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Tonight on Dateline. People started reaching out to me and they're like, did you hear what happened at Connie's
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house? We heard it was a break-in. It was an alarming scene. He was in the kitchen, bound to a folding chair, moaning.
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She was located in the basement, dressed in workout gear. There was obvious signs of gunshot wound to her.
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It was like a sick feeling. Connie didn't make it. There's this big mystery in town of who came in and did this.
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We had unidentified DNA in six key places. A lot of information started coming out, including a big bombshell.
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Unbelievable. She really became one of your key witnesses. She was not a willing witness.
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It was difficult. You took a number of electronic devices from the house. We took the Fitbit transmitter off of her body.
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It was a silent witness. Correct. Digital evidence is powerful. This was a big twist that you were not expecting.
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No. It's devastation. It's betrayal. How could this happen? My jaw almost dropped to the floor. I just kept on thinking, oh my God.
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A Fitbit captured the last moments of a loving mom's life. You'll see how it also helped investigators catch her killer.
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I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Andrea Canning with The Secrets of Birchview Drive.
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Birchview Drive was a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood in a quiet Connecticut town called Ellington.
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It was also home to three boisterous friends, Darlene Beaudry, Peggy Giautzes, and Connie DeBate.
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You all lived so close to each other. Yeah, we did. We do. That's my house over there.
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That's my house there, and Connie lived right back there. Close houses, even closer friends. Connie always knew how to make herself at home.
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My favorite thing that she did is she would, back then we would always leave the garage doors open.
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So she'd come through the garage, she'd say, honey, I'm home. And then just like Peggy did today, she would just, she'd just walk right in.
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There was no knocking. She'd just throw the door open. I think you three have a friendship that so many of us ladies would love to have.
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We actually really did become like family. We cooked together, hung out together.
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Peggy would offer endless advice about babies. And you guys had a name for yourselves?
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Either the Three Musketeers or the Three Amigos. Depending on whatever day. We had a lot of fun together.
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Fun. Connie was all about the fun, especially with the holiday season upon them.
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But on the morning of December 23, 2015, there was only chaos at Connie's house.
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I came to the sink and I look over and I'm like, holy cow, there's a state trooper with his rifle drawn on the house.
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Peggy immediately called Connie, but she didn't pick up. So Peggy tried Darlene.
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And asked her if she knew what was going on and had she heard from Connie. And she said there was a first responder car and a sheriff at Connie's house
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and he was outside the car with his rifle. That's really scary. It was like, what?
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Before we can say another sentence, this entire street was full of state troopers.
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The driveway had about 1,000 of them coming up. I mean, it just seemed like it. Are they screaming?
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They're screeching in. They're screeching in one by one, but yes, yes. I mean, it was like.
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Full speed. Something you would see out of the movies, yeah. The massive police presence was in response to an alarm triggered at the house Connie shared with her husband, 39-year-old Rick DeBate, and their two children.
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That and a cryptic 911 call. 911? Hello? Hello? David Lamoureux and Ryan Luther raced to the scene.
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Back then, they were Connecticut state police detectives. What do you see as you pull up in this, you know, quiet suburban neighborhood?
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There was numerous uniform troopers there. It was our K-9 unit troopers there with their canines out.
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And they had the scene secured at the time with crime scene tape. I believe media was actually starting to show up.
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What are you being told by the first responders about what they saw in the house?
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Initially that it was called in as a home invasion and that there was a deceased person in the basement.
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Troopers were already scouring the neighborhood, pounding on doors up and down the street.
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They were saying there was home invasion and the intruder has fled on foot and is somewhere in the neighborhood.
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And your children are home. My children are home. The panic that you must have felt, just the fear.
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One of the troopers said they needed to clear Darlene's house to make sure the intruder wasn't inside.
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He said, is this a bathroom? Is this a powder room here? And I said, yes. And he said, I want you to get in the bathroom with your children.
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I took them off the couch. They were with their iPads. And I put them back behind the toilet.
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And I just shut the door. I put my back against the door. And the trooper said, I'm going to clear the house.
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And I don't want you to come out until you hear me knock twice. And you hear me knock twice, then you'll know the house is clear.
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You're all huddled in there. All huddled. With the door. With the door shut. When they finally got the all clear, Darlene and her children came out of the bathroom.
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But they were ordered to stay inside the house. He came out and he stood here and he said, I'm going to go out that door.
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I want you to lock the door behind me. Do not open the door under any other circumstance.
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So that's what we did. Meanwhile across the street Peggy was still trying to reach Connie I was feeling anxious I didn know what was going on I called there I like what is going on Please call me back Let me know that you guys are okay
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No one answered. It went straight to voicemail. She was standing by her window when she heard the crackle of a police scanner.
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I heard DOA going to Hartford Hospital. I called her and I was like, I couldn't breathe.
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I was screaming. I was like, someone's dead. Like, what's going on? I don't understand.
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And so everyone knows what DOA means. Exactly. An apparent home invasion, an intruder on the loose, someone dead.
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What had happened at Rick and Connie's house and why on earth wasn't Connie picking up her phone?
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Figuring that out wouldn't be so easy when we come back for investigators. the chaos outside the house was about to give way to a series of chilling discoveries inside.
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He was in the kitchen, bound to a folding chair. She was located in the far corner of the basement.
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Birchview Drive, normally peaceful, was in upheaval. An apparent home invasion at Connie and Rick DeBate's house.
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Police cars all over the place. Detectives Lamoureux and Luther had to make sense of it all.
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What do you see? Well, a large house. We were able to just do a general walk through the house
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before we begin processing to get a feel for what's going on. It was two days before Christmas.
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You have this Christmas tree and presents and decorations, you know, and we later learned about the two boys that they had.
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Thankfully, the boys, just six and nine years old, were at school. But Rick and Connie had been home.
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First responders found Rick in the kitchen. He was partially bound to a folding chair.
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There was what looked like blood on the floor, smeared on the floor. He was reportedly just moaning when they got there.
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He was injured, but alive. The responders rushed him to the hospital. But Connie...
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She was located in the far corner of the basement, in the unfinished portion. She was dressed in what looked like workout gear, like sweatpants and a sweat top, wearing sneakers.
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She was obviously deceased. There was obvious signs of gunshot wound to her. Connie DeBate had been shot to death.
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She was the DOA Peggy had heard mentioned on that police scanner. Darlene got the news from Rick's dad.
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He said there was a home evasion and Connie didn't make it. It was like a sick feeling, like, Connie didn't make it.
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What are you saying? Connie's brother, Keith Margotta, and his wife Donna found out from Keith's father.
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He called and said that there's been a tragedy or a home invasion at my sister's house in Ellington,
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and that Connie was gone, is what he said. I felt like I was just going to collapse.
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Yeah, we're just trying to process what we've been told. We can't fathom it because we've just seen her.
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You know, it's not real. It can't be real. Soon, word of Connie's murder spread.
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One of her oldest friends, Kim Phillips, got the news by text. She says she crumbled.
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My kids were five and six, so I just remember, like, I didn't want them to see me getting so upset.
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So my master isn't just screaming into the pillow. and I hate that I'm saying this,
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but I was like, why is it her and why couldn't it be somebody else? That was your natural reaction in the moment.
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It really was the worst, worst news I could ever hear and the worst person that I could ever be.
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Connie, who would have murdered her? She was the sweetest person, the baby in the family with two older sisters and a brother.
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I teased her a lot as a big brother, as big brothers might. And as adults, she had reminded me of that.
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How would you tease her? How would you torment your little sister? She says I put her out the window one time.
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Ooh. But it was just, it was maybe her feet. Don't you love how little siblings can exaggerate like that?
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They do exaggerate, yeah. When they want to get you in trouble? Yeah. Yeah, she thought my father, you know, I'd get in trouble with my father when I was 40 or something.
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And Donna, you came into Connie's life when she was quite young. Yes. She was six years old. I met Connie, was dating her brother.
