The Secrets of Birch View Drive

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Speaker 6 Tonight, on date live.

Speaker 7 People started reaching out to me and they're like, did you hear what happened at at Connie's house? We heard it was a break-in.

Speaker 8 It was an alarming scene. He was in the kitchen, bound to a folding chair, moaning.
She was located in the basement, dressed in workout gear. There was obvious signs of gunshot wound to her.

Speaker 10 It was like a sick feeling. Connie didn't make it.

Speaker 11 There's this big mystery in town of who came in and did this.

Speaker 12 We had unidentified DNA in six key places.

Speaker 13 A lot of information started coming out, including a big bombshell.

Speaker 10 Unbelievable.

Speaker 14 She really became one of your key witnesses.

Speaker 15 She was not a willing witness.

Speaker 16 It was difficult.

Speaker 13 You took a number of electronic devices from the house.

Speaker 12 I took the Fitbit transmitter off of her body.

Speaker 13 It was a silent witness.

Speaker 17 Correct.

Speaker 18 Digital evidence is powerful.

Speaker 13 This was a big twist that you were not expecting.

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 4 It's devastation. It's betrayal.

Speaker 19 How could this happen?

Speaker 7 My jaw almost dropped to the floor. I just kept on thinking, oh my God.

Speaker 6 A Fitbit captured the last moments of a loving mom's life. You'll see how it also helped investigators catch her killer.
I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 6 Here's Andrea Canning with The Secrets of Birch View Drive.

Speaker 20 Birch View Drive was a quiet street in a quiet neighborhood in a quiet Connecticut town called Ellington.

Speaker 26 It was also home to three boisterous friends, Darlene Baudry, Peggy Giatsis, and Connie Debate.

Speaker 27 You all lived so close to each other.

Speaker 28 Yeah, we did. We did.
We do.

Speaker 10 That's my house over there.

Speaker 29 That's my house there, and Connie lived right back there.

Speaker 30 Close houses, even closer friends.

Speaker 32 Connie always knew how to make herself at home.

Speaker 10 My favorite thing that she did is she would, back then we would always leave the garage doors open. So she'd come through the garage, she'd say, honey, I'm home.

Speaker 10 And then just like Peggy did today, she would just, she'd just walk right in. There was no knocking, she'd just throw the door open.

Speaker 13 I think you three have a friendship that

Speaker 9 so many of us ladies would love to have.

Speaker 10 We actually really did become like family. We cooked together, hung out together.
Peggy would offer endless advice about babies.

Speaker 13 And you guys had a name for yourselves?

Speaker 2 Either the three Musketeers or the three Amigos.

Speaker 10 Depending on whatever day. We had a lot of fun together.

Speaker 28 Fun.

Speaker 34 Connie was all about the fun, especially with the holiday season upon them.

Speaker 34 But on the morning of December 23rd, 2015, there was only chaos at Connie's house.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 36 Peggy immediately called Connie, but she didn't pick up.

Speaker 29 So Peggy tried Darlene and asked her if she knew what was going on and had she heard from Connie.

Speaker 10 And she said there was a first responder car and a sheriff at Connie's house and he was outside the car with his rifle. That's really scary.
It was like, what?

Speaker 29 Before we can say another sentence, this entire street was full of state troopers. The driveway had about a thousand of them coming up.
I mean, it's

Speaker 11 like are they screaming?

Speaker 29 They're screeching in, they're screeching in one by one, but yes, yes. I mean, it was like full speed, something you would see out of the movies.
Yeah,

Speaker 20 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.

Speaker 43 That and a cryptic 911 call.

Speaker 28 911.

Speaker 28 Hello? Hello?

Speaker 28 Can you help?

Speaker 45 David Lamaru and Ryan Luther raced to the scene.

Speaker 26 Back then, they were Connecticut state police detectives.

Speaker 9 What do you see as you pull up in this, you know, quiet suburban neighborhood?

Speaker 12 There was numerous uniformed troopers there. It was our canine unit, troopers there with their canines out.
And they had the scene secured at the time with crime scene tape.

Speaker 8 I believe media was actually starting to show up.

Speaker 13 What are you being told by the first responders about what they saw in the house?

Speaker 8 Initially that it was called in as a home invasion and that there was a deceased person in the basement.

Speaker 26 Troopers were already scouring the neighborhood, pounding on doors up and down the street.

Speaker 10 They were saying there was home invasion and the intruder has fled on foot and is somewhere in the neighborhood.

Speaker 15 And the children are home.

Speaker 10 My children are home.

Speaker 13 The panic that you must have felt,

Speaker 13 just the fear.

Speaker 36 One of the troopers said they needed to clear Darlene's house to make sure the intruder wasn't inside.

Speaker 10 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.
I took them off the couch. They were, what, their iPads.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 I put them back behind the toilet.

Speaker 10 And I just shut the door. I put my back against the door.
And the trooper said, I'm going to clear the house. And I don't want you to come out until you hear me knock twice.

Speaker 10 And you hear me knock twice, then you'll know the house is clear.

Speaker 4 You're all huddled in there.

Speaker 41 All huddled.

Speaker 27 With the door. The door shut.

Speaker 34 When they finally got the all clear, Darlene and her children came out of the bathroom, but they were ordered to stay inside the house.

Speaker 10 He came out and he stood here and he said, I'm going to go out that door. I want you to lock the door behind me.
Do not open the door under any other circumstance.

Speaker 10 So that's what we did.

Speaker 44 Meanwhile, across the street, Peggy was still trying to reach Connie.

Speaker 29 I was feeling anxious. I didn't know what was going on.

Speaker 4 I called there.

Speaker 29 I'm like, what is going on? Please call me back. Let me know that you guys are okay.

Speaker 49 No one answered.

Speaker 29 It went straight to voicemail.

Speaker 16 She was standing by her window when she heard the crackle of a police scanner.

Speaker 29 I heard DOA going to Hartford Hospital. I called her and I was like, I couldn't breathe.
I was screaming. I was like, someone's dead.
Like, what's going on? I don't understand.

Speaker 50 And so.

Speaker 14 Everyone knows what DOA means.

Speaker 51 Exactly.

Speaker 35 An apparent home invasion.

Speaker 30 An intruder on the loose.

Speaker 16 someone dead.

Speaker 34 What had happened at Rick and Connie's house? And why on earth wasn't Connie picking up her phone?

Speaker 6 Figuring that out wouldn't be so easy when we come back for investigators that chaos outside the house was about to give way to a series of chilling discoveries inside.

Speaker 8 He was in the kitchen, bound to a folding chair. She was located in the far corner of the basement.

Speaker 34 Birchview Drive, normally peaceful, was an upheaval.

Speaker 52 An apparent home invasion at Connie and Rick Debates' house.

Speaker 19 Police cars all over the place.

Speaker 34 Detectives Lamaru and Luther had to make sense of it all.

Speaker 34 What do you see?

Speaker 46 Well, the large house.

Speaker 8 We were able to just do a walk, general walk through the house before we begin processing to get a feel for what's going on.

Speaker 12 It was two days before Christmas. You have this Christmas tree and presents and decorations, you know, and we later learned about the two boys that they had.

Speaker 34 Thankfully, the boys, just six and nine years old, were at school.

Speaker 52 But Rick and Connie had been home.

Speaker 26 First responders found Rick in the kitchen.

Speaker 8 He was partially bound to a folding chair. There was what looked like blood on the floor, smeared on the floor.
He was reportedly just moaning when they got there.

Speaker 53 He was injured, but alive.

Speaker 35 The responders rushed him to the hospital.

Speaker 54 But Connie.

Speaker 8 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.

Speaker 8 She was obviously deceased. There was obvious signs signs of gunshot wound to her.

Speaker 35 Connie Debate had been shot to death.

Speaker 14 She was the DOA Peggy had heard mentioned on that police scanner.

Speaker 9 Darlene got the news from Rick's dad.

Speaker 10 He said there was a home invasion and Connie didn't make it.

Speaker 10 It was like a sick feeling, like

Speaker 10 Connie didn't make it. What are you saying?

Speaker 35 Connie's brother, Keith Margotta, and his wife Donna found out from Keith's father.

Speaker 18 He called and said that there's been

Speaker 18 a tragedy or a home invasion at my sister's house in Ellington and that Connie was gone is what he said. I felt like I was just going to collapse.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we're just trying to process what we've been told.

Speaker 4 We can't fathom it because we've just seen her.

Speaker 4 You know, it's not real.

Speaker 37 It can't be real.

Speaker 53 Soon, word of Connie's murder spread.

Speaker 34 One of her oldest friends, Kim Phillips, got the news by text.

Speaker 57 She says she crumbled.

Speaker 2 My kids were five and six, so I just remember, like, I didn't want them to see me getting so upset. So I ran up to stairs and just screamed into the pillow.

Speaker 2 And I hate that I'm saying this, but I was like, why is it her and why couldn't it be somebody else?

Speaker 13 How was your, you know, natural reaction in the moment?

