New details emerge in Connie Dabate Connecticut murder case

The sister of a Connecticut woman fatally shot in a Fitbit murder case has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the victim's husband claiming he shot her in the head and then made a claim on her life insurance policy, The Daily Mail reported.

May 2, 2017

A pretty mom, a beautiful home in a Connecticut suburb and yellow crime-scene tape wrapped around the yellow house.

Who killed Connie Dabate?

The murder is a mystery townspeople wanted solved. Was Connie the victim of a home invasion as her husband Rick claims, or was she collateral damage in a love triangle turned deadly?

The Dabates' house is set back at the end of a long driveway in Ellington, Connecticut just outside Hartford.

It was two days before Christmas in 2015 when a security alarm went off. State police rushed inside and that's when they found Connie Dabate in the basement, dead from multiple gunshot wounds to the head and stomach.

It was 10:15 a.m. police arrive at the Dabate house. The police radio says a masked man wearing camouflage was seen running away. Oddly the house is filled with smoke.

Inside cops find Connie, a pharmaceutical representative and mother of two, dead from two bullets.

They found Rick tied to a folding metal chair, moaning, telling cops "They're still in the house!"

Now there's a dramatic new development in a case that Crime Watch Daily has been following since day one, a crime that people in Ellington, Connecticut are still talking about.

After nearly a year and a half, Connie's husband Rick was arrested. Richard Dabate is charged with murder, tampering with evidence and making a false statement. Cops arrested Dabate as he pulled onto his leafy street.

Crime Watch Daily obtained the 50-page arrest warrant.

Could the alleged motive be found in the revelation of a now-admitted affair between Dabate and an old high school friend he says he impregnated?

According to the arrest warrant, Dabate reveals intimate details, saying his friend wanted a baby and he was "going to donate sperm, but the process was too lengthy and expensive." So he claims he did some "untraditional things" and the woman got pregnant. And he claims he and Connie were actually going to co-parent the baby.

"Then this situation popped up like a [----] soap opera," Richard Dabate says.

Police say there is no evidence Connie knew about the affair

According to the warrant Dabate and the woman even had pet names for each other.

But according to the warrant the alleged mother of Dabate's child appears to be jealous after Dabate took his wife to Vermont for a vacation.

"What are you doing Rick? Are you playing me?" she wrote to him via text.

Investigators searched Connie's cellphone and found notes titled "I want a divorce."

Investigators determined the exact time Connie was killed from her Fitbit, a fitness device worn on the wrist that tracks heart rate and body movements. Once the movement of the body stops, the Fitbit stops, so investigators were able to determine the exact time Connie stopped moving.

According to cops Connie's Fitbit stopped registering movement at 10:10 a.m. That's one minute before the burglar alarm went off at the house, and apparently before any possible intruders would have entered the house.

Crime Watch Daily was on the scene looking for answers. We went to the house of the alleged mystery mistress. We're not revealing her name to protect her identity.

She lives in a nondescript brick house, the kind you'd find in Anytown, New England. No one answered, but we found an apparently unopened letter tacked to the front door from the Connecticut Department of Children and Family Services. Were social workers attempting to conduct a welfare check on the alleged love child?

We just went up there knocked on the door nobody answered but someone did pull one of the shades down. Multiple sources told Crime Watch Daily who they think the woman is. We found her carrying a baby at a swap meet held at a drive-in movie theater. The woman refused to talk to Crime Watch Daily.

Richard Dabate's attorney says he's innocent. He pleaded not guilty and waived his right to a probable-cause hearing

Wearing a yellow jumpsuit, Dabate looked dour as the state's attorney asked for a $5-million bond. His lawyer argued for a much lower amount. The judge agreed and set bond at a million dollars. And Dabate bailed out.