#525 - Detective Fitbit - Ellington, Connecticut
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Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you about one of my favorite things in the world, Audible. Oh, audible.com or that app. Oh, I give that app a workout. Let me tell you something. Listening on Audible helps your imagination soar. You can listen to anything. There's so many genres on there. There's more to imagine when you listen. And let me tell you something that makes my imagination soar in a terrible way. I've been listening to Secrets in the Cellar. Oh, boy.

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This week, in Ellington, Connecticut, the claim is that a Vin Diesel type of man terrorized a family home, tying people up, stabbing and burning people with a blowtorch. But did any of these horrors actually occur? Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay!

Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrogallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thanks for having me.

Thank you so much for joining us today on another absolutely insane edition of Small Town Murder. Hey, surprise, everybody. We got a crazy one for you today. You shocked? Say it in style. Because it's so crazy, I'll tell you right now, just like all the others. Even this is the first time that they use a piece of information. Hard to say this without giving it away, but it's the first time they use a piece of technology to...

actually convict a person. It's very interesting. So something that's very common nowadays here. We'll get to all that. First of all, shut up and give me murder dot com. Head over there post haste. Get your tickets for live shows. Number one, September 20th. We are in Minneapolis at the State Theater. That is almost sold out. You get your tickets now. That way you can have an opportunity to be a part of the

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So get in there. That show's available for two weeks after you purchase it as well, too. So you can watch it a million times. You can watch it later. You can do whatever you want with it, though. But shutupandgivebemurder.com is where you get all of that. Patreon.com slash crimeinsports is where you get all of the bonus material. And we got a ton of it. Anybody $5 a month or above, you are going to get hundreds of back episodes. So much. Immediately upon subscription of bonus episodes you've never heard. And then you're going to get new ones every other week. We will not stop, damn it.

And here we go. This week, what you're going to get for crime and sports, we're going to talk about James Pudd Galvin.

who was the first steroid user in baseball way back in 1889. And you want to know what they made steroids out of back then? Sure do. It is gross. We'll tell you all about it, and then we'll kind of tell you the beginnings of performance-enhancing drugs back then. And then for small-town murder, it is time again for one of the favorites. Old-timey murders are back. We dip into the old newspaper archives and hear about some horribly descriptive, awful old-timey murders from, gosh,

God, early 1900s. Can't wait for that. That is patreon.com slash crime in sports. And you get a shout out at the end of the show. Jimmy will mess your name all up if you want. So there you go. That said, disclaimer. It's a comedy show, everybody. It's a comedy show. Now that you might say it's a comedy show. I thought it was real. It is real, unfortunately. Unfortunately, every single thing we tell you is real.

And there's jokes. So that's how that works here. We never, you know, we don't make anything up to make it funnier. That's ridiculous. No, it's all unfortunately true. And it's very sad. But what we don't do here is say, how the hell do you make that palatable? Very easily. All you have to do is not make fun of the victims or the victims' families. There you go. What is that, James? That's because we're assholes. Yeah, but? But we're not scumbags. See how that works? There you go. You can be a decent person and laugh while murder is taking place. So, yeah.

That sounds good to you. You are going to hear one hell of a crazy story. If you think true crime and comedy and all that stuff never, ever go together, maybe we're not for you. Maybe it's a bad date and we look at each other in the eyes and we say, good luck in your future. You never know. But you never know. Sometimes you go out with someone and you like them much better than you thought you were going to like them. So that's how that goes. So if you're one of those people and you're going, you know what? Maybe they're not so bad. I think it's time to sit back.

Let's all clear the lungs and let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. What do you say? Let's go on a trip, shall we? Let's do it. Let us do it. We are going to the East Coast this week here. We are going to Connecticut.

Oh, boy. Ellington, Connecticut. Like the Duke. Like the Duke. It's in north central Connecticut here. It's about a half hour to Hartford and about an hour to our last Connecticut episode in Newtown, Connecticut. That one was woodchipping the wife. We all remember that one. That one's...

obvious what happened there. Everything's about an hour away in Connecticut. Within. It's so small. And Hartford's like right in the middle, so everything's like within an hour of Hartford pretty much in Connecticut. It's not a big place. It's a drive-through state. You drive through it on the way from New York to Boston. You drive through it that way. It's right there. It's available to everything. Yeah.

It's available to everybody, really. Anyone can access Connecticut. Yeah. It's true. That's probably why it's so expensive to live there and then the taxes are so high because everything's right there. So it's a very convenient place. Especially anywhere that's commutable to New York City. Now you're in that range. Oh, shit, it's commutable to Boston. It's commutable to so many places. That's the other thing, too.

Rhode Island you can get to from there. So the Tolland County is the county. Tolland, T-O, like Holland with a T. The motto here, a great place to grow.

Yeah. So once you're locked. Yeah. Well, once you're older, get the fuck out is what they're telling you. No adults allowed to grow your ears is what it is. Ears and nose. Yeah. History of this town. The Ellington's home to one of the oldest roadside memorials in the United States.

Who did they memorialize? A boy killed in a car accident. Jesus! Or a road accident. It's pre-cars. So a stone in the southwest corner of the town marks the site where Samuel Knight was killed, quote, by a cartwheel rolling over his head in his 10th year of age. Did they need to be so specific about it in the sign?

Couldn't they just say was killed in an accident here? Isn't that enough? On this spot, a boy aged 10 had a brain bleed. Brain shot out of the boy's ears in every direction, scaring the town folk and the women especially. A splatter of 10 hands. His own mother didn't recognize him. Very sad.

His heart ran over his head. Wow. That was 1812. January 1st, 1967. Ellington made national news when this is pretty fucking cool. Actually, there's a pilot who's having engine trouble and couldn't find the runway because it was so foggy that visibility was only 200 feet.

So what they did is a resident, a state trooper that lived there named Lionel Labrache of the Connecticut State Police assembled dozens of people in the town's unlit airstrip and lined their cars down the side, down the sides and lit all their headlights so they could see that they could see the runway. And the guy landed safely between the cars, between the car. That's fucking brilliant. I wouldn't have thought of that. I'd be like, oh, no, he's fucked.

Oh, man. Shit, that's going to... He's going to crash on my house. I'd be worried about that. Let's all get to the highest point and watch him go down. Who's got a camera? Anybody? Somebody go home and get a fucking camera because this is going to be wild shit when he blows up.

Cars, that's pretty smart. The flashlights from up there, you can't see them. No, no. No way. Dozens of headlights you can see. So reviews of this town. Here we go. Let's find out what other people think about this town. Here's four stars. I've lived in Ellington basically all my life, and it's just a nice little town.

That's nice. It has good schools and is very safe for families and has a cute country town vibe to it with all its farms and the little farmer's market we have at the park during the spring and summer. I don't have many complaints about the town other than there is really nothing to do here.

Yeah. Right. There's Crystal Lake. Now, the next line should be, but obviously I don't want to go there because Jason will stab me in the face. Yeah, you can't be. As soon as I saw Crystal Lake on the map mirror, I was like, oh, no, that's not good. God, no. That is terrible. Jesus, don't. Rename it. Just rename the whole thing. Yeah. I'm not. I realize Jason's not real, but the amount of sick fucks that have seen that movie that would love to do it. Fuck that. I'm not going. Where do you think they're going to start? Yeah.

Crystal Lake, obviously. Not me. Probably. Holy shit. She says there's Crystal Lake, but for someone who lives on the opposite side of town, this is an amazing line. Think about this as a Phoenix resident. Yeah. I don't want to be driving 20 minutes just to find some entertainment. Fuck you. 20 minutes? This is how lazy we are. I'm not driving 20 minutes.

What about the boy who got his head run over with a cartwheel? He would love to go somewhere for 20 minutes. He'd drive hours, I'm sure, to go do anything fun. It used to take like six months to do the Oregon Trail. This lady's like, 20 minutes? No way. Fuck that. Wow. I don't want to be driving 20 minutes. And the only other source of entertainment in the town is what the high school is hosting, which sometimes isn't everyone's thing. It should be all the time. Sometimes.

Let me fix that for you. All the time is in anybody's thing except for the kids' parents. Children. They don't even want to be there, really, if we're being honest. And they're all saying, I wish my child was a bigger deal and bigger role in this because this took a lot of time. I had to sit here for an hour and a half to hear my kids say, Hey, look, everybody, it's Enrico Palazzo. Obviously, they were doing a remake of The Naked Gun, clearly. Yeah.

But overall, I think Ellington is a good place. All right, that's nice. Three stars. Ellington offers a lot, but I'm here to address the elephant in town that other reviews have left out.

Elephant in the room, yeah. I was excited when I first read that. Like, they have an elephant? Cool. They just keep it in the center of town or what? Ellington smells repugnant pretty regularly because of the liquid manure that's sprayed around the farms essentially all year round.

Liquid? Liquid shit, yeah. What? I didn't know about liquid shit. I thought it was just... Were they fine with the cows allergic to to make them have diarrhea? I thought it was dirt. I thought it was like turd it up shit. You know what I mean? How do you make liquid shit from a cow? I think you can just mix it and put water in it probably or put some sort of fertilizer in it too. Who knows what they're jacking up. Feed it Mexican food? Feed it some enchiladas?

Jesus, let's stay with the hacky stuff. Feed it Arby's. Beef and cheddar. Give it cow horsey sauce. You want some horsey sauce? Oh, I love it. That's fucking funny. We live near Ellington High School, and between there and Main Street, where the post office is, one of those hot, smelly zones where it's just unbearable. What?

On any given day throughout the spring, summer, and fall. So there's apparently zones of bad smell that you drive through. Hot smell. Hot zones. Hot zones. There's a place near me that's like that, where you drive past it. You got a hot zone? It's a hot zone of, like, sulfur smell. I don't know what the fuck. But there's, like, four houses there. And I'm like, how do you people live here? When we're driving, we're like, shut the vents off. Like, it's only for, like, 200 yards. But there's houses there.

I'm like, roll them up. We're almost there. Lock the windows. That smell can open a handle, I swear to God. It knows what it's doing. Oh, man. Are they on a sulfur? There are a lot of sulfur wells in northern New York, not where you're at. Somebody might have a sulfur well, yeah? I don't know what the hell it is, but it's disgusting. It's hideous. Is it just eggs? It's near my brother's house. Yeah, it's a real eggy, horrible thing.

Sewery fucking... I don't know. Someone's got a bad septic tank. Maybe it's a bad septic tank. But it's been like three years. It always smells through there. I don't know, man. Maybe they're used to it. If your neighbor let that smell just permeate for years, you'd be on an episode of this show because you'd kill him. Yeah, I'd murder. Yeah, there'd be a murder happening. I'll open a kid. Fuck.

And even some winter days, the air will be polluted with the awful repugnant smell that will be present for the taking with every single breath you take while outside. Not sure how others deal with it or just ignore it, but there's many other nice towns in Connecticut with something as simple as fresh-smelling clean air. Okay, I guess so. Two stars. Boring is the first line. Boring. Clickish.

Town government does nothing besides suck you dry. Well, that's a big service. I don't know what the taxes are in this town, but that is a service that I feel like you'd be willing to pay extra for, right? 18% and several blowjobs? I think that's fine. Good schools and blowjobs? Take my money, please. Please, I beg you.

I came air the other day. They sucked me dry. And I know it's a blowjob because the next line is very hands off. So definitely not a hand job. It's all mouth. We're talking all mouth action, which is impressive. It doesn't reach up at all and start jerking it all in nothing. Very work it out yourself. Now you got to jerk off. Now they're telling you, I thought you just said I was getting blown two seconds ago. Now I got to work it out for myself. This person is all over the map with their shit.

Work it out yourself as we take your money to do nothing. Okay. It's Connecticut. That place is very we do everything. Everything's so nice. I'll say it, as I said a million times. Drive on the 84 from New York, cross into Connecticut. You don't even have to. You can close your eyes because you'll know exactly when you hit Connecticut because you'll stop.

going on the fucking road and it's smooth all of a sudden. Your shocks suddenly don't have to do anything. You go down. Soon as you hit it, you're like, they must pay a lot of taxes here. Jesus, this road is smooth as fuck. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump

That's tough if you don't know anybody. You're on the internet right now. You're going to meet a lot of people. Yeah, I guess people they can actually meet with. I don't know. There's got to be. Isn't there dude dates? I mean, there's all kinds of apps that exist now. This next line makes me very angry with this person saying this because I got it if you're like 53 and you just moved here. But this person says, as a college age individual. Oh, dude. Get the fuck out and do things. What's wrong with you? Your legs work.

Very little opportunity meeting anyone my age as the average age of an Ellington resident is 40. Well, the average age of an American is 38 and a half, so that's probably why. Sounds about right. It's close to normal. And it's probably a little difficult to live here. You've probably got to be a little more successful to live here because it's probably expensive. It is. It's a very affluent town, as we'll talk about, especially the neighborhood we're going to get into here. Population here, 16,339.

It's gone up pretty good lately here. More males than females, which is like 51.5% male, which is as high as I've ever seen it for a town here. Median age is 39.3%, just like the person said. 56% of people are married. It's normally 50-50. So this is suburbs, family, yard, house, four-bedroom house.

13% are single with children, so that's low also. So all that is low. Race in this town, 87.9% white, 1.6% black, 5.2% Asian.

Hey, beats me. I don't know where that came from in middle of Connecticut, but there they are. You never know. And three point nine percent Hispanic unemployment rate here is a little higher than the national average, but pretty close to it. Median household income here for this particular town. One hundred nine thousand five hundred forty five dollars a year.

That is a good, healthy income here. It's normally about $69,000, so we've got about $40,000 over the average here. Cost of living in this town, this isn't bad, actually. $100,000 being average or par, here it is $105,000.

Okay. It's not extremely expensive. The housing's a little expensive, though. Median home cost here, $348,000. Yeah, it's Connecticut. That shit is so expensive. A lot of these places, though, we've looked at when they have $100,000 median household income, the average home price is $600,000 or $700,000, so that's not too bad. What's very expensive here is utilities and miscellaneous, whatever the fuck that is. Yeah.

I guess gas and... Maybe. Well, maybe we've convinced you, though. You know what? Okay. You don't care about anything else. You've just heard that there's free blowjobs here. Blowjobs come with your property taxes. So we have for you the Ellington, Connecticut Real Estate Report. Real Estate Report

Average two-bedroom rental here is a little pricey. $1,610 a month. $1,610? That's a little over the national average. It's usually $12 and change. Here's a three-bedroom, one-bath, 1,434-square-foot shithole meth shack. Yeah, it looks like it's...

it's not straight. It's like leaning. Oh, it looks like the ground is shifted and the house is wet with it. He's a craftsman with a square. Yeah, there's no columns. There are, though, two very old and shitty tattered posts of wood that hold the house up that look like

If you knocked them down, the whole house would fall down. Not great. Zero interior pictures of this house. So that's a bad thing. The outside looks that bad. I guarantee you there's a poop bucket somewhere in there. Something's bad here. $135,000 for it, though. You need two to fix it. Cheap. Yeah, you got to buy another shithouse for parts. You need a parts house. You need a parts house for that one. Here's a six-bedroom, four-bath.

6,890 foot square, a square foot house. Sure. That I want so fucking bad. I can taste it. This house thousand square feet. So almost 7,000. This house is fucking unbelievable. It's built in 1906. I've been, I was looking at it for 20 minutes. It's built in 1906. It's built in 1906.

The floors are like the dark hardwoods and they're beautiful and the beautiful big wood staircase. Fat planks or thin planks? It's dark. I can't tell. Then there's, I'm from the pictures, and then there's giant, huge, ornate, old school fireplaces. The bedrooms have fireplaces. This place, it's got a heated fucking pool and ground. It's just in fucking credible. It's wild.

beautiful carved marble. It's amazing. This place, 799, nine for that. Less than 800,000. Any acreage? A 0.7, no acres. So not, I'd move. Yeah, absolutely. I swear to God, if I, that's such a nice house, I want that house legitimately.