Speaker 2 It really was the worst, worst news I could ever hear and the worst person that it could ever be.

Speaker 28 Connie, who would have murdered her?

Speaker 44 She was the sweetest person, the baby in the family with two older sisters and a brother.

Speaker 18 I teased her a lot as a big brother, as big brothers might. You know, and as adults, she had reminded me of that.

Speaker 13 How would you tease her?

Speaker 13 How would you torment your little sister?

Speaker 18 She says I put her out the window one time.

Speaker 18 But it was just, it was maybe her feet.

Speaker 48 Don't you love how little siblings can exaggerate?

Speaker 56 They do exaggerate. And they want to get you in trouble.

Speaker 18 yeah yeah she she thought my father you know i'd get in trouble with my father when i was 40 or something

Speaker 60 and donna you came into connie's life when she was quite young yes she was six years old i met connie um i was dating her her brother connie took dance from the same dance teacher i did she was like a little sister

Speaker 24 Family for Connie also included her friends, like Kim.

Speaker 7 I met Connie my sophomore year of high school. She had just moved to Ellington and we just got along from the start.

Speaker 13 This is everything I keep hearing about Connie. It's just her way of putting people at ease, getting to know people very quickly, having those instant connections.

Speaker 7 Yeah, absolutely. She was someone that the first time you would meet her, you would automatically just be attracted to her personality.
You would want to spend more time with her.

Speaker 34 It's that quality, Kim says, that made everyone who knew Connie think of her as a best friend.

Speaker 42 You know, usually it's like maybe a small group of best friends.

Speaker 27 This was like everybody was Connie was my best friend.

Speaker 7 It makes me feel so good to know that so many people thought of Connie as their best friend. And I just think it's again, she was able to reach into people.

Speaker 7 She put everyone else before herself.

Speaker 16 And that made it easy to root for Connie when she gushed over a new man in her life.

Speaker 24 She met Rick at a party while home from college one summer.

Speaker 7 She's like, I met this great guy and he's Italian and you know, she loved Italian men.

Speaker 7 And so I was like, okay, you know, if Connie loves him, I'll love him.

Speaker 13 What did you think about initial impressions of Rick and Connie and Rick together?

Speaker 18 I really liked Rick. I thought he

Speaker 18 was a good fit for Connie. I mean, he was fond.
She was fond.

Speaker 23 Richard and Julie debate say their son had always been that way.

Speaker 63 He was easygoing. He was always like a

Speaker 64 joker.

Speaker 65 And when he brought Connie home, I said to my husband, this is different. I think she's the one.

Speaker 60 What was different about it?

Speaker 65 He was glowing. And

Speaker 65 Connie fit right in.

Speaker 40 Connie was the one.

Speaker 34 The two married, had the boys, and their house on Birchview Drive became the happy center of their social lives.

Speaker 7 It was funny because we actually called Connie's house the Debate Estates because we used to always go there.

Speaker 27 Sounds like a winery.

Speaker 7 But it was true because that's where people would just congregate at that house.

Speaker 14 But now the debate house was a crime scene.

Speaker 44 Connie was dead and the people congregating there were state police investigators.

Speaker 67 We are a team of five detectives that will investigate the most serious crimes that occur.

Speaker 39 Detective Sergeant Brett Longevin, Lieutenant Bill Udermark, and Jeff Payette were detectives at the time.

Speaker 21 and also assigned to the case.

Speaker 35 Job one for Payat and Longevin, get over to the hospital where doctors were treating Rick.

Speaker 13 What do you want to find out from the husband?

Speaker 9 Since he was in the house when the police arrived?

Speaker 68 Everything he knows. He's the best witness.
He's a victim.

Speaker 68 He could potentially tell us who did it.

Speaker 51 Or at least provide a description of the intruder.

Speaker 18 The sooner we get that information and get it out to everybody, the better off everyone is.

Speaker 23 The question was, how soon could they get it?

Speaker 30 Rick was lying in a hospital bed.

Speaker 14 What, if anything, would he be able to tell police?

Speaker 6 Coming up, Rick recounts walking into a closet and discovering a masked man.

Speaker 70 He was big.

Speaker 6 And there was one other thing the man's mask couldn't cover.

Speaker 70 Just heard this,

Speaker 70 the deep,

Speaker 70 in-diesel-like voice.

Speaker 6 When Dateline continues.

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Speaker 44 Hours after the attack at Connie and Rick Debates' house, detectives were inside an ER.

Speaker 30 Rick had suffered wounds to his legs, shoulder, and the back of his head.

Speaker 35 But he was conscious.

Speaker 68 He seemed well-spoken, coherent.

Speaker 67 We could see a little bit of blood on the side of his cheek, some blood on his hands.

Speaker 16 Detectives Jeff Payette and Brett Longevin needed Rick to tell them what happened.

Speaker 70 I saw Connie on the ground, and I can't get that image out of my mind.

Speaker 30 With the recorder rolling, the detectives listened as Rick went back over that morning.

Speaker 35 Getting the kids off to school, watching Connie get ready for the gym, driving off to work.

Speaker 14 He said he wasn't 10 minutes down the road when he stopped.

Speaker 70 Sudden realized I needed to go back to my live zone.

Speaker 24 At the same time, he said the alert notifications on his phone went off.

Speaker 30 Trouble with his home security system.

Speaker 70 Shout out to email to my boss saying that I'll be late. Told her I needed to check out some things on my security system.

Speaker 35 He drove back home, headed inside, and heard a noise upstairs.

Speaker 70 The cats make a loud, obnoxious mess. I figured it was just the cats.

Speaker 67 He thought that it was the cats because it wasn't uncommon for them to knock things over and make noise.

Speaker 35 So we went to check it out.

Speaker 50 He says the cats weren't there, but someone was.

Speaker 70 I saw that that light was on too, and I opened up and there's this

Speaker 70 camouflage unit

Speaker 6 in your closet?

Speaker 70 Yes, just looking around, trying to find something, I don't know,

Speaker 70 something of value. Did you watch him for a little while? No, no, I opened the door pretty quick.

Speaker 70 This is where it all just gets so.

Speaker 70 I never had it like this happening.

Speaker 70 Take your time.

Speaker 34 Rick said the man was a huge, hulking guy.

Speaker 70 He was big.

Speaker 30 But that was all he could share as far as physical appearance, because he said the intruder wore a mask.

Speaker 67 He did not describe

Speaker 67 skin color or any other descriptors.

Speaker 34 But if Rick couldn't describe the man's face, his voice, that he could describe.

Speaker 70 I just heard this

Speaker 70 deep,

Speaker 70 Vin Diesel-like voice.

Speaker 6 The word on the street is, you got locked up.

Speaker 30 Vin Diesel, the megawatt Hollywood star of the hit Fast and Furious film franchise.

Speaker 35 His deep, gravelly voice is instantly recognizable.

Speaker 6 You get involved here, you put everything you have at risk.

Speaker 13 It's an interesting way to describe a voice.

Speaker 67 Very specific.

Speaker 13 So you're looking for a large man, deep voice in camouflage.

Speaker 68 Obese, testocky, over six foot tall, covered in green camouflage with a deep voice.

Speaker 23 That's scary.

Speaker 77 Yes.

Speaker 47 He told detectives the Vin diesel intruder was holding a knife, demanding Rick's wallet and pins.

Speaker 70 You said you're going to give me what I want, rather than sit here quietly and wait for your family to get home.

Speaker 53 That's when he heard it.

Speaker 51 The garage door opening below.

Speaker 35 Connie walking into the house.

Speaker 70 So I yelled to her to get out of the house. My wife didn't run.

Speaker 70 She must have ran into the basement because we have

Speaker 70 two guns in the house. One was in the basement in a lockbox, and one's in our closet.
She ran downstairs.

Speaker 32 Rather than saving herself, Connie was apparently trying to save her husband.

Speaker 14 Rick said the intruder knocked him to the ground and chased after Connie.

Speaker 34 He said he staggered behind, catching up with them in the basement.

Speaker 70 Around the corner, I just

Speaker 70 hear like the loudest bang,

Speaker 70 and I saw my wife go.

Speaker 70 I think I saw her laying in the ground.

Speaker 70 I don't know.

Speaker 70 I didn't hear her at all after that.

Speaker 35 Suddenly, he said, the man was back on him.

Speaker 70 My ears were ringing, and then he puts me in this

Speaker 70 neck,

Speaker 70 arm thing.

Speaker 70 I couldn't get out of it. And he just guided me over to the other side,

Speaker 70 threw me in a chair, started using my own tools on. What type of chair was it? Remember? The

Speaker 70 folding chair.

Speaker 34 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.

Speaker 70 I was sitting in the chair, half I was kind of half tied up in shock, I guess. What do you mean half tied up?

Speaker 70 I had one leg free and an arm free. He tied one leg, tied one arm, and he tied my neck fairly tight with a tie wrap.

Speaker 14 Rick said he used his free arm to fight back.

Speaker 70 I got torch to kind of just blow in his mask a little bit, and I caught on fire. He dropped a blowtorch.

