Police use victim’s Fitbit to arrest murder suspect
SAN JOSE >> When detectives found Karen Navarra’s body on Sept. 13 inside her San Jose home, she was slouched on a wooden chair, a knife in her hand and a gaping laceration in her neck. But when the coroner’s office ruled the cause of death as homicide, detectives turned to technology to make an arrest.
San Jose police used security camera video from neighboring homes and the victim’s Fitbit to arrest a suspect, Navarra’s 90-year-old stepfather, Anthony Vincent Aiello, according to a San Jose police report.
Detectives analyzed the data from the fitness tracker to determine when her heart stopped beating, and combined that with the video footage to place Aiello at the house on Terra Noble Way during the same time period, when he said he wasn’t there.
“Comparing the statements provided by Anthony ‘Tony’ Aiello, the video footage of the driveway of the victim’s house and the data from the Fitbit, I believe that Anthony Aiello is responsible for the murder,” San Jose police Detective Brian Meeker wrote in the report.
Thursday, Aiello made his first court appearance and was formally charged with murder, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.
Navarra’s body was discovered Sept. 13 when a concerned co-worker stopped by the house after she failed to show up for work at the Regional Medical Center pharmacy. When police arrived, they found what they now say was a scene “staged to appear as though it was a suicide.”
Navarra had a large Vanadium Flint stainless steel knife in the her right hand, with the wounds to the neck and more on her head, the report says.
After performing an autopsy the next day, the coroner's office concluded Navarra suffered multiple skull fractures which were “inconsistent with being self-inflicted or accidental,” according to the report. The medical examiner told detectives the weapon used to inflict the wounds was “most likely an object with a sharpened edge similar to
a small hatchet, or an axe.”
The coroner's office said Navarra could not have inflicted all the wounds to herself.
When detectives first interviewed Aiello and his wife, Navarra's mother, he told them he last saw his stepdaughter on Sept. 8. He told detectives he brought her pizza and biscotti and spent about 15 minutes in her home, then drove back to his home a few blocks away. Aiello's wife said he drove the couple's gray 2007 Toyota Corolla.
Aiello told police he saw Navarra later that day when she drove by his home his as he was standing outside. Aiello told police that someone was in the passenger seat.
There was pizza wrapped in aluminum foil on the counter and pieces of pizza on the floor of Navarra's house.
When Navarra's body was found, she was wearing a Fitbit Alta HR on her left wrist, according to police. Detectives obtained a search warrant to obtain
data about her heartrate and movements.
Police provided the Fitbit to the San Franciscobased company to obtain that data. Detectives learned that Navarra experienced a significant spike in heartrate on Sept. 8 at about 3:20 p.m., followed by a rapid slowing. The device stopped registering a heartbeat at 3:28 p.m.
Video from neighboring homes showed small gray compact car similar to a Toyota Corolla parked in Navarra's driveway on the
same day from 3:12 p.m. until at least 3:33 p.m., according to the police report. By 3:35 p.m., the car was gone.
Detectives also served a search warrant at Aiello's house and located a pair of men's pants in the closet with blood stains on the knees, according to the police report. Police also found a tank top and button down shirt with blood stains in a hamper, and found a presence of blood in two sinks.
Aiello was arrested Tuesday, and while being interviewed