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Connie took dance from the same dance teacher I did. She was like a little sister.
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Family for Connie also included her friends, like Kim. I met Connie my sophomore year of high school.
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She had just moved to Ellington, and we just got along from the start. This is everything I keep hearing about Connie.
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It's just her way of putting people at ease, getting to know people very quickly, having those instant connections.
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Yeah, absolutely. She was someone that the first time you would meet her, you would automatically just be attracted to her personality.
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You would want to spend more time with her. It's that quality, Kim says, that made everyone who knew Connie think of her as a best friend.
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You know, usually it's like maybe a small group of best friends. This was like everybody was, Connie was my best friend.
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It makes me feel so good to know that so many people thought of Connie as their best friend.
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And I just think it's, again, she was able to reach into people. She put everyone else before herself.
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And that made it easy to root for Connie when she gushed over a new man in her life She met Rick at a party while home from college one summer She like I met this great guy and he Italian and you know she loved Italian men
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And so I was like, okay, you know, if Connie loves him, I'll love him. What did you think about initial impressions of Rick and Connie and Rick together?
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I really liked Rick. I thought he was a good fit for Connie. I mean, he was fun, she was fun.
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Richard and Julie debate say their son had always been that way. He was easygoing. He was always like a joker.
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And when he brought Connie home, I said to my husband, this is different. I think she's the one.
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What was different about it? He was glowing. And Connie fit right in. Connie was the one.
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The two married, had the boys, and their house on Birchview Drive became the happy center of their social lives.
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It was funny because we actually called Connie's house the Debate Estates because we used to always go there.
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Sounds like a winery. But it was true because that's where people would just congregate at that house.
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But now the debate house was a crime scene. Connie was dead, and the people congregating there were state police investigators.
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We are a team of five detectives that will investigate the most serious crimes that occur.
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Detective Sergeant Brett Longevin, Lieutenant Bill Udermark, and Jeff Payette were detectives at the time and also assigned to the case.
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Job one for Payette and Longevin, get over to the hospital where doctors were treating Rick.
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What do you want to find out from the husband since he was in the house when the police arrived?
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Everything he knows. He's the best witness. he's a victim, he could potentially tell us who did it.
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Or at least provide a description of the intruder. The sooner we get that information and get it out to everybody, the better off everyone is.
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The question was, how soon could they get it? Rick was lying in a hospital bed. What, if anything, would he be able to tell police?
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Coming up, Rick recounts walking into a closet and discovering a masked man. It was big.
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And there was one other thing the man's mask couldn't cover. Just heard this deep, diesel-like voice.
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When Dateline continues. Hours after the attack at Connie and Rick DeBate's house,
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detectives were inside an ER. Rick had suffered wounds to his legs, shoulder, and the back of his head.
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But he was conscious. He seemed well-spoken, coherent. We could see a little bit of blood on the side of his cheek,
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some blood on his hands. Detectives Jeff Payette and Brett Longevin needed Rick to tell them what happened.
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I saw Connie on the ground and I can't get that image out of my mind. With the recorder rolling,
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the detectives listened as Rick went back over that morning. Getting the kids off to school,
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watching Connie get ready for the gym, driving off to work. He said he wasn't 10 minutes down the road
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when he stopped. I hadn't realized I needed to go back for my laptop. At the same time, he said the alert notifications on his phone went off.
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Trouble with his home security system. Shout out an email to my boss saying that I'll be late.
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Told I needed to check out some things on my security system. He drove back home, headed inside and heard a noise upstairs.
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The cats make a loud, obnoxious mess. I figured it was just the cats. He thought that it was the cats because it wasn't uncommon for them.
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to knock things over and make noise. So we went to check it out. He says the cats weren't there, but someone was.
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When you first walk into our bedroom, there's a walk-in closet right in front of me.
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That's not that late, it was on two, and I opened up and there's this camouflage view.
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In your closet? Yes. just looking around, trying to find something. I don't know.
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Something of value. Did you watch him for a little while? No. No, I opened the door pretty quick.
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This is where it all just gets so... I never had a night that's happening. Take your time.
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Rick said the man was a huge, hulking guy. He was big. But that was all he could share as far as physical appearance,
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because he said the intruder wore a mask. He did not describe skin color or any other descriptors.
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But if Rick couldn't describe the man's face, his voice, that he could describe.
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I just heard this deep Vin Diesel-like voice. The word on the street is you got locked up.
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Vin Diesel, the megawatt Hollywood star of the hit Fast and Furious film franchise.
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His deep, gravelly voice is instantly recognizable. You get involved here, you put everything you have at risk.
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It's an interesting way to describe a voice. Very specific. So you're looking for a large man, deep voice in camouflage.
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Obese, to stocky, over six foot tall, covered in green camouflage with a deep voice.
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That's scary. Yes. He told detectives the Vin Diesel intruder was holding a knife,
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demanding Rick's wallet and pins. He said, you're going to give me what I want. I going to sit here quietly and wait for your family to go home That when he heard it the garage door opening below Connie walking into the house So I yelled to her to get out of the house
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My wife didn't run. She must have ran into the basement because we have two guns in the house.
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One was in the basement in a lockbox and one's in our closet. She ran downstairs.
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Rather than saving herself, Connie was apparently trying to save her husband. Rick said the intruder knocked him to the ground and chased after Connie.
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He said he staggered behind, catching up with them in the basement. Around the corner, I just hear the loudest bang.
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And I saw my wife go. I think I saw her laying in the ground. I don't know. I didn't hear her at all.
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Suddenly, he said, the man was back on him. My ears were ringing. And then he puts me in this neck, arm thing.
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I couldn't get out of it. And he just guided me over to the other side. Threw me in a chair.
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Started using my own tools. What type of chair was it? A folding chair. Then, Rick described how the intruder tied him to the chair with zip ties, stabbed him with a box cutter, and burned him with a handheld blowtorch, all from a bag of tools Rick kept in the basement.
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I'm sitting in the chair, half, I was kind of half tied up, in shock, I guess. What do you mean half tied up?
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I had one leg free and an arm free. He tied one leg, tied one arm, and he tied my neck.
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I thoroughly tied the tire out. Rick said he used his free arm to fight back. I got a torch to kind of just blow in his mask a little bit, and I caught him fire.
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He dropped a blowtorch. Dropped the blowtorch and ran. I was starting to scream for help.
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I screamed for help. I couldn't hear a soul. I got really, really dizzy. Rick said he then crawled upstairs, still partially zip-tied to the chair, triggered the home alarm, and called 911.
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You have a lot of things you have to check out. We do. And corroborate from his story.
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We have to process the scene, we have to talk to people, interview people, look up electronic data, explore every option.
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As Rick was speaking to the detectives, his parents were trying to find him. All they knew was that he'd been taken to the hospital.
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When I finally got to the hospital, to the emergency room, they asked to see him, and they still wouldn't let us see him yet.
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We waited in the emergency room for a couple more hours before they were leading him out of the room.
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He was asking me, where are the boys? I says, Mom has the boys, they're at the house.
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To his parents' relief, Rick's injuries were not severe, and he was discharged from the hospital the same day.
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His first stop was his Aunt Janice's house to clean up. He didn't want his sons to see him bloody and bruised.
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His cousin Lori was also there. He was devastated. He was in tears. He was just a mess.
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He was stunned by everything, too. If he said it once, he must have said it 50 times.
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How are my boys? How are my boys? Later that night, Rick went to his parents' place.
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He sat his two boys down and told them what happened to their mom. It wasn't easy, and they were very young to understand something like that.
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And Rick told them that someone came into the house and hurt Mommy, and I couldn't help her.
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And she's gone. And one of them, I think, said, Mommy's dead, and Rick said yes.
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It must have broken your heart to see those little boys' faces. Tragic and heartbreaking.
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Meanwhile, back at the debate house, the crime scene tape was up and the floodlights were on.
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It was going to be a long night scouring for evidence and clues and talking to neighbors.
