- 13 hours ago
A Plan to Kill - Season 2 - Episode 07: Digital Justice
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Short filmTranscript
00:05A 9-1-1 call came in.
00:07An armed intruder broke into this house.
00:09Did you see her like the loudest bang?
00:11I saw my wife laying on the ground.
00:14She was only 39 years old.
00:17At the peak of her life, it was awful.
00:20All I kept thinking about were her kids
00:22and how are they going to get through life without her?
00:26We have a murderer in camouflage
00:28running around the neighborhood.
00:30The entire street was full of state troopers
00:33and police dogs.
00:35Do you know of anybody who would want to do this?
00:37The contractor.
00:39He took their money and they were taking him to court.
00:42He was pretty hostile towards them.
00:44Usually in a murder case, you hear about DNA.
00:48But in this case, the Fitbit completely contradicted his story
00:53and was the star of the show.
00:56He thought he had the perfect plan
00:57and that he could get away with it.
01:00It hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment crime.
01:02This was a planned cold-blooded murder.
01:25Ellington, Connecticut is a charming small town.
01:28It's a farming community.
01:32It's probably one of the friendliest places on earth to live.
01:36It is filled with cornfields and cows
01:40and we all kind of help each other out whenever we need it.
01:44Crimes are very rare in Ellington.
01:48That kind of stuff doesn't happen there.
01:579-1-1, can I help you?
01:59Hello?
02:01No.
02:04What's the address?
02:06Hello?
02:09At 10.16 a.m., a 911 call came in from a male moaning into the phone.
02:15And it was a reported home invasion on Birchview Drive in Ellington.
02:20A home invasion in a small town like Ellington would be considered a major crime.
02:24So at that point, all the troopers that we had are sent to that area.
02:28So the first troopers that get there, they go in, guns are on, to clear the house.
02:33Through the front door, which was unlocked,
02:37to find Rick DeBate, the homeowner, alive on the kitchen floor lying on his face.
02:43One hand zip-tied to a folding chair.
02:46One hand outstretched and blood on the floor.
02:51Rick DeBate appeared to be injurant but stable.
02:53And immediately described the intruder as a stocky, large male, about 6'4",
03:00with a deep, grovelly, like, min-diesel type voice,
03:04dressed all in camouflage and wearing gloves.
03:07He asks him for his wallet and assaults him with a box cutter and a low torch.
03:14But then he says that down in the basement in front of him,
03:19the intruder killed his wife.
03:23It was a Connie debate.
03:28Rick was in shock, but he thinks the intruder had fled the basement out to the backyard.
03:34Two of the troopers were sent downstairs to clear the basement.
03:39They could see blood on the stairs, blood on the wall.
03:42When they walked down there, they'd have to go through an area that had tools on the floor.
03:47They immediately see a handgun on the floor.
03:50And then notice the bulkhead is open.
03:54In Connecticut, we call it a bulkhead.
03:56It's the cellar door that covers the opening of the basement at the ground level.
04:02And then in a dark section of the basement, they find Rick's wife lying on her back, deceased.
04:12Arriving on the scene, there was police cars all in the neighborhood.
04:16The media was already assembling.
04:18By the time we arrived, Rick debate had already been transported to the hospital.
04:23Because he had puncture wounds on both of his legs, his left shoulder, and cuts on his head.
04:28But they're not life-thartening.
04:31The entire street was full of state troopers and police dogs.
04:36It was insane.
04:38I had looked out my kitchen window and saw a state trooper with his rifle drawn on Connie's house.
04:48Connie debate was one of my best friends.
04:51I had no idea what was going on, and I immediately called Connie.
04:56I was panicked and was hoping that she would answer her phone.
05:02But she did not.
05:06When we turned on to Birchview Drive, it was a scene I'll never forget.
05:10There was a sense of urgency.
05:12Neighbors don't know.
05:14Is someone on the loose?
