Accused killer Richard Dabate testifies in Conn. Fitbit trial
VERNON — Richard Dabate, facing accusations he killed his wife in their Ellington home in December 2015, took the stand as his trial continued Thursday.
Dabate, who has been free since he was charged with fatally shooting Connie Dabate, has long maintained his innocence, saying his wife was killed by an intruder. Authorities have sought to refute his claims, pointing to evidence that Connie Dabate’s Fitbit fitness tracker contradicted her husband’s version of when the shooting happened.
During cross-examination Thursday, the prosecutor tried to poke holes in Dabate’s story that his wife was fatally shot during a home invasion.
Debate remained calm as Tolland State’s Attorney Matthew Gedansky grilled him on details of his account of the homicide at the Colonial-style house he shared with his wife and two sons. Dabate testified the intruder, who had a voice that sounded like actor Vin Diesel’s, tied him to a chair and stabbed him.
Gedansky asked why Dabate’s wounds looked as though he had cut himself.
“You stabbed yourself in the legs, didn’t you?” Gedansky asked. “No, sir,” Dabate responded. “There’s the blood on your pants in 90-degree drops,” Gedansky said, showing him a crime scene picture of pants with symmetrical blood splotches.
Gedansky also asked how blood from Dabate’s thighs ended up on the wall.
Debate replied, “I don’t know. I’m not a forensic scientist.”
“You were trying to make a bloody crime scene, were you not?” Gedansky asked.
“No, sir,“Dabate said. Gedansky also asked Dabate why the receipt for a gun purchase he made before the shooting listed a post office box instead of his street address. Dabate said he didn’t remember.
The prosecutor asked why a police dog twice picked up only on Dabate’s scent at the scene instead of the intruder.
“I don’t know why the dog did what it did,” Dabate responded.
Gedansky questioned Dabate about his state of mind in the months leading up to the killing, when the woman he was having an affair with was getting closer to delivering his child.
“It must have been stressful,” the prosecutor said.
Dabate responded that he had been indecisive.
“I loved two women, and I didn’t want to push either of them away,” he said.
Judge Corinne Klatt later admonished Gedansky for a series of questions she said went beyond what had been presented as evidence.
Trent LaLima, one of Dabate’s lawyers, objected to the line of questioning, but Klatt denied his request for a mistrial.
Toward the end of Dabate’s time on the witness stand, LaLima got right to the point, asking Dabate, “Did you shoot Connie?”
“No,” he answered.
Dabate’s testimony Thursday comes almost a month since evidence was first presented in a trial that faced years of delays amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier in the trial, jurors heard recordings of Dabate recounting what happened during an interview with state police investigators.
Dabate told investigators he had left that morning about 8:30 a.m., but turned around when he realized he did not have his laptop, according to the interview recording.
He told investigators he then saw an alert on the home’s security system, but was not initially concerned because the system was known for frequent false alarms, according to the recording.
But once Dabate was inside the house, he told investigators he went upstairs and saw a man dressed in camouflage and a mask standing with a knife in the couple’s walk-in closet apparently looking for something, according to the interview recording.
“He said something about my kids, I can’t remember what, but it was threatening,” Dabate told the officers on the recording.
He recounted that he relented to the intruder’s demands and handed over his wallet, but then heard his wife come home, according to the recording. He told investigators he yelled for her to get out of the house, but she went into the basement instead where the couple had a lockedup gun.
Though Richard Dabate said he chased the intruder, he fell at one point, and saw the intruder in the basement with a gun pointed a few inches from his wife, the recording showed. He told investigators he then heard “the loudest bang” and saw his wife fall to the floor.
“I can’t get it out of my head,” Dabate told detectives when they asked him later if he was sure he witnessed the shooting.
In the recording, Dabate went on to recount how the intruder got him in a headlock and restrained him to a chair before poking him with a blade or box cutter then burning him with a torch.
Dabate told investigators he eventually managed to burn the intruder, prompting him to flee the home, according to the recording. Dabate recounted that he was able to crawl upstairs and alert authorities.