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Neighbors who had stories to tell, stories that could possibly lead detectives to that deep-voiced intruder.
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Coming up, one story was about the debates and someone they hired. They were having an argument with a contractor.
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A spiraling situation sparking real fear. This contractor was so out of control that maybe they should get a gun.
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In the search for Connie DeBate's killer, police had fanned out and canvassed the neighborhood
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looking for anyone who had seen something. Were you surprised that no one saw anything?
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I don't know if I was surprised. I mean, that time of morning of the scene, you know, a lot of people work in that neighborhood,
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so there could have been a very good chance that, just nobody was around at that time.
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While the canvassing troopers had struck out, the major crime squad was gathering evidence at the house,
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dusting for fingerprints, swabbing for DNA, and photographing the entire scene. including where the intruder may have sneaked inside.
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You just noticed that it was, the window was open. Yes, yes, into the basement. The basement door was also open.
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This is where Rick says the assailant came out of the house, right here? Yes, yes.
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And they were actually open. One door was open at the time when we processed the scene.
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And just outside that door, police found this. This is the wallet found in the backyard.
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Rick had talked about Assailant taking his wallet. Yes. Yes. And in the basement.
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This is the area that Rick had told detectives where he was seated in the chair being abused.
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This is like a bad game of Clue, all these potential weapons. Yes. Many of them had what appeared to be blood on them.
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Did you know where these droplets came from, who they came from at the time? Not at that point. We didn't know. It could have been an assailant. It could have been from Rick. We didn't know at that point, no.
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A revolver, the presumed murder weapon, was found near Connie's body. She had been shot twice, once in the stomach and once in the back of the head.
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Any other clues around her, around the body, in the basement that you could see?
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She did have her cell phone on her, tucked into her right waistband, and she also had a Fitbit tracker clipped to her left waistband.
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A cell phone and a Fitbit tracker. Detectives bagged them along with other electronic devices in the house.
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And though the troopers hadn't found any witnesses, they did uncover a substantial clue while talking to the neighbors.
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The debates, it turned out, may have had an enemy. They were having an argument with a contractor over work that had not been done right, according to Rick.
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And they were worried that the contractor would break into the house. His name was Ken Sweeney.
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Kim had gotten a text message from Connie venting about him. Just that he wasn't finishing the work, and I think they were looking to sue him,
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and there was a lot of discussions with him and arguments with him, and I just specifically remember it seeming like it wasn't a good situation.
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A bad situation that seemed to get worse in the weeks before the murder. They had found some towels that were in one of the vehicle's mufflers,
00:26:01
and they found that suspicious and thought that that could be associated with this contractor.
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A week later, in the driveway, their car's windshield was smashed. That was when Connie confided in her friends that she and Rick were so scared they were considering buying a gun.
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Connie was deathly afraid of guns. but this contractor was so out of control that maybe they should get a gun.
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Did they think that the contractor was the one who vandalized the car? Yep, that's what they told everyone.
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Did you think that the contractor had killed Connie? When they questioned us, they asked,
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is there anybody that you could think of that had a grudge or didn't like Connie and Rick?
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Is there anybody? And then it hits you. You're like, yeah, there is somebody, the contractor.
00:26:47
I mean, most people on Birchview said the contractor. I actually had the text, and I remember when the detectives came to interview them,
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I'm like, I'm going to show them this text because I think this is going to help.
00:27:03
I think they need to look into this person. You're thinking the contractor could be a suspect.
00:27:08
Yeah, I just remember them having a lot of tensions with him, and I thought, like, maybe this is who did this.
00:27:14
The thought also occurred to Rick. He mentioned it when talking to the detectives.
00:27:19
Do you know of anybody who would want to do this? When our cars were vandalized, my wife seemed to think it was a contractor that we took the small claims for because he took some of our money.
00:27:30
We have zero way to boot down. The state police had a lead to pursue. Maybe this wasn't a home invasion gone wrong.
00:27:39
Maybe the debates had been targeted. Detectives were sent out right away to find him and talk to him.
00:27:46
Coming up, at Connie's Wake, a curious encounter triggers questions about someone in the family.
00:27:56
That was the most bizarre thing we've ever been involved in. When Dateline continues.
00:28:03
Investigators had a tip to run down in the brutal murder of 39-year-old Connie DeBate.
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A theory about the killer that was almost universally held among family and friends.
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It was the contractor. That's exactly who I thought was at the house at the time in the morning of the murder.
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Had Rick and Connie talked to you about the contractor? They sued him. I mean, they had to sue him because they didn't finish the job, so they knew he wasn't happy.
00:28:42
He was very ugly to them, and there was always things happening there that I thought, oh, my God, this must have been the contractor.
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State police sought out this contractor, Ken Sweeney, speaking with him at his house.
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He admitted to having issues with the debates. The contractor said that he had agreed to do work in the bathroom of the residence
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and that as the job went on, some of the specifics as to what they wanted done may not have been aligned with the price.
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And he backed out, and then there was a civil suit. The case was settled for a few thousand dollars in small claims court before Connie was killed.
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Did this contractor have a record? Any violence in his past? Nothing. Nothing would go to this level.
00:29:28
Yeah, nothing as violent as this. Ken Sweeney denied breaking into the debate home and killing Connie and said he had an alibi.
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He was working at another job site that morning. As detectives interviewed him, they noticed something straight away.
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He wasn't an overly large man, as Rick described. And there was another thing that didn't match. His voice.
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Did he sound like Vin Diesel? No. So he didn fit Rick description at all Police asked if they could photograph his face hands and body for signs he had been in an altercation They didn see anything But it was possible the contractor had someone else break into
00:30:06
the debate home. Detectives would have to check out that angle and confirm his alibi. As investigators
00:30:13
worked on that, Connie's family was mourning her death and thinking of all she had left behind.
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your heart must have just ached for your nephews to lose their mom that way at that age
00:30:26
when they need her the most. Yeah. It's devastating. Did you think about all those things that
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she won't be there, you know, for them? Yeah, definitely. I thought that, you know, there's no more holidays,
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no more birthdays. We think about it every day. We live it every day. They weren't alone in their grief.
00:30:49
On a blustery late December day of what is normally a festive week between Christmas and New Year's,
00:30:54
hundreds braved the cold in Ellington to say goodbye to Connie. So obviously whenever a young person dies, there's a lot of people that come to the wake.
00:31:03
But multiply that by 100 just because of who Connie was and how many people viewed her as a best friend.
00:31:10
The line was just out the door. It was horrible weather. lines and lines of people.
00:31:17
I mean, just hundreds of people. And just looking at how many people in there. It was surreal.
00:31:25
Shows how much Connie was loved. Right. She was very much loved. And now, very much missed.
00:31:32
Connie's fellow musketeers, Peggy and Darlene, were eager to offer their condolences
00:31:37
to their good friend's husband, Rick. But as the women approached, he seemed confused.
00:31:43
That was the most bizarre thing we've ever been involved in. Peggy and I went together.
00:31:49
We waited in like a three-hour line. He greeted us by asking us who we were and how we knew Connie.
00:31:58
What? How did you know my wife? Did you think that maybe he was just so out of it from everything that had happened?
00:32:06
I think at that moment we were like in shock. But at that time, we also looked at each other and were like, he doesn't have a scratch on him.
00:32:16
Yeah. He didn't have one bruise on the face, not one anything. The next day, Connie's family and closest friends gathered again for her funeral, a continuation of mourning for most.
00:32:29
But according to Connie's friend Kim, it was also a continuation of strange behavior by Rick.
00:32:35
when we went to the cemetery. I don't even know if he got out of the car. I mean, he must have gotten out of the car.
00:32:43
But I remember it was me and my friends were the last people at her grave. And he left, and I'm thinking, that's odd.
00:32:52
Like, why isn't he still here? Why doesn't he feel the same way that I feel right now,
00:32:57
that I just can't leave this grave? And I thought that was weird. Connie's sister-in-law, Donna,
00:33:02
noticed Rick also cut short his stay at the reception after the burial. In the middle of the luncheon, he just disappeared with his male family members.