05:15Are they worried for our safety?
05:17We were told to stay in our houses.
05:19So I was really scared for us as a neighborhood, but I was also nervous and scared for Connie and
05:27Rick.
05:28We have a six-foot, four-foot stocky Vin Diesel murderer in camouflage running around
05:35the area, and who knows what that person's capable of.
05:41Our department basically locked down all the roads in the neighborhood, got ahold of the local schools.
05:47The community was shocked, was shaken.
05:51Our team is out interviewing neighbors to find out if they saw anything going on out of the ordinary,
05:57as well as for information about Connie and Rick debate.
06:02Speaking to those witnesses, earlier on that morning, everything appeared normal, nothing out of place.
06:09Some of the neighbors that were particularly close with the debates described Connie as a wonderful, fun friend that they
06:18loved.
06:19And Rick was the life of the party.
06:22Connie moved into the neighborhood, and that's when I met her.
06:25She was bringing everyone homemade fudge in a way to introduce herself.
06:31And she just had this vibe about her that just drew you to her.
06:36She was the most caring, loving, thoughtful person that I have ever met in my life.
06:43Connie was a pharmaceutical sales rep and an EMT because that was just her nature, is to help people.
06:50Connie was an extraordinarily good mom and had two boys, seven and nine.
06:57Connie and Rick met at a party after college.
07:02Rick became a director of IT, which he seemed to be successful at.
07:07And he was really a good friend, and I instantly grew to like him.
07:14Connie and Rick were the couple that everybody was a little jealous about.
07:20They never fought.
07:21They joked around a lot together.
07:23He doted over her.
07:25They were a match made in heaven.
07:36Everybody's still looking for the person who committed the home invasion.
07:40But at this point, I'm assigned to go talk to Rick.
07:43He's the only witness that we have that knows what happened in the house.
07:48So when he got to the hospital, we walk into Rick DeBate's room.
07:51We could see a little bit of dry blood on his face, and we could see blood on his hands
07:56from fighting the assailant.
07:58He's got some superficial injuries from the assault.
08:12I sent a text to our sergeant at the house just to let him know that this person could be
08:18on the radar.
08:18And they had already learned of the contractor through one of the neighbors.
08:24I told the police that when I had seen the state trooper with his rifle drawn on Connie's house, all
08:32I kept thinking about was that she had told us about some issues that she was having with a contractor.
08:37He did a job that was not complete.
08:40He took their money, and they were taking him to court, and he was pretty hostile towards them.
08:47I thought maybe the contractor had barricaded them into the house and had Connie and Rick holding them against their
08:55will.
08:55The neighbor's saying it, and Rick's saying it, so this person could definitely be somebody of interest.
09:03And that's why the sergeant sent two detectives right away to talk to them.
09:09There were two separate vandalism calls a couple months before Connie had been killed.
09:14My window was fast.
09:16They decided to get a gun for personal protection.
09:19The quote was, I'm sticking to my story, and I need to get a lawyer.
09:24This person who's charged with murder is just out and about what is going on.
09:44We had the dog teams that were out searching the woods looking for the assailant.
09:49But we were given information about a contractor that may have been having a feud with the debates about work
09:57not completed at their house.
09:59Rick said they were taking him to court.
10:01This was the only person that we knew so far that could have a problem with the debate family, and
10:06his name was Ken Sweeney.
10:08Two detectives are sent out immediately to find Ken Sweeney to talk to him about his whereabouts that morning.
10:16At the hospital, Rick DeBate also told us about two separate vandalism calls two months before Connie's murder.
10:23And they had to do with vehicles.
10:25One was rags stuffed into Connie's tailpipe.
10:29For the following week, my window was smashed.
10:33Freaked us out a little bit.
10:35Connie immediately called me, and she was really convinced that the contractor had done this.
10:41Soon after that, they decided that it would be a good idea to have a gun in the house.
10:46For protection.