I legitimately, I'm like, oh no, I want the, how do I get this house? It's so pretty. I love this house. $800,000. That's not bad. Not bad for that house. It's beautiful. I'm telling you this house, you could break it apart and sell the parts of it. You'll get more than that. Just for like the old timey shit people would buy. Oh my God.

The ceilings. Copper ceiling in the kitchen. The old timey copper ceiling. Forget it. Stamped in? Yes. The ornate fucking ceiling work in the living rooms. It's intense, dude. Here's a four bedroom, eight bath, tea bowl for all your b-holes and your friends and your family. 10,768 square feet. Okay.

It is a ridiculous. It looks like you ever see the comedians in cars getting coffee where he picks up Tracy Morgan. It looks like Tracy Morgan's house. It's this ridiculous. You got to get hit by a Walmart to have this ridiculous house. Eleven acres. It's all. Oh, God, it's fake. It looks like they built it to be like an Italian villa. And it's just poor shit. Two million eight hundred thousand dollars. Gross. Don't like it.

I'll take the other house. If you get hit by a Walmart truck, good for you. I'd still take the other house over it. Maybe so. That's a deal. It's a deal, dude. That's a fucking house is awesome. Please. I can't believe that's not over a million dollars. I was shocked when I saw that. When you look at it, you go, what's the catch? I don't understand it. Are there ether fumes from the neighbors making meth? Have the last three families that live there been butchered by a poltergeist or something that we don't know about? What's going on with this house?

It's too perfect. Inexplicably, every family that's ever owned it has been gutted in this house. Just gutted. Never caught anybody. Always by a supernatural entity that they assume lives there.

Winterfest. Things to do here. Winterfest. Established in 2004, Winterfest and the tree lighting ceremonies held the first weekend in December. It includes a series of events to promote community and holiday spirit in the town. 20th anniversary this year. 20th anniversary. Get down there. Events typically include a tree lighting ceremony, a holiday concert. Not by anyone you've heard of. It's children, unfortunately. Okay.

They just started this. The Torchlight Parade, which sounds like it would lose a little luster after. I don't want to do that. I don't want torches anywhere. No, I don't think so. That's usually a bad look. And photo opportunities with Santa and Mrs. Claus, not to mention Frosty the Snowman and Rudy will be there too. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is going to be in the house as well. That's pretty hot shit.

Oh, you can get a picture with all four of them. Unbelievable. Which they're rarely in the same space. I've never gotten a chance to get all four. Never. Not once. Awesome. There's plenty of festive events. They have Saturday's activities begin with green lights.

On the Green with Music, a visit from Santa and lighting all the trees. The Winterfest is spreading joy throughout the area as well here. The bands, they don't say what they are. They do say, though, they will have a musical program that features bells and piano music and a sing-along carol session.

So they're trying to basically do like the funny farm. Yeah. What Chevy Chase and his wife paid everybody to do in funny farm. That's what they're trying to do. Yeah, this is real, though. But they do it for real here. And then there's also the just like the title here, the Opioid Awareness Music Festival. What? I got it.

We should raise money for Opioid Awareness. That's great, but the title is very weird. It should be Music Festival to help promote awareness for opioid. Opioid Awareness Music Festival. Woo! Rock on! First word is opioid. It's so weird. Yeah.

There you go. So there's that. Crime rate in this town, what we are interested in. It's got to be outrageous. I'm blown away by that, right? No, property crime is about half the national average. Okay, pretty safe. Very safe. And then violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault, the Mount Rushmore of crime is about one quarter of the national average. Maybe they're just worried about Florida. I think so, yeah. You know what I mean? I think they're letting you know this is what's going on. Don't let those people into our town. Yeah.

Here's what you look for in a person. There are zombies 3,000 miles away, everybody. Let's be careful. If you see any of these signs, watch out. So that said, let's talk about some murder here. All right. Let's start out hot here. Let's go in. And I'm doing this on purpose because last Wednesday's show, the regular show, not the Express show, there's some similarities in the beginning of the story. Oh.

But they're different also. So I wanted to start them out the same to show you how both similar and different they are. Okay? It'll make sense if you've heard last week's episode and you hear this. If you didn't hear last week's episode, where were you last week, number one? Yeah. And number two. That's your problem.

We worked very hard to put out an episode for you that is very funny, so you should be listening to it. And also, if you're anything like me and you've heard 500 episodes of this shit, you have no fucking idea what James is talking about. Yeah, you don't know. I've heard so many, I don't even remember last week. They remember much better than us. Put it that way. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, I think, I don't know what it is, but they remember way better than we do. People bring stuff up. Remember in episode 310 when you said this? No. No, I don't.

Did I say that? I'm a genius. The best is when we do an episode and then the next day people are quoting lines that you said I said and I'm like, I don't remember saying that. Who said that? I must have said it. That guy just quoted me, but go, wow, I'm pretty funny. You know what I mean? Like, that's pretty good. Hey, Jimmy, good job. I'm funnier in print. Look at that.

So December 23rd, 2015. So 2015, everything is exactly the same. Literally. Sure. Yeah. No differences in technology or any of that shit. Everything's exactly the same. Now that morning at about 1018 or 1020 or 1021, there's some dispute over that. But a minute here or there. AM that morning, a 911 call goes out.

And the caller is a guy named Richard DeBatte, D-A-B-A-T-E. Yeah. DeBatte. Yes. He goes by Rick. He picked the – finally, someone did it correctly. All these Richards are always Richard and then they're Rich or Richie or Dick. Rick is way cooler of a name than any of that. Use Rick. It sounds cool. So Rick DeBatte is 40 years old.

And he calls the police to report that his home has been broken into. He's badly injured and his wife's been shot. And he doesn't know her condition. Rick's injured. Rick's injured. He's badly injured. When the police arrive, they find him on the floor of the home's main level, partially bound. His one side of him, leg and ankle and wrist, is bound with zip ties to a metal folding chair.

So he's attached to this metal folding chair. He's got blood all on his legs and he looks to be a frantic mess. Okay. Um, his wife, they end up finding, uh, Connie DeBatte, who's 39. They find her in the far corner of the basement, uh,

And she's not moving at all. They get closer. They realize that she has bullet wounds to her stomach and the back of her head. She's super dead. Super dead because we find out she was shot with a .357 in the back of her head. Good Lord. Which is not needed for a head. One is enough. So Richard, as they're on, they said, what the hell happened, man? Help us out here. What's going on?

So he said, okay, I'll run it down quick. He said, my sons went to school. I left for work between 830 and 840. Then I realized five minutes into the trip, I forgot my laptop at home. And he's the IT guy for work, so he can't forget it. You got to have that. Got to have that. So he said he pulled over, sent a quick email from his phone to his boss to let him know he'd be late. Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more about SimpliSafe.com.

Oh, SimpliSafe.com. S-I-M-P-L-I-Safe.com. That's right. And maybe you felt this. You ever felt a sense of unease when you leave your home? Wondering if everything's going to be okay if you're away. Maybe you'll be out of town for a while. Did I close the garage? Yeah, we have. I do it when we go out of town. Every day. But it wasn't until I had my house broken into and a man destroyed my plumbing that I was able to get out of town.

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This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's the season of fear. Maybe you have some fears. Maybe you're not Halloween-based. Maybe you're not scared of Dracula. You're scared of real-life things like us. Like, we're both terrified of flying, and we have to fly all the time. So things like that can help with therapy. Honestly, you need it. You're going to hold yourself back with that stuff. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

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And he went upstairs. First, he thought maybe Connie was up there. But instead, he found a man, he said, a very bulky man, about six foot two and bulky in a camouflage and a black mask rummaging through his wife's jewelry in the closet. His wife had jewelry box in the closet. OK, the best thing is, he says his voice was just like Vin Diesel.

which means he didn't understand a word the guy fucking said. That would be it. Where's your jewelry? Huh? I said, where's your jewelry? Where do you keep it? I need to know where the jewelry is. It's like Shaquille O'Neal or Vin Diesel. It's Shaquille O'Neal mixed with Sylvester Stallone. You get Vin Diesel. The three most unintelligible... I don't know what you're doing, but I want to find your wife's jewelry. You know where it is? Yeah. I could really use it, you know? I'm...

I heard him say Honda Civic Dodge Charger. I need more nitrous. I got to get more nitrous from my car out there. I heard him say ground effects. You don't have like a power bar or nothing like I could work out real quick maybe to like anything like that maybe you could give me. So that's what he said though. He said the intruder made demands including money and credit cards with pin numbers which from

From a Vin Diesel voice, I'd just crack up laughing. I'm sorry. I'd be like, that's ridiculous. I don't want any credit cards. I don't want all your pin numbers. You wouldn't know what a pin number is if it bit you in the ass, you fucking moron. With your fat sausage fingers, you're not hitting nothing. You're not hitting shit. You're not hitting the buttons. No. You're hitting three at a time. Fucking liar. So Rick said, though, he handed them over, even though he said he did not see a weapon

Oh, currently at that moment on the brandishing it. Yeah. But his size and his obvious Vin Diesel, the charisma of Vin Diesel following through here. He's got weapons. You just hand it over. Yeah. When Vin Diesel and camo asked you for your cards, you just give them to him. That's how it works here.

So he said Richard heard the garage door open at that point. Oh, Rick said, yeah, Rick. No, no. He's still in the room with this guy. He said he heard the garage door open. So he assumed his wife had returned early from her exercise class at the Indian Valley YMCA. Oh, no. So he said he yelled for her to run, run, get out, go now. No, Connie, go. But he said rather than run out of the house, she ran to the basement and

Ran into the basement, which obviously, if you've ever seen a horror movie, not the place to run. I'll be down there so you can torture me. I'll be down there so you can murder me and maybe you can pen me in. I'll be behind the boiler so it'll be extra creepy. You know what I mean? Yeah. One of those. I'm going to go make this place...

Impenetrable for children for the rest of the time this house is existing. Maybe you can cut my throat and the blood will spray on the single exposed bulb and give it like a red tint to the room like Evil Dead. Maybe that'll happen. Can we do that possibly? I'll stand next to the furnace that Kevin McAllister's so scared of. Yeah. That's what I feel like. That's nobody. That's... Anyway.

And Richard, Rick says that Vin Diesel then followed his wife down to the basement, heard his wife go down to the basement as well, where he could hear a struggle and he heard a gunshot in the back. He heard a gun. He heard three gunshots go off.

Three shots in a house at 357 is loud. Very, very loud. Now, this gun had been purchased two months earlier but never had been fired. It's Richard's gun. Rick's gun. So this guy came in the house and didn't bring a gun.

Didn't bring any weapons, but the .357 was kept in the basement, you know, in case you need it quick. And then so that's Rick said he thought Connie was going to get the gun. Yeah. To save him when he said help. There's someone in the house. Run, run, run.

Now, they said, you know, what the what the fuck happened at that point? You know, what the hell? Because you were upstairs. This happened. Why didn't you run out of the house? He said, well, I couldn't run out of the house because the guy fucking came back and tied me to a chair with zip ties and started cutting me with a box cutter and then started burning me with a blowtorch.

was torturing me. But then there was a struggle because he had one of his hands free, Rick said. So he a struggle ensued where he grabbed the blowtorch of the guy and somehow got the blowtorch turned around to where it shot back at the guy. He's saying the plot of Home Alone is what happened here.

He said he shot it back on the guy and his mask caught on fire. Yeah. And he ran out of the house with his head on fire. A woolen mask with a wire. Poof. Gone. Which any flame near it, it'll go poof. It'll come up, but it'll usually go down after that. But instead. It'll fuck you up though. Ask Joe Pesci. Oh, that's what I mean. It's a look at the top of his head. Gave him an angel's halo forever. Fucking boils. Yeah. His hair never grew back right. That's what happens.

So his whole head and face goes up in flames, and the man runs out of the house screaming. And now Rick is stuck tied to this chair, and he hit the house alarm thing, the panic alarm, and called 911.

And he doesn't know anything what happened to his wife because he's on the main floor and his wife's in the basement. So he just heard gunshots and didn't know. And this is two days. There's a Christmas tree up for this shit. You know what I mean? There's a goddamn Christmas tree. There's a festival happening down the road. Any clues at all here, hopefully, they do find the gun on the premises. Okay. On site. It's a Ruger 357 revolver. It was found to have no fingerprints on it at all.

None. Not from anybody. Not even Connie or Richard's fingerprints. Nobody's fingerprints.

So we're not quite sure how that works. And we'll talk if there's also some gunpowder residue issues there, too. So who the fuck would want to hurt these people? Who is Vin Diesel? Because it's one thing to rob a house and kill people. But to torture people with a blowtorch and a box cutter sounds pretty personal. Right. And, you know, everybody wants to be famous until you're you're famous. Shit is being is being used to describe something. Hey, that's awful.

That's fucking terrible. Poor Vin. Vin Diesel's like, hold on. How did I get involved in this? I didn't do this. I'm busy. He gets a Google alert for his name, and he's like, what? I don't. I don't even have to go to Connecticut. I don't understand. Wiz Khalifa just made a song for me. What are we doing? I don't understand. Whoever was with him, like, Vin, you don't understand a lot of things. It's okay. And he's like, I don't know what happened. I swear it wasn't me. I don't know.

So the couple, let's find out who they are. Richard DeBatte, like we said, he graduated in 1995 from Manchester High School. He went on to technical school and worked as a computer network administrator for

No criminal record, no, you know. Doing great. Not even a bunch of parking tickets, nothing. These are very clean family suburb people, you know. His wife's name, Connie DeBatte, she was born Connie Margotta, M-R-A-G-O-T-T-A. So we got, this is a full gin. Oh, my.

There's a whole clan here, too, because they have big families and everything. So I was like, all right. New England gins. These are real gins. New England gins. Oh, yeah. I felt comfortable doing research with these people. They got a sweet little recipe. Oh, yeah. And it goes back decades. There's this particular Sunday sauce that they make. There's a, you know.

They got a whole routine. Christmas Eve, big fucking deal with these people. Tell you what, right now, the fishes and everything else. This is my favorite dessert now, and everywhere I go that's Italian, nobody has it, and it drives me bananas. Arizona. It's so good. Here, every Italian belly can get it.

You can go up to- I want to sell that every day. What's the one in Poughkeepsie that's like, it's a world famous one now because it blew up on social media. Is it Rossi's? Rossi's. Oh, no. Rossi's Italian. It's an Italian deli. It's been there forever. It's in the city of Poughkeepsie and it's got really, really good sandwiches, except I really wish they would not use this goddamn focaccia bread as their bread. Use the regular bread that they have, which is much better. But anyway, that place has, like an Italian, like a roll. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, but they have amazing desserts there as well that you would shit yourself for. And next time we're there together, I will take you up there. That's all I care about anymore. For the rest of my life, that's all I want. There's a tiny Little Italy in Poughkeepsie that I'll take you to. You can sample it. Some coffee and that shit. You can sample it from a couple different places. We'll make you fat when you do it. All right.

Now, Connie graduated from Ellington High School in 95, so she is Ellington girl through and through. She got an undergraduate degree from UConn, so she went to college in 1999. She got a job as a pharmaceutical sales rep for Wreck-It Benkiser, which sounds like a Pixar movie, doesn't it? Yeah, it doesn't sound good. It's Wreck-It Ralph Part 4, Wreck-It Benkiser.

It's Ralph's cousin, Ben. Ben, yeah. It's much different. Ben Kaiser. Ben Kaiser. One word, though. So, yeah, she, which means, number one, she's pretty smart and personable. And number two, it means she's fucking hot because...