00:33:12
He didn't stay to the end. He was maybe there for an hour or so, and then just everybody got up and left.
00:33:19
So that was very odd to me. Like, where did they go? Where are they heading off to?
00:33:23
That was a moment for me where I sat there and said, this is strange. There is no script for grief.
00:33:30
No one-way road map for mourning the dead, especially when it's your wife, the mother of your children.
00:33:37
Then again, does anyone ever really know what's going on inside someone else's marriage?
00:33:44
Coming up, the debates in the days before tragedy struck. Why friends say their relationship was one they envied.
00:33:53
He doted over her. He would tell us, hey, you know, she's having a bad day. Like, go out for drinks.
00:33:58
He's putting all the husbands to shame in the neighborhood. Yeah, he really did. He did.
00:34:17
It was the holiday season, a time for joy, celebration, family gatherings. Connie's family wanted to hang on to some semblance of that for her boys.
00:34:29
So they did their best, wrapped their gifts, wiped their tears, put on their coats.
00:34:35
Connie hadn't even been dead two days. We still wanted to bring presents to the children.
00:34:40
And he was staying at his parents' house. So our family went to visit with his family at his parents' house.
00:34:47
And what was that like? It was very hard. We were all together. Everybody was very emotional.
00:34:54
Everybody, Donna noticed, but Rick. And it was a very strange evening. His demeanor of not being able to look me in the eye was very telling to me that night.
00:35:07
Talking, telling jokes, telling stories. We were all very devastated. And, you know, right or wrong, I didn't sense a lot of sadness or emotion from him.
00:35:19
I would say that the pain and grief that was on our family's faces, along with his family, was different than his demeanor.
00:35:29
His demeanor was like, you know, it's like, let's say, just a party. Peggy and Darlene felt it, too, that something was just off with Rick in the days after Connie's death.
00:35:40
He would text us and say, like, hey, good neighbors, where do you guys get takeout?
00:35:46
like where do we get takeout you've lived here all these years and who's worried about takeout
00:35:54
we in the middle of this horrible time and why was Rick so willing to engage over text but not in person Peggy remembers him playing the artful Dodger
00:36:05
at a hardware store. I was at the register, and I had to just sign the form to get a refund.
00:36:12
And then I saw him, I waved, I looked down, I signed, I looked back up, and he was gone.
00:36:18
I immediately called her, and I was like, I'm looking for him, where is he? He's trying to avoid me, and I don't understand why.
00:36:25
Then again, Connie's friends didn't want to judge. Others? Not so charitable. Quickly the town gossip picked up and most folks were saying Rick did this.
00:36:37
Why? What was leading them? His behavior got so strange. Like he, you know, he's out at bars hanging out during the holiday.
00:36:47
Having dinner, drinking and looking. Having people over his house. Jolly. Having a party at his house.
00:36:53
Too happy for someone whose wife had died in a brutal way. Yeah, right before Christmas.
00:37:00
It was just odd behavior that started to put question marks. Still, Peggy and Darlene resisted thinking the worst of Rick.
00:37:09
They didn't want to go there. Did you think that it was possible that Rick killed Connie?
00:37:14
No. No. Why not? Because he was just loving. He doted over her. He was checked in on her.
00:37:23
He would tell us, hey, you know, she's having a bad day, like, take her away, go out for drinks.
00:37:30
Always rubbing her shoulders or... Can I make you a plate? Like, if there was a party, can I make you a plate? Go sit down, like, you know.
00:37:38
Then we'd be like, okay, can somebody make us a plate? He's putting all the husbands to shame in the neighborhood.
00:37:44
Yeah, he really did. He did. The way Kim Phillips saw it, Rick and Connie were always in lockstep.
00:37:50
partners on life's dance floor. We spent a lot of time together as couples with my husband,
00:37:57
and the more and more time we spent together, the more and more, you know, he grew on us,
00:38:02
and we loved him, and, you know, we just, and we thought he was perfect for her.
00:38:07
Which is why the nasty rumors flying through town landed like daggers for Rick's family.
00:38:12
Two days before Christmas, you take your wife down into the basement and shoot her.
00:38:17
No. No, Rick would not. do anything like that to Connie. He would never hurt Connie.
00:38:25
No. I don't think anyone who knows Rick well would ever believe that he'd be capable of murder.
00:38:34
It's just not his nature. But a town's rumors aren't much used to a major crime squad.
00:38:41
Facts, on the other hand, are. And right now, the facts were helping detectives working Connie DeBate's murder.
00:38:48
You were seeing red flags pop up in this interview? Yes, absolutely. Coming up, what had investigators' whiskers twitching?
00:38:59
Generally, people will recall events differently, but when they're giving very specific answers,
00:39:06
it can lead us to believe that that person may be trying to convince us of something.
00:39:10
When Dateline continues. Connie's family and friends had started to wonder if Rick's odd behavior in the days and weeks after her murder meant he had something to hide.
00:39:30
And they weren't the only ones. Detectives Jeff Payette and Brett Longevin had interviewed Rick in the hospital for nearly seven hours the day of the attack.
00:39:39
Rick's accounts varied as the progression of the interview went on. Do you think that just with all that had happened that morning, that it was hard for him to get it out just, you know, because it was such a terrorizing event?
00:39:51
The details he was providing us weren't details that should have had different answers.
00:39:59
Whether or not he saw his wife get shot, that was changing. At first, he said he only heard Connie get shot.
00:40:06
I heard it fire, I think, twice. Once for sure. But a minute later, his story was this.
00:40:14
Did you actually see him shoot your wife? Yes. And then he wasn't sure Connie had been shot at all.
00:40:22
You're not actually sure if she got shot. I didn't know at that point. We started having questions as far as trying to get a consistent story from him.
00:40:31
There were other times during the interview that the detectives thought Rick was overly descriptive,
00:40:37
something they also found suspicious. Generally, people will recall events differently,
00:40:44
but when they're giving very specific answers, it can lead us to believe that that person may be trying to convince us of something.
00:40:52
Is there a moment in the interview where you two look at each other and it's like, what are we dealing with here?
00:40:59
Because he's supposed to be the victim. Are you starting to get a pit in your stomach a little bit?
00:41:04
One of the biggest things was the timeline he was providing us. He's saying he gets home at 9 o'clock.
00:41:09
His wife gets home, say, five minutes after him, and then everything happens. The chase down the stairs, he witnesses his wife murder.
00:41:19
But the 911 call is 1019, so we're missing over an hour. That was one of the biggest red flags.
00:41:28
Red flags, but not evidence that Rick killed Connie. And Rick's mom said anyone who endured what her son had could be forgiven for a hazy memory or a changing story.
00:41:39
Well, he had six hours at that hospital to be interrogated and to think about what happened to Connie.
00:41:48
And he's like, he can't even think. You know my wife is dead and someone broke into our house And this is a life that totally turned upside down I think he was in shock In shock and well aware that the police were suspicious of him
00:42:05
He told his father before they'd even left the hospital that day. He says, Dad, they think I did it.
00:42:10
Oh, wow. This is the day it happened. I said, they're thinking you did something.
00:42:15
So he says, you have to stop talking to them right now. Rick's family believes tunnel vision had already set in.
00:42:22
It's like they just only had one person in mind. They never did anything to look for anybody else.
00:42:30
Rick hired a prominent defense attorney, and they waited, anticipating the worst.
00:42:35
But there were no arrests. Spring came, then summer. The leaves began to fall. The holidays approached once again.
00:42:44
So as the weeks and months go on after Connie's murder, There is a lot of speculation going around because police have not named a person of interest, a potential suspect.
00:42:54
Debate maintains that it was a masked intruder. NBC Connecticut anchor and reporter Shannon Miller.
00:43:00
So there's this big mystery in town. Who could be this person responsible who came in and did this?
00:43:06
There's a lot of fear. There's a lot of frustration as to why the answers are not coming fast enough.