Speaker 78 Dropped the blowtorch and ran.

Speaker 70 I was starting to scream for help. I screamed for help.

Speaker 70 I couldn't hear a soul. I got really, really dizzy.

Speaker 26 Rick said he then crawled upstairs, still partially zip-tied to the chair, triggered the home alarm, and called 911.

Speaker 35 You have a lot of things you have to check out.

Speaker 27 We do.

Speaker 13 And corroborate from his story.

Speaker 67 We have to process the scene. We have to talk to people, interview people, look up electronic.

Speaker 46 data, explore every option.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 63 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.

Speaker 63 We waited in the emergency room for a couple more hours before they were leading him out of the room.

Speaker 46 He's asking me, where are the boys? I says, mom has the boys at the house.

Speaker 34 To his parents' relief, Rick's injuries were not severe, and he was discharged from the hospital the same day.

Speaker 24 His first stop was his aunt Janice's house to clean up.

Speaker 40 He didn't want his sons to see him bloody and bruised.

Speaker 19 His cousin Lori was also there.

Speaker 34 He was devastated. He was in tears.

Speaker 80 He was just a mess.

Speaker 75 He was stunned by everything, too.

Speaker 65 If he said it once, he must have said it 50 times.

Speaker 75 How are my boys? How are my boys?

Speaker 24 Later that night, Rick went to his parents' place.

Speaker 52 He sat his two boys down and told them what happened to their mom.

Speaker 65 It wasn't easy. And they were very young to understand something like that.

Speaker 65 And Rick told them that someone came into the house and hurt mommy, and I couldn't help her.

Speaker 65 And she's gone. And one of them, I think, said, mommy's dead.
And Rick said, yes.

Speaker 13 It must have broken your heart to see those little boys' faces.

Speaker 35 Tragic and heartbreaking.

Speaker 54 Meanwhile, back at at the debate house, the crime scene tape was up and the floodlights were on.

Speaker 34 It was going to be a long night scouring for evidence and clues and talking to neighbors.

Speaker 36 Neighbors who had stories to tell, stories that could possibly lead detectives to that deep-voiced intruder.

Speaker 6 Coming up.

Speaker 6 One story was about the debates and someone they hired.

Speaker 10 They were having an argument with a contractor.

Speaker 6 A spiraling situation sparking real fear.

Speaker 10 This contractor was so out of control that maybe they should get a gun.

Speaker 14 In the search for Connie Debates' killer, police had fanned out and canvassed the neighborhood looking for anyone who had seen something.

Speaker 13 Were you surprised that no one saw anything?

Speaker 8 I don't know if it was surprised.

Speaker 12 I mean, that time of morning of the scene, you know, a lot of people work in that neighborhood, so there could have been a very good chance that, just nobody was around at that time.

Speaker 34 While the canvassing troopers had struck out, the major crime squad was gathering evidence at the house, dusting for fingerprints, swabbing for DNA, and photographing the entire scene.

Speaker 51 including where the intruder may have sneaked inside.

Speaker 13 You just noticed that it was the window was open.

Speaker 8 Yes, into the basement.

Speaker 34 The basement door was also open.

Speaker 34 This is where Rick says the assailant came out of the house right here?

Speaker 13 Yes, yes.

Speaker 12 And they were actually open. One door was open at the time when we processed the scene.

Speaker 50 And just outside that door, police found this.

Speaker 13 This is the wallet found in the backyard.

Speaker 27 Rick had talked about the assailant taking his wallet.

Speaker 59 Yes, yes.

Speaker 69 And in the basement.

Speaker 79 This is the area that Rick had told detectives where he was was seated in the chair being abused.

Speaker 13 This is like a bad game of clue.

Speaker 42 All these potential weapons.

Speaker 12 Yes. Many of them had what appeared to be blood on them.

Speaker 26 Did you know where these droplets came from?

Speaker 13 Who they came from at the time?

Speaker 8 Not at that point. We didn't know.
It could have been an assailant and it could have been from Rick. We didn't know at that point, no.

Speaker 22 A revolver, the presumed murder weapon, was found near Connie's body.

Speaker 25 She had been shot twice, once in the stomach and once in the back of the head.

Speaker 2 Any other clues around her, around the body in the basement that you could see?

Speaker 8 She did have her cell phone on her,

Speaker 8 tucked into her right waistband, and she also had a Fitbit tracker clipped to her left waistband.

Speaker 24 A cell phone and a Fitbit tracker.

Speaker 5 Detectives bagged them along with other electronic devices in the house.

Speaker 34 And though the troopers hadn't found any witnesses, they did uncover a substantial clue while talking to the neighbors. The debates, it turned out, may have had an enemy.

Speaker 10 They were having an argument with a contractor over work that had not been done right,

Speaker 10 according to Rec, and

Speaker 10 they were worried that the contractor would break into the house.

Speaker 40 His name was Ken Sweeney.

Speaker 81 Kim had gotten a text message from Connie venting about him.

Speaker 7 Just that

Speaker 7 he wasn't finishing the work,

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 I think they were looking to sue him and there was a lot of discussions with him and arguments with him

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 I just specifically remember it seeming like it wasn't a good situation.

Speaker 34 A bad situation that seemed to get worse in the weeks before the murder.

Speaker 67 They had found some towels that were in one of the vehicle's mufflers and they found that suspicious and thought that that could be associated with this contractor.

Speaker 26 A week later, in the driveway, their car's windshield was smashed.

Speaker 35 That was when Connie confided in her friends that she and Rick were so scared they were considering buying a gun.

Speaker 10 Connie was deathly afraid of guns, but this contractor was so out of control that maybe they should get a gun.

Speaker 13 Did they think that the contractor was the one who vandalized the car?

Speaker 27 Yep, that's what they told everyone.

Speaker 13 Did you think that the contractor had killed Connie?

Speaker 10 When they questioned us, they asked, is there anybody that you could think of that had a grudge or didn't like Connie and Rick?

Speaker 10 Is there anybody? And then it hits you. You're like, yeah, there is somebody, the contractor.

Speaker 10 I mean, most people on Birchview said, the contractor.

Speaker 7 I actually had the text and I remember when the detectives came to interview them, I'm like, I'm going to show them this text because I think this is going to help.

Speaker 7 I think they need to look into this person.

Speaker 13 You're thinking the contractor could be a suspect?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I just remember them having a lot of tensions with him, and I thought, like, maybe this is maybe this is who did this.

Speaker 61 The thought also occurred to Rick.

Speaker 39 He mentioned it when talking to the detectives.

Speaker 70 Do you know of anybody who would want to do this?

Speaker 70 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.

Speaker 70 Perhaps you're only approved now.

Speaker 34 The state police had a lead to pursue.

Speaker 35 Maybe this wasn't a home invasion gone wrong.

Speaker 51 Maybe the debates had been targeted.

Speaker 68 Detectives were sent out right away to find him and talk to him.

Speaker 6 Coming up, at Connie's wake, a curious encounter triggers questions about someone in the family.

Speaker 10 That was the most bizarre thing we've ever been involved in.

Speaker 6 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 82 Investigators had a tip to run down in the brutal murder of 39-year-old Connie Debate.

Speaker 26 A theory about the killer that was almost universally held among family and friends.

Speaker 40 It was the contractor.

Speaker 29 That's exactly who I thought was at the house at the time, in the morning of the murder.

Speaker 13 Had Rick and Connie talked to you about the contractor?

Speaker 63 They sued him. I mean, they had assumed because they didn't finish the job, so they knew he wasn't happy.

Speaker 65 He was very ugly to them, and there was always things happening there that I thought, oh my God,

Speaker 65 this must have been the contractor.

Speaker 50 State police sought out this contractor, Ken Sweeney, speaking with him at his house.

Speaker 35 He admitted to having issues with the debates.

Speaker 67 The contractor said that They had agreed, or he had agreed to do work in the bathroom of the residence 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.

Speaker 67 And he backed out, and then there was a civil suit.

Speaker 50 The case was settled for a few thousand dollars in small claims court before Connie was killed.

Speaker 17 Did this contractor have a record, any violence in his past?

Speaker 84 Nothing that nothing would go to this level.

Speaker 68 Yeah, nothing as violent as this.

Speaker 82 Ken Sweeney denied breaking into the debate home and killing Connie and said he had an alibi.

Speaker 36 He was working at another job job site that morning.

Speaker 51 As detectives interviewed him, they noticed something straight away.

Speaker 14 He wasn't an overly large man, as Rick described, and there was another thing that didn't match.

Speaker 53 His voice.

Speaker 9 Did he sound like Vin Diesel? No.

Speaker 14 So he didn't fit Rick's description at all.

Speaker 21 Police asked if they could photograph his face, hands, and body for signs he had been in an altercation.

Speaker 57 They didn't see anything.

Speaker 21 But it was possible the contractor had someone else break into the debate home.

Speaker 48 Detectives would have to check out that angle and confirm his alibi.

Speaker 35 As investigators worked on that, Connie's family was mourning her death and thinking of all she had left behind.