Have you ever seen a pharmaceutical sales rep that is smoking hot? Like silly hot. Not even hot that you would approach. Just like, oh my goodness, that's a striking woman. They're all like... Every one of them. I used to serve papers and I'd be in doctor's offices serving subpoenas all the time and I'd see them in there and I'm like, where do they get these women to do this? This is ridiculous. They take the girls that fail out of that and put them in...

dental hygienist school. That's weird. There's a, it's like the, the second tier system. Yeah. There's a tiered system, but this is like a lot of that. Do something. They're like dressed. Well, they're all five foot 11 and blonde and like fucking all put together. It's a very strange group of people they have. They're doing, doing that sort of thing. Can't read a teleprompter for Fox news. That's it. That's all it is. They're like, well, can you sell? Have you heard about Oxycontin? Yeah.

Yeah. What's your what's your knowledge of the opioid crisis? How would you like to make that go on a little longer? So she's also the past vice president and a member of the Ellington Ambulance Corp as well. So she does a lot of charity shit around town. Also, she's got a lot of close family. They're all very close. She has at least one brother and one sister that I'm positive of here.

So these two got together, and they're both from the same area. They're professionals. They're both white-collar people and all that. They hook up, and everything's fine, and they get married on the 4th of July, 2003. That's how much of an American story they want to be. They get married on the 4th of July with John Cougar Mellencamp blaring over the speakers. Ellington doesn't even have a Winterfest yet. They're like, next year's Winterfest, huh?

What do you think? And she's like, I think we're going to go. We're going to go. What a historic wedding. We got to be married for Winterfest, sweetheart. I'm not going to Winterfest in a married couple. Anything could happen. You know what I mean? Somebody could steal you away from me or something. That's how it works there. So they settle in Ellington, Connecticut. He's working. Richard Rick is working as a computer tech guy.

And Connie is working as a pharmaceutical sales rep still, and she's the main family breadwinner. Yeah. They make a shitload of money, those chicks. Of course. Any job you have to be super smart and hot for, you make a lot of money for, basically. Super smart, hot, well-spoken, and be able to bullshit doctors. That's a...

That's a wild skill set to have, and very few people have all that skill set to go. On the cusp of CPAP machines in every overweight, snoring person's home, all these strip sales for diabetes in a home, she could be making a killing.

At home testing for everything. Absolutely. And she does very well. And everybody says she's a super sweet person, too. Everybody really likes Connie. Really nice person. Honest person. You know, making jokes about pharmaceutical reps. But she's not, like, full of shit at all. She's a nice lady and just has a good job. She's known for her volunteer work, as a matter of fact. True.

She gave her time to the Boston Children's Hospital where she did fundraisers. And she was also, like I said, vice president of the Ellington Volunteer Ambulance Corps. So she does very she's a very nice person. Good person. Yeah. Yeah.

So they lived at 7 Birchview Drive. This is the house they bought here. 7 Birchview Drive. It's a four-bedroom colonial-style home. I'll show it to you. It's at the end of a long driveway, big yard. It's your typical home.

New England, lots of windows. Wow. The big front porch across there. Yeah, that big front porch stops, and then the master wing begins over there on the west side. Over there. Look at that. It's only 2,800 square feet. It's not obscenely big. But it looks bigger than that. It looks incredible. It's in a very nice neighborhood as well. It's a four-bedroom, three-bath, 2,800 square feet, 7 Birchview Drive, Ellington, Connecticut.

So now they have a couple of sons as well. Now, they after they get married in 2006, they have a son named Richard. They call him RJ. So I assume that's Richard Jr. And they also have a son named Connor born in 2009.

Oh, Connie. Yeah, got it. Connie and Richard. Yeah, they named him after the two of them. So that's nice. So in 2016 or 15 when all this happened, they were nine and six years of age, these poor kids. Little guys. Another weird thing about Richard, as we'll find out in our next thing here coming up, one of her friends describes Richard as quirky, quote unquote.

One of the things that you could say is a little bit quirky is he is obsessed with Superman. Obsessed with Superman. That's just weird. Real obsessed with Superman. He dressed up as Superman for the Manchester Road Race in 2015. He ran a race dressed as Superman. It's kind of funny.

And occasionally ended text messages with thinking of you from Superman. He would literally put from Superman, which is fucking ridiculous. Hey, you don't need to put who it's from on a text because we know who it's from. But from Superman? Really? Wow. I don't even know what to say about that, man. So your kids can say.

we thought of him like Superman, but you don't have her. And why did you think of that? Because he texted us. That's not a good reason. Yeah, he's like, see you guys later. Peace out, big soup. You don't see that very often. Like, that's stupid. Why are we doing this? It's fucking super bad. The man who happens to be super. Super. He can fly now. He's, you know. He can turn back time by just, you know, reversing the rotation of the earth. It's real easy. Ah.

You don't get to be super... You're faster. You should have been able to stop that bullet that went through your wife's head, motherfucker. At least be able to fucking out-muscle Vin Diesel, I would hope, if you're supposed to be the man of steel over here. Vin Diesel requires cars to go that fast. Yeah. Otherwise, he's very slow. You ever seen Vin Diesel run? Never. No. Never. It's not good. Because they know you'd hear his brain clanking around in there as he ran. Sound like a metal thing. Like...

Like, don't run, don't run. Just stand still. Look at the camera. He gives himself concussions. Yeah, just bounces all around.

Stand still, look at the camera, and... He's lost CTE from running. Just from running. He had to stop running at age 12. It was too much for him. He was forgetting his address. Don't call his name if he turns his head too fast. Clank, clank. He forgets his name for 10 minutes. The next thing you know, he's doing movies going, I don't want to just drive around.

Vinnie go make the cargo fast. I make the cargo fast sometimes and it's good.

No, they had some problems as every married couple. There is not a married couple on earth, especially one with two kids. Yeah. That doesn't fight about nothing. It's not good. It happens, though. If you outlast them and they get out of the house, that's when the relationship starts to get repaired. And that's when you see 60-year-olds being romantic together. It's because they lost 20 fucking years to that shit. They're like, finally. Finally, life's about us again. Yeah.

It's a completely different. Yeah. Totally different thing. They're allowed to make noise when they fuck now. They're happy. Oh, they can do anything. They can fuck in the kitchen. They don't care anymore. It's great. They can have disgusting old sex in the kitchen and no one cares. It's crazy. So most people said the same thing about Connie, about her friends, is she never talked about getting divorced. Although it wasn't to that extent where she was like, I'm going to get rid of this guy. Yeah.

But she said she was stressed about the amount of money that Richard would spend a lot. That was her main complaint is that he spent too much money, which again, arguing about spending money is the...

That's what people argue about. You know what I mean? And it's usually the breadwinner is the one that complains about it because the breadwinner is like, it was so fucking hard to make that and you just spent it? You're spending it on garbage. What are you doing? Why do you have Superman outfits? Superman outfits. He does a lot of dumb shit with money as we'll find out. He is a dumb fuck and he's not honest with her also, which is another problem. It's one thing if you're honest, but he's not really honest. He feels guilty about it.

about it. Yeah. One friend said Connie never talked about them having marital problems. Every once in a while she would hear Connie complain that Rick's credit sucked. So she had to do shit because Rick's credit was bad because he's bad with money. Generally it was that he was irresponsible.

And the friend said the money issues she heard about didn't appear to be any different than what she did with her husband or what any of her friends had going on. It's just very normal stuff that, you know, people can't agree a thousand percent on every little detail of their life. So there's going to be something. Yeah.

Yeah. And there's a difference between coming home from work and seeing a Superman cape laying on the couch and coming home from work and seeing a lifted fucking pickup truck in the driveway. Seeing a new pickup trucker. They're digging a pool now. Well, hold on a minute. Whose motorhome is that? Oh, that's ours. Oh, that's ours. No, I got a great deal. It was only $97,000. It's five years old.

It's going to be great, though, because in the long run, it's like a timeshare. We're going to save money on vacations over the course of our marriage. No, no, but how much do we spend on hotels? Let's think about it. Let's do a math. Now, the average hotel price is $100 a night. Think about what it was 20 years ago, though. It was $59 a night. Now think about what it's going to be 20 years from now. It's going to be $200 a night. This thing's going to pay for itself by the time the kids are in college. Right.

We're good, baby. This is fine. $97,000 is a meat drop in the bucket. I mean, but really, think about all the money we're going to spend on these vacations. Forget it. So her friend said that Rick was always seemed, quote, odd and quirky, but never like violent or...

Yeah.

He's Rick. He's Rick. Rick's are fucking wild cards, baby. You never know what that's exactly. That's the perfect way to put it. Rick's are wild cards. Yeah. That's what they are. If this isn't always Sonny Gang, he's Charlie by far. For sure. He's Rick and he's out there. Rick's and Ricky's are always wild. He's talking about eating cat food and fucking- Bird law. Bird law and getting crow's eggs. He's got all sorts of weird shit going on. All this while dressed as Superman. Very strange. Yeah.

So late 2014, she, Connie, makes a note in her iPhone, the note section there, including one is, quote, titled, Why I Want a Divorce. Oh, God.

And she didn't tell anybody about this. And this was in 2014. And she, so I don't know if this was like therapy, basically like getting out her complaints or what. It's nice to write. Yeah. But she, unfortunately it wasn't a poem. It wasn't like, you know, a haiku or anything. It's just a list and grocery. It's a list of shit that he does wrong. It was created late 2014 and was apparently updated occasionally. Yeah.

With more complaints. Once he does something, she breaks out the notes section and is like, leaves toothpaste cap off. Okay, that's another one to put on there. Shit streaks in the toilet. Shit streaks in the toilet.

When he pisses in the middle of the night, does it right in the middle of the water so it's super loud rather than on the side of the bowl like a fucking gentleman. Doesn't even aim for the porcelain. Like a goddamn gentleman. I don't even know what it is. So one is about a lack of trust. Everything from lack of trust to how he doesn't deal with the children a lot. One of them, here's some quotes from it. Quote, he takes money from a lot of accounts that don't belong to him.

Okay, well, that's... We have a lot of accounts that don't belong to me. That's what I mean. Well, how does he have access to accounts that don't belong to him? Just cut up, change your password. Don't tell him about those. Yeah. Well, I mean, you have to tell a marriage. It's a marriage. But you don't have to let them have access to it, but you can tell them. I mean, if it's her retirement stuff or I don't know. Yeah, tell them the purpose of it, I guess. But in a marriage, you want to be able to share all that shit with your...

husband or wife and not worry about them screwing. Yeah. Like I don't, I wouldn't keep anything from Sarah as far as stuff like that. Sure. I tell her everything. I know a lot of very successful older people, uh, relationships and they all kept separate money.

Yeah, I guess that's something. Separate accounts that aren't even accessible by the other. Interesting. And they don't even care. I mean, that's just how people do it, different ways or whatever. But you have to tell people what you have. You can't just be like, I got a half a million dollars in an account you don't know about somewhere, a retirement fund or something. That'd be crazy to not tell your spouse that. Yeah, I could see that too. Especially if there's a bunch of money sitting somewhere and the mortgage hasn't been paid, what the fuck? Yeah, what are we doing here?

So he takes a lot of money from a lot of accounts that don't belong to him, lets the kids watch TV for hours, and leaves disciplining them to me, meaning Connie. He lies to people and makes them think we have a great sex life and we are a super couple. So I don't know when that comes up. Boy, I was pounding the shit out of my wife last night. I was knocking the bottom out of that asshole tonight.

It's real weird to who I don't know who he's telling about their sex life. But what isn't a sex life objective to like that could be great to him. And she just hasn't come in a while. That's very subject. Yeah. Very subjective. Sex life. Yeah. He could be like, this is true. If she lets me dress up like Superman and fuck her through the hole in the shorts.

Or he just finishes every time and she's going, not yet. Shit. Well, faster than a speeding bullet every fucking time. There he goes. Look at this guy. There it is again. There it is again. Son of a bitch. Also, he lies to people for that. He doesn't share his cell phone or computer.

Which, to me, I believe in privacy of that shit. I would never look at Sarah's phone just because she would show it to me if I wanted to. Just like, I'd throw it to her and go, here's my shit. I don't give a fuck. I have nothing to hide whatsoever. But also, I don't want access to her stuff. You know what I mean? I'm a firm believer in if you're looking into something, you're looking for a reason to fight. There's already a problem. Yeah.

Right. There's already a problem with that before we get to the bottom of my phone. Totally. Yes. The bottom of that is before the bottom of my phone. That's what it is. That's the problem. And she's exactly. So she said also there's no trust and he's never happy with everything, anything that she does.

She said, quote, I'm tired for covering him of covering for him. I'm tired of lying and acting like things are great when they aren't. I'm tired of him getting all of the credit and the glory for everything I do. And he doesn't correct them, meaning like with the kids, because she was later on like.

She would take the kids to do all this shit and then he would be like, look at my kids. Aren't they great? And then everybody would be like, oh, you're such a great father. And she's like, I've been doing this shit with these kids. What are you talking about? I did that. I took them to lessons. I took them here. I did that. This is my stuff, which is frustrating. She also had a section listing nine things that she liked about their marriage too.

Oh, OK. This isn't just all a bitch sesh. No, you know, she's not just complaining. She said that he gives her foot and neck rubs and fixes things at their rental property when they need fixed and stuff like that. They have a rental property also. He takes care of that. And she also says that he allows her to be, quote, I myself around him.

So there's good things. He just needs to stop fucking around with money and being kind of weird. That's all it is. Other than that, she's happy. And stop telling people we fuck great when we don't. Yeah. Well, you could just fuck great and then it'll be true. Live up to what your brags are. Yeah. So October 2015, Richard said that somebody vandalized his car at the home. Just did some shit, damaged his car. So he tells Connie, we need a gun.

We need a gun.

We got to know the level of vandalization. Jesus. For that, they had to do a lot, I would think. Yeah. You're going to go out and buck off a .357 at somebody while they're fucking. Messages have to be carved in the car with that key. Yes. It can't just be a stripe down the side. I need a gun now. Racial slurs carved deep into the paint, into the metal. You know what I mean? And then hosed over so it's rusted and you could see it.

That's what I need to shoot a guy for it. So he buys a .357. So he's like, that ought to do. A hand cannon for teenage vandals. Sure. I need a dead serious gun. A huge, giant, booming gun. So one night, late in November 2015, Connie texted him a photo of her in sexy lingerie. Oh.

He was in another place in the house. She posted. In the fucking house? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were texting from in the house. Oh, yeah. Sexy lingerie and under it said, quote, I'm ready for you, big boy. Come find me. Fuck yeah. This is great. That's the greatest text ever. This is terrific. What are you fucking. Yeah, this guy's got a great life right now. You know what I mean? This is terrific.

I mean, if you're at work and you get nudes and stuff, that's kind of a tease because I've got a spreadsheet to do. But if you're watching fucking Dexter and you get a text, I'm in the house in this. Fuck this show. Pausing Netflix now. Finding a flashlight and finding every dark corner of this house. Let's go, motherfucker. Yeah, you go, oh, what's that? Click. Yeah, goodbye. Goodbye.

shirt laying over there you're trying to find her with your balls hanging out if she's in the bed and it's the last place i look i'm gonna be furious connie sounds awesome she sounds pretty fucking cool honestly she sounds like a cool wife and you know sending pics of herself gonna come fuck me that's fantastic

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash smalltownmurder to get free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash smalltownmurder. Now back to the show. Hey, everybody. Just going to take a quick break from the show and tell you a little bit more about SimpliSafe.