00:43:13
Rick's family wanted an arrest, too, partly to put an end to all the rumors. We were hopeful that there would be some other evidence to point to someone else, because we knew it couldn't possibly be Rick, so there has to be something else out there proving that it's not him.
00:43:35
By the first anniversary of Connie's murder, her killer was still out there. All her family and friends could do was gather to honor that bright light that had been extinguished from their lives.
00:43:46
Thank you so much for coming out tonight. It's amazing to see all the support from Connie's friends and family in the Ellington community.
00:43:55
We wanted to do something special for her, primarily because we knew that she would do that for us.
00:44:01
Friends spoke about Connie and sang her favorite songs. Somewhere over the rainbow
00:44:10
Last time I saw her, she was singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Just days before Connie's murder, Darlene ran into her at their children's school.
00:44:20
Connie wanted to go get a coffee and chat. Darlene was in a rush. And she was like, I wish you would just go and get a cup of jaff.
00:44:28
And then as she went by me, she started to sing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. She just, as she turned, last time I saw her, she turned around and she was just like,
00:44:38
she kind of gave me this smile. She used to always go like, and I was like. live every moment laugh every day love beyond words this is how connie margata debate lived in
00:44:50
her life every day how hard was it having that vigil when you're trying to celebrate connie
00:44:57
and you know that her killer is still out there yeah yeah well i knew it was him by that time he
00:45:04
just needed to get arrested him was connie's husband rick kim and many others close to connie
00:45:12
with all they'd seen and heard in the years since her murder, now believed Rick was her killer.
00:45:17
Even Peggy and Darlene, who had spent so much time with the debates and observed the marriage that was the envy of Birchview Drive,
00:45:24
could no longer ignore what had become so clear to others. We were the last two, I always say this to her,
00:45:30
we were the last two ding-dongs on that train because everybody else jumped off a long time ago,
00:45:35
and we hung on with the behavior and just the conversations, the weird text messaging, we're kind of like, yeah, this doesn't add up.
00:45:45
And within that year, he never approached us to ask us, did you see anything that day?
00:45:51
Was there anything odd? But if the authorities were focusing on Rick debate, they were tight-lipped about it.
00:45:57
And state's attorney, Matthew Gdansky, had no intention of rushing the case. We're not just going to go A to Z.
00:46:03
We're going to hit every letter in between and check every box, cross every T, dot every I.
00:46:08
And what may have looked like a lack of progress was anything but. The neighbors on Birchview Drive were about to experience a case of deja vu.
00:46:20
Coming up. Next thing I knew, there were more huge SUVs and cop cars and sirens.
00:46:27
What was going on this time? More than a year after Connie DeBate was shot to death,
00:46:45
state police still hadn't made an arrest. But that's not to say they weren't working the case hard.
00:46:52
They knew it wasn't the contractor. His alibi checked out. And there was no evidence that he'd been the one to damage the debate's cars.
00:46:59
He was cleared of any involvement. Their suspicion was firmly on Connie's husband, Rick DeBate.
00:47:06
They were having trouble with his account of what happened. This was being called a home invasion.
00:47:11
Yeah. Suspicion arose in those crucial first hours of the investigation. As neighbors hid in their houses or huddled on the street,
00:47:21
Trooper First Class Ryan Klukey and his canine Rocky were called to the scene to try to pick up the scent of that elusive intruder,
00:47:28
a masked man who Rick said had most likely fled from the open basement door. They had left something behind.
00:47:34
There was a wallet lying on the grass pretty much right outside of that entry basement door.
00:47:43
Trooper Kluke put Rocky to work. I brought him up to that basement door where I started him,
00:47:48
and he initiates a track with his head down tracking into the rear yard area where he comes up to that wallet that was lying on the ground.
00:48:00
He continues that track pretty intensely around the deck area of the residence on the grass
00:48:05
until he makes his way to the front of the house. According to Rocky's nose, whoever had left the basement did not run into the woods or flee the property,
00:48:16
but rather went around the house and right back in the front door. Was that odd to you? Because you almost think if it was an intruder who ran away and was trying to get away,
00:48:25
then they would have kept going away from the house instead of back into the house.
00:48:29
Yeah, it's noteworthy at the time. What made it even more noteworthy was what Rocky did once he got inside the house.
00:48:37
He comes in very close proximity to where Mr. Debate was in the house receiving medical attention.
00:48:44
It appeared that Rocky had tracked Rick's scent, which indicated to his handler, Trooper Klukey, that Rick was the one who left through the basement door.
00:48:53
Could that be right? So I want to proof that trail that we just ran. Did we miss something?
00:49:01
Because it was abnormal, so let's try it again. Rocky followed the same trail from the basement door to the front of the house.
00:49:08
However, this time, instead of going onto the porch and into the house, Rocky takes a left turn instead of the right and goes into the ambulance, essentially.
00:49:17
Right to the stretcher in the ambulance in those tight quarters where Mr. DeBate was laying.
00:49:21
And it wasn't just the canine that had sniffed something out that day. Because when detectives processed the scene, they felt the whole thing look staged.
00:49:32
What did you think in particular, what was really sticking out to you as looking staged?
00:49:37
This was a burglary where someone's in there to steal your stuff. It didn't appear like anything was really disturbed.
00:49:44
The drawers weren't pulled out. in the upstairs closet where the intruder reportedly was with Rick DeVate,
00:49:51
where you could see all of Connie's jewelry right there, not disturbed. None of the drawers were opened.
00:49:57
So, their conclusion? No masked intruder. No Vin Diesel-sounding madman. Could there have really been an intruder?
00:50:05
No, definitely not. He wanted to come out looking like he survived a home invasion,
00:50:11
but his wife, unfortunately, was murdered. But what it comes down to is it's a domestic homicide.
00:50:18
Good Friday, April 14, 2017. It had been almost a year and a half since Connie's murder
00:50:25
when Darlene looked out her window and saw Rick DeBate driving up toward his house.
00:50:29
Next thing I knew, same thing as the day of the murder. There were more huge SUVs and cop cars and sirens,
00:50:37
and they forced him out of the car. Rick DeBate was led away in handcuffs and charged with the murder of his wife Connie.
00:50:46
I thought it's over. But for Rick's parents, it was far from over. Because now, a new nightmare had just begun.
00:50:55
What do you say to your son after he's been arrested for murder? Say, we'll get through this. We're going to get through it. We'll try to stay positive.
00:51:03
Yeah, I couldn't believe it. The boys went to live with Connie's older sister after Rick's arrest.
00:51:10
How's he handling it? Lousy. He lost his job right away. He lost his boys. Lost his wife.
00:51:23
He was alone. He was terrified. He was scared about how the boy's going to handle this news.
00:51:33
And it was not good. Did you believe Rick's story about the intruder, the, you know, being zip-tied to the chair,
00:51:44
and the intruder shoots Connie? Yes. We had no reason to doubt it. No reason at all.
00:51:51
The arrest had come as a shock to Rick's Aunt Janice as well. I honestly thought they were looking elsewhere.
00:51:58
I really didn't think they were looking at Rick. But the authorities had been looking very closely at Rick.
00:52:04
And pretty soon, everyone would know about a secret they'd discovered. My jaw almost dropped to the floor. I couldn't believe it.
00:52:13
Coming up, what had Connie's friends and family floored? I just kept on thinking, oh my God.
00:52:20
Rick was living a secret life. Absolutely. When Dateline continues. When Rick DeBate was arrested for killing his wife Connie,
00:52:40
many wondered how this seemingly perfect marriage could have possibly ended in murder.
00:52:45
Did Rick DeBate have any history of domestic violence that you could find? No. Criminal record?
00:52:52
No. No. It seems odd that someone would, you know, go from having a clean slate to kill her.
00:53:00
It does. And that was certainly a hurdle I considered on this case. I've got to convince a jury that this normal, suburban, professional guy with no record killed his wife.
