Hi! Enough with the fun and
games. Today I’m going to solve a murder. Maybe. Or maybe not. Definitely not.
Connie Dabate of Ellington,
CT was killed in her home in December 23rd of last year. This is
intriguing to me because it’s my hometown—their house is about 3 miles away
from the house where I grew up. She graduated from Ellington High School in
1995—four years after me. I don’t think I ever met her. Her husband Richard
Dabate is from next door Vernon. The case is also intriguing because six months after the
fact, there have been no arrests. “There is no update” was the curt reply from
the police to the press this week. It’s unsolved as far as we know.
Investigations take time but six months is an awfully long time to dot the i’s
and cross the t’s before making an arrest. So something weird is going on. Your
fearless blog writer would like to go through the facts that have been
reported. Let’s see any sense can be made of this at all by Detective Doyle. The
Shamrock Sherlock? Let’s go with that.
Proceeding chronologically, in
October police were called after someone tampered with their cars: Connie’s car
on October 2nd, Rick’s car on October 9th. This is probably
irrelevant, but it’s interesting that these incidents happened exactly 7 days
apart. The calls came on Fridays and both incidents were reported as happening
the night before. So two straight Thursday nights. No detail is too small for
the keen detective mind.
Connie’s car had two yellow
rags placed in the exhaust system. She told the cops she “believes she know who
did it”. Rick’s car had a damaged windshield on the front passenger side. After
the second incident, they both said they suspected the same person they had suspected
a week earlier.
She told the cops she did not
own any yellow rags matching those found in her exhaust system. I doubt she
volunteered this, so the cops must have asked her—a suspicious line of
questioning which seems slightly odd thought it might just be standard
procedure. The trooper also took great pains to report that all evidence
indicated Rick’s windshield was smashed form the inside, not the outside. No
other cars parked in the driveway were damaged and there no footprints—which
would have been visible due to the morning dew.
Rick said he had purchased a
surveillance camera after the first incident a week earlier--but had not set it
up yet.
If I’m reading between the
lines correctly, it seems clear the cops suspected this was an inside job. While
it seems incredibly strange to tamper with your wife’s car and then your own
car and call the cops to report so-and-so tampered with the cars yet that’s
apparently what they thought happened. Otherwise why ask Connie if she owned
matching yellow rags? And why make such a point of noting the windshield was
smashed from the inside, not the outside? Isn’t this suggesting that if vandals
had shown up at their house they probably would have smashed the windshield
from the outside while standing outside the car vs. opening the door, getting
in the front passenger seat, and smashing it from the inside? If you’re a criminal,
why would you take that extra step when presumably you would want to get away
as fast as possible? But if it’s your own car, maybe getting in first and
smashing it makes more sense and this was a small detail that, if he did it,
Rick didn’t think to account for?
The troopers knocked on the
door of the person the Dabates had accused of tampering with their cars. They
weren’t home. They didn’t try back. That is also odd to me. No, tampering with
cars isn’t the crime of the century, but this is sleepy Ellington. I mean that’s
about as much action as those boys are normally going to get. This is the place
where a cop once stopped me for rounding a corner too sharply on my ten speed. It’s
a place where cows breaking loose from their pen at night is the closest thing
to a riot they see, unless you count breaking up bonfires and teenage drinking
on Green Road. Why wouldn’t they have followed up? Was it because they were
positive Rick did it himself and was trying to play them for fools or was just
it simple laziness?
Now let’s skip ahead to
December 23rd. This was a Monday. Two days before Christmas. (Obviously).
A burglar alarm sounded at 10:15 AM. The cops found Connie fatally shot in the
head and abdomen at their home. Rick had “non life threatening” injuries. They
also saw smoke in the house.
Trooper
Kelly Grant said, "Are there signs this was a domestic dispute? Sure. But
again, I'm not going to make that determination. They don't want to say that
and then say someone broke in and then later on that it was a domestic dispute.
Right now, it's being investigated as a suspicious homicide until we make a
determination."
Here
is what the obituary said:
“Connie
(Margotta) Dabate, 39, of Ellington, beloved wife and best friend of Richard
Dabate, and dedicated and loving mother of Richard "RJ" age 9, and
Connor age 6, died tragically at her home on Wednesday, December 23, 2015. Born
in Rockville, the daughter of Kenneth and Cindi (Stuart) Margotta, she grew up
in Vernon and Ellington. She was a graduate of Ellington High School, Class of
1995. Connie earned her undergraduate degree from the University of
Connecticut, Class of 1999. She was a pharmaceutical sales representative for
Reckitt Benckiser. Connie was a past vice president, and member for many years,
of the Ellington Ambulance Corp. She was a loving, cheerful and kind person.
Connie was the sunshine of so many lives including….”.
