‘Trial wasn’t about a Fitbit’
Connie Dabate’s family and friends feel sense of justice
Six years, four months and a little more than two weeks passed between the time Connie Dabate, a 39-year-old mother of two, was found dead in her basement and the moment her husband was convicted of killing her.
For the past five weeks, a jury of 12 listened to testimony from more than 130 witnesses — detectives, neighbors, parents, house cleaners, a boss, a mistress and a Fitbit expert from New York City — and was presented with more than 600 pieces of evidence in the trial dubbed the “Fitbit murder.”
This week, it took them less than three hours in the deliberation room to come up with their verdict: guilty on all counts.
Richard Dabate, Connie Dabate’s husband, was led away in handcuffs Tuesday afternoon after the jury found him guilty of murder, tampering with evidence and lying to police. He was taken into custody for the first time in years after a judge increased his bond from $1 million to $5 million.
Prosecutors built a hefty case around Dabate, whom they said staged a bloody home invasion after shooting his wife with a gun he bought behind her back months earlier. The motive, the
state said, was the impending birth of his daughter with his secret lover, Sara Ganzer, who was seven months pregnant at the time of the crimes.
Their case relied in part on data from the Fitbit Connie Dabate was wearing on her hip when she died. The data collected from the fitness device — according to State’s Attorney Matthew C. Gedansky, who prosecuted the case, and a psychologist and researcher who he called to the stand — showed that Connie Dabate was still moving around at about 10:05 a.m. on the morning of Dec. 23, 2015, a timeline that didn’t add up with her husband’s story of when she was murdered by an intruder.
The Fitbit expert also told the jury that the mother’s last movements were “incidental” movements — the kind you’d expect from someone idling about their home doing chores, not running for their lives.
A spokesperson for Connie Dabate’s family said on Tuesday, though, that “the trial wasn’t about a Fitbit.”
“It was about a cold-blooded, planned murder of Connie Margotta Dabate,” said Wayne Rioux, a longtime neighbor and friend of the family. “Connie was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a friend and colleague. Most importantly, she was a loving and devoted mother to her sons.”
Richard Dabate, 45, took the stand in his own defense last week and admitted to lying to his wife, his lover, a friend and police to hide his affair, and the seriousness of his relationship with Ganzer. He tried to pin his wife’s murder on an intruder he said broke into the couple’s Ellington home.
He repeatedly told the story of coming home that morning to find a masked man wearing all camouflage in the couple’s closet.
The Dabates lived in a large yellow and white house set back at the end of a long driveway on Birch View Drive with their two sons, RJ and Connor, who were 6 and 9 years old when their mother was killed, according to court records and an obituary for Connie Dabate. In December 2015, the weekend before Christmas, the couple shared a romantic getaway to Vermont while Connie’s mother babysat their sons.
When they got back from their weekend away, though, Gedansky said that pressure was piling on Dabate. He needed to make a decision between his wife and his lover, the prosecutor said, so he hatched a plan.
Jurors began deliberating Monday afternoon but quickly came back into the courtroom to ask for certain pieces of evidence including Connie Dabate’s autopsy report, gunshot residue reports, recordings of testimony about DNA testing and Dabate’s statement to police in the hospital the day of the murder.
On Tuesday, they returned to the courtroom and listened to recordings of experts who testified about DNA until they took their lunch break. When they came back from lunch, they said they’d heard enough.
Less than an hour later, they sent a note to the judge saying they’d reached a verdict, bringing the long judicial journey to a close for Connie Dabate’s family who filled the courtroom.
Connie Dabate’s brother Keith Margotta said Tuesday that if his sister were looking down on them, he thinks she’d be thinking, “It’s about time.”
The family said that the length of the trial, which was delayed first by Dabate’s first defense attorney’s illness and death and then by the shuttering of courtrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic, made it a longer road for them, but they were happy with the case prosecutors built against the man they formerly considered a part of their family.
Dabate’s defense lawyer Trent Lalima said Tuesday afternoon that they haven’t reached the end of the long road. They plan to appeal the conviction.
Dabate was being held in custody at the Hartford Correctional Center, according to Connecticut Department of Correction records. He is scheduled to appear in court next on Sept. 16 at 10 a.m. in Rockville Superior Court.