00:53:16
State's attorney, Matthew Gidansky, felt confident he could overcome that hurdle because he believed he had found the motive.
00:53:23
He had a long-term affair with this other woman. she became pregnant in may of 2015 an affair a pregnant girlfriend the prosecutor was convinced
00:53:35
rick killed connie to be with the other woman investigators had kept this bombshell quiet
00:53:40
during the course of their nearly 18 month investigation but rick had only kept it quiet
00:53:45
from them for a couple of hours he must have guessed they'd find out soon enough so he brought
00:53:51
it up right there on day one from his hospital bed He told you this in the interview He did This is huge It is Her name was Sarah Ganser and she and Rick had been friends since junior high She had even done a reading at Rick and Connie wedding
00:54:07
And the way Rick told it to detectives, it all sounded above board. Sarah, his newly single longtime friend, wanted to have a baby, and he and Connie offered to help.
00:54:18
We were going to donate sperm to her to have a kid. But it became too expensive so that in order for her to conceive a child, they had to do some untraditional things.
00:54:31
Rick had to sleep with Sarah? Yes. Instead of doing it a different way? Yes. Like the science route?
00:54:38
Correct. Old-fashioned? Yes. Untraditional, but traditional in the way that the baby was conceived?
00:54:46
Yeah. Okay. Do you think your wife had any issues with that? It was her idea, in a way.
00:54:52
Her idea? Hard to believe Connie would have been okay with the plan, let alone come up with it.
00:54:58
Rick may have sensed the detectives were skeptical, so he tried again. There was a cheating going on in the beginning.
00:55:04
And then, finally, Rick settled on the real story. Was her getting pregnant unexpected?
00:55:09
It was unexpected. After Rick's arrest, word got out about the affair. You thought they had a good marriage.
00:55:16
I honestly thought I was being punked. I was like, this is not... It was unbelievable.
00:55:20
My husband told me, he's like, listen, he has a girlfriend, she's pregnant. I'm like, get out of here.
00:55:25
What are you talking about? Friends and family believe there's zero chance Connie knew about it, as Rick had claimed.
00:55:33
Do you think Connie found out? She definitely did not know. If she had ever found out, or if she had known that was happening,
00:55:41
she would have said something to someone. That is something that she would have not accepted.
00:55:45
It would have been very apparent, I think, if she knew. I think she would have been...
00:55:48
Angry. Very angry. You know, she was very close to my mother. She would have called screaming and yelling.
00:55:53
Connie was no shrinking violet. No. No. So I don't believe she knew. And I just kept on thinking, oh my God, I was shocked.
00:56:03
Rick was living a secret life. Absolutely, yeah. The prosecutor believed Rick's secret life was on a collision course with his real life.
00:56:12
So the pressure was building. And he actually voiced that to the handful of people that he told about this.
00:56:18
that he was worried about a divorce, that he was worried that he was going to lose his friends,
00:56:23
he was going to lose his family. He needed to resolve this situation to the point that you believed he took a life, his wife.
00:56:30
Well, we don't grade them on the wisdom of their plan. We just grade them whether they're guilty or not guilty.
00:56:35
And by any stretch of the imagination, no one would think this was a good plan to resolve his problem.
00:56:41
No one would. But this was the plan he came up with. The prosecutor's plan was to lay it all out for a jury.
00:56:49
But as he would soon find out, things don't always go according to plan. I think she was a very reluctant witness.
00:56:57
I think she was very reluctant to provide answers. Coming up, is the prosecution's star witness about to throw a curveball?
00:57:07
How would you describe Sarah Ganser in court? Was she on your side? I would say she was not on the state side. I wouldn't say she was hostile, but I would say she approached that line.
00:57:33
Rick DeBate had been arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, Connie. He had planned for this possibility when, the day after Connie's murder,
00:57:42
he hired Hubert Santos, one of the most highly regarded defense attorneys in the state,
00:57:47
and his partner, Trent LaLima. And that was the morning of Christmas Eve? Yes. That's an interesting time to get a call from a potential new client.
00:57:59
Sometimes in criminal defense, things are urgent, things come up. But a sense of urgency didn't seem to apply to the courts.
00:58:06
and any notion that justice would be swift quickly evaporated. The trial was delayed again and again and again.
00:58:14
Three years passed. And the entire time, Rick was free on bail. How did you cope?
00:58:22
Not easy. It's not easy. You put it in a box. You take it out and deal with it when you have to.
00:58:28
You put it back on the shelf. And I think we also lean on each other. But there's no manual for this.
00:58:34
You don't know how to cope with this. Did you feel like he's getting this kind of free pass in the meantime, that he's out and about?
00:58:40
Definitely. I remember one person saying the only person dancing in the streets is him.
00:58:45
And so, you know, the family's devastated. The devastation was compounded when Connie's father died of cancer in 2019.
00:58:55
I'm convinced for him he was holding on with very bad health, hoping to see this through.
00:59:02
just wanting to be there for all of us. I mean, he wanted to be the rock for us.
00:59:09
And his body just gave out. Eventually, the opposing sides assembled in a Connecticut courtroom
00:59:16
and selected a jury. It was the eve of the trial, March 2020. And then COVID happened.
00:59:22
And we thought we'd be out a week or two, but obviously COVID had other ideas for us.
00:59:27
It wasn't a week, it wasn't two weeks, and then it turned into months and years.
00:59:30
Rick's attorney, Hubert Santos, passed away during this time, causing a further delay.
00:59:36
Trent LaLima would now try the case without his partner and mentor. We already knew what our strategy was, what our defense would be.
00:59:43
And so as much as he was not there for the trial, his ideas, his planning, they were.
00:59:48
You believe the police really had tunnel vision in this case from the beginning?
00:59:53
That was a clear part of our theory at trial The state had already honed in on him from the beginning and that they made their mind up and worked backwards from there When the trial finally started in April 2022 the state led by Matthew Gdansky told the jury it was not tunnel vision
01:00:08
that pointed the finger at Rick DeBate, but concrete evidence. Lots of it. He brought in the state police to explain how the crime scene looks staged,
01:00:18
how Rocky the canine had traced Rick's and only Rick's scent at the scene. And he spelled out what he said were holes in Rick's story about that day.
01:00:28
And of course, the prosecutor told the jury why Rick killed Connie. So the motive was his pregnant girlfriend.
01:00:36
And who better to explain that to the jury than the woman herself? The state is going to call Sarah Ganser next.
01:00:46
Cameras weren't allowed in the courtroom, but this is an audio recording of the woman at the center of the love triangle, Sarah Ganser.
01:00:53
Reporters covering the trial were keenly focused on her testimony. When Sarah Ganser walks into the courtroom, I mean, you could hear a pin drop.
01:01:02
This is the testimony that so many people had been waiting to hear. At some point, did you become pregnant?
01:01:10
I did. And who was the father of the baby? Rick debate. I think the jury empathized with Sarah.
01:01:19
She told the court several times this is tough testimony to do. She was sharing her most personal, intimate details with strangers.
01:01:28
So, Ms. Ganser, even before you got pregnant with the defendant's baby, was the defendant indicating to you that there was going to be a divorce?
01:01:37
Yes. The prosecution argued that despite what Rick had told Sarah, there was no evidence he and Connie were divorcing.
01:01:45
But Sarah's time on the stand was not without its problems for Gdansky in his case.
01:01:50
How would you describe Sarah Ganser in court? Was she on your side? No, I would say she was not on the state side.
01:01:58
I wouldn't say she was hostile, but I would say she approached that line. The prosecution's theory was that Rick DeBate was under immense pressure.
01:02:08
But that's not what Sarah said. Ms. Ganser, is it your testimony you never conveyed that you were upset that he did not file for a divorce?
01:02:18
I don't recall telling him that. Did you ever shut him out, so to speak, and say, that's it?
01:02:27
Well, yeah, that's different from saying I want you to get a divorce. Did he complain about the pressure of your situation and his situation?