10:50Next, we asked Rick DeBate to clarify the timeline so we could figure out exactly what happened at Connie and
10:57Rick's home that morning.
10:58He had left for work. It was around 8.30 or so.
11:08He sent his boss an email that he has to go back to his house.
11:12He gets home around 9 o'clock in the morning.
11:14He goes in through the garage.
11:17Once he gets inside, he hears noises up in his bedroom.
11:21So he goes upstairs and checks, and that's when he runs into an intruder in the walk-in closet.
11:27I opened up, and there's this camouflage unit.
11:34I can see that it was hard for him to talk about, but Rick said the intruder had a Bowie
11:42knife on him.
11:44Grabs him, asks him for his money, his wallet, and his PIN numbers, which he gave to him.
11:53At the house, in the bedroom, nothing appeared to be ransacked.
11:57In Rick and Connie's closet, we did locate on the top shelf a locked gun box.
12:04We found the key in the drawer of their nightstand.
12:07Inside that was a Ruger 357 unloaded with a trigger lock on it.
12:13The intruder probably didn't see it up there.
12:17Rick hears the garage door open, and he realizes that it's Connie coming back home from a workout at the
12:23local YMCI.
12:25That's when I yelled, there's someone in the house.
12:28She must have ran into the basement because we have two guns in the house.
12:32One was in the basement in a lockbox, and one's in our closet.
12:35The one downstairs was loaded.
12:39The intruder runs down the stairs, and then Rick chases the intruder down into the basement.
12:46You guys just hear, like, the loudest bang.
12:50And I saw my wife laying in the ground.
12:52I didn't hear her at all after that.
12:58We ventured into the basement.
13:00Right at the bottom of the stairs, there was obvious drops of blood on the floor.
13:05There was a butane torch, zip ties, a hammer, utility knife.
13:13And clearly on the floor was another Ruger 357 revolver.
13:18There was three spent rounds, and there was two live rounds still on the cylinder.
13:23Just beyond where the 357 was located, we located Connie, deceased, on the floor.
13:31She was laying on her back.
13:33She had what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the back of her head, and also a gunshot wound
13:38to her belly in a downward trajectory.
13:42We searched the area to see if there was a third round.
13:45And in fact, we did find a bullet projectile in the ceiling joists.
13:51Connie had a cell phone tucked into her waistband, as well as a Fitbit monitor clipped to the
13:57waistband on her left side.
14:00After Rick sees the intruder shoot Connie, the intruder drags Rick debate, sets him down
14:07into a chair, zip ties one leg and one arm to this chair, and then assaults Rick with a
14:14razor knife and a blowtorch from the basement, which all belonged to Rick.
14:20When I hear the zip ties, I'm thinking, okay, the assailant came prepared to restrain someone.
14:25Could it be a targeted home invasion?
14:27Somebody who has a problem with a debate feeling, like the contractor, Ken Sweeney, who detectives
14:31are still looking for.
14:33So I'm opening to grab a torch, and all I did was just push it up toward his base area.
14:40It felt like I may burn him a little.
14:43At that point, the intruder drops everything he's doing and runs out the basement through
14:47the bulkhead.
14:51I walked up the stairs, crawled, whatever.
14:54So you got away from the chair at that point?
14:56Oh, it's still attached to me.
14:58Once he gets upstairs, that's when he grabs his cell phone and then calls 911.
15:07Next, all electronic devices at the scene were seized as evidence.
15:11That would include cell phones, laptops, iPads.
15:14I've never personally seized a Fitbit at a crime scene, but we took that as well.
15:19Let's get the warrants ready for all the electronic data so they can be processed for any digital
15:23evidence that might be helpful.
15:27Later that day, the news came out that a woman is murdered.
15:31An Ellington woman was killed in her home after being shot in the head and stomach.
15:37The victim has been identified as 39-year-old Connie DeBate.