Speaker 38 Your heart must have just ached for your nephews

Speaker 13 to lose their mom that way at that age when they need her the most. Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's devastating.

Speaker 13 Did you think about all those things that she won't be there, you know, for that?

Speaker 2 Definitely.

Speaker 7 every thought that you know there's no more holidays no more birthdays we think about it every day we live it every day they weren't alone in their grief on a blustery late december day of what is normally a festive week between christmas and new year's 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, but multiply that by 100 just because of who Connie was and how many people, you know, viewed her as like a best friend.

Speaker 4 The line was just out the door. It was horrible weather.

Speaker 4 Lines and lines of people.

Speaker 7 I mean, just hundreds of people.

Speaker 4 And just looking at how many people in there, it was surreal.

Speaker 13 Shows how much Connie was loved. Right.

Speaker 4 She was very much loved.

Speaker 24 And now, very much missed.

Speaker 35 Connie's fellow musketeers, Peggy and Darlene, were eager to offer their condolences to their good friend's husband, Rick.

Speaker 30 But as the women approached, he seemed confused.

Speaker 10 That was the most bizarre thing we've ever been involved in. Peggy and I went together, we waited in like a three-hour line.

Speaker 10 He greeted us by asking us who we were and how we knew Connie.

Speaker 66 What?

Speaker 10 How did you know my wife?

Speaker 13 Did you think that maybe he was just so out of it from everything that had happened?

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 29 I think at that moment we were like in shock.

Speaker 29 But at that time we also looked at each other and were like,

Speaker 29 he doesn't have a scratch on him.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 29 He didn't have one bruise on the face, not one anything.

Speaker 24 The next day, Connie's family and closest friends gathered again for her funeral.

Speaker 30 A continuation of mourning for most.

Speaker 35 But according to Connie's friend Kim, it was also a continuation of strange behavior by Rick.

Speaker 7 When we went to the cemetery,

Speaker 7 I don't even know if he got out of the car. I mean, he must have gotten out of the car, but

Speaker 7 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.
Like, why isn't he still here?

Speaker 7 Why doesn't he feel the same way that I feel right now, that I just can't leave this grave? And I thought that was weird.

Speaker 34 Connie's sister-in-law, Donna, noticed Rick also cut short his stay at the reception after the burial.

Speaker 4 In the middle of the luncheon, he just disappeared with his male family members and he didn't stay to the end.

Speaker 4 He was maybe there for an hour or so and then just

Speaker 4 everybody got up and left. So that was very odd to me.
Like, where did they go? Where are they heading off to?

Speaker 4 That was very, very, that was a moment for me where I sat there and said, this is, this is strange.

Speaker 51 There is no script for grief, no one-way roadmap for mourning the dead, especially when it's your wife, the mother of your children.

Speaker 50 Then again, does anyone ever really know what's going on inside someone else's marriage?

Speaker 6 Coming up, the debates in the days before tragedy struck. Why friends say their relationship was one they envied.

Speaker 29 He doted over her, he would tell us, hey, you know, she's having a bad day, like, go out for drinks.

Speaker 21 He's putting all the husbands to shame in the neighborhood.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he really did. He did.

Speaker 84 Hey, everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 85 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and we're back for another season.

Speaker 86 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more.

Speaker 59 You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 85 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 41 Emochi Moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1.

Speaker 41 He understood, and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Speaker 20 Thanks, Sadie.

Speaker 41 I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 87 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 30 It was the holiday season, a time for joy, celebration, family gatherings.

Speaker 39 Connie's family wanted to hang on to some semblance of that for her boys.

Speaker 21 So they did their best.

Speaker 44 wrap their gifts, wipe their tears, put on their coats.

Speaker 14 Connie hadn't even been dead two days.

Speaker 4 We still wanted to bring presents to the children and he was staying at his parents' house. So our family went to visit with his family at his parents' house.

Speaker 13 And what was that like that when you it was very hard.

Speaker 4 We were all together. Everybody was very emotional.

Speaker 35 Everybody, Donna noticed, but Rick.

Speaker 4 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 that night.

Speaker 4 Talking, telling jokes, telling stories,

Speaker 4 we were all very devastated and, you know, right or wrong, I didn't sense a lot of sadness or emotion from him.

Speaker 18 I would say that the pain and grief that was on our family's faces, along with his family, was different than his demeanor.

Speaker 18 His demeanor was like, you know, it's like it's a just a party.

Speaker 23 Peggy and Darlene felt it too, that something was just off with Rick in the days after Connie's death.

Speaker 10 He would text us and say, like, hey, good neighbors, where do you guys get takeout?

Speaker 10 Like, where do we get takeout? You've lived here all these years. And

Speaker 10 who's worried about takeout? We're in the middle of this, like, this horrible time.

Speaker 34 And why was Rick so willing to engage over text, but not in person?

Speaker 33 Peggy remembers him playing the artful Dodger at a hardware store.

Speaker 29 I was at the register and I had to just sign the form

Speaker 29 to get a refund. And then I saw him, I waved, I

Speaker 29 looked down, I signed, I looked back up and he was gone. 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.

Speaker 25 Then again, Connie's friends didn't want to judge.

Speaker 44 Others, not so charitable.

Speaker 10 Quickly, the town gossip picked up and most folks were saying Rick did this.

Speaker 17 Why?

Speaker 10 What was leading that? The behavior got so strange. Like, he, you know, he's out at bars hanging out during the holiday,

Speaker 10 having dinner, drinking, and

Speaker 2 looking

Speaker 29 people over his house, jolly, having a party at his house.

Speaker 29 Too happy for somebody who

Speaker 9 had died in a brutal way.

Speaker 10 Yeah, right before Christmas. It was just odd behavior that started to put question marks.

Speaker 57 Still, Peggy and Darlene resisted thinking the worst of Rick.

Speaker 26 They didn't want to go there.

Speaker 27 Did you think that it was possible that Rick killed Connie?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 29 Why not? I guess he was just loving.

Speaker 11 He doted over her.

Speaker 29 He was checked in on her. He would tell us, hey, you know, she's having a bad day.
Like, take her away.

Speaker 11 Go out for drinks.

Speaker 10 Always rubbing her shoulders or, can I make you a plate?

Speaker 10 Like, if there's a party, can I make you a plate go sit down like you know then we'd be like okay can somebody make us a plate like he's putting all the husbands to shame in the neighborhood yeah he really did he did

Speaker 7 the way Kim Phillips saw it Rick and Connie were always in lockstep partners on life's dance floor We spent a lot of time together as couples with my husband and the more and more time we spent together the more and more you know he grew on us and we loved him and you know we just and we thought he was perfect for her.

Speaker 34 Which is why the nasty rumors flying through town landed like daggers for Rick's family.

Speaker 65 Two days before Christmas, you take your wife down into the basement and shoot her.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 65 No, Rick would not

Speaker 65 do anything like that to Connie. He would never hurt Connie.

Speaker 65 No.

Speaker 80 I don't think anyone who knows Rick well would ever believe that he'd be capable of murder.

Speaker 38 It's just not his nature.

Speaker 26 But a town's rumors aren't much use to a major crime squad.

Speaker 50 Facts, on the other hand, are.

Speaker 35 And right now, the facts were helping detectives working Connie Debates' murder.

Speaker 13 You were seeing red flags pop up in this interview?

Speaker 59 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 6 Coming up. What had investigators' whiskers twitching?

Speaker 67 Generally, people will recall events differently, 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.

Speaker 6 When dateline continues.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 24 And they weren't the only ones.

Speaker 22 Detectives Jeff Payette and Brett Longevin had interviewed Rick in the hospital for nearly seven hours the day of the attack.

Speaker 67 Rick's accounts varied as the progression of the interview went on.

Speaker 13 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?

Speaker 68 The details he was providing us weren't details that should have had different answers. Whether or not he saw his wife get shot, that was changing.

Speaker 39 At first, he said he only heard Connie get shot.

Speaker 70 I heard it fire, I think, twice.

Speaker 70 Once for sure.

Speaker 53 But a minute later, his story was this.

Speaker 15 Did you actually see him shoot your wife?

Speaker 70 Yes.

Speaker 56 And then he wasn't sure Connie had been shot at all.

Speaker 46 You're not actually sure if she got shot.

Speaker 70 I didn't know at that point.

Speaker 15 We started

Speaker 68 having questions as far as

Speaker 68 trying to get a consistent story from him.

Speaker 23 There were other times during the interview that the detectives thought Rick was overly descriptive, something they also found suspicious.

Speaker 67 Generally, people will recall events differently, 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.

Speaker 13 Is there a moment in the interview where you two look at each other and it's like, what are we dealing with here? Because he's supposed to be the victim.

Speaker 27 Are you starting to get a pit in your stomach a little bit?

Speaker 34 Like, hmm.

Speaker 68 One of the biggest things was the timeline he was providing us. He's saying he gets home at 9 o'clock.
His wife gets home, say, five minutes after him, and then everything happens.