01:02:36
not really to me. He never said the pressure is getting to me. I don't know what behaviors would characterize that. So I think the prosecution obviously kind of had
01:02:50
this pregnancy as the reason, the motive behind this murder. But in Sarah's testimony,
01:02:56
she wasn't looking to break up a family at all. And so I think in some cases, you know,
01:03:02
it helped paint the picture that she was not putting pressure on Richard DuBate to make a decision.
01:03:09
In the months leading up to the murder, Rick had texted tenderly with Sarah, referring to her as his little love nugget.
01:03:17
And when investigators dug into Sarah's private Facebook messages, they said there was evidence Rick had been trashing his wife to his girlfriend.
01:03:25
Do you ever call her names? I think that married people say, and even dating people say,
01:03:30
flippant things about each other all the time to other people. Did he ever call her names?
01:03:36
I'm sure he did. Please don't ask me to remember any of them because it was seven years ago.
01:03:43
Sarah appeared reluctant to help the prosecution. And in fact, defense attorney Trent Lalima
01:03:48
believed she actually helped his client. It was quite clear she wasn't putting any pressure on him.
01:03:54
She had told him that you just say the word and I won't put the father's name on the birth certificate.
01:04:01
I won't mention your name to anybody. No one will ever know that this is your child.
01:04:06
So how is the pressure on? If she's telling him, you can just go back to her and we can pretend this never happened.
01:04:14
And that was exactly the point the defense wanted to hammer home when they questioned Sarah.
01:04:19
Because of your nature, was it often the case that you didn't regularly bring up the prospect of a divorce with Rick debate?
01:04:29
That and because I did not want to be the cause of a breakup of their family. It was enough that I was pregnant. I did not want to break up their family.
01:04:43
But Sarah clearly wanted to be with him. She told the jury her relationship with Rick continued even after he had been arrested and charged with Connie's murder.
01:04:52
Well, I think Rick was arrested in 2017, in April. So it was, again, probably months after that, that, yes, yet we started seeing each other again.
01:05:06
Rick's family says the idea that Connie was killed over an affair was nonsense. How do you feel about that as a possible motive that, you know, he wanted Connie out of the way to be with?
01:05:19
No. No. He would deal with it. He would have dealt with it. And Connie would have too.
01:05:25
They would have somehow managed. And it wasn't such a big secret after all. He had, in fact, confided in his cousin Lori all about it.
01:05:34
I think at the time his intention was to tell Connie and to try to keep his family together.
01:05:44
And, you know, that that was going to be difficult and I was going to be there to do whatever I could to help.
01:05:53
Sarah Ganser testimony had not gone as smoothly as the prosecution had hoped But there was more for the jury to consider including what could amount to the proverbial smoking gun
01:06:07
Coming up, the story told by Data. It was a silent witness. Correct. Multiple silent witnesses.
01:06:15
Digital evidence is powerful. When Dateline continues. The prosecution had put a reluctant witness on the stand
01:06:34
who provided the jury with a why in the case against Rick debate. But now they had perhaps an even better witness,
01:06:41
a witness with no emotional ties to the defendant. It was a silent witness. Correct.
01:06:48
Multiple silent witnesses. Digital evidence is powerful. The state had what it said was cold, hard data.
01:06:56
Detective Sergeant Bill Udermark told the jury and us how the debate's electronic devices held a treasure trove of information.
01:07:04
And when you're talking about electronics, you're talking about Facebook accounts, the alarm reporting.
01:07:10
You're talking about cell phone downloads, cameras, the Fitbit, surveillance cameras, a lot of different work that came into play.
01:07:18
It all added up to a timeline for both Connie and Rick. What they did, where they went, who they talked to.
01:07:26
What are you learning about Connie's last day? What had she done that morning? After she wakes up, I believe the first thing she does is go on her phone.
01:07:33
She messages to some friends, and then she starts her day. We have her putting on her Fitbit shortly after she got up.
01:07:41
Connie wore the Fitbit device on her waistband. It recorded when she was moving, when she was stationary, and her steps taken that day.
01:07:49
She's starting the day with the kids, getting the kids ready for school. She has a couple of other text messages during the morning, and then we can see her leaving.
01:07:58
Getting in the car, driving to the Y. We can see when she hops in her car, because there's no movement on the Fitbit, she's not walking anymore.
01:08:07
Connie arrived at the YMCA, as seen in these surveillance images, but didn't stay long because her exercise class had been canceled.
01:08:15
She drove straight home. And the Fitbit picks her up? Correct. Getting home, getting out of the car?
01:08:21
So she starts getting steps again on the Fitbit. So that's about 918, 920. So then she's moving sporadically inside the house.
01:08:28
We correspond that with some of the Facebook things that she's doing as well. This is where the Fitbit becomes really critical
01:08:33
because Rick's story was that Connie came home and he was yelling at her to escape or to flee this intruder.
01:08:42
And Rick's story is that this occurred at 9 o'clock. So now we have steps on our Fitbit up to 10.05.
01:08:51
So it's an hour and five minutes that you're still alive. So you've got a time discrepancy.
01:08:54
Correct. Connie's electronic footprint was telling a different story than what Rick was telling you.
01:09:00
Not just Connie's. Rick's as well. It provided us all kinds of information showing us that he really never left the property.
01:09:07
He's very close to the house, if not in the house. So the story about him driving away, realizing he forgot his laptop and going back, that you were finding that that was not?
01:09:18
That was not the case. According to the electronic data, Rick DeBate never left the property.
01:09:25
Instead, according to the prosecution, Rick stayed home and waited for Connie to return,
01:09:31
then spent nearly an hour building up the nerve to lure her down into the basement,
01:09:35
where he shot her dead and staged his own attack. But that theory was full of holes, said defense attorney Trent LaLima.
01:09:46
And it's important to remember, it's the state's job to prove beyond a reasonable doubt their case.
01:09:52
And reasonable doubt was everywhere, he said, starting with the fact that Rick was not a violent man.
01:09:59
Rick Debate has never had an allegation of violence in his history. There's no allegation of any violence against Connie Debate or that he was ever attacked anyone else.
01:10:08
And you don't go from that to what the state alleges that morning. And he said the prosecution's evidence to the contrary could not be trusted.
01:10:17
These electronic devices are not prepared with the idea that they're going to be used in a murder trial.
01:10:22
Fitbit designed their device to make money. It's not meant to be an absolutely accurate scientific or legal device.
01:10:29
And in fact, the people that testify at trial couldn't even tell us how the Fitbit reached the conclusions it did.
01:10:34
They could only tell us the numbers it spit out and how it got the numbers. But you're still having to say that every single device was faulty or inaccurate.
01:10:43
I think it's quite possible that all these electronic devices are not perfect. But they all were wrong?
01:10:50
They could all have errors, absolutely. The defense argued there was one thing the jury could rely on.
01:10:56
The old-fashioned tried-and-true forensic evidence, which was in our favor. DNA at the crime scene.
01:11:04
Investigators had found plenty of it. And the defense said it confirmed Rick DeBate's story about an intruder.
01:11:11
In this case, we had unidentified DNA in six different key places, starting with the master bedroom closet, going down to the safe box in the basement where the gun was kept, going to the gun itself, including the inside of Rick DeBate's shirt and including the door exiting the basement out the hatchway.
01:11:31
And it's important to remember, Rick DeBate, when he told his story to the police that first day,
01:11:36
before he could have ever known what the DNA results were, he was citing those exact places, saying that's where the intruder was.
01:11:43
That's what the intruder touched in the house. The defense also wanted to make clear to the jury that despite what the prosecution wanted them to believe,
01:11:51
Rick DeBate never wavered in his story about what happened that morning on Birchview Drive.
01:11:56
His wife is shot, feet away. after he's attacked by an intruder. That would be the most traumatic day of anybody's life,
01:12:05
the most traumatic experience of anybody's life. And are we going to expect that he's going to have the exact time
01:12:11
of how long everything happened? Remember every small detail of what he did on his iPad or his tablet that morning?