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but only for our listeners at babbel.com slash truecrime. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash truecrime, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash truecrime. Rules and restrictions may apply. So December 22nd, 2015, back to where, this is the day before where we started. Connie tells him, this is an argument over text messages here,

Connie tells him that she just spent two hours on the phone with Comcast Cable. Two hours, which right away, if anyone makes me go fight with a cable company for two hours, I'll kill them. Yeah. I don't want to do that. What is that conversation? Why? Well, they argued about a cable bill that had doubled. Why is my cable bill double this month? And it turns out, I don't know what they were arguing about because the explanation was very simple, that...

He, meaning Rick, had ordered all the sports channels to the package as well. He ordered all the tiers, all the sports tiers, because he likes sports, as we'll find out. Yeah, because football season started. Yeah, so she's pissed off because he didn't tell her about this. He just added it. Now she's got a bill and she's like, what the fuck? I'm the commish of the fucking league. I have to know everything.

Do you understand? There's like the injured reserve. There's like four fantasy shows. If I don't see him, I'm out. I'll be lost. What do I do? I don't know who's the backup running back for Tampa Bay this week. I'm the commish. God damn it. I'm the commish.

So she accused him of lying and said, quote, once again, I have to clean up your mess, basically. So there was that. Then this is amazing. The last text of that thing, because he was off that day and the next day or he was off that day, the 22nd. She said, quote, great day off and Merry fucking Christmas. She's not happy at all. No, this guy right now.

So December 23rd. Okay, let's get back into this. This is where we started now. Okay, he gets home. Here's a noise. Thought it might be one of the family's cats knocking something over at first. Might be a cat. He said, I saw a masked man, six foot two and stocky with a Vin Diesel voice, quote, looking through things in their closet, in their walk-in closet. So now he said he goes over. They start to talk.

scuffle, I guess, tuffle, tussle. And he said he heard his wife come home and enter the house through the garage door, yelled for her to run, like we said. He said that the man incapacitated him because you're wondering, how does this guy...

If there's a potential murderer and there's your wife and you're standing between the two of them and he doesn't have a weapon, how are you getting by me? Because I'm going to fight pretty hard for this. Tooth and nail. For you not to go murder my wife. I'm probably going to really fight hard. Well, he says he was completely incapacitated by Vin Diesel because Vin Diesel used pressure points.

Wow. Didn't even like punch him or pull like a fucking UFC choke hold on him. Pinky shit. He grabbed him by the wrist and he said he just went to the ground, man. He's like Mr. Miyagi. I couldn't fucking control it. He vulcanized me. Done. He was spocked my ass like a bitch. I just went right down. Spocked up like a little bitch.

Wow. Yep. He put pressure points on his wrist and then ran down the stairs after Connie while Richard was obviously Rick's recovering from the horrible pressure point wrist pain up there on his wrist, writhing in the back in the closet. That's when he heard the man head down to the basement. He said that he chased after him. He got up and once he shook off the horrible wrist injury, he

Yeah. He chased after him because at first it was just, I'll give you my codes to my cards. And then the wife came and then we started getting into pressure points at that point. So he said that he was running after him. He said he chased him and saw the man about five feet from his wife. But he said as he approached the man to try to, you know, tackle him or. Yeah. And mid stride pressure uses the pressure points against him. Now he said that the gunshot went off and totally disoriented him at that point.

Which a .357 in a basement should disorient everybody. It should certainly deafen you. He said he just was so disoriented he was just like walking in circles and didn't know what he was doing after that. Just completely screwed up. He said the intruder, by the way, three shots were fired. Two shots hit Connie.

One in the back of the head from a few feet away and one in the torso. So not great. Three .357 shots. You'd remember that.

He said then that Vin Diesel approached him again. He approaches Rick and, quote, did some sort of pressure point thing to his wrist and neck. Now he put his neck into it, too. Oh, God. Yeah, he spocked him. He didn't walk over and point the hand cannon at him. Yeah, because he's got at least two rounds left. Which is a very effective way to get people to do things. If you pointed .357 at them, he instead decided to spock them up and... Yeah.

get him in there. Then he said he started tying him to the metal chair with zip ties. So zip tying him to a metal chair. He said at that point, for some reason, he didn't zip tie all of his

Just the two. Just the two on one side, which is... And by the way, if you are robbing a house and you plan on... You know, if anybody fucks with me, I'm going to kill them and I'm going to take whatever they got. If you had a man and a woman, which one would you kill first, probably, usually? Yeah, I'm not opening a woman's head before I...

destroy this man usually they get the guy out of the way first the threat and then they deal with the woman someone they think of a physical threat meaning the guy so we can say that ladies are can do everything a man can do except for that we'll say you can't define the home as well we're a little better at fighting off an intruder usually just based on size and everything else yeah yeah that's just how it works usually so for the most part we sleep closer to the door let's be realistic here

And if you don't... I'm the one sleeping with the door. What the fuck's wrong with you, dude? Yeah, exactly. Get over there. Stop being a pussy. Get your machete and sleep next to the door like I do. Works great. I don't give a fuck what weapon it is. Get a baseball bat. Something. Sleep next to the door, you fucking... Jesus, you nothing. At least give her the illusion that you might be able to defend this fucking house. Do that for yourself, please. You might be able to take care of her. Yeah.

That might make her sleep better, even if she doesn't know it's not true. Yeah. Perhaps she doesn't sleep well because she sleeps next to the door unarmed. That's unarmed next to the door while you sleep all comfortably over there. With a body in between you and danger. Well, she'll be killing her, and that should wake me on up to be able to get out of here.

So he said the man then, while he is, this is a metal folding chair that he's tying him to, which. Yeah, like a wrestling chair? Yes, exactly. Like I'm going to hit you over the head with a wrestling chair.

He said the man then grabbed Richard's own toolbox, which he apparently knew where it was and knew what was in it also. You could see a toolbox, but you know what's in the toolbox? No. I don't know what's in it. It might be a tackle box. It might be. He might keep fucking hostess products in there. I have no idea what's in your toolbox. It might be his starter kit. He's waiting on the tools. Yeah. It might be kiddie porn. We have no idea what's in this toolbox.

Toolboxes are expensive. If you've got a toolbox, you might not have the tools yet. Yeah, you might be. Someday I'm going to fill that box. You might be saying that to yourself. They are. They're ridiculously expensive. Might be the most inflated price of any product ever on the planet. It's just a box. It's so stupid. That never goes anywhere but right where you have it, by the way. It's not even like it's portable. It doesn't need to be weather tested. No, nothing. Nothing.

So he said at that point, he goes to the toolbox and takes the blowtorch out of the toolbox. So he knew he had a blowtorch in there, apparently. It's a big toolbox. Or he just saw it and was like, ooh, there we go. Or it's one of those benzematics with just the knob that you light. I bet it's one of those. Go on, sorry. No, it may be. Yeah, one of those little knobber things like I have right back. Yeah, I've got so many. Yeah, there's a bunch around my house, too. I've got fireplaces, so there's a lot of those to start with.

So he said he began burning him with the torch.

He said he also put something around his neck that made it hard to swallow, like he was strangling him of some kind, a rope of some kind, but there's no marks of any kind later, so we don't know what it is. And a torch. He was burning him with a torch and started, quote, poking him in the legs with a box cutter, just stabbing him in the legs with a box cutter just for fun. This is a man that is vicious enough to shoot a woman in the head. Three shots. Boom, boom, boom. Connie, according to Richard, Connie lasted like...

30 seconds in the house with this guy. But now the guy really wants to go to work on Rick, though. He wants to sit him down and really torture him here. So he's poking him with a box cutter. He says that he used his right arm, which hadn't been tied to the chair, to direct the torch into the intruder's face, setting his mask on fire and sending him running from the basement like a Home Alone villain. Right.

So that's what he said. Then he said at the top of the stairs, though, I had put a bunch of matchbox cars. So he slipped and he fell. It was awesome. Couldn't get out. So a lot of Hot Wheels at the top of the steps. You know how that goes. So he said that that's what happened. The guy ran out of the basement. Richard said that he then half attached to this chair, crawled up the stairs.

still tied to the chair just enough to get to the panic button on the alarm. And he hit that panic button and then hurled himself to the stovetop to get his cell phone and call 911.

That's what he said. What a morning. When they show up, he's laying there half tied to a chair on the floor in the living room and they get him and he's screaming and then they go find him. He's like, oh, check my wife, my wife. So when the police arrive, they're called to 7 Birchview Drive here. First of all, it was the reports of the alarm going off because the alarm company called –

Four minutes before he did based on the panic. Wow. Yeah. So they don't know if it's just an alarm that went off or a home invasion because a guy called too. So who knows? So one officer is the first to enter the home. Sweeney's his name. He found Richard lying face down on his kitchen floor. Yeah. Okay. Let's say something. He's face down. You're half tied to the chair. Why wouldn't you be sitting in the chair? Uh,

He got up to the counter to get his phone, but then he just laid on his face and waited 10 minutes on your face. Well, you're right. You don't know what's up with your wife. You've got access to a toolbox that has a blowtorch. You've got to have some snips in there. I was going to say, or up on the counter where your cell phone was, right below that, there's probably a drawer with something sharp in it you could probably cut a zip tie with. You have a free hand. The knife block has a sick pair of scissors. They're the best. You can cut chicken bones with them.

those fucking things are great. That'll go through snips. That'll go right through a zip tie. Yeah. So they said his wrist was tied tightly with a zip tie to a black metal folding chair that was laying on his back. They said that he was making groaning sounds when they came in. He was just on the ground like he was half dead but never asked anything about Connie.

Didn't say like my wife downstairs. She could be hurt. Go help her. Nothing like that, which is very weird. A state trooper, another state trooper said that Rick told him that, quote, I entered the house and the next thing I knew there was an intruder on top of me. There was a guy there. He said that he was a larger man dressed all in camo. He said he heard his wife come home, told her to run. And that's when the masked man shot his beloved wife right in front of him.

Horrible. So Richardson, Trooper Richardson, one of the cops, is a military veteran, and he said he could tell a weapon had been fired as soon as he entered the house. You smell that. That's the thing. Three shots in a house like that, you can definitely smell gunpowder.

It's a lot of powder. A lot of powder. Especially at 357. That's a big blast. And he said he walked through the living room. The Christmas tree was up and lit and everything. It looked very festive. But he said, I smelled gunpowder as soon as I went in the door. And he said that that scene was embedded in his memory from then on. He said, it's something that you don't forget.

They said a gun was found not far from Connie's body, and she had been shot twice out of three shots. So they said they tried to gather information from Richard. Another investigator shouted from the basement that they'd found a body because they were talking to him upstairs while other people went downstairs. They said, we found a body. And this trooper said that Rick didn't react at all to that. He didn't even drop his head. He didn't do anything. He just was like, oh, very matter of fact with the whole thing.

So he's given them the whole Vin Diesel story. So they go, well, let's get dogs in here. Dogs sniff for this intruder and we can see where he went. We can see which direction he went in. Did he go to a car? Did he run away? Maybe he's hiding in the woods somewhere. You know what I mean? Who knows? So they use police dogs to try to pick up the scent, but they don't pick up any trail of any intruder. The first dog just kept circling back to Richard.

Oh, shit. And then even when Richard is being taken in the ambulance to the hospital, the dog tried to jump into the back of the ambulance at Richard to alert. Kick at it until it shoot. Shut up. Shut up. Go. He's like, dogs just love me. I'm sorry. They just love me. It's always been like this.

Jumped in the ambulance. Jumped into it saying, this is what I'm looking for. He did it. Two additional police dogs failed to pick up any scent of any intruder leaving the property. So three dogs, nobody smelled shit. I'm saying, I don't know. So they're looking at the scene. Anything here they can go on? Forced entry? Right. Burnout marks from a muscle car or something? You know what I mean? Nitrous burn, anything, really.

So they said many parts of the story didn't make sense to them, meaning because there's no forced entry into the home at all. So like, how the fuck did this guy get in here to begin with? Number one, nothing was taken either. He's in there to rob the place and he's going through jewelry when the man comes in, when Richard comes home. But yet this man didn't take any of that jewelry and stuff in his pocket or anything like that. Nothing. Didn't even take cell phones. Nothing. Also, none of the neighbors saw anyone suspicious in the neighborhood.

This is, by the way, a really affluent neighborhood where if anybody who doesn't live there comes in, that's a suspicious person. They notice. They notice everything. Richard claimed to have a struggle during the invasion, but the closet where the struggle was supposed to have taken place was found to be completely neat, tidy, not a hanger out of... There isn't even a shirt hung backwards. A man just rifled through this. Never mind. The jewelry is all still in the closed drawers in the closet.

So this man must have, before he decided to scuffle with the man of the house and shoot the lady of the house, he decided to be neat and close all the drawers first. I'll come back for that later. Interesting. Richard also had no bruises on him at all, despite claiming he wrestled around with a 6'2 stocky Vin Diesel impersonator.

Right. And claiming that the intruder had used pressure points to subdue him. He's like, that's why I don't have bruises. He used pressure points. He barely touched me. I just went down like a ton of shit. Yeah. So they said all weapons used by the intruder during the attack are from inside the residence as well. Shit. There's no outside weapons here. Box cutter, zip ties, handgun, blowtorch, all in the house. So-

Most of the time when people go to do something like this, they bring a weapon with them usually. And also no signs of struggle on Connie's body, which there wouldn't be because any version of it, it's just a gunshot. So they do find Richard's wallet. It's in the grass behind their house. They find his wallet, but it still had money in it. It still had all the money in it and credit cards.

And nothing was taken from the house. So literally, if this guy, if there's a man who came in to do this, he killed a woman and got not a thing out of it. Nothing at all. Not even a book of matches. He got shit.

Now, here, speaking of matches, the police are like, OK, let's find Vin Diesel here. They do a check on all hospitals within 100 miles to see if anybody came in for burns, because if they had their masks set on fire, their face is going to be burned. And all medical clinics and hospitals, no one showed up with burns to their head that day at all or the next. So interesting. Interesting.

So they talk to Richard. They're like, listen, you're the only one alive here, so you're going to have to help us out. And yeah, he says, I have nothing really to tell. I mean, I'm a simple man here. I'm a simple family man. Took my kids to the bus stop. Went to work at the computer company about 8.30. My wife was still home getting ready for her spinning class at the YMCA. And her Fitbit indicates that she likely left for the nine-minute drive to the facility around 8.46 a.m.

From the house to the YMCA. Rick said that he was driving around for five minutes when he got an alert on his cell phone that the alarm back at home had been activated. So he said he pulled over to the side of the road nearby Reeves Road for about five minutes, emailing his boss and checking the alarm status before turning around to go home. So he says he got back to the house 9 a.m., a couple minutes before 9 a.m., somewhere in there.

So that's his story. One of the first questions they ask him is, is there anything about your marriage you want to tell us about? Any issues with your marriage that an investigation is going to reveal that you'd like to tell us ahead of time so we're not like, oh, here's a big red flag. You know what I mean? And they said he took a deep breath and he said, quote, yes and no. That's a good answer. Yeah.

Even if you said that faster than a speeding bullet, I would have been upset. Yes, this is a yes or no question. It is. No, it's a yes and no question, really. He said, well, the thing is here, they are kind of finding out that he possibly has been seeing another woman.

Oh, and she's a high school friend of his from back then with whom he apparently began having an affair with in 2014 after she divorced her husband and got back out there on the market. Goddamn Facebook. Her name is Sarah Ganser. I wonder how many marriages Facebook has ruined.

Just destroyed. Just fucking. A hundred thousand. It's got to be more than that. It has to be more than that. How many people are on Facebook? It's probably around 1%, maybe 3%.

