Fitbit is a snitch in killing
Vic’s device puts lie to 90-yr.-old susp’s tale
A California woman’s Fitbit recorded a “significant spike” in her heart rate before a “rapid slowing,” leading cops to conclude that she had been murdered and resulting in the arrest of her 90-year-old stepfather.
San Jose police say Tony Aiello murdered 67-year-old Karen Navarra in her home Sept. 8 and tried to stage the bloody scene as a suicide. But officials said her wounds could not have been self-inflicted.
Aiello, who is married to Navarra’s mother, told police he brought pizza to her San Jose home on the day of her murder and stayed for only 15 minutes.
However, surveillance cameras told a different story — revealing to cops that Aiello’s car was at his stepdaughter’s home for at least 21 minutes that day.
Navarra, who was wearing her Fitbit Alta, a wristband device that collects data like a person’s heart rate and the number of steps taken during the day, showed a “significant spike” in her heart rate followed by a “rapid slowing,” according to a police statement obtained by the Daily News.
“After explaining the abilities of the Fitbit to record time, physical movement and heart rate data, he was informed that the victim was deceased prior to his leaving the house,” the document read. “Aiello stated that could not be true because she had walked him to the door when he left the residence.”
Navarra’s body was found in her home Sept. 13, five days after Aiello’s visit, when she failed to show up for work. A pharmacy technician described as a “recluse,” she was found “slouched” in a chair at her dining room table.
She was discovered with a “gaping laceration” on her neck and wounds on the top of her head, most likely inflicted by a small hatchet or ax, according to police. A large kitchen knife was found in Navarra’s right hand.
Aiello suggested to cops that someone else might have been in the house when Navarra was killed, but they had found two shirts with blood spatter in the clothes hamper in his garage. He said he might have cut his hand and shaken it while he was wearing those shirts.
He was arrested on suspicion of murder.
The ubiquitous fitness trackers have previously helped investigators solve crimes. A Connecticut man was busted after his wife’s Fitbit showed her last movements were more than an hour after he had told cops she was killed by intruders.