I
have tried in vain to find another article I saw a couple month ago with the
remaining piece of publicly revealed info that I know of. I hope I get this
right. They had some work done on their house and there was a legal dispute
which resulted in the Dabates receiving court ordered payment from the builders.
Even an amateur detective like me can see that these were obviously the people
they were directing the cops to when their cars were tampered with.
So…..since
I’m neither a paid nor a responsible journalist, here is where I engage in
rampant speculation. This doesn’t seem like it should be such an amazingly
difficult case to solve. It seems like there’s only two possibilities: the contractors
did it or the husband did it. If the contractors had lost money and possibly business
due to bad publicity, they may have either wanted to get their money back or
simply enact revenge. If the husband did it, who knows why? But in those
situations you can bet with almost 100 percent certainty that an affair was
involved, can’t you? Maybe she was having an affair and he decided to deal with
it in the most extreme way possible? Or maybe he was having an affair,
wanted out of the marriage, but didn’t want to pay child support?
But
if he did it, he obviously went about it in a slightly crazy way by leading the
cops directly to him. First with self-tampered cars more than two months in advance
of a pre-meditated murder to set up a motive for those he was trying finger for
the crime, next with the set up burglar alarm and a 911 call. Even smoke! And
injuring himself! Did he take such crazy steps thinking he had the perfect fall
guys lined up? Was the prior lawsuit against the contractors the ultimate
opportunity to get away with murder?
If
the contractors did it, it sure seems an extreme way to deal with a money dispute,
but stranger things have happened. Tamper with their cars to scare them and when that doesn't yield the outcome you want, resort to killing the guy's wife? The first scenario is out of a murder mystery thriller, this scenario is out of a gangster movie. I just wish the story of the cracked
windshield had answered an obvious question: was the car unlocked? If it was locked,
clearly the husband cracked the windshield himself. But if unlocked, maybe vandals
thought getting in the car first and smashing it from the inside would reduce
noise? And if there were no footprints, maybe they thought to cover their
tracks?
But
again…..the cops don’t seem to think that. They clearly seem to think it’s the
husband—as evidenced by the aforementioned trooper’s statement after the murder,
their apparent skepticism over the tampered cars, and their lack of follow up
in attempting to talk to the contractors after they supposedly tampered with cars.
But why? Why did they seemingly jump to the stranger conclusion vs. the more
obvious conclusion? An angry contractor who had lost in court and was out for vigilante
justice almost makes sense. A husband hatching a cat and mouse, hiding in plain
sight scheme with the police so he can murder his wife seems slightly more out
there. Something out of a movie.
So
as an irresponsible blog writer with zero journalistic credentials, why don’t I
lapse even further into crazy theories? The cops were in on it! In league with
the contractors! You heard me. The husband wasn’t setting up the cops, the cops
were setting up the husband by feigning ignorance! Okay, again, I’ve seen too
many movies and I’m just wildly speculating and I kind of doubt my own theory
here, but isn’t this what the Internet is for? If it was true, that would
explain their desire to hint that the husband himself tampered with the cars,
their non-follow through on talking to the people he had accused, and their
dragging their heels for six months without making a single arrest in a case
which does seem to have enough facts to work with.
And
everyone seems to suspect the husband in town. One article quoted a woman who
had moved next door to him saying she carries an “extra large flashlight” when walking
her dog in the morning. The most recent article quoted the owner of the Chuck
Wagon—the local diner, a fine establishment! —saying he was there with his kids
last week and no one came near him. Since one of the cops already more or less stated
he suspects him too and the whole town suspects him, why wouldn’t you think you
can present a case to a jury to get a conviction? Unless you know the
contractors did it, you’re in on it, and fear any action at all will expose
that but as long as it’s an “unsolved crime” no one will ever know! Or they are not "in on it" exactly but the contractors have some high up connections making them untouchable? Also the
press only reported on the tampered cars through a freedom of information
request but the article said the police report was heavily redacted. Why?
I’ve probably lost it completely. Forget that.
The
cops said from the very beginning that no one was in danger. No manhunt of any
kind occurred. So we have to infer that the cops knew beyond a shadow of a
doubt who did it. Or least they know it was either Rick or the contractors. With
the options so narrowed, again, why is it so hard to get evidence for an
arrest!? Whoever is guilty, it would seem relatively easy.
Or
maybe there’s no great mystery. Maybe state police in north central Connecticut
are simply over their heads trying to conduct a homicide investigation due to limited
experience. They know who did it, but they bungled the gathering of evidence at
the start and now they have no case. And a murder may go without justice.
Hopefully I’m wrong. But I believe the most important time to gather the evidence after any crime is in the immediate hours and days afterward. Otherwise, forensics has a nearly impossible job. Whoever did this, was it a stroke of evil genius to time it two days before Christmas--when you could assume many of them would be taking holiday time off from work?
Damnit.
I solved nothing. I knew it.