Of the world? Of marriages. Oh, of people that are on Facebook. Oh, I get what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. I mean... If there's 300,000 or 300 million users, that's a huge number, right? It can't be that many, right? In this country, you mean? Worldwide, there's like... No, I mean in the world. There's like 2 billion worldwide. Do you think there's 300 million people that use Facebook? I don't know.

There's way more than that in the world. Is there? There's over a billion people use Facebook. Oh, then it's probably 100 million that it's ruined. It's ruined so many marriages. Yeah, it's ruined. If there's 100...

If there's a billion used in it, it's ruined at least 100 million, right? It's got to be 10% of everybody that's used it. It's ruined their marriage. It's probably 300 million marriages that it's ruined because it's got to be 3% up, right? It's got to, yeah, because people from your past are messaging you. Yeah. Yeah, that's dangerous. That's not great. Or 3 million, I guess, is the answer. 30 million? Maybe it's 30 million. Maybe it's 30. I think it's 30. So this woman's name is Sarah Ganser, the woman he's having a thing.

thing with now yeah he claimed they said what about sarah ganser and he said okay this is what i was trying to tell you guys about the yes and no he said because okay me and connie we've been trying to have another baby all right that's the thing we want another child but we couldn't do it we couldn't get we couldn't get pregnant we were trying i don't know if it's because she's 39 i'm 40 and whatever the fuck but oh you know who knows it's just harder to get pregnant for us now than our first two kids

So he said that Sarah was going to serve as a surrogate. He's like, it's not my girlfriend. She was going to be the surrogate mother. Oh, boy. And then the three of them would, quote, co-parent the child together. Yeah, that's going to work.

So the cops are like, get the fuck out of here. That's not true. Are you saying you're going to have her turkey basted or you're going to traditionally fuck her? It's funny that you use the word traditional because we're going to get to this in a second. Yeah.

He said that they discussed artificial insemination with the unidentified or at the time unidentified for the public, but with Sarah being the one to give birth and then they'd all raise the baby together. But he told detectives that instead he had, quote, done some untraditional things.

And gotten the woman pregnant. Oh, she is pregnant. He knocked her up. So he did the most traditional thing, which was stick his dick in her and not pull out and get her pregnant. Untraditional, he said, though. Meaning banging not his wife, I guess. Yeah. And that she actually is pregnant currently at this time. Oh, shit. Then he said Connie was totally okay with the situation, though.

Because this is what she wanted from the beginning. Just because I used my dick instead of a turkey baste or whatever. Right, just because he has a separate womb. In the end, baby's a baby and she's fine with it. And she was all down to co-parent this baby is what he told them. Okay. So...

Okay. Later, though, when they were talking to him later, he said, okay, fine, my wife didn't know about any of this shit, the affair or the pregnancy. I lied. She is pregnant, though. She is certainly pregnant, yeah. Oh, boy. Before that, though, they were like, so you knocked up your girlfriend? And he said, well, the pregnancy was...

quote, in a way, Connie's idea. What is going on? That's what he tried to say. In a way, it was her idea. Yeah. But then I just decided to slip it in instead and take it. I'm like Superman in that stray pussy is my kryptonite. I can't help it.

You know what I mean? It brings me to my knees. I can't fucking help it. Jesus Christ. That's how I'm like Superman. So he says that. He said that it was her idea, and this is stupid. So Connie's friends and family told investigators there ain't no fucking way she would have agreed to this arrangement. That list tells me she would certainly be upset with this.

She's an Italian lady. She's not happy with that arrangement at all. Babies aren't that important. I don't think so. Yeah. It's sticking your dick in anything. And they also said she would have definitely been angry to find out her husband was cheating, they thought. So then later on he said, no, the pregnancy was accidental. Fine. We didn't want it. It was just I knocked her out. So he said, I knew her from high school. And he said, quote, there was a lot of cheating going on in the beginning on both sides.

Meaning the beginning of their relationship. But that was also over 10 years ago. And now you're married with two kids and now what are you getting her back? Like what are we talking about? He said though the pregnancy was unexpected. He said, and this is a quote from him, this situation popped up like a frickin' soap opera. Frickin'. Frickin'. I don't trust any grown man who says frickin'. Never. Never.

Every time I hear a man in an interrogation say frickin' or freaking or any way of that, I go, question him further. Keep him talking. Murder is the time when anybody should be like, fucking shit. Holy fuck.

Fucking blood and shit. It's fucking insane. This is fucking insane. That's what cursing's for. It's for extreme situations like that. It works well. For displaying how goddamn dire this situation is. Yes. If you never curse, even in this situation, I've said it many times, I'm pretty sure you're a pedophile. That's all there is to it.

This is weird. A normal grown man would definitely say this. It's like a fucking soap opera. Yeah. My wife's dead. He told detectives that the mother of his unborn child was expecting him to divorce Connie. That's what this was like sitting over his head for a while of he's telling her that, yeah, I'm going to divorce Connie and he's telling Connie everything's wonderful. I love you. So it's like.

This is so ugly. That's an untenuous situation there. So he also said that his wife and he were working to salvage their marriage and that his girlfriend was not aware of those efforts. He's like, what you guys don't understand is I lie to everybody. See, that's how this works. I lie to...

To everyone. Like any person I meet. You guys, this one, that one. You know, straight pussy, yeah, that brings me to my knees. Honesty is really my kryptonite. I go to a drive-thru, they're like, you want fries with that? And I say no, even though I do, just because I really want french fries really bad, but I say no. And then I get to the window and I go, where are the french fries? Yes. Nobody gets it.

So dozens of neighbors they talked to also said they were out and about in the neighborhood that morning heading to work, bringing children to school or bus stop. Just normal activities. It's a shit. Yeah. Suburban neighborhood like that at that time of day. There is just cars pulling out of dry kids. Well, it's all over the place. They all said that they did not see anyone unfamiliar or anyone wearing all camouflage or for that matter, anyone with their head literally on fire.

None of those things. All of those things would have stood out, I believe. I did not see Nicolas Cage and Ghost Rider going down the road. Not at all. Not even a little bit. So Christmas Day comes around. This is two days later. And they said that Richard hobbled into Connie's parents' house for Christmas dinner and

Christmas gathering or whatever hobbled in. Oh, he's hurting because he got stabbed in the leg with the with the box cutter. And he described Connie's murder and described his innocence. And one of the relatives said here that he was that he said it in a very stoic and matter of fact way. This is what happened. And this happened. And that happened, like running it down like a.

Timeline. Like a timeline, which is a lot of times when people are lying, what they do is they do that so they can keep it straight. Sure. You know what I mean? There's no emotion involved because there's no emotion attached to it for them. And they're not good enough actors to realize you have to attach emotion to words to make them believable. If an actor took a script and was like, oh, I'm so scared. I don't want this man. You're like, you're not buying that shit. That's what acting is. So in the...

she said it was the first time the family had heard how Connie had died. They didn't know the cops didn't tell them yet. They didn't get into all that. So he told them she was shot in the back of her head. Um, and he talked to the family about what he claimed to be a home invasion for about 25 minutes. They said he told the family that he left for work, turned around, headed back to their house. And, uh,

Yeah.

That's all the guy wanted was valuables. That's it, going through the jewelry box. He then said that he heard the garage door open, figured that the YMCA class must have been canceled. She's home early. Run, run, run. The guy runs after her. He said that he heard his wife go down to the basement. He said that this is what he told the family, that he thought that she was going to get the gun and save him.

Oh, save me. Yeah. She's running to go get the gun and then it's going to be like, all right, motherfucker. Now I just had to go downstairs and get this. There you go. I know you're looking for valuables. I had one piece of valuable you didn't find and it's this right here. And then point at 357 in his face. Stay away from my husband. Now you get away from my husband, right? You take your fingers off of his wrists. There you go. So that feel better. My man.

You get out of my house right now. So like the mom and cops and robbers. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That is a reference that me and you understand and nobody else. Nobody understands a comedic Jack Palance movie. That's not city slickers. Not one fucking person. The worst Chevy Chase movie of all time. I love when we reference shit that's only for us because

Because we've seen every one of the same movies when it comes to all the comedies. Oh my god, it's crazy. What was the one you said to me the other day? Every comedy. Did you ever see this? What was it? Oh fuck, I don't remember. No, because we talk about so many movies every day. You know, you texted me. You're like, do you remember this movie? And I just right out of the gate, fuck yeah. Yeah, I was like, yes! This is why we're best friends.

How do you know that? Well, because I'm about to ask you a question that I can't believe you know. Fucking amazing, right? Yeah. So, yeah, going to go get the gun and save him. Yeah. The family said that they thought that was they were surprised to hear that because she no one had ever known Connie to either own or ever to have touched a gun in her entire life.

Okay. But she's going to go get that one. A .357. If you've never touched a gun or shot a gun, a .357 should not be the first one. No, and when you do touch one for the first time, you are amazed with how fucking heavy that thing is. Holy shit. Holy shit. That is wild. So, yeah, he said that eventually he fell down the stairs and then made his way to the basement.

to and told the family that he heard a noise that was louder than any noise he'd ever heard before. And that was the gunshots. He said, after the gunshots rang out, that's when he started gripping me by my pressure points, led me into the kitchen, kitchen by my pressure point.

Oh, come on. Stop. Stop. Oh, wow. Like a little kid being dragged by his ear. I picture. Yeah. Let him to the kitchen where he was wearing yellow dishwashing gloves. This man, by the way. Oh, we had the old the old. Yeah. Grandma's got the dishwashing gloves. That's where he started stabbing Richard in the legs with Richard's own box cutter. That's just wrong.

Just me. He's really just destroying them with their own shit. That's the insult. Really lazy, unprepared criminal this guy is. Then tied him to a metal chair with zip ties. He said that he managed to grab a hold of the blowtorch and scorch his face like we've said before. So now the sister hearing all this said that she saw very little emotion from her from him telling the story. This is like a story of you almost being murdered and fighting off the killer of your wife.

And you're just like, yeah, that's what happened. I don't know. Yeah. Like I went to McDonald's. It was closed. Weird. I don't know. Like that's the. Yeah. It's perhaps the it should be the scariest fucking moment that you've ever. Yeah. You should be like this is you should be shaking. It's two days later. It's like it's five years later. You just have therapy. Yeah. It's 24, 48 hours ago.

So the sister said that, and then she said that after walking him through what happened, he called his father to ask to get his passport from the house at his father's house. He left his passport for some reason. But he said he needed to get a new phone and money because the police had his phone and wallet. So he's like, I have no phone. I have no wallet, no money, no ID, no nothing. They took everything.

So then later on, the family learned from the police that he was having an affair during the murder. So they were like, ah, that makes more sense. Now, one of Rich Rick's friends here told the state police that he was aware of an impending divorce that Rick had confided in him about.

Really? Rick had gone to meet with a divorce attorney in June of 2015 but never retained the man. He only talked to one attorney and then that was that and it never came up again. And just spoke to him about it.

Just spoke to him. No money exchanged hands. Well, she would have loved to just give legal counsel for free. Yeah. Yeah. They'll do the initial consultation, but anything past that, they want money. You know, there'll be that. Can I help you? Sure, I can. Yeah. Pay me money for this fee. Then we'll talk about how I will talk. Exactly. Otherwise, I can't help you.

So also told this man that he'd been having an affair with a woman who was pregnant as well. Rick had told this witness that he was concerned that Connie would divorce him as well if she found out. So he had to keep it a secret, obviously. Now, here is Rick talking to his girlfriend. This was Rick...

This is the day before the murders, the murder happened here. He texted pregnant Sarah here to assure her that he and his wife, quote, have talked about the divorce and are on the same page.

Which later on he's going to go, that wasn't actually a lie. We were on the same page of we weren't going to get divorced. But he tells her that as it's a weird – he didn't say that we decided we're getting divorced. But later on he told the woman that he and Connie were, quote, getting a slow-moving divorce to make it easier on the kids. Mm-hmm.

There's no such thing as a slow-moving divorce, by the way. No, no, no. A slow-moving divorce... A divorce is generally timed by the fucking judge. You don't get to make any choices. Well, I guess they're going to announce that eventually they're going to get a divorce, but they're still going to live together, do shit as a family. Eventually, like, you know, he'll stop coming home on time, and then, like, eventually he'll move into a motel...

This seems like a more drawn out, make it harder on the kids. It'd be easier if he just left. Stop coming home. Just stop going home. You know what I mean? He'll start going home to another place. Just start going. Eventually, just not come home at all. And then eventually, there'll be paperwork. You know, a slow-moving divorce. Just slow-moving as it gets.

Wow. The night before the murder, Rick texted his pregnant girlfriend, Sarah, to assure her that he was getting a divorce. And he says, quote, and this is just gross, quote, I'll see you tomorrow, my little love nugget.

love nugget what is that it sounds like a turd to me like it's yeah anything nugget is just a clot of poo or a personal item we review on your stupid opinions the love nugget and it's like vibrates on an app on your phone you stick it up your ass that's what it sounds like it's a thing you fuck yeah it's a thing you fucker that fucks you one of the two um a friend of connie has told the newspaper that she believes her friend loved rick

In text messages obtained between the couple, she said, and she's seen text messages with Connie and her husband, too. She said they loved each other. In text messages, he calls Connie sweet pea and buttercup sweetpea.

Sweet pea, that's weird because that's what we both call our daughters. And buttercup is the thing you call a kid too. Yeah, buttercup. Is that Princess Bride maybe? What are you doing? I can think of Princess Bride buttercup, the horse. It was buttercup. Was it buttercup?

The horse was Buttercup, wasn't it? Or something. Somebody was Buttercup. There was Buttercup. Princess Buttercup. It was. Was it her? Yeah, it was her. Okay. So that makes sense. But sweet pea is for a child and love nuggets even worse. I don't like that at all. That sounds disgusting. And also all of the texts he's telling her he loves her all the time and everything like that. A few days after the murder, about a week later, he comments. He makes a Facebook post about it. Yeah.

And he says, many questions unanswered, but we are all doing our best to move forward as impossible as it seems. He said he's worried about his son's future, and he thanked many people who reached out. He said the volume of loving friends and family and acquaintances who we saw at the service is a testament to how much she touched the lives of others. Our friends and neighbors have also been showing an amazing amount of support. To all of you, I say thank you, and Connie thanks you.

Okay. Now, they find out some stuff because the cops are now investigating everything about him because there's no evidence of another human being being in this house. They find out that he had taken out a credit card without his wife's knowledge. And they go, well, maybe, you know, for whatever, he's trying to get his credit better. Maybe. Remember, he had bad credit. She did say it sucks. It sucks. Well, no, he used it to buy flowers for his girlfriend.

He spent more than $1,200 at a strip club using the credit card. On a credit card? On a credit card. Oh, my God. If you know. You're getting strip club cash. No. This man is horny. He is cash advancing strip club money. $1,200. Oh, my. That's a $3,000 night. That's a three after fucking after interest. That's some shit that'll make your wife yell at you is what that is. You're going to get in trouble for that.

And stays at a nearby Motel 6, which he has no reason to stay at considering he lives 10 minutes from it. So this is the if my wife finds out she's going to cut my balls off in my sleep credit card that he has. That's a crazy night. That's what he's been doing. But this is his slush money credit card. Yeah. This is his petty cash that is costing us an arm and a leg. Yeah. That his wife's going to have to pay for someday. Yeah. Yeah.

So then detectives learned that five days after the shooting, Richard tried to cash in the $475,000 life insurance policy on Connie. Yeah. Not even the ground yet, I don't think. But the insurance company denied his claim.

Why? Because there's an ongoing investigation. An ongoing investigation into a murder, right. Yep. So two years earlier, he had stopped making payments on his own policy. And in January 2016, he had withdrawn more than $90,000 from a Fidelity investment account that belonged to his wife. Yeah, he's got to pay that credit card from one night of his trip. Oh, shit. It's 90 grand now. It's 1,200. Jesus, I got five lap dances, 90 grand. Yeah.