15:42I got a phone call from a neighbor.
15:44She just kept screaming out, Connie's dead.
15:47And in that moment, life just stood still.
15:52It was a moment in time that I never, ever in my life want to repeat again.
15:58All I kept thinking about were Connie's kids and how are they going to get through life without her.
16:09I'll never forget my dad called in the evening and he said that Connie is gone.
16:14And I said, what do you, what do you mean?
16:17He said that somebody broke into the house and murdered my sister.
16:20It was just so unbelievable.
16:22She was only 39 years old.
16:24At the peak of her life with her young kids and her family and her career, so much to live
16:30for.
16:30It was awful.
16:35By this time, detectives found the contractor, Ken Sweeney, at a job site.
16:40Ken Sweeney, he admitted there was some bad blood between him and the debates,
16:44but he didn't feel like he had that much animosity or hatred towards them.
16:49It was just a basic misunderstanding about what was supposed to be done at the house.
16:55Detectives said Ken Sweeney was very cooperative.
16:59He had a rock-solid alibi of being at this job site during the time of the murder.
17:04That was corroborated by his workers and he was more than happy to give us DNA samples.
17:11At that point, we had a decent feeling that Ken Sweeney's not the intruder.
17:15So then who is?
17:20In processing the scene, there were some things that did make sense.
17:23For example, there was a small window in the basement gently laying on the floor with no damage.
17:31Rick DeVay mentioned that basement window might have been a point of entry.
17:36The glass isn't broken, so we went to the window next to it and had someone push it from the
17:41outside.
17:42And when it hit the floor, it shattered into a million pieces.
17:44And there was no evidence of anyone being outside that window.
17:47There was cobwebs in the frame that weren't disturbed by anyone coming through it.
17:51It was odd.
17:53Also, the detectives at the hospital, they were relaying to us that Rick had very superficial injury.
17:59Why would a reported armed intruder murder his wife in front of him and then not injure him seriously and
18:06leave that witness behind?
18:08Finally, we found something within feet of the house outside that made no sense.
18:12It was just very suspicious.
18:29What stood out to me as odd is that an armed intruder broke into this house, murdered someone, and then
18:34didn't seriously injure the Rick debate.
18:36And then later on, I learned from talking to the troopers that when first responders arrived on scene, they found
18:44Rick debate's wallet in the lawn with all its contents within feet in the staircase from that bulkhead where the
18:49intruder reportedly fled from.
18:51The state police canine was brought in to assist.
18:55The dogs kind of know we need to find a track of an assailant, and they give off certain smells,
19:02endorphins, that the dogs are keyed in on.
19:05The dog tracked from the bulkhead to the area where Rick debate's wallet was and went to where Rick debate
19:13was still being treated inside the house by EMS.
19:15The dog handler then had the dog start a new track.
19:19The dog, again, left the bulkhead area, went to the wallet, and then led towards the ambulance.
19:25And the ambulance at that point was where Rick debate was located.
19:29That was a big red flag to us.
19:31What's going on here?
19:38After learning all of this stuff from the scene at the hospital, we ask Rick debate,
19:43what are we going to find during our investigation that's going to put you in a bad light?
19:49Then Rick drops a huge bomb and tells us that she's having a baby with a woman named Sarah Ganser.
19:59That was an important detail to leave out.
20:02We have a problem.
20:04Connie was well aware of what's going on.
20:07She wanted to have another baby.
20:08Due to her back issues and her health issues, it couldn't happen.
20:13Rick said that it was Connie's idea to have Rick make a baby the old-fashioned way with Sarah, an
20:20ex-high school girlfriend.
20:22My wife kind of brought it up to me because she knew about Sarah.
20:26Did it bother her that I impregnated another woman?
20:29It was very untraditional.
20:31She was amazing.
20:33I never expected things to go that way.
20:36It didn't ring well with me.
20:40We continued to question him.