01:12:19
The big details that he was home, an intruder was in the home, attacked him, and they ran down to the basement, and that man shot his wife.
01:12:27
Those details were always consistent. But the jurors wouldn't have to take his word for it.
01:12:33
They would hear it straight from Rick DeBate himself. The defense will call Richard DeBate Jr.
01:12:40
Coming up, Rick recounts struggling with the intruder and the horror of his wife's last moments.
01:12:48
What did you see in here? I heard a loud bang. I believe the flash. and I remember seeing Thunc Tani
01:12:58
of all emotion was to the ground. Will jurors believe his story? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
01:13:04
have you agreed upon a verdict? We have. Rick Debate had waited more than six years
01:13:22
to tell his side of the story. Now was his chance as he took the stand in his own defense.
01:13:28
How has Connie's loss affected you? I don't know where to start with that. It affected me in the most awfully negative way possible.
01:13:42
The boys don't have a mother. Life is irreversibly changed for the worse. Rick acknowledged to the jury he had cheated on Connie with Sarah.
01:13:52
Did it happen on multiple occasions? Yes, it did. At some point around this time period, did Sarah tell you anything?
01:13:59
Yes, she did. What did she tell you? She told me she was pregnant. But just as Sarah Ganser had testified, Rick denied feeling pressure to choose between her and Connie.
01:14:10
Did she tell you to do anything? No. Did she present options to you? Yes, she did.
01:14:17
What options did she present to you? She said if you stay with Connie, that she wouldn't tell anyone who the dad was.
01:14:25
And then Rick took the jury through that awful morning. What happened when you got upstairs?
01:14:31
I went upstairs, and when I opened up the closet door, there was an intruder. He told them how the intruder demanded his wallet,
01:14:39
and then what happened when he heard Connie come home. What did you do I yelled Connie there was someone in the house Ron The intruder grabbed my hand twisted it somehow
01:14:52
forced me to the ground, and ran out. Ran upstairs. What did you do? After I eventually got up, I ran after him.
01:15:02
And he described getting to the basement just seconds too late. What did you see in here?
01:15:07
I heard a loud bang. I believe a flash. And I remember seeing Connie fall in motion most of the ground.
01:15:18
Next, he told the jury how he was tortured, eventually fighting off the intruder with the blowtorch.
01:15:23
I thought maybe I burned his mask, but he put his hands up in his face, dropped the blowtorch, and ran.
01:15:34
Rick DeBate professed his love for Connie and his innocence in her murder. Who shot Connie DeBate?
01:15:41
Intruder. Did you shoot Connie? No. Did you stage any of the evidence at that scene?
01:15:49
No, I didn't. That part of Rick's story never wavered. But there were subtle differences between what he initially told investigators and what he said in court.
01:15:59
For instance, in 2015, he told detectives this. I walked in, put my phone down, then I heard something upstairs.
01:16:06
I heard something fall. Somebody broke the cancer. Break, something again. and then went upstairs and let something happen.
01:16:14
But this is what he told the jury in 2022. What did you do when you went inside?
01:16:20
Put my keys down on a hodge, put my phone near the car because I was going to make a coffee.
01:16:28
And at that point, since I already told my boss I was running late, I just decided to kind of veg out a little bit
01:16:35
and surf the internet and kind of take my time. Now, at some point, was this interrupted?
01:16:42
Yes. What happened? Heard something upstairs? The allegation was that he was changing his story to fit what he'd heard during the trial.
01:16:56
I mean, what changed were the gaps in between the big moments? How long was he home?
01:17:00
Was he making a coffee? You know, did he go on his iPad for a bit to kill some time?
01:17:04
Those gaps changed, but the details were the same. And he stuck to the key parts of his story that he had told the police and the family over and over again.
01:17:13
And those have never changed over the years. But now it was state's attorney Matthew Godansky's turn to ask the questions.
01:17:20
And perhaps nobody had listened more closely to Rick's story than he had. I was looking forward to cross-examine him.
01:17:27
Yeah. Did you beat him up? I guess that for someone else to determine The prosecutor pulled no punches accusing Rick of getting rid of his wife while trying to make himself look good in the process
01:17:39
And so this is the plan you came up with for this dilemma that you were in? There's no plan, sir.
01:17:45
You could be the hero, a failed hero, but a hero? No. He pressed Rick to account for the inconsistencies in his story.
01:17:53
And you could see from the data that you and Connie were home together for a good half hour or so that day before she was killed.
01:18:02
At some point. OK. But that that disputes your story. Your story is that she came home and she ran down in the basement.
01:18:12
That's not the full story, sir. You never left that house, did you? I absolutely left the house that day.
01:18:18
And every chance he got, the prosecutor made sure to emphasize one key element of Rick's story, a Hollywood element.
01:18:27
There were two people in that closet, you and Vin Diesel. That must be your wrestling match with Vin Diesel, correct?
01:18:33
Vin Diesel, Vin Diesel, this Vin Diesel guy. You must have been fighting with Vin Diesel, were you not?
01:18:39
I was fighting with an intruder, yes. Why bring up a movie star so many times in your cross-examination?
01:18:46
He's the one who said the guy sounded like Vin Diesel. So I was certainly going to use it with him.
01:18:53
Was he trying to get a rise out of Rick? Or was it a wink and a nod to the jury?
01:18:58
A way to emphasize how ridiculous he found the whole story. You chased Vin Diesel, who was chasing your wife.
01:19:06
The exchanges were tense, often accusatory. But Rick debate stuck to his story. He didn't kill Connie.
01:19:12
An intruder did. You shot her in the back of the head. Did you not? Absolutely not, sir.
01:19:17
And then you went up to her and you pulled her back and you put another shot in her stomach to finish her off, didn't you?
01:19:23
Absolutely not, sir. Was he lying? It was now up to the jury to decide. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in the case of State B. Richard DeBate, have you agreed upon a verdict?
01:19:33
We have. Less than a day's worth of deliberating was all it took. Will the defendant, Richard DeBate, please rise and face the jury?
01:19:41
Madam Foreperson, is the defendant guilty or not guilty? We found the defendant guilty.
01:19:51
How did you feel when you heard guilty? Like a victory. You know, definitely felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders.
01:19:58
It had been years. Years. Finally, this part was over. Yeah, it was relief. After six and a half years from that day that you went to that crime scene,
01:20:11
you finally had the guilty verdict. You know we felt a great responsibility to Connie and obviously very happy with the verdict The irony is that he came up with this crazy evil plan to protect his reputation and this is how he going to be remembered
01:20:32
Rick DeBate convicted wife killer. He was sentenced to 65 years in prison. It was an amazing feeling like it was better than I thought it was going to be.
01:20:45
And I just think it was because I can move on now. Because those seven years, there was just so much anxiety.
01:20:56
I changed as a person. I lost a part of me that I'll never get back. On the other side of the courtroom, different tears.
01:21:07
That's a tough moment when now your son is being led away for murdering his wife.
01:21:15
I can't believe it was there I can't believe it was there Two families torn apart
01:21:34
learning to live with different types of pain but they all share one thing a love for Connie
01:21:40
Everything she did was out of her heart There are people we never met that would reach out and say, she did a small act of kindness or she did something amazing.
01:21:53
Do you feel that Connie will live on in her boys? I know she will. She had a great, beautiful influence on them, and I know they will carry that forward.
01:22:06
And maybe a good piece of advice is to go through life treating people like their mom did.
01:22:13
Absolutely. Peggy and Darlene will forever miss their third musketeer, but they know Connie's legacy lives on along the once again quiet Birchview Drive.
01:22:26
Connie was the connector. Connie wanted to connect all the neighbors to one another.
01:22:32
Her death brought everyone together. Absolutely. She was beautiful from the inside out.
01:22:40
Her light was so bright that you just wanted to be in the light with her. That's all for this edition of Dateline.
01:22:51
We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 central. And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.
01:22:58
I'm Lester Holt. For all of us at NBC News, good night.