90 fucking grand. So that might be the shit she's complaining about, about he takes money from accounts that don't belong to him. Sure. Now, let's find physical evidence on the gun. We said there's no fingerprints, but it's 2015, everybody. Let's find some DNA on this bitch. What do you say? Yeah. So they swabbed the handle grip of the .357, and they found Richard's DNA along with the DNA of an unidentified person. Uh-oh.

They find an unidentified folk DNA on there, so that's something. They do a gunshot residue test on Richard's hands the morning of the shooting, and those are negative.

Now, if he did this, I assume he was wearing yellow dishwashing gloves, which is why he said that. Because people always tell themselves like that. It's the I went fishing at this exact point. I remember because there was garbage there. And then I remember there was a sign that said no landing. Yeah, same exact thing. So the gunshot residue on his hands are negative. But there's his shirt had residue on it.

Which they said if he was in a basement while it got fired, it's possible he would have residue on it from that. Perhaps those fingerprints and that DNA we'll never know because the person may have been raised by wolves like how we make everyone walk like a man. We had, by the way,

You have no way of knowing this audience, but we had about a 20-minute conversation about Walk Like a Man the other day. Literally 20 minutes. We just talked about a horrible movie with Harry Mandel acting like he was raised by wolves and running like a dog through a mansion. And we laughed our asses off and talked about it forever. So much fun.

Because it's so terrible. It's great. If you can watch it, watch it. You're going to have a jaw on the floor. What am I watching? Well, grandma just loves Bobo. Oh, loves him.

Oh, I love it. So then they look for digital evidence. Richard gives consent for them to search his iPhone because if he doesn't, it would look real weird. So it really would. So they also have find Connie's iPhone was located in her right side waistband of her sweatpants.

Oh, she had those Lululemons, yeah. Oh, yeah. She had those rocking. It was under her jacket facing the floor, and it was seized at the crime scene. So it's now 2015. It's not as easy to crack cell phones as it is today, too, because if you don't have the password, it was a lot harder back then. And there is nothing that compels you to give your password.

Really? In the law, yes. Cops, they can get warrants for your phone, but they cannot force you to give your password. There's no judgment that can make you give your password. Isn't that weird? It's like a constitutional issue. Is the phone encrypted with that password? When the password's put in, does it encrypt?

I'm not sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. You can't get without the password. Open it at all. I mean, like to open it at all, just to open the phone. So, but Apple also is fighting that and they don't want, they don't want that ever, ever disclosed. No, they, yeah. Well, your password is considered a private thing. You don't have to tell anybody that. So even with a warrant, suspects aren't compelled to reveal that. But in the case of deceased victims, they,

The password might not be known to anybody, they say. So that's another problem. So they were able to recover all the data from both cell phones, though. And in the year prior, they found Connie's December 2014 Why I Want a Divorce notes written in there. Interesting. Him handling money, taking, we told you all that shit. Also saying he acts like a kid constantly.

And doesn't come home on time also. Because he's having an affair. Oh, they also find out he's having another affair, by the way. He has several? He has two women he's fucking on the side. Wow. Not only the pregnant one, he's got another one too that the pregnant one didn't know about. How do you have the time? He has a job, two kids, a wife, and a wife.

And two girlfriends, one of whom were pregnant. I have no idea how you have time. I don't have time to put this show together and eat food and sleep properly. I literally don't. I don't have the time to do that. Yeah. I,

I just, yeah. If I could have two more hours in the day between like 10 and noon, like if we could get two more hours in there that I could maybe work it out. I held a business meeting while on the road yesterday. I remember, yeah. I don't have time for anything. This guy has, and yeah, and you don't have to work fucking 40 hours a week away from your house in a building. Like drive a car there like this asshole does. Yeah.

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So

So she had also, like they said, the good stuff about him. They talk about the cable bill. They find that out. They were arguing over the cable bill. At least it wasn't all porn channels. At least it was sports. That's nice. They're sports. That's the innocent. Yeah. I feel awful for her, too, that the police got to see her in lingerie and all kinds of whatever fucking photos she sends. That's fucked up.

man. That's tough. That's, and if anybody out there is planning on dying, I fucking clear your phone out because you're going to look through it. I'm telling you, just don't send it in the first place. It's so fucked up too, but send it to someone. If it's, if it makes you both horny, who knows? Certainly send it, please.

Please send nudes to not to us, but to other people. Wonderful piece of advice to people who know you, not to us, not to strangers. The ones you want to fucking see that and fuck you. Send it. Yeah. Send that. So they plan to introduce evidence that he repeatedly searched. Also, they find when they look through his phone, they find he repeatedly searched for information on poisons in the months before the killing. Poisons. Poisons. He was like, I could poison. He's like, I'm just going to find it.

So then he was like, well, they searched. They did an examination. They revealed that in July and September 2015, he was looking up a lot of poison information. They said that they referenced searches including, quote, deadly over-the-counter pill combinations. So what can I buy at CVS that I could kill her with? What can cocks together? Wow. Fast, untraceable homemade poisons. Oh, my God.

untraceable good luck yeah how can i make arsenic yeah fucking uh insulin there's your there's my suggestion for you but you can't make that at home so i don't know what's the one that dissipates really fast when you take it in pill form oh yeah there's that arsenic i know no they find that cyanide cyanide yeah so they said uh also he searched for tasteless poison easily available

So he's not, he's also lazy. He'd like to kill people, but he's also super lazy. Like, what can I just make at home? What's easily available? I'm not looking to fucking look, you know, go to stores, order. I don't want to go to the dark web for this shit. This is crazy. I just want Google to tell me.

So the prosecutors also referenced other searches involving antifreeze and ricin. He looked up ricin. What? Did you want to clear a subway out or kill your wife? Which one? Were you looking to cause a mass panic in an American city or kill your wife? You trying to end the food court at the mall? Wow.

And they said all these searches, he read several articles on all of these topics after the searches for it. It also included a text to his girlfriend two days prior saying that he was going to talk about getting a divorce and all that was going on here. Also, the several alarm notification text messages during the morning hours indicating the arming and disarming of the home alarm system. So they have all of that.

They checked the camera at the YMCA. Oh, yeah, yeah. The date and time and the surveillance camera are found to be accurate. And the cameras from the parking lot showed Connie arriving at about 8.53 a.m. And she soon found out her class was canceled. And so she's seen on the cameras leaving at approximately 9.08 a.m.

So when she came home, I think she came home earlier than he expected, by the way. I think that happened as well. Then they find his tablet, his Microsoft Surface Pro tablet is examined. Oh, look at that. Nice little piece of technology. He watches commercials in between plays in the NFL. Yeah, he does for sure.

So including this has found his web history, including visits to websites during the time he alleged he was driving to work that morning. Oh, no. So how are you doing that? At 826 and again at 827, there were visits to Facebook.com on there, like the web page, not an app. At 837 a.m., there was a Google search for long-lasting tattoo ideas. What? What the fuck are you doing? Exactly. What are you, rice and tattoos? Tattoos?

He really wants long-lasting tattoo ideas. Like, should I murder my wife or get a tattoo? What should I do? What are some tattoos that are evergreen? Which ones haven't had trends that are stupid now? Is there one that just says single man on it? Because that's the one I want.

At 8.41 a.m., a login to his Outlook email account was made from the tablet using the IP address from within the home. So he was home. This is when he said he was on the road. Uh-oh. Remember he said he pulled over? Yeah. He didn't. So at 9.04 a.m., he sent an email to his boss indicating he'd be late for work. It was sent from his laptop at home, not from the side of Reeves Road, as he...

had claimed. While he said he didn't have his laptop. Yes, exactly. He was home with his laptop. They said that was at 9.04. Richard, Rick said he sent the email while he was in his car, so I don't know what you're talking about. It's about two miles from the home. The typical reach for a home internet router is about 300 feet outdoors. Guy's got sick Wi-Fi. He's got the best coverage ever. Two miles from the

You know those extenders? He's got them everywhere, like in his whole neighborhood, down the street, on Main Street. He's got a fucking tower. His own. So 9.18 a.m., he visited the website of the Indian Valley YMCA to view the group's exercise schedule.

And by the way, his wife will be home any second because she left at 9.08 a.m. And it's a nine minute drive. So usually two minutes after that, he searched for the ESPN website for the Mike and Mike show. I give up, man. This guy is all fucking over the place. He's searching for poisons. He's like, what about fucking, you know, YMCA? What about Mike and Mike here?

I feel like getting a tattoo. Talking about terrific Tom today. What the fuck are we talking about? So he is all over the place as far. He's got a lot of distractions. You need to focus if you're going to do shit like this. He's a pinball. He is. And that was the last time he used the computer that morning at 918 a.m. Connie called someone from her cell phone after surveillance cameras indicated that

She had left the YMCA. That call lasted three minutes and 23 seconds. At 9.23 a.m., Connie's Fitbit, which was idle for nine minutes, that's the drive home, that's why it was idle, became active again at the same time alarm records showed the garage door opening at the home. Okay.

Okay. So we know when she got home. They believe that's when she arrived, obviously. What she did is when she got home, she sent a message from her phone via Facebook to her psychotherapist requesting an appointment to be hypnotized, which is weird, quote, because there's a lot going on right now. That's what she said. I'd like to be hypnotized because I got a lot going on. Is that possible?

I don't know the answers. Maybe they're buried in there. Let's hypnotize me and find out. She's swinging for everything. She's trying so hard. She wants to save the marriage and be happy. She really does. I mean, this is her. She had two kids and she's got a house. This is her life. She's trying. And she's going through therapy. That's amazing. Yeah, she's doing that too. From 940 to 946, Connie posted two videos on Facebook using her iPhone, then posted a message to a friend through Facebook. So sent a Facebook message to a friend on Facebook.

And that was while she's at home, IP address to sign to the house. Yep.

And we know she's home. Now, her Fitbit indicated she likely left for the YMCA class around 8.46 a.m., a period of inactivity for nine minutes consistent with her driving there, then activity consistent with her actions while at the YMCA, next period of inactivity beginning at 9.08, the time she's recorded leaving. The next recorded movement on her Fitbit is 9.23, same time the alarm went off, just to give everybody a rundown. Yes.

Fitbit shows that her last movements inside the home were at 10.05 a.m. And then it went idle. This is an hour after Richard told detectives she'd been killed by the murder. He said it was right after 9 and that he didn't call 911 until...

10.05, 10.20 because he was tied to a chair and being tortured and blow torched and shit. So Dick's story or Rick's story, we can call him Dick by now. Rick's story was that Connie came into the house, ran directly into the basement and all that kind of thing. Now, during the time that this happened, though, the Fitbit recorded her. It's important because he just says she walked in, heard him, ran right to the basement. So there should be a certain number of steps that.

that coordinate with that. Yeah. Correlate with that shit. Instead, it shows her walking a distance of 1,217 feet.

My Christ, that's like a fucking fourth of a mile. It's an hour of walking around is what it is. That's an hour of walking around. This was much further than it was. Basically, they did the math on everything else. It'd be about 125 feet for Richard Starry to be true, for her to walk in here and go down to the basement, about 125 feet. So it's 10 times as much she walked. Right.

which is very, very, very, very interesting. So the record show her last movements at 10 Oh five. Like we said, um, the, um,

So they're like, holy shit, this is a big deal. The times are all fucked up. We're going to use this. And the Lancaster, Pennsylvania district attorney who had heard about this case said to say it's rare to use a Fitbit record would be a safe call. Like to say that that's rare. This is the first time they're ever going to try to use Fitbit information in a murder case. In 2015, they're only a couple years old. Totally. Only a couple years old. Yeah.

And apparently this guy said that this other one was they tried to use Fitbit records to prove that a woman had fabricated a story about a stranger breaking into her home and sexually assaulting her. I guess they were saying that the guy had a Fitbit and they knew he knew where he was and whatever. Wow.

So the guy said, it's an electronic footprint that tracks your movements. It's a great tool for investigators to use. We can also get the information much faster than other types of evidence such as DNA tests. They can just look at it. Which is, if you have a Fitbit, you're basically saying, please track everything. Everything I do. Here's my cell phone. You can track exactly where I am. You'll know how much I'm walking around while I'm there because I have this on. It's just, please, I'd like to be tracked.

It's fucking crazy. Does everybody know what a Fitbit is? Is that common that everybody knows? I don't know. That's why I read the description. It's a little thing that you clip on your. Oh, it's a wristband. It's like a little watch. This was a clip. Oh, she had the hip one. The clip-on one was on her pants. Yeah, so it clips on your wherever the fuck you want. Now they have them in watch form too, and it tells you how many feet you walked.

That's all. Yep. How many miles? It's a, you know, whatever. It's a pedometer. But sometimes, you know, then the watch ended up doing the heart rate and all that shit too. Yeah, yeah. It gave you so much more information. More shit like that that you can fucking be a hypochondriac and panic about. Perfect. Great. Now my heart's dead. The last thing I need is to be constantly looking at my heart rate. I'll be fucking, I'll give myself a heart attack. I'll give myself a heart attack. I'll lose my fucking mind.

Well, why is it averaging this many beats today? Yesterday it was this many beats. What did I do different? You got to let go, man. Oh, dude. Everything I eat, I'd be like, what does this make my heart rate do? And is this up or down? Oh, God, I got to stop eating that. That's making my heart rate. I don't need that kind of stress. That's why I don't have one of those fucking things. I bought the cheapest Apple Watch so that I can monitor my heart because I'm paranoid. I said, I'm not mature enough for that. I know it.

I back off. I got mine for the same reason, though. You're not getting one for the same reason I got one. Exactly. Because I'm paranoid. Every time I feel a fucking creak, I'm like, great, now my heart's going to explode. What's my heart rate? I need my watch to tell me. I don't want to know what's coming. Just explode and let me move on.

So the panic alarm system that went off was at 10-11 was when the panic alarm was set. That was activated from his keychain fob. It's the only time the panic alarm went off that morning, although he said he'd gotten one earlier that morning while driving to work, which wasn't true. It was activated but didn't go off. 10-16 is when the barracks received a 911 call from the alarm company. He called 911 at 10-20.

Now, data recovered from the Home Alarm System indicated it was armed and disarmed several times that morning. They said that they talk about the various functions and things, saying two keychain fobs had a maximum range of 500 feet, which would be shortened if any objects were in the way, obviously. Cell interference also, things like that.

They were, they said that it was Richard's key that set it off. Key fob six. It was, they know which one it was. It was recovered in a same key ring as Nissan's vehicle key fob. So he had all his keys together. It also contained motion sensors detected to detect body heat or yeah, designed to detect body heat. The alarm company's records show movement around the house. That's consistent with Richard's accounts of events. The,

The alarm system was armed as stay, indicating people can be in the house and not trigger the alarm at 847. When Connie was at the gym and Richard claimed to be on his way to work, the alarm was armed as stay from the key chain fob on his key chain, which would have required someone to be at the house, which we know he's at the house. At that same time, Richard also logged into the website of the alarm system from his phone to attempt to disarm the alarm, which was unsuccessful.

At 8.50, Richard was unsuccessful in disarming the system from the website using his phone. Then at 8.50, less than a minute later, he armed the system from the website. At 8.59, the system was disarmed from his keychain fob. So he's like figuring out how to get it on and off. Mm-hmm.

So this is all took place during the time that Richard said that he wasn't home, by the way. This is all when he was on the road. But all this shit has to be done from inside the house. And it's all his IP address and all that kind of shit. In addition, the first door to open and close after the system was disarmed wasn't an outside entrance, as you would imagine. It was the basement door opening and closing indicated whoever opened and closed the door had to already have been in the house. Already in the house.