Speaker 68 The chase down the stairs, he witnesses his wife murdered.

Speaker 68 But the 911 call is 10.19, so we're missing over an hour.

Speaker 58 That was

Speaker 8 one of the biggest red flags.

Speaker 40 Red flags, but not evidence that Rick killed Connie.

Speaker 35 And Rick's mom said anyone who endured what her son had could be forgiven for a hazy memory or a changing story.

Speaker 65 Well, he had six hours at that hospital to

Speaker 65 be interrogated and to think about what happened to Connie. And he's like,

Speaker 65 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.

Speaker 30 In shock and well aware that the police were suspicious of him.

Speaker 35 He told his father before they'd even left the hospital that day.

Speaker 63 He says, Dad, they think I did it.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow.

Speaker 46 This is the day it happened.

Speaker 63 I said, they're thinking you did something.

Speaker 63 So he says, you have to stop talking to them right now.

Speaker 22 Rick's family believes tunnel vision had already set in.

Speaker 63 It's like they just only had one person in mind. They never

Speaker 63 did anything to look for anybody else.

Speaker 34 Rick hired a prominent defense attorney and they waited, anticipating the worst.

Speaker 11 but there were no arrests spring came then summer the leaves began to fall the holidays approached once again 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 debate maintains that it was a masked intruder who NBC Connecticut anchor and reporter Shannon Miller

Speaker 11 so there's this big mystery in town who could be this person responsible who came in and did did this.

Speaker 11 There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of frustration as to why the answers are not coming fast enough.

Speaker 34 Rick's family wanted an arrest too, partly to put an end to all the rumors.

Speaker 13 We were hopeful that there would be some other evidence to someone, to point to someone else,

Speaker 80 because we knew It couldn't possibly be Rick, so there has to be something else out there proving that it's not him.

Speaker 53 By By the first anniversary of Connie's murder, her killer was still out there.

Speaker 24 All her family and friends could do was gather to honor that bright light that had been extinguished from their lives.

Speaker 11 Thank you so much for coming out tonight.

Speaker 88 It's amazing to see all the support from Connie's friends and family in the Ellington community.

Speaker 7 We wanted to do something special for her, primarily because we knew that she would do that for us.

Speaker 30 Friends spoke about Connie and sang her favorite songs.

Speaker 10 Last time I saw her, she was singing somewhere over the rainbow.

Speaker 45 Just days before Connie's murder, Darlene ran into her at their children's school.

Speaker 35 Connie wanted to go get a coffee and chat.

Speaker 57 Darlene was in a rush.

Speaker 10 And she was like, I wish you would just go and get a cup of jaffe. And then as she went by me, she started to sing somewhere over the rainbow.

Speaker 10 She just, as she turned, last time I saw her, she turned around and she was just like, she kind of gave me the smile she used to always go like,

Speaker 2 and I was like,

Speaker 88 live every moment, laugh every day, love beyond words. This is how Connie Margott Debate lived in her life every day.

Speaker 13 How hard was it having that vigil when you're trying to celebrate Connie and you know that her killer is still out there?

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 Well, I knew it was him. By that time he just needed to get arrested.

Speaker 34 Him was Connie's husband, Rick. Kim and many others close to Connie, with all they'd seen and heard in the years since her murder, now believed Rick was her killer.

Speaker 34 Even Peggy and Darlene, who had spent so much time with the debates and observed the marriage that was the envy of Birchview Drive, could no longer ignore what had become so clear to others.

Speaker 29 We were the last two, I always say this to her, we were the last two ding-dongs on that train because everybody else like jumped off a long time ago and we hung on and with the behavior and just the conversations the weird text messaging we're kind of like yeah this doesn't like add mad within that year like he never approached us to ask us did you see anything that day was there anything odd but if the authorities were focusing on rick debate they were tight-lipped about it and state's attorney Matthew Gdansky had no intention of rushing the case we're not just going to go A to Z we're going to hit every letter in between and check every box, cross every T, dot every I.

Speaker 35 And what may have looked like a lack of progress was anything but.

Speaker 50 The neighbors on Birchview Drive were about to experience a case of deja vu.

Speaker 6 Coming up.

Speaker 10 Next thing I knew, there were huge SUVs and cop cars and sirens.

Speaker 6 What was going on this time?

Speaker 84 Hey everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 85 It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name and We're Back for Another Season.

Speaker 86 I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more.

Speaker 59 You don't want to miss it.

Speaker 85 Listen to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 41 Emochi moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying. This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1.

Speaker 41 He understood, and I felt supported, not judged. I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Speaker 20 Thanks, Sadie.

Speaker 41 I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 87 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 56 More than a year after Connie Debate was shot to death, state police still hadn't made an arrest.

Speaker 69 But that's not to say they weren't working the case hard.

Speaker 17 They knew it wasn't the contractor, his alibi checked out.

Speaker 14 And there was no evidence that he'd been the one to damage the debate's cars.

Speaker 33 He was cleared of any involvement.

Speaker 35 Their suspicion was firmly on Connie's husband, Rick Debate.

Speaker 34 They were having trouble with his account of what happened.

Speaker 13 This was being called a home invasion. Yeah.

Speaker 30 Suspicion arose in those crucial first hours of the investigation.

Speaker 34 As neighbors hid in their houses or huddled on the street, Trooper First Class Ryan Kluke and his canine Rocky were called to the scene to try to pick up the scent of that elusive intruder.

Speaker 26 a masked man who Rick said had most likely fled from the open basement door.

Speaker 13 They had left something something behind.

Speaker 58 There was a wallet lying on the grass pretty much right outside of that of that entry basement door.

Speaker 32 Trooper Kluke put Rocky to work.

Speaker 58 I brought him up to that basement door where I started him and he initiates a track with his head down tracking

Speaker 58 into the rear yard area

Speaker 58 where he comes up to that wallet that was lying on the ground.

Speaker 58 He continues that track pretty intensely around the deck area of the residence on the grass until he makes his way to the front of the house.

Speaker 30 According to Rocky's nose, whoever had left the basement did not run into the woods or flee the property, but rather went around the house and right back in the front door.

Speaker 5 Was that odd to you?

Speaker 13 Because you almost think if it was an intruder who ran away and was trying to get away, then they would have kept going away from the house instead of back into the house.

Speaker 58 Yeah, it's noteworthy at the time.

Speaker 14 What made it even more noteworthy was what Rocky did once he got inside the house.

Speaker 58 He comes in very close proximity to where

Speaker 58 Mr. Debate was in the house receiving medical attention.

Speaker 35 It appeared that Rocky had tracked Rick's scent, which indicated to his handler, Trooper Kluke, that Rick was the one who left through the basement door.

Speaker 33 Could that be right?

Speaker 58 So I want to proof that trail that we just ran. Did we miss something?

Speaker 13 It was abnormal, so let's try it again.

Speaker 34 Rocky followed the same trail from the basement door to the front of the house.

Speaker 58 However, this time instead of going onto the porch and into the house,

Speaker 58 Rocky takes a left turn instead of the right and goes into the ambulance, essentially. Right to the stretcher in the ambulance in those tight quarters where Mr.
Debate was laying.

Speaker 21 And it wasn't just the canine that had sniffed something out that day.

Speaker 43 Because when detectives processed the scene, they felt the whole thing look staged.

Speaker 69 What did you think in particular, particular?

Speaker 13 What was really sticking out to you as looking staged?

Speaker 8 This was a burglary where someone's in there to steal your stuff. It didn't appear like anything was really disturbed.
The drawers weren't pulled out.

Speaker 8 The upstairs closet where the intruder reportedly was with Rick Debate, where you could see all of Connie's jewelry right there, not disturbed. None of the drawers were opened.

Speaker 34 So, their conclusion, no masked intruder, no Vindiesel-sounding madman.

Speaker 60 Could there have really been an intruder?

Speaker 15 No, definitely not.

Speaker 68 He wanted to come out looking like he survived a home invasion, but his wife, unfortunately, was murdered. But what it comes down to is to domestic homicide.

Speaker 34 Good Friday, April 14th, 2017.

Speaker 50 It had been almost a year and a half since Connie's murder when Darlene looked out her window and saw Rick Debate driving up toward his house.

Speaker 10 Next thing I knew, same thing as the day of the murder. There were

Speaker 10 huge SUVs and cop cars and sirens, and they

Speaker 10 forced him, you know, out of the car.

Speaker 19 Rick Debate was led away in handcuffs and charged with the murder of his wife, Connie.

Speaker 10 I thought it's over.

Speaker 35 But for Rick's parents, it was far from over because now a new nightmare had just begun.

Speaker 13 What do you say to your son after he's been arrested for murder?

Speaker 79 Say, we'll get through this. We're going to get through it.
We'll try to stay positive.

Speaker 65 Yeah, I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 19 The boys went to live with Connie's older sister after Rick's arrest.

Speaker 17 How's he handling it?

Speaker 65 Lousy.

Speaker 65 Lost his job right away.

Speaker 65 He lost his boys,

Speaker 65 lost his wife.