20:43And his eventual story to us was that he was having an affair that started in the spring of 2015.
20:51And the pregnancy was an accident.
20:53But he still said that Connie knew about it.
20:56She was mad for a little bit, but really wanted to keep our family together.
21:00And she really wanted to somehow have contact with another kid.
21:05Rick said that they were going to co-parent the baby with Sarah.
21:09It raises my eyebrows.
21:10It didn't sit right with me at all.
21:13And then the more we talked to Rick, the more he changed his story.
21:18The time that he left the house would change.
21:21The time he got back would change.
21:23How he saw his wife get killed.
21:27Whether or not he was in front of the intruder or in back of the intruder.
21:33The glaring one for us at this point is Rick was telling us he got home at 9 o'clock.
21:38And this all occurred within a half an hour from him getting home.
21:43So that'll bring us to 9.30.
21:45The 911 call didn't come in until 10.16.
21:48So we realized there's about 45 minutes missing from Rick DeBate's story.
21:53But he couldn't fill that in.
21:55And his quote was, I'm sticking to my story.
21:58And I need to get a lawyer.
22:00If somebody wants to get a lawyer to speak to, then that is the end of our interview.
22:06At the hospital, we sat with him for maybe a little more than seven hours.
22:11And there was not one tear.
22:14And that just didn't seem right.
22:18We started looking at him as a victim, as a witness.
22:21But by the time we're done with the interview, my focus had shifted him more into a person of interest.
22:32Our next stop was to go interview Sarah Ganser, Rick's girlfriend, who's pregnant.
22:37One of the things we're trying to find out during Sarah's interview is whether or not she had any involvement
22:41to what happened to Connie in the house.
22:45In the back of my mind, I'm also thinking, what if Sarah did it?
22:48Maybe Rick's covering up for Sarah.
22:56When we get to Sarah's house, we tell her that Connie had been killed in the house and that Rick
23:00was in the hospital.
23:01She seemed very empathetic.
23:03Sarah Ganser was somebody Rick had grown up with.
23:07She told us that she and Rick started a relationship in the spring of 2015.
23:14And she got pregnant and was going to have a baby in February of 2016.
23:20Her side of the story was that Rick said, you make me happy.
23:24I want to spend the rest of my life with you.
23:27And that Rick promised her he was going to get a divorce from Connie.
23:31Finally, she says that Connie did not know about the baby.
23:38I told her straight out, Rick told us that it was Connie's idea to have another baby, but couldn't.
23:44So you guys are all going to co-parent the baby.
23:48I don't think she believed us at first.
23:50But I told her more details and Sarah broke down.
23:56She had no idea her boyfriend Rick was a liar.
23:59She was crying, like, more emotion than Rick showed us during the entire seven-hour interview.
24:05It's not always 100%, but my general feeling after talking to Sarah was I don't think she had any part
24:11in Connie's murder.
24:14At this point, we know Rick is lying to us.
24:17And we started thinking that there was a plan here to get Connie out of the picture.
24:24Well, Rick, if you killed Connie, I'll make you pay for it.
24:40After the interview with Rick and after talking to Sarah, we know that Rick is comfortable lying to us.
24:46And he's the main person of interest.
24:49But at this point, there was no evidence to prove that Rick murdered his wife.
24:55So our next stop was to go to the medical examiner's office.
24:59I was one of the detectives at the autopsy.
25:01And we're hoping that we can find something to solve Connie's murder.
25:05The doctors tell us that the bullet in the back of the head was instant death.
25:09I tend to think the one in the joist was the first one.
25:13We think she's facing the murderer.
25:16That person raises the gun.
25:18She hits it.
25:19That's what causes the shot into the joist.
25:22She turns around.
25:23There's nowhere to go.
25:24And then the headshot was the second one that dropped her down.
25:28The third shot was when she was laying just based on the angle of where the bullet hit in her
25:34stomach.
25:35Both bullets were found inside Connie.
