he allegedly wrote.
Connie’s Murder
Richard Dabate.
Stephen Dunn/Hartford Courant via AP
That next day, state prosecutors said Richard staged a break-in that involved claiming he had been zip-tied while his wife was shot and killed. But later on, police dogs brought to the scene would turn up no scent of an intruder, raising some eyebrows among investigators, we previously reported.
And then came an alibi and conflicting evidence that left investigators even more suspicious.
Officers arrived at the Dabates’ home on the morning of Dec. 23, 2015, after Richard called 911 to report that a masked intruder had broken into their home, tied him up, and shot and killed his wife after she unexpectedly walked in on the situation. An arrest warrant previously obtained by PEOPLEshowed that investigators discovered Connie’s body in the basement of the Dabate’s Ellington, Conn., home, while Richard was treated for “minor” injuries.
Richard told authorities that after he dropped his two sons off at their bus stop that morning, he returned home because he forgot his “work shirt,” where he then claimed to have encountered the home intruder. But police would later begin to question Richard’s alibi when it didn’t match up with physical and digital evidence collected at the scene.
“His story made no sense,” a spokesman for the Connecticut State Police told us in 2017. “So we had to begin a thorough investigation to get to the bottom of it.”
Then, in April 2017, Richard was arrested and charged with Connie’s murder, as well as tampering with evidence and giving false statements to police.
How a Fitbit Helped Solve the Case
Richard Dabate. Mark Mirko/Hartford Courant via AP
While investigators became increasingly suspicious of Richard, they were finally able to crack the case once they recovered the data from a Fitbit watch on Connie’s wrist. According to Richard’s 2017 arrest warrant, Connie’s Fitbit showed that she moved roughly 1,217 feet between 9:18 a.m. and 10:05 a.m. that morning, roughly an hour after her husband told police that she had been killed by the alleged intruder.
Police arrested Richard in April 2017 and he was briefly released on a $1 million bond, PEOPLE previously reported. But by 2022, Richard was convicted of his wife’s murder — a ruling that Connie’s father Keith Margotta told Connecticut Insider would allow the family to finally “get a little bit of closure” more than half a decade after her death.
Richard maintains his innocence to this day, and his attorneys continue to appeal his conviction. As recently as October 2024, local NBC Connecticut reported, attorneys for Richard argued that their client wasn’t given a fair trial based on questions asked by state prosecutors, including asking Richard to respond to other witness testimony.
But Richard remains behind bars, convicted of killing his wife to hide his affair. He isn’t scheduled to be released until 2087, though his attorneys’ appeals continue to attempt to shorten his sentencing. There has been no decision made yet on Richard’s appeal from last October, which could reexamine his conviction and his sentence.