Speaker 65 He was alone. He was terrified.
He was scared about how the boy's gonna handle

Speaker 65 this news.

Speaker 65 And

Speaker 23 it was not good did you believe rick's story about the intruder the

Speaker 65 you know being zip-tied to the chair then the intruder shoots connie yes we had no reason to doubt it no reason at all

Speaker 34 the arrest had come as a shock to rick's and janice as well

Speaker 75 i honestly thought they were looking elsewhere I really didn't think they were looking at Rick.

Speaker 34 But the authorities had been looking very closely at Rick, and pretty soon everyone would know about a secret they'd discovered.

Speaker 7 My jaw almost dropped to the floor. I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 6 Coming up, what had Connie's friends and family floored?

Speaker 13 I just kept on thinking, oh my god, Rick was living a secret life.

Speaker 64 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 When dateline continues

Speaker 34 When Rick Debate was arrested for killing his wife Connie, many wondered how this seemingly perfect marriage could have possibly ended in murder.

Speaker 9 Did Rick Debate have any history of domestic violence that you could find?

Speaker 1 No. Criminal record?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 13 It seems odd that someone would, you know, go from having a clean slate to kill her.

Speaker 15 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.

Speaker 20 State's attorney Matthew Gdansky felt confident he could overcome that hurdle because he believed he had found the motive.

Speaker 15 He had a long-term affair with this other woman. She became pregnant in May of 2015.

Speaker 31 An affair, a pregnant girlfriend.

Speaker 34 The prosecutor was convinced Rick killed Connie to be with the other woman.

Speaker 21 Investigators had kept this bombshell quiet during the course of their nearly 18-month investigation, but Rick had only kept it quiet from them for a couple of hours.

Speaker 21 He must have guessed they'd find out soon enough, so he brought it up right there on day one from his hospital bed.

Speaker 27 He told you this in the interview? He did.

Speaker 57 This is huge.

Speaker 67 It is.

Speaker 25 Her name was Sarah Ganser, and she and Rick had been friends since junior high.

Speaker 35 She had even done a reading at Rick and Connie's wedding.

Speaker 34 And the way Rick told it to detectives, it all sounded above board.

Speaker 14 Sarah, his newly single, longtime friend, wanted to have a baby, and he and Connie offered to help.

Speaker 70 We were going to donate

Speaker 70 swerve to her to have a kid.

Speaker 67 But it became too expensive, so that in order for her to conceive a child, they had to do some untraditional things.

Speaker 13 Rick had to sleep with Sarah Instead of doing it a different way. Yes.

Speaker 48 Like

Speaker 17 the science route.

Speaker 13 Correct. Old-fashioned.

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 70 Untraditional, but traditional in the way that the baby was

Speaker 70 conceived.

Speaker 70 Yeah. Okay.
Do you think your wife had any issues with that? It was her idea, in a way.

Speaker 28 Her idea?

Speaker 43 Hard to believe Connie would have been okay with the plan, let alone come up with it.

Speaker 34 Rick may have sensed the detectives were skeptical, so he tried again.

Speaker 70 There was student going on in the beginning.

Speaker 22 And then, finally, Rick settled on the real story.

Speaker 70 Was her getting pregnant unexpected? It was unexpected.

Speaker 35 After Rick's arrest, word got out about the affair.

Speaker 13 You thought they had a good marriage.

Speaker 29 I honestly thought I was being punked. I was like, this is not cool.
My husband told me, he's like, listen, he has a girlfriend. She's pregnant.

Speaker 55 I'm like, get out of here.

Speaker 10 What are you talking about?

Speaker 26 Friends and family believe there's zero chance Connie knew about it, as Rick had claimed.

Speaker 13 Do you think Connie found out?

Speaker 7 She definitely did not know. If she had ever found out, or if she had known that was happening, she would have said something to someone.
That is something that she would have not accepted.

Speaker 59 It would have been very apparent, I think, if she knew.

Speaker 18 I think she would have been

Speaker 59 very angry.

Speaker 18 You know, she was very close to my mother. She would have called screaming and yelling.

Speaker 36 Connie was no shrinking violet.

Speaker 2 No. No.

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 So I don't believe she knew.

Speaker 7 And I just kept on thinking, oh my God, I was shocked.

Speaker 13 Rick was living a secret life.

Speaker 7 Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 53 The prosecutor believed Rick's secret life was on a collision course with his real life.

Speaker 15 So the pressure was building, and he actually voiced that to the handful of people that he told about this.

Speaker 15 That he was worried about a divorce, that he was worried that he was going to lose his friends, he was going to lose his family.

Speaker 14 He needed to resolve this situation to the point that you believed he took a life, his wife.

Speaker 15 Well, we don't grade them on the wisdom of their plan.

Speaker 15 We just grade them whether they're guilty or not guilty and by any stretch of the imagination no one would think this was a good plan to resolve his problem no one would but this was the plan he came up with

Speaker 15 the prosecutor's plan was to lay it all out for a jury but as he would soon find out things don't always go according to plan i think she was a very reluctant witness I think she was very reluctant to provide answers.

Speaker 6 Coming up, is the prosecution star witness about to throw a curveball?

Speaker 13 How would you describe Sarah Ganser in court?

Speaker 11 Was she on your side?

Speaker 15 I would say she was not on the state side. I wouldn't say she was hostile, but I'd say she approached that line.

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Speaker 14 Rick Debate had been arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, Connie.

Speaker 35 He had planned for this possibility when, the day after Connie's murder, he hired Hubert Santos, one of the most highly regarded defense attorneys in the state, and his partner, Trent LaLima.

Speaker 13 And that was the morning of Christmas Eve?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 13 That's an interesting time to get a call from a potential new client.

Speaker 12 Sometimes in criminal defense, things are urgent, things come up.

Speaker 21 But a sense of urgency didn't seem to apply to the courts, and any notion that justice would be swift quickly evaporated.

Speaker 35 The trial was delayed again and again and again.

Speaker 40 Three years passed.

Speaker 36 And the entire time, Rick was free on bail.

Speaker 55 How did you cope?

Speaker 2 Not easy.

Speaker 4 It's not easy. You put it in a box, you take it out and deal with it when you have to.
You put it back on the shelf. And I think we also lean on each other, but there's no manual for this.

Speaker 47 You don't know how to cope with this.

Speaker 21 Did you feel like he's getting this kind of free pass in the meantime that he's out and about?

Speaker 28 Definitely.

Speaker 18 I remember one person saying the only person dancing in the streets is him. And so, you know, the family's

Speaker 18 devastated.

Speaker 35 The devastation was compounded when Connie's father died of cancer in 2019.

Speaker 4 I'm convinced for him, he was holding on with very bad health, hoping to see this through.

Speaker 4 Just wanting to be there for all of us. I mean, he wanted to be the rock for us.

Speaker 4 And his body just gave out.

Speaker 35 Eventually, the opposing sides assembled in a Connecticut courtroom and selected a jury.

Speaker 40 It was the eve of the trial, March 2020.

Speaker 15 And then COVID happened. And we thought we'd be out a week or two, but obviously COVID had other ideas for us.
It wasn't a week, it wasn't two weeks, and then it turned into months and years.

Speaker 40 Rick's attorney, Hubert Santos, passed away during this time, causing a further delay.

Speaker 34 Trent LaLima would now try the case without his partner and mentor.

Speaker 12 We already knew what our strategy was, what our defense would be. And so, as much as he was not there for the trial, his ideas, his planning, they were.

Speaker 13 You believe the police really had tunnel vision in this case from the beginning?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 35 When the trial finally started in April 2022, the state led by Matthew Gdansky told the jury it was not tunnel vision that pointed the finger at Rick debate, but concrete evidence.

Speaker 27 Lots of it.

Speaker 34 He brought in the state police to explain how the crime scene looked staged, how Rocky the canine had traced Rick's and only Rick's sent at the scene.

Speaker 34 And he spelled out what he said were holes in Rick's story about that day.

Speaker 33 And of course, the prosecutor told the jury why Rick killed killed Connie.

Speaker 15 So the motive was his pregnant girlfriend.

Speaker 33 And who better to explain that to the jury than the woman herself?

Speaker 89 Stadia's going to call Sarah Ganser next.

Speaker 30 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.

Speaker 19 Reporters covering the trial were keenly focused on her testimony.

Speaker 11 When Sarah Ganser walks into the courtroom, I mean, you could hear a pin drop. This is the testimony that so many people had been waiting to hear.

Speaker 89 At some point, did you become pregnant? I did.

Speaker 89 And who was the father of the baby? Break the bait.

Speaker 11 I think the jury empathized with Sarah.

Speaker 38 She told the court several times this was tough testimony to do.

Speaker 11 She was sharing her most personal, intimate details with strangers.

Speaker 89 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? Yes.

Speaker 35 The prosecution argued that despite what Rick had told Sarah, there was no evidence he and Connie were divorcing. But Sarah's time on the stand was not without its problems for Gdansky in his case.