25:37There were no exit wounds.
25:38And there's no blood evidence, hairs, fibers on her person.
25:45Next, we sent the gun to forensics.
25:48But there's nothing on the gun to prove who had done this.
25:53When we talked to Rick, he had mentioned that Connie knew about both the guns in the house.
25:59During some of the interviews, we had spoken to family and friends of Connie.
26:03And we asked them about whether or not she liked guns.
26:07But nobody that we had spoken to gave us the indication that Connie would keep the only loaded gun in
26:12the house, in the basement, adjacent to the room where the kids are always playing.
26:17And that's suspicious.
26:19It seemed more likely that Connie never even knew that they owned a second gun.
26:27In an investigation like this, if you don't have an open mind, you could be wrong.
26:31And you'll miss something very important.
26:34But no matter what we did, we couldn't find any leads to corroborate Rick's story that an intruder had entered
26:41his home.
26:43Nothing appeared to be ransacked.
26:45Then there was that basement window possible point of entry that was gently laying on the floor with no damage.
26:51And the superficial injuries that Rick allegedly sustained from this 6'4 intruder that had just murdered his wife.
27:00We also got the dog twice tracking the assailant and going directly to Rick.
27:07It just didn't make any sense.
27:10So, at this point, everything's pointing back to Rick as being the only suspect.
27:22Based on Rick's first initial story to us, Connie was shot at 9.30, but the 9-1-1 call
27:29didn't come in until 10.16.
27:32So, it became very clear that the electronic evidence was going to be the dominating feature of this investigation because
27:39everything's time-stamped.
27:41So, it was going to start painting the bigger picture of what happened at Connie and Rick's home that morning.
27:49I do a search warrant for video surveillance at the YMCA to clarify the timeline.
27:54And as far as Connie's Fitbit, I didn't know too much about them, but if it has any records, I'm
28:00going to get those records.
28:02With all of the technology and so many search warrants, this is going to take a lot of time to
28:08prepare and then to go through.
28:18The wake for Connie had been maybe a week after her murder.
28:23There was lines out the door.
28:26You could see what an impact Connie had in this world.
28:29She had tons of friends there, and we had gotten up to give our condolences to the family, and I,
28:38you know, shook Rick's hand and I said, I'm really sorry, and he kind of glanced over me.
28:46That seemed very odd.
28:49At some point that day, Rick came out with something saying that this isn't as bad as it was for
28:55a grandpa or so, you know, like, like, it's not as painful or it's easier.
28:59Like, it wasn't a big deal.
29:01We were all looking at each other, like, how could he be saying this?
29:05He's just so unfeeling and transactional.
29:09Not a grieving husband.
29:15Soon after Connie's wake, I heard from people who know Rick from high school that his high school sweetheart was
29:25his girlfriend and that she was pregnant.
29:28It was definitely a gut punch to hear Connie would have been devastated.
29:32This is not something that she would have been okay with.
29:35That moment when I found out about this started the doubting.
29:39I thought that Rick was indeed the person who killed Connie.
29:54When detectives processed the debate house, they found copies of life insurance policies, one for Rick, one for Connie.
30:01That day, I made sure to call the company to let them know where the state police were investigating the
30:07suspicious death of Connie.
30:09And not to release any money to anyone who's trying to cash in on anything.
30:16Three weeks later, I was contacted by them to let me know that Rick had tried to cash in on
30:21the life insurance policy he had on Connie for $475,000.
30:32When I heard from Detective Payot that right before Connie's murder, Rick had dropped back his insurance and increased hers.
30:45And that's when the pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together that Rick did do this.
30:51He made a plan to have a, you know, a new family to replace my sister.
30:56I was just in shock.
30:58You know, very hard to process.
31:00And just so unbelievable.
31:07Rick had a motive and opportunity.
31:10Now we just need the electronic evidence to corroborate that Rick did this.
