Defense rests in Dabate trial
Jury set to deliberate in ‘Fitbit murder’ case beginning Monday
After five weeks of testimony — and six years after his alleged crimes — Richard Dabate’s lawyers and state prosecutors rested their cases in the “Fitbit murder” trial.
The defense finished its case Friday morning after calling four witnesses, including Dabate.
Attorneys for both sides will make their closing arguments on Monday morning in Rockville Superior Court. Then, after hearing from more than 100 witnesses and listening to 22 days of evidence, the jury will start to deliberate.
Dabate’s lead attorney, Trent Lalima, said outside the courthouse Friday afternoon that he looks forward to arguing his client’s case on Monday.
Dabate, who is free on a $1 million bond, is charged with killing his wife, Connie Dabate, in their Ellington home just before Christmas in 2015, staging a home invasion and lying to police.
Dabate took the stand in his defense on Thursday, adamantly defending his innocence and
sticking to his story that a masked intruder broke in and shot his wife, even when State’s Attorney Matthew C. Gedansky grilled him about discrepancies in his timelines and statements over the years.
He told the jury on Thursday that he came home the morning of Dec. 23, 2015, after realizing he’d forgotten his laptop on the way to work and found a large man in all camouflage inside the house. That man, he said, shot his wife to death in their basement, stole his wallet, stabbed him with a box cutter and tied him to a folding chair.
Investigators found that data from Connie Dabate’s Fitbit showed her moving around after the time her husband says she was killed,
a key piece of evidence that has earned the case the moniker of the “Fitbit
murder.” A physiologist with a years-long research history into wearable fitness trackers,
like the Fitbit Connie Dabate wore on her hip, testified last week about the device’s accuracy.
Police also learned that Dabate was having an affair at the time of his wife’s death with a woman named Sara Ganzer, who a few months later gave birth to his daughter. Gedansky questioned Dabate at length about the affair on Thursday, leading Dabate to admit that he’d lied about the nature of his affair and his marriage to police, his lover, his wife and friends.
On Friday, the jury heard from Dabate’s aunt, who described her nephew as “a bloody mess” when he came to her house to change out of his hospital gown the night of the murder. She said her nephew seemed upset about his wife’s murder, was wounded from the cuts he said came from the intruder and, at times, was crying.
The defense also questioned a woman who, on the day of the crimes, was cleaning a nearby house to help her parents with their cleaning business. She told police that she may have seen a deer or human-sized dark green figure pass by the window. Dabate has said from Day 1 that a man in a camouflage hunting-style outfit killed his wife and ran from the home.
At least two dozen people who lived on Birch View Drive at the time of the murder were called to the stand by the state throughout the weeks-long trial and asked if they saw a large man in camouflage — or anything unusual — in their neighborhood that day. They all said no.
Attorneys for both sides will each have one hour to argue their case Monday beginning at 10 a.m. before Judge Corinne L. Klatt in Rockville Superior Court. The jurors will then be given their instructions and sent to deliberate.