Speaker 13 How would you describe Sarah Ganser in court?

Speaker 11 Was she on your side?

Speaker 15 No, I would say she was not on the state side. I wouldn't say she was hostile, but I'd say she approached that line.

Speaker 34 The prosecution's theory was that Rick Debate was under immense pressure, but that's not what Sarah said.

Speaker 89 Ms. Ganser, is it your testimony you never conveyed that you were upset that he did not file for a divorce?

Speaker 89 I don't recall telling him that. Did you ever shut him out, so to speak, and say, that's it?

Speaker 89 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?

Speaker 89 Not really to me. He never said the pressure is getting to me.
I don't know what behaviors would characterize that.

Speaker 11 So I think the prosecution obviously kind of had this pregnancy as the reason, the motive behind this murder. But in Sarah's testimony, she wasn't looking to break up a family at all.

Speaker 11 And so I think in some cases, you know, it helps paint the picture that she was not putting pressure on Richard Dubay to make a decision.

Speaker 57 In the months leading up to the murder, Rick had texted tenderly with Sarah, referring to her as his little love nugget.

Speaker 34 And when investigators dug into Sarah's private Facebook messages, they said there was evidence Rick had been trashing his wife to his girlfriend.

Speaker 89 Did he ever call her names? I think that married people say, and even dating people, say flippant things about each other all the time to other people. Did he ever call her names?

Speaker 89 I'm sure he did.

Speaker 89 Please don't ask me to remember any of them because it was seven years ago.

Speaker 23 Sarah appeared reluctant to help the prosecution.

Speaker 34 And in fact, defense attorney Trent Lalima believed she actually helped his client.

Speaker 12 Well, it was quite clear she wasn't putting any pressure on him. She had told him that you just say the word, and I won't put the father's name on the birth certificate.

Speaker 12 I won't mention your name to anybody. No one will ever know that this is your child.
So how is the pressure on? If she's telling him,

Speaker 12 you can just go back to her and this, and we can pretend this never happened.

Speaker 34 And that was exactly the point the defense wanted to hammer home when they questioned Sarah.

Speaker 89 Because of your nature, was it often the case that you didn't regularly bring up the prospect of a divorce with Rick debate?

Speaker 89 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.

Speaker 34 But Sarah clearly wanted to be with him.

Speaker 39 She told the jury her relationship with Rick continued even after he had been arrested and charged with Connie's murder.

Speaker 89 Well, I think Rick was arrested in 2017, in April. So it was again, probably months after that, that, yes, yep, we started seeing each other again.

Speaker 47 Rick's family says the idea that Connie was killed over an affair was nonsense.

Speaker 13 How do you feel about that as a possible motive that, you know, he wanted Connie out of the way to, you know, be with

Speaker 65 no, no. He would deal with it.

Speaker 65 He would have dealt with it. And Connie would have, too.

Speaker 75 They would have somehow.

Speaker 65 managed.

Speaker 34 And it wasn't such a big secret after all.

Speaker 35 He had, in fact, confided in his cousin Lori all about it.

Speaker 13 I think at the time, his intention was to tell Connie and to try to keep his family together.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 80 you know, that that was going to be difficult.

Speaker 17 And I was

Speaker 62 going to be there to do whatever I could to help.

Speaker 36 Sarah Ganser's 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.

Speaker 6 Coming up, the story told by data.

Speaker 13 It was a silent witness.

Speaker 84 Correct.

Speaker 18 Multiple silent witnesses.

Speaker 18 Digital evidence is powerful.

Speaker 6 When dateline continues.

Speaker 26 The prosecution had put a reluctant witness on the stand who provided the jury with a why in the case against Rick Debate.

Speaker 26 But now they had perhaps an even better witness, a witness with no emotional ties to the defendant.

Speaker 13 It was a silent witness.

Speaker 28 Correct.

Speaker 18 Multiple silent witnesses.

Speaker 18 Digital evidence is powerful.

Speaker 34 The state had what it said was cold, hard data.

Speaker 5 Detective Sergeant Bill Udermark told the jury and us how the debate's electronic devices devices held a treasure trove of information.

Speaker 18 And when you're talking about electronics, you're talking about Facebook accounts, the alarm reporting. You're talking about cell phone downloads, camera cameras,

Speaker 18 the Fitbit, surveillance cameras, a lot of different work that came into play.

Speaker 35 It all added up to a timeline for both Connie and Rick.

Speaker 34 What they did, where they went, who they talked to.

Speaker 36 What are you learning about Connie's last day?

Speaker 13 What had she done that morning?

Speaker 68 After she wakes up,

Speaker 68 I believe the first thing she does is go on her phone. She messages some friends and then she starts her day.
We have her putting on her Fitbit shortly after she got up.

Speaker 16 Connie wore the Fitbit device on her waistband.

Speaker 82 It recorded when she was moving, when she was stationary, and her steps taken that day.

Speaker 68 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.

Speaker 86 Getting in the car and driving to the Y.

Speaker 68 We can see when she hops in her car, because there's no movement on the Fitbit, she's not walking anymore.

Speaker 40 Connie arrived at the YMCA, as seen in these surveillance images, but didn't stay long because her exercise class had been canceled.

Speaker 34 She drove straight home.

Speaker 7 And the Fitbit picks her up.

Speaker 28 Correct. Getting home, getting out of the car.

Speaker 68 So she starts getting steps again on the Fitbit. So that's about 9-18, 9-20.
So then she's moving sporadically inside the house.

Speaker 68 We correspond that with some of the Facebook things that she's doing as well.

Speaker 13 This is where the Fitbit becomes really critical because Rick's story was that Connie came home and he was yelling at her to escape or to flee this intruder.

Speaker 28 And

Speaker 68 Rick's story is that this occurred at 9 o'clock. So now we have

Speaker 68 steps on our Fitbit at 100 up to 10.05. So it's an hour and five minutes that she's talking about.

Speaker 13 So you've got a time discrepancy. Correct.

Speaker 44 Connie's electronic footprint was telling a different story than what Rick was telling you.

Speaker 67 Not just Connie's.

Speaker 77 Rick's as well.

Speaker 18 It provided us with all kinds of information showing us that he really never left the property.

Speaker 46 He's very close to the house, if not in the house.

Speaker 13 So the story about him driving away, realizing he forgot his laptop and going back, that you were finding that that was not? That was not the case.

Speaker 35 According to the electronic data, Rick Debate never left the property.

Speaker 33 Instead, according to the prosecution, Rick stayed home and waited for Connie to return, then spent nearly an hour building up the nerve to lure her down into the basement, where he shot her dead and staged his own attack.

Speaker 32 But that theory was full of holes, said Defense Attorney Trent Lalima.

Speaker 12 And it's important to remember, it's the state's job to prove beyond a reasonable doubt their case.

Speaker 14 And reasonable doubt was everywhere, he said.

Speaker 47 starting with the fact that Rick was not a violent man.

Speaker 12 Rick Debate has never had an allegation of violence in his his history. There's no allegation of any violence against Connie Debate or that he was ever attacked anyone else.

Speaker 12 And you don't go from that to what the state alleges that morning.

Speaker 26 And he said the prosecution's evidence to the contrary could not be trusted.

Speaker 12 These electronic devices are not prepared with the idea that they're going to be used in a murder trial. Fitbit designed their device to make money.

Speaker 12 It's not meant to be a absolutely accurate scientific or legal device. And in fact, the people that testify at trial couldn't even tell us how the Fitbit reached the conclusions it did.

Speaker 12 They could only tell us the numbers it spit out, not how it got the numbers.

Speaker 9 But you're still having to say that every single device was faulty or inaccurate?

Speaker 12 I think it's quite possible that all these electronic devices are not perfect.

Speaker 28 But they all were wrong?

Speaker 12 They could all have errors, absolutely. The defense argued there was one thing the jury could rely on: the old-fashioned tried-and-true forensic evidence, which was in our favor.

Speaker 57 DNA at the crime scene.

Speaker 35 Investigators had found plenty of it.

Speaker 26 And the defense said it confirmed Rick Debate's story about an intruder.

Speaker 12 In this case, we had unidentified DNA in six different key places, starting with the master bedroom closet,

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And it's important to to remember Rick Debate, when he told his story to the police that first day, before he could have ever known what the DNA results were, he was citing those exact places saying that's where the intruder was.

Speaker 12 That's what the intruder touched in the house.

Speaker 82 The defense also wanted to make clear to the jury that despite what the prosecution wanted them to believe, Rick Debate never wavered in his story about what happened that morning on Birchview Drive.

Speaker 12 His wife is shot feet away from him after he's attacked by an intruder. That would be the most traumatic day of anybody's life, the most traumatic experience of anybody's life.

Speaker 12 And are we going to expect that he's going to have the exact time of how long everything happened? Remember every small detail of what he did on his iPad or his tablet that morning?

Speaker 12 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. Those details were always consistent.

Speaker 34 But the jurors wouldn't have to take his word for it.

Speaker 26 They would hear it straight from Rick Debate himself.