31:14But we're still waiting for the search warrants to come to the office.
31:19Law enforcement became very tight-lipped about the investigation.
31:23And it really put people in that community on edge.
31:28Why hasn't an arrest been made?
31:30People wanted answers.
31:32Being pretty positive that Rick had murdered my sister.
31:37You know, I was worried about the kids who remained in the care of Rick.
31:41So that was scary.
31:44I kind of just ignored Rick, even though he was still living in the neighborhood.
31:47It really upset me because I think he felt like, I'm going to get away with this.
31:55In the following months, we started receiving evidence back from the subpoenas of a search warrant sent out for digital
32:01evidence.
32:02We were able to start seeing how calculated this cold-blooded husband truly was.
32:19As the search warrants start coming in, it'll lead you down different trails to do more search warrants, to get
32:24more information.
32:25That was extremely time-consuming.
32:28Just Sarah's Facebook records were over 36,000 pages.
32:33But we were able to at least go back to May of 2015 when Rick and Sarah first knew about
32:40the baby.
32:42Through Sarah's Facebook comments, through her friends, we see her kind of explaining that once Connie finds out about the
32:50baby,
32:50she's going to eviscerate Rick in court and he's going to lose everything.
32:55Again, that shows motive.
32:59And he's still telling Sarah that he's going to get a divorce.
33:03But at this point, we speculate he's not planning a divorce.
33:06There was a plan in Rick's head to have something done before the baby was born.
33:16And it came down to Rick figuring out that the only way he's going to get himself out of this
33:21is to kill Connie.
33:24So Rick used those two vandalism incidents that he actually committed himself to try to convince Connie that it would
33:32be a good idea to have a gun in the house.
33:35And he ends up buying the guns in October.
33:41The next electronic evidence that came in were Connie's Fitbit records.
33:46The Fitbit is hooked up to your phone, so it actually has a concrete timestamp.
33:52We didn't get heart rate with this one.
33:53It was kind of a basic model.
33:55But we can see distance.
33:57We can see steps.
34:01On December 23rd, we could see when Connie woke up and started walking around.
34:06When she left to go to the YMCA, you can see that her Fitbit went stationary, meaning she's in the
34:12car.
34:12She's not registering any steps.
34:14We had gotten video surveillance at the YMCA.
34:16And as soon as Connie gets out of the car, we can see her walking into the YMCA through her
34:22Fitbit, but also through the video.
34:24We see her driving from the YMCA back to the house.
34:29From the Fitbit, we can see when she started walking into the house, and that's when the front door opens.
34:36The final thing the Fitbit showed us was when Connie stopped moving, which was 10.05 a.m.
34:43So we were able to speculate that that was probably the time of death, about half an hour after what
34:49Rick had told us.
34:52We also found out from Rick's internet usage that the information about driving to work and sending an email to
35:00his boss from the roadway about being late,
35:02that was sent from the house based on the computer records, the IP address.
35:06Rick had planned on establishing that he wasn't home, and he came back and found an intruder.
35:10But what investigators believe happened is that Rick never left the house that morning.
35:17And then we also found out that after learning that Sarah was pregnant with his child in May,
35:23Rick was looking up information in June, July on how to poison somebody through dozens of internet searches.
35:33But for some reason, he ends up buying the guns in October, and it's almost like a progression of how
35:41Rick thinks he's going to get himself out of the situation.
35:47In this case, obviously, we found the pregnancy with the girlfriend, insurance money, avoiding the whole divorce.
35:54It just didn't happen out of the blue.
35:56This scheme took months to plan.
36:06In May of 2015, Rick finds out that his girlfriend is pregnant with his child.
36:13Then in July of 2015, Rick conducted searches on how to poison Connie.
36:20But in October, he changed his plan and decided he would instead shoot Connie to death.
36:26First, to scare Connie into allowing a gun in the house, he vandalizes his own cars.