So at 9.23, the opening of the garage door coincided with data recovered from the Fitbit activity at the same time. So we know that. Also, they said that Richard canceled his subscription with the alarm company 12 days after the murder. Really? 12 days, despite claiming that the home was broken into resulted in a murder. Now I don't need one at all. So they also talked to Richard's girlfriend and get her phone.

which is important. A Verizon cell phone record for Richard's girlfriend were seized, and they showed that the text messages between her and Richard were exchanged with Richard using a Google voice number, not his primary cell number. This motherfucker went, wow.

He went incognito here. Yeah. He got WhatsApp for Christ's sake. This is nuts. And he didn't ever tell the investigators that though. He kept that. Oh, he didn't tell him he had a Google number. Didn't tell him he had that one. Now he just, Oh yeah, go through my phone. Yeah, no problem. Uh, the messages were not stored within the messages associated with his primary cell phone number. So they were not recovered during the search of a cell phone. It's a whole separate thing. Um,

had the girlfriend's cell phone records not been obtained and the only messages from his cell phone were analyzed, the text between Richard and his girlfriend might not have been located, but they got her and they found him. So that's an interesting way they do that. So April of 2017, he's arrested. It took...

Five months to arrest this guy. Almost. Four and a half months. He thought he had him fucking beat. He thought he had it fooled. He's like, perfect crime. All the digital shit. I think he got confused with the digital shit or something. I think he thought that the digital shit was going to be the way out when it's really...

For them, the way in. He didn't know. And I don't know if he knew his wife had a Fitbit Honor even, or I don't know if he thought and extrapolated what that would mean. You know what I mean? For an IT guy, he's dumb as fuck. He's dumb as fuck. I'm telling you, man. It's fucking interesting. He's so...

And the story he makes up, because last week we had the guy who said that he came home and his wife had a horrible accident and the weight bench fell. The bar fell across her throat. Meanwhile, it was him choking her out with the goddamn thing. So that starts out with this 911 call of, oh, my God, I came home to this tragedy. This guy went a step further and was like, I was involved and I'm hurt, too. Yeah. He literally, I mean, for him to be lying face down on the fucking kitchen floor. Uh-huh.

When they get in, it's ridiculous. Sit in the chair. It's a chair. Sit in it if you're tied to it. Grab some shit and cut yourself free. What are you doing? He's just laying face down. Just literally moaning so they could find him.

So he's arrested. Now, his lawyer's very pissed because his lawyer told the judge that his client offered to turn himself in when there's a warrant. But instead, troopers arrested him without giving him any warning because they thought he'd run away. That's why they surprised a would be murderer. Wow. He's a flight risk, probably. Yeah. The lawyer said, I extended the offer numerous times. And he said, my client's innocent. This is ridiculous.

This is Hubert Santos is the attorney. He said, my client is innocent of these charges and he looks forward to being vindicated after the trial. Stay in court. Sure. Yeah. They said he denies making any searches related to Connie's death. Any searches. Any at all. Yeah. Those are someone else hacked his computer to look up poison. Apparently. Preston. Yeah. How easily is it? How easy is it to kill a woman with Preston? This is what he looked up.

So Connie's family members here, they said they're happy to find... I'm sorry, by the way, it was 2017, so it's a 16 months in between this and the arrest. My God. 16. Yeah, that's a lot. Not four.

That's a lot. I forgot that there. Her family members, one said, I was very happy to hear the news earlier today and I'm looking forward to getting justice for my cousin. That was Danielle. I am Mateo is the fucking all good names. I love it. Yeah. As for her friends, one said, I'm just so happy that her friends got justice for

Which not yet. He just got arrested. There's nothing yet. One other friend said, or this is Ellington First Select woman, Lori Spielman. She said, it's been a long time coming. I'm very happy that the state was still working on it. They said, the homicide is not something that I'm going to forget. It happened weeks after she was sworn in as the top elected official in the town. And resident after resident had been coming to her.

if there's any progress in the case. So this has been a big, big thorn in her side since she got in office. It's like, fuck, I just got here. I don't know. How casual is it to live in Connecticut that they're like, eh, we'll get to that tomorrow. We'll get to it. Maybe tomorrow. I had some time and we'll get in there. So she said she is pleased about the way the state police handled the arrest and they made sure not to slap handcuffs on Richard and haul him away in front of his sons because his sons were living with him, obviously. Yeah.

She said, I know they were very concerned about the children, making everything even more fucking disturbing for them. So in this time, Richard has been making some financial moves. Sure. Yeah. He put the couple's second home in Vernon, nearby Vernon. Vernon is the town that really amazing house in the real estate report was in, by the way. It's nearby. Yeah. Put that up for sale for $149,000.

And was supposed to close the sale on April 21st, 2017, which is a week after he was charged with murder. But an attorney for Connie's family asked a probate judge to halt the sale. And they do. They freeze everything. Anything that Connie had assets, including a home, everything is all frozen. Good move because that thing's probably worth $400,000 now. Yeah, it's worth a lot more now. Yeah, it went up.

So when he then he removed Rick as the executor of the will and ordered a full accounting of the estate. At that point, according to Rick, the estate was worth six hundred or six dollars and forty two cents. Oh, Rick.

So a new inventory filed later by the probate attorney showed that Connie's estate was worth about $86,000. It's a little better. Richard, as executor of the estate, paid about $17,000 in funeral expenses. It was a...

Us guineas do funerals up. Yeah, we send off right. Yeah, you got to get the Catholic church involved. You got to get the church. You got to give them a fucking donation. Plus, there's got to be a big casket. It's got to be a beautiful one. Basically, if it's not nice, that means nobody loved you and everyone's going to talk bad about you. They don't hate it. Yeah, it makes your family look terrible. Yeah.

$17,000 in expenses and state and local taxes from the estate as well. He then withdrew another $70,000 before he was arrested and charged with murder. A lawyer who represents Connie's sister said he plans to file a motion asking the judge to order him to pay back the $70,000 to the estate.

Okay. May 26th, 2017. Connie's sister is named executor of all of her shit. Yeah. Which is probably good. Because Connie, in her original will, which was made in 2005...

Richard as executor, obviously. But once he was charged, then it's different and you can do all this shit. Her sister will now be responsible for paying off any debts and overseeing the distribution of her assets according to her wishes. So that's how that goes here. So they say that her death, her estate was worth about $77,000, most of which was from a $99,000 settlement of a lawsuit after she was injured in a car crash. Oh, wow.

Yeah. They said he, meaning Dick, didn't submit or Rick didn't submit any information about her life insurance policy or her pension when he was doing the financial disclosure, both of which are referenced in the warrant for his arrest. He tried to cash in his wife's insurance policy. There's also nothing in his asset list about their home, which at the time was worth at least $275,000, according to court documents. And he used the house as part of collateral for

to hopefully get bail. He's trying to get bail. He's going to put the house up to get bail? He wants to get bonded out for a brutal murder of his wife in his own home. My God. So the prosecutor, though, said that Richard's family has money and you can't give him bail because then they'll be able to get him out. Yeah. Which is the point of bail. So it's funny to go,

You can't give him bail. He can afford that. Well, why the fuck? What are you talking about? Why does it exist? Yeah. If you're going to give him bail, give him something he couldn't possibly afford. Well, then don't do it at all. What are we talking about here? So the prosecutor said, what's what's one million dollars to us is one hundred thousand dollars to him.

Is that right? They're saying his family is very wealthy, apparently. His lawyer disputed this observation about the family's financial status and asked that the bail be kept at $1 million. He said that the family plans to post a real estate bond to free him. Now, the family has five pieces of property they plan to use as collateral for a real estate bond. The properties, including houses owned by his parents, a cousin, an aunt, and him, are

So they're not wealthy. Everyone in the whole family is putting their house up. What you're saying is everybody has a home? Yeah, they all have homes. Such rich folks. And altogether they had $710,000 in equity in these homes. So that he would have to post the remaining $290,000 through a bail bondsman.

Okay. So that's what they do. So they do. He does that and he gets out on bail. So a cash bond is much lower than if you put property up, it has to be almost the value of. It has to be the value. Some states have it where it has to be like a half again value. Wow. Yeah, they do that in case for markets or whatever. Yeah. Or they have to be-

Twice as much because remember American Hollow and the guy went to put that him in four houses up for a five thousand dollar bail. And they were like, that does don't add up. It's got to be ten thousand. We don't have enough equity. Holy shit. So the kids at this point, what's where are these two poor kids? These fucking kids feel horrible. They are staying with or they had been while Richard was in jail. They've been staying with Connie's parents.

So there's no indication whether that would change. There are no conditions of his release that prohibit him from having access to his children. So that he wants to, he can say, bring my fucking kids over because they're mine. And that's that they have to do it. So they can sue him or whatever, but that's outside of that. December, 2017, a wrongful death suit is filed. This is Connie's sister who files this lawsuit against Rick. It's very strange. Um,

I get that they do it so they can't make money off of it is essentially the deal. But why don't we just make a sweeping law that says you can't make money off your crimes, make it a federal law or an every state law and then say you can't sue murderers for damages unless the murder had something to do with money or whatever. And also, if you are accused of murder, you can't be around the children.

Yes, yeah. If you were on bail for murder of their mother, you shouldn't be around. You should not be allowed to be around. It's happened in the past where the people get bailed, they have the children, they end up killing the children and themselves. And themselves. They take everybody down. Exactly. We can't allow that. No, that's fucking crazy. So the sister is named...

of her sister's estate, and that's it. They said that in Connecticut, a wrongful death lawsuit can only be filed by the executor of a person's estate. So the sister had to file it.

Now, Rick also put the second home up for sale, like we said, but that was stopped. They own the home in Ellington as well. Records show while the sale of the Vernon house was halted, Richard still took hundreds of thousands of dollars out of his wife's 401k accounts, of which he was the beneficiary, and at least one Fidelity account worth $93,000. Wow.

Once removed, that's when they did all the accounting and that's when they found out there was $6.42 in what he said and all that kind of shit. Now, okay, we get all the way to May of 2020.

I'm sorry, not May. Beginning January 2020. Are we ready to go to trial yet? Maybe. Possibly. We better be. Yeah. So the jury selection for the trial, which remained on the docket for years amid a lot of evidence issues, all that electronic stuff, and his attorney had a bunch of health issues. There's a lot of issues that delayed this thing three fucking years, but they're finally ready. November of 2019, they say that the...

There's no more delaying the trial. The judge says this trial is to go forward in April no matter what, which, of course, the no matter what happened because the trial was it was literally supposed to start the end of March in 2020, which is when everything was shut down. Yeah. So that was that. So and then Richard, then when they were all set to go again in 2021, Richard's attorney died.

Oh, God. He fucking died. So then they had to delay it more to 2022. So you had to get another retire before their dad goes to trial. It's fucking crazy. The one kid was born in 2006. He's fucking 15 by now. He was a small child. Now he's getting to be an adult for this. This is crazy. Those poor kids drive February 2022. The jury selection finally resumes two years later.

And a new jury has to be selected due to the amount of time that's passed because some of the people that were selected have moved away. Yeah. Out of state. They're not residents of the state anymore. They can't be jurors. It's been fucking five years. So people move out of 12 people. Few of them are going to go for sure. Now, during the trial, the defense, their whole thing is they are going to challenge the electronic evidence, including the Fitbit data collected by police, arguing that it's unreliable to

Okay. Okay.

His attorneys are expected to challenge all of the evidence. They also have asked the court to bar an interview state police did with him outside the hospital, too, as well. This is the conversation where he acknowledged that he had a pregnant girlfriend that was about to give birth to their child, that his wife was not only aware of it, but had agreed that not only will they co-parent, they could all live together, he told the cops. Oh.

I'll live in. Bring your high school girlfriend who you knocked up in and we'll all just raise kids together. We'll just have a commune. It's fine. I'll live in third. Okay. Wow. This isn't 1975. That's never going to fly. You know what I mean? So the motion to bar the interview alleges that Rick wasn't informed of his Miranda rights and wasn't free to leave since he was confined to a hospital bed.

They said, though he was not physically restrained, he was restrained from leaving by the physical presence of two officers accusing him of not being truthful. Well, that's not being held, though. No. Just because they're accusing you and they're in the room, you're not held. So the prosecutors file a separate notice in which they said Rick claimed someone damaged his car in October 2015 only to demonstrate the need for home security that led to him buying a gun. So they're saying he was planning this for months.

Oh, they even vandalization himself. They argue that he damaged the car himself and they have physical evidence to that as well. I said he damaged the car himself so he could say they needed a gun so he could get one so he could plan this for. Oh, my God. That's diabolical. Fucking diabolical. That is. That's a terrible man. That's a bad bet. He's a bad guy lying to everybody. He's a piece of shit.

So they said that Rick had affairs with two other women, including the pregnant one. So three altogether women, including his wife. And a lawyer for Rick said the evidence of the affairs was, quote, just an attempt to dirty up Mr. DeBatte's reputation.

What reputation? You're on trial for murdering your wife. Your reputation couldn't be worse right now. It would be impossible for your reputation to be worse unless it said you raped a child first. That's the only way that would make it worse. And then turn the gun and shot your wife for seeing it.

Wow. So they talked to the first cop on the scene, he testifies, and he said that he tried to get information from Rick as another investigator shouted they found a body. He said Rick didn't react. They argued, defense team argued, that he was laying on his stomach with a hand tied behind his back may have made it hard for him to react to investigators or for the investigators to see his reaction. Hmm.

They said that this cop said that he questioned Rick further once they'd been loaded into the ambulance asking where his children were. Rick said that they were at school in first and fourth grade and gave the trooper his parents' phone number to call them and pick the children up. That makes sense. So he was in his right mind is what they're saying. He's remembering phone numbers because he doesn't even have his phone. Yeah.

Sarah, now his girlfriend, she gets on there and says, yes, he said this. Yes, he said he was going to leave his wife. Yes, he got me knocked up. No, there was never any plan for us to live together and co-parent this fucking baby and all that shit.

Obviously, Fitbit. This is where Fitbit really comes into play here. They showed leading up to her last movement, the show, the Fitbit showed what they called incidental movement. They described this type of movement as the kind that would be recorded if someone were doing household chores.

Like you'd get home and do for an hour almost. Not the kind of data a Fitbit would show if someone were purposely walking somewhere or running from someone or just farting around, you know, tooling around the house. She just didn't take her shit off. She forgot.

So they said that his assessment, this expert said, is based on a peer-reviewed and published research in which he and his colleagues studied multiple users wearing different kinds of wearable technology while walking, jogging, running, or standing still on treadmills.

We found that the Fitbit device was very accurate at measuring steps. Yep. They said the most accurate Fitbit model that they tested was the hip-worn model worn by Connie. The one she has. Yes, because if you know the Kathleen Madigan joke, she talks about fooling her Fitbit when she had a watch, but she noticed that when she drinks wine, every time she picks her hand up, it says a step. So she's like, I just got to drink more and I'll be in a lot better shape.

She's doing her whole thing. So that's why they're more accurate because you can do other shit. Whereas the one on the hip, you actually have to be moving around. Yeah. He said it was really, really accurate, which that's an expert saying that. Her movement was more intentional, meaning about 60 steps or so per minute around 8.15 to 8.34 that morning. And then the Fitbit recorded some light stepping about 10.05, and that's her last registered movement.

So he explained that I didn't know this. They said, how does this work? And I'm just going to read this off quick because it's fascinating. He explained that the device has crystals that move around three planes and elicit a voltage that is a read as acceleration or steps. Really? If you said, how does a Fitbit work? Is it crystals? I would laugh for 15 minutes and say, what are you in a fucking wizard? What are you talking about? Obviously, it's not crystals that are doing this.