Speaker 69 The defense will call Richard Debate Jr.

Speaker 6 Coming up, Rick recounts struggling with the intruder and the horror of his wife's last moments.

Speaker 89 What did you see and hear?

Speaker 89 I heard a loud bang, fully the flesh,

Speaker 89 and

Speaker 89 I remember seeing Punk Tanya fall motionless to the ground.

Speaker 6 Will jurors believe his story?

Speaker 89 Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you agreed upon a verdict? We have.

Speaker 57 Rick Debate had waited more than six years to tell his side of the story.

Speaker 34 Now was his chance as he took the stand in his own defense.

Speaker 89 How has Connie's loss affected you?

Speaker 89 I don't know where to start with that.

Speaker 89 It affected me in the most awfully negative way possible. The boys don't have a mother.
Life is irreversibly changed for the worse.

Speaker 34 Rick acknowledged to the jury he had cheated on Connie with Sarah.

Speaker 89 Did it happen on multiple occasions? Yes, it did. At some point around this time period, did Sarah tell you anything? Yes, she did.
What did she tell you?

Speaker 89 She told me she was pregnant.

Speaker 34 But just as Sarah Ganser had testified, Rick denied feeling pressure to choose between her and Connie.

Speaker 89 Did she tell you to do anything? No.

Speaker 89 Did she present options to you?

Speaker 89 Yes, she did. What options did she present to you?

Speaker 89 She said if you stayed with Connie,

Speaker 89 that she wouldn't tell anyone who the dad was.

Speaker 33 And then Rick took the jury through that awful morning.

Speaker 89 What happened when you got upstairs? Went upstairs.

Speaker 89 and when I opened up the closet door, there was an intruder.

Speaker 52 He told them how the intruder demanded his wallet, and then what happened when he heard Connie come home.

Speaker 89 What did you do?

Speaker 89 I yelled at Connie, there was someone in the house, run.

Speaker 89 The intruder grabbed my hand,

Speaker 89 twisted it somehow, forced me to the ground, and ran out. Ran downstairs.
What did you do?

Speaker 89 After I eventually got up, I ran after him.

Speaker 40 And he described getting to the basement just seconds too late.

Speaker 89 What did you see and hear? I heard a loud bang, believe a flash,

Speaker 89 and

Speaker 89 I remember seeing Punk Connie fall motionless to the ground.

Speaker 43 Next, he told the jury how he was tortured, eventually fighting off the intruder with the blowtorch.

Speaker 89 I thought maybe I burned his mask, but he put his hands up in his face,

Speaker 89 dropped the blowtorch, and

Speaker 89 ran.

Speaker 35 Rick Debate professed his love for Connie and his innocence in her murder.

Speaker 89 Who shot Connie Debate? Intruder.

Speaker 89 Did you shoot Connie? No.

Speaker 89 Did you

Speaker 89 stage any of the evidence at that scene? No, I didn't.

Speaker 30 That part of Rick's story never wavered.

Speaker 34 But there were subtle differences between what he initially told investigators and what he said in court.

Speaker 24 For instance, in 2015, he told detectives this.

Speaker 26 But this is what he told the jury in 2022.

Speaker 89 What did you do when you went inside?

Speaker 89 Put my keys down

Speaker 89 on a hutch, put my phone

Speaker 89 near the curts. I was going to make a coffee.
And at that point, since I already told my boss I I was running late, I just decided to kind of veg out a little bit and surf the internet and

Speaker 89 kind of take my time. Now at some point, was this interrupted?

Speaker 89 Yes.

Speaker 89 What happened?

Speaker 89 Heard something upstairs.

Speaker 9 The allegation was that he was changing his story to fit what he'd heard during the trial.

Speaker 12 I mean, what changed were the gaps in between the big moments? How long was he home? Was he making a coffee? You know, did he go on his iPad for a bit to kill some time?

Speaker 12 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.

Speaker 12 And those have never changed over the years.

Speaker 14 But now it was state's attorney Matthew Gdansky's turn to ask the questions.

Speaker 30 And perhaps nobody had listened more closely to Rick's story than he had.

Speaker 15 I was looking forward to cross-examining him.

Speaker 26 Yeah, did you beat him up?

Speaker 15 I guess that's for someone else to determine.

Speaker 50 The prosecutor pulled no punches, accusing Rick of getting rid of his wife while trying to make himself look good in the process.

Speaker 89 And so, this is the plan you came up with for this dilemma that you were in? There's no plan, sir.

Speaker 89 You could be the hero, a failed hero, but a hero.

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 35 He pressed Rick to account for the inconsistencies in his story.

Speaker 89 And you could see from the data that you and Connie were home together for a good half hour or so that day

Speaker 89 before she was killed. At some point, I...
Okay.

Speaker 89 But that disputes your story. Your story is that she came home and she ran down in the basement.

Speaker 89 That's not the full story, sir. You never left that house, did you? I absolutely left the house that day.

Speaker 26 And every chance he got, the prosecutor made sure to emphasize one key element of Rick's story.

Speaker 35 A Hollywood element.

Speaker 89 There were two people in that closet, you and Vin Diesel. That must be your wrestling match with Vin Diesel, correct? And that Vin Diesel, Vin Diesel, this Vin Diesel guy.

Speaker 89 You must have been fighting with Vin Diesel, were you not? I was fighting with an intruder, yes.

Speaker 14 Why bring up a movie star so many times in your cross-examination?

Speaker 15 He's the one who said the guy sounded like Vin Diesel. So I was certainly going to use it with him.

Speaker 14 Was he trying to get a rise out of Rick?

Speaker 5 Or was it a wink and a nod to the jury, a way to emphasize how ridiculous he found the whole story?

Speaker 89 You chased Vin Diesel, who was chasing your wife.

Speaker 14 The exchanges were tense, often accusatory, but Rick Debate stuck to his story.

Speaker 35 He didn't kill Connie.

Speaker 78 An intruder did.

Speaker 89 You shot her in the back of the head, did you? Absolutely not, sir. 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?

Speaker 89 Absolutely not, sir.

Speaker 36 Was he lying? It was now up to the jury to decide.

Speaker 89 Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, in the case of State v. Richard debate, have you agreed upon a verdict? We have.

Speaker 34 Less than a day's worth of deliberating was all it took.

Speaker 89 Will the defendant Richard debate please rise and face the jury? Madam Fourperson, is the defendant guilty or not guilty? We found the defendant guilty.

Speaker 21 How did you feel when you heard guilty?

Speaker 18 Like a victory. You know, it definitely felt like

Speaker 18 a weight lifted off my shoulders.

Speaker 44 It had been years. Years.

Speaker 13 Finally, this part was over.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was relief.

Speaker 13 After six and a half years from that day that you went to that crime scene, you finally had the guilty verdict.

Speaker 15 You know, we felt a great responsibility to Connie and

Speaker 15 obviously very happy with the verdict. The irony is that he came up with this crazy

Speaker 15 evil plan to protect his reputation. And this is how he's going to be remembered.

Speaker 35 Rick Debate, convicted wife killer.

Speaker 34 He was sentenced to 65 years in prison.

Speaker 7 It was an amazing feeling, like it was better than I thought it was going to be. And I just think it was because

Speaker 7 I can move on now.

Speaker 7 Because those seven years, there was just so much anxiety.

Speaker 2 I changed as a person.

Speaker 2 I lost the part of me that I'll never get back.

Speaker 19 On the other side of the courtroom, different tears.

Speaker 13 That's a tough moment when now your son is

Speaker 13 being led away for murdering his wife.

Speaker 28 I can't believe he's there.

Speaker 2 I can't believe he's there.

Speaker 34 Two families torn apart, learning to live with different types of pain.

Speaker 24 But they all share one thing, a love for Connie.

Speaker 4 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.

Speaker 26 Do you feel that Connie will live on and her boys?

Speaker 7 I know she will. Like, she just, she had a great, beautiful influence on them and I know they will carry that forward.

Speaker 21 And maybe a good piece of advice is to

Speaker 13 go through life treating people like their mom did.

Speaker 7 Absolutely.

Speaker 28 Peggy and Darlene will forever miss their third musketeer, but they know Connie's legacy lives on along the once again quiet Birchview Drive.

Speaker 10 Connie was the connector. Connie wanted to connect all of the neighbors to one another.

Speaker 23 Her death brought everyone together. Absolutely.

Speaker 10 She was beautiful from the inside out. Her light was so bright that you just wanted to be in the light with her.

Speaker 6 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9-8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News. I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 6 Good night.

Speaker 49 Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena.

Speaker 90 And I'm Ash, and we are the hosts of Morbid Podcast.

Speaker 91 Each week, we dive into the dark and fascinating world of true crime, spooky history, and the unexplained.

Speaker 90 From infamous killers and unsolved mysteries to haunted places and strange legends, we cover it all with research, empathy, humor, and a few creative expletives.

Speaker 91 It's smart, it's spooky, and it's just the right amount of weird.

Speaker 90 Two new episodes drop every week, and there's even a bonus once a month.

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