36:34Debate then buys one gun Connie knows about, which is supposedly for protection.
36:40And then a second gun that she doesn't know about.
36:42He hides the second gun in the basement so Connie won't accidentally find it.
36:49And then Rick increased Connie's life insurance to $475,000.
36:56Then on December 23rd, Debate pretends to leave for work.
37:01But instead, he stays behind, laying in wait for Connie to return.
37:06Rick removes the window that was in the basement, trying to stage it to look like somebody else did it
37:12to get into the house.
37:15Then, once Connie returns, he lures her to the basement and shoots her to death.
37:26Finally, he stages an attack, pretending to be a victim and injuring himself.
37:34And then he calls 911.
37:42By April 2017, we finally had enough digital evidence to support probable cause for an arrest of Rick Debate.
37:49He was charged with one count of murder, one count of tampering or fabricating physical evidence,
37:55and one count of falsely reporting an incident.
38:05Detective Payette had called me, and he asked me if I knew where Connie's boys were.
38:11And I said, yes, they're down for an Easter egg hunt with me.
38:15And he said, good, I need to know that they're not with Rick.
38:18He said that he had gotten an arrest warrant for Rick for the murder of my sister.
38:25It felt like such a relief, because you thought, hey, this is never going to happen.
38:32We finally felt like we got some momentum, and then the rugs pulled out from under us.
38:44When Rick Debate was arrested, there was a sense of relief from the community.
38:51I downloaded the arrest warrant, and I read it from cover to cover.
38:56Finding out that Rick was planning this for months was shocking,
39:02because all along, he was playing the perfect husband, the perfect father, the perfect son-in-law.
39:10You didn't think about anyone but yourself in that moment.
39:13He duped all of us.
39:18But then the community was shocked, because following Rick's arrest, he was released on bond.
39:25So he was out until trial could commence.
39:28He put up his home as collateral in order for him to post this $1 million bond.
39:36I found it very bizarre that you have this man who's charged with murder, just out and about.
39:44Rick went to jail for about three days, and then he was out free.
39:49He was celebrating Christmas with his family.
39:54You're having parties at your house, you're out and about in the town, you're at bars.
40:00Meanwhile, I don't have my sister anymore, and I'm like sick to my stomach almost.
40:05It was horrendous.
40:13The trial finally gets started on April 5th, 2022.
40:19It's a highly anticipated trial, so people are on the edge of their seats.
40:24Usually in a murder case, you hear about DNA.
40:28But in the Rick debate case, the Fitbit was the star of the show.
40:34Connie debates every step, was logged the morning of the murder.
40:39It was labeled the Fitbit murder, because Connie's Fitbit completely contradicted Rick's story.
40:46She was alive an hour after Rick said there was an intruder inside.
40:52Anything you'd like to say to your wife's family?
40:54No comment, folks. Thank you.
40:57After weeks of the trial on May 10th, 2022, the verdict is in.
41:04And Rick debate is found guilty of all charges.
41:09Rick debate was sentenced to 65 years in prison with no chance of parole.
41:14That's where he belongs.
41:22He doesn't bring my sister back, but finally, you know, done.
41:27You know, he's going to get what he deserves.
41:32When the jury came back unanimous, I was elated.
41:39When I look at Rick debate, I think monster evil, but I also think pathetic.
41:44Coming up with a plan like this to end someone's life and destroy all these different people, his own kids.
41:50He hurt everyone.
42:01If Connie was in front of me here, I would tell her how much I love her.
42:05I wish I spent more time with her.
42:08Life gets in the way and you get distracted.
42:11But time is what's important.
42:15A friend and I walk at the cemetery.
42:18It's kind of like Connie walks kind of with us.
42:22You know, we go by her grave and we kind of just keep an eye on our girl and make
42:27sure that she knows that we're still thinking of her and that the boys are fine.
42:32They're amazing.
42:35I miss you, Connie.
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