It is. It's crystals. It really is. What's the fuck? Slytherin inside your fucking. I don't know what to say here. It's some Harry Potter shit. That's what does it. That's the most shocking thing in this whole case so far. We've had some weird shit. So they asked him whether the device could record how many steps a person made in a few seconds or just over the course of a minute.

The expert said the data is recorded per minute, meaning someone could walk 30 steps in 10 seconds and stop moving, and the device would record that they walked 30 seconds within the surrounding 60-second window. Okay. So, yeah. He also said that the Fitbit does not keep time.

The time the steps are taken is connected to the time kept on the device that the data is loaded onto. Oh. So like your cloud or whatever. If the phone or computer or the device was connected to was not set to the right time, the timing of the steps wouldn't be accurate. Everything's got to be set from the right time. They bring in Connie's mom. Uh-oh.

Cindy Margata here. She's so mad. Oh, she's super pissed. Yeah. She said she spoke with both her daughter and son-in-law the morning of the murder. She said that, yeah, Rick texted her to ask if one of the couple's young sons had left a jacket at her home. She'd been watching the sons that the grandsons that weekend while they they took them to because Rick and Connie had gone to Vermont together. Mm hmm.

That's very nice. She said her mom said that Connie called her that morning and was stressed. And the mom said that they were very close. She said, I considered her a close friend and she considered me a close friend. She shared a tremendous amount with me, more than I think most mothers and daughters.

So she said on the morning of the 23rd, Connie told her mother she was going to make an appointment with her therapist. They asked if she knew why her daughter wanted to talk to her therapist and the judge that they object, but the judge allows it. And she responded, quote, She said that Rick was a mess.

And the lawyer questioned mom about her further conversation with her daughter, asking whether she told the police what she was telling the jury. And the mom said she said Rick was a mess that morning and she wanted to see Barb, her therapist. And then I said and then she said, I love you, mom. You're my best friend. And that's the last I heard from her. So the defense witnesses come now.

They one is her his aunt and his aunt describes Rick as a bloody mess when he came to her house to change out of his hospital gown the night of the murder because the cops took his clothes, obviously, to test for residue and all that. She said her nephew seemed upset about his wife's murder, was wounded from the cuts, he said, came from the intruder and at times was crying.

Where's his burns, by the way? Right. He said he was burning me with a blowtorch and I don't see burns on him. I expect burns. Dancing around with it. Ooh, I'm going to burn you. Yeah, ooh, I'm going to burn you. He's doing like fucking... He had stuck in the middle with you playing and fucking Michael Madsen was going around. So the defense also questioned a woman who on the day of the crimes...

was cleaning a house nearby to help her parents with their cleaning business. She told the cops she may have seen a deer or human-sized dark green figure pass by the window. As a person that lives around woods, likely a deer. You know how many deer have passed my fucking house window every day? My dogs are barking every five minutes at these fucking deer. And this happened in January? Was that right? Yes, yes. So they're out in the winter looking for food, too.

So she said, but that and the defense is like, there he was. That was the guy running away. The green guy. Yep. Because Rick said from day one that a man in camouflage hunting style outfit killed his wife and ran from the home. At least two dozen people who lived on the street were called to the stand throughout the weeks to ask if they saw a large man in camouflage or anything unusual at all. They all said no. Okay. Now it's Rick's turn to testify. Here we go.

And he's got to testify. Yeah. He's in a position where he's getting found guilty a thousand percent unless he goes up there and bullshits these jurors like he bullshitted every woman in his life. This is going to be fascinating. This is going to be amazing. So...

He, by the way, this is, this reminds me of this, uh, tell us guy, Robert, tell us Richard, tell us the guy in Las Vegas who killed a reporter and the trials on right now. He's got a crazy bald head. You can't miss him. If you look on YouTube, it's his story is fascinating. And the craziest thing, he's the guiltiest person ever. He's just like, no, they're all framing me. Everyone, the police, a real estate company, the guy, all these people, anyway, I'll have to get him.

Richard here, Rick testifies here. And I guess there was a lot of motions for mistrial and some last warnings from the judge. The prosecutor was asking him questions about the crime scene investigators saying, you know, he staged his home after murdering his wife. And the judges, he's asking a lot of inappropriate questions that aren't legal and the judges disallowing them.

During cross-examination, this is the state here, the state asked him point-blank whether he shot his wife and staged a crime scene, accusing him of smearing blood on the wall of their staircase, planting his stolen quote-unquote wallet in the yard, and then waiting for the police to arrive and find him tied to a lightweight metal folding chair. Right. So...

The the lawyer, his lawyer, then objects because he is asked if because of the blowtorch being around, they asked him, were you trying to create a little mini Cheshire scene there?

Now, Cheshire is a very, very, very famous murder of the of the Pettit family being slaughtered in this fucking home and then burning it down. It's a horrible fucking story. They were not dead when that fire went. No, it is so bad. It's such a terrible story, that story. So they said that they asked if he was trying to set fire to a stack of papers in the basement where his wife was shot. That's why maybe that's what you were doing.

So they said the whole courtroom went, when he brought that up, like, Jesus, he brought that up? Damn. They also referred. A baby was raped for fuck's sake. For fuck's sake. It's an awful story.

Also, the prosecutor kept referring to the alleged intruder as Vin Diesel throughout his entire line of questioning. So then Vin Diesel said this. What did Vin Diesel say next? Which I think is great because that's exactly what I would be doing too. I oftentimes feel bad for people. Not that guy. Yeah. Not this guy. So he would say questions like, quote, your testimony isn't that Vin Diesel left by helicopter, is it? No. Because they were like...

It was a blown 69 Charger. It was insane. There's got to be tire marks in the road from the peeling out. There has to be. It was like a 10-second... The frame twisted. Smoke clouds were coming up. When he shifted from second to third, the car jumped off the ground for a minute. Is there a spot...

So because they're saying that the dogs never smelled anybody else. There's no evidence of another man. So he's saying, how do you get out of there if the dogs couldn't smell him? Are you saying you left by helicopter? So now Vin Diesel is like hanging off the bottom rung of a helicopter as he's being taken away. Right.

Which makes it sound more ridiculous, obviously. Rick testified during questioning from his own attorney that the intruder tied the chair to his left wrist after killing his wife. In later questioning, after the prosecutor pointed out the crime scene photos show the chair tied to his right wrist. Uh-oh. He said, I guess I made a mistake about which wrist just now. How do you? It's cool. Yeah. Sorry. No worries. Yeah. How do you never forget? Yeah.

He said he was tied at his right wrist and tried to wrestle off the intruder with his left hand. I said, yeah, that's what happened. He also said that in his disoriented state, he made his way upstairs to

from the basement and into the kitchen and laid on the ground under the chair, um, suffering injuries while his ears were ringing from the single gunshot wound. He heard it close range. Meanwhile, three bullets were fired in the basement. Uh, Connie was shot twice and we don't know where the third bullet went. It's a little lodged in something. So they said, well, how come you didn't lift yourself off the ground before the police arrived? You got up on the counter to get your, your cell phone, your key. Why would you flop back down on your face? Uh,

It doesn't make any sense. And they also said the chair because he said, well, the chair was on top of you. And they said the chair weighs nine pounds. Yeah. You just said you fought off a bulky Vin Diesel a minute ago. Now, a nine pound metal chair is not very hard. And there's plenty of guys walking around still that have been hitting the head with them hundreds of times.

So he said it weighs nine pounds. He said, well, why didn't you use the multiple sharp objects in your kitchen, like your knife block that had knives and scissors to set yourself free? He said, you never set yourself free in the kitchen, did you? Because that was the way you wanted to be found.

Great point. Great point. And there was multiple objections all through this, talking about the couple's finances, talking about Rick's parenting or bringing up topics that hadn't been introduced into evidence and prejudicial answers being given. A lot of last quote, last warnings from the judge. A lot of those. He said,

Went on to tell a story, brought my kids to the bus stop. He said that I went back inside to change my shirt, left for work and all the bullshit he said here. He said that he pulled over near an apple orchard to send an email to his boss saying he had to get saying that his alarm system was going off because he said, I'm the I.T. guy. So I was embarrassed to tell my boss I forgot my laptop.

So lying to everybody, they said, what about what you told police in the morning that you driven 10 to 15 minutes before you pulled over to send that email? And he said, I don't know. It was a stressful day. I guess I wasn't thinking clearly, which is his answer to any of his shit that doesn't line up with facts. He just goes, I guess I was stressed out. I don't know. That's not a catch all. No. He said my times were obviously off back then. It was a long day.

Long day. It was a long day. It was 10 a.m., man. Super long day. He said that they also said your cell phone data shows that you were both home for about 30 minutes together that morning before the shooting and that Rick didn't leave his house besides bringing his sons to the school bus. He said both of those things contradicted what he told police and what you've told the jury. And Rick's answer was, quote, that's not true. We're like, but we have all the electronic stuff. He said, I absolutely left the house that day.

Okay. So we don't know where you were. You were using. Okay. Okay. All right. That's, this is wild. This is, this is grinding me. This tell us guy so much. They said that, you know, he heard a noise and he got home and I got home. I placed my phone by the Keurig machine because I wanted to make some coffee.

So he left it like a marker, like I'll find that later. And since he was already going to be late for work now, he pulled out his laptop and decided to veg out for a while while listening to ESPN radio. Mike and Mike. Yeah, Mike and Mike. That's when he heard the sound.

And he said that he again told the story walking in the bedroom, masked intruder in the closet, Connie, yada, yada. He said, I remember seeing this is when the shooting happened. Quote, I remember seeing Connie fall motionless on the ground. That's probably true because you shot her and she did that. He said, by the way, she fell that he knew she was dead.

He said it was pretty clear by the way she fell, the way she lied motionless that she was dead. And also it's a .357 in her fucking head. You can pretty much bank that one. It's pretty amazing what those things can do. They asked him point blank, did you shoot your wife? And he said, absolutely not, sir.

Okay, sure, OJ. So, questioned about the time, 9-18, when he looked up the YMCA cycling class schedule, he said that Connie had asked him to look it up that morning as they were getting ready. Okay, but you said she was gone, so why? Or she was there? I don't understand. They pointed out that the timing didn't match up because 9-18 was around the time that he said the intruder was going after his wife.

And she said, the prosecutor said, was she running down to the basement and did she yell up? Can you look up if there's a spin class as he's running from an intruder?

I'm going to get the gun. You check if there's spin after this. You know what? We'll take care of this real quick, and then we're going to need shit to do for the rest of the day. Lickety split. I'm going to need some spin. Wow. So he's got all the spin. He could teach a spin class, this guy. Bullshit spin. Rick again attributed his confusion of the timeline and minor details of the day, as he called them. Minor details. Minor details. Wow. The woman that you love.

Fucking A to the trauma he endured during the attack. So they concluded this cross-examination by once again asking him, did you shoot your wife and stage a crime scene? He said, no, I didn't. No, no, no. So the jury goes out. It only takes them. This is a trial, by the way, that lasted weeks. They examined 130 witnesses and had 600 pieces of evidence. Good Lord.

It took them like three hours. They were ready to go. They knew they had a decision. Didn't take a lot here. He is found guilty on all charges, which is, you know, tampering with evidence and murder. They filled out the paperwork and then went and took a spin class. Yeah. They were all talking about, oh, man, my thighs are burning, but I'm ready to put somebody in the pokey. All this talk about spin. You guys want to go do one?

Now, the trial watchers outside, because this is a huge deal in this area. Here's a lady from Vernon. She's amongst the people in the court who didn't know the victim or the accused. She said she'd been following the case and just wanted to be in the courtroom. Okay. She said, personally, I hope he goes to prison and they throw away the key. They're better off, the kids are better off not having a father like that. Oh, my God.

That may kill them probably. Better off not having a father. A father at all. Mary Wheeler of Vernon said she knows Connie's family from when her daughter used to get on a school bus with one of her sisters. She came to court and to support the family. She said you can't find words that are going to do anything other than let people know that you care and that your heart feels for them.

Now, during sentencing, they brought in more than 10 of Connie's loved ones to speak to the judge to get the sentence up here. They described her as a prankster who liked to do mischief shit. She was mischievous. Once she started a huge water gun fight at the family barbecue. That's fun.

You know, it's fun. Yeah, she's fun. She's not like diabolically. No, but she's just fun. You know, she'll she'll be the fun aunt. She's not putting saran wrap on the toilet. She's spraying you with a water gun. It's not short sheet in your bed and dressed up as an elf to visit their father in the hospital to cheer him up around the holidays. They she was called the fun young aunt. She's the cool aunt, basically.

Jesus, that's fucking dark. Fucking dark.

That's grim. Yeah. My God. What is her name? Fucking, I don't know her first name, but Grimshaw over here. My God, that's fucking grim. Stabbing everybody in the gut in the fucking courtroom. Oh, my God. Connie's mother, Cindy, who's 84 years old, got up there, and she said she'll never forget the last time she spoke to her daughter. Her daughter said, I love you. You're my best friend. And also that Rick is a mess today.

Another friend took the stand here saying that the last time she saw Connie, she was, last time she saw her, she was walking through the hallway of their children's school singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Jesus Christ. They're really going to get this guy, man. Holy shit. She's an actual light. She wanders around singing songs that make everybody happy. Fuck.

Her friend, Donna Judge, brought a framed photo of a six-year-old Connie with her when she spoke. She said she wanted the judge to see how long she knew Connie. They've known each other since then. They had met at a dance studio when they were six years old and developed a sister-like bond.

Then this woman married her older brother, Keith. Connie's brother? Connie's brother, Keith. So they became sister-in-laws. Sister-in-law, yeah. They said they grew closer as the years went on. She said that Connie was her honorary baby sister. And she says she has trouble forgetting the image of Connie's body when she went to a— It's not an honorary. Your sister's in-law. She can be your baby sister now. Yeah, it's fine. It's totally fine. You don't have to put honorary in there.

She said that when she went to identify the sister-in-law after the murder, she was the one that went to do it. She said her husband, who is Connie's brother, has trouble sleeping through the night, tortured by thoughts of not being able to save his sister. She said,

Okay, Sister Leslie said that she and her husband have gotten a front row seat to this life sentence of grief that he's inflicted on their nephews.

Because now their mom's dead and their dad's in prison. They recounted the trauma the boys live with. Their constant fear of an intruder breaking in and murdering them. Oh, my God. Sleepless nights, fear of the dark, and the sleeping bag that they have to... The kids sleep in sleeping bags next to their beds, basically, most of the time. They keep sleeping bags there for when the kids are too scared to sleep and they run in there.

They said the boys fear grief and confusion get worse every year as the leaves start to change. As soon as Christmas decorations hit store shelves, they said this woman says she knows what's coming. A painful and obvious shift in the boys moods. Yeah. You think his mother was basically murdered under the Christmas tree. Your holidays would be fucked from now on.

She said the two have become withdrawn. They're less talkative, less social, and sadder. And every Christmas tree, every stocking, every twinkling light reminds them of the reality that's another year since they lost their mother. Now, wow. Richard speaks on his own behalf. Is that right? And he maintains his innocence. Oh, Richard.

And he says, I will never stop seeking justice for my wife, Connie, who I love and think of every day. And I will never stop seeking justice for myself. More importantly, what about your son's man? The judge here, Corinne Klatt, said that Rick was not the victim of a home invasion, but rather the perpetrator of cold blooded crimes.

She called him brutal, calculated, and it was an incomprehensible act that was committed at the hands of a person who at one point vowed to love and protect her. Prosecutors are asking for 60 years. Judge says, you, sir, may fuck off 65 years. Eat dicks. It is 60 years for murder, five years for tampering with evidence, and fucking consecutive, because fuck you, basically. Wow.

Yep. Eat dicks. It was five years for tampering and one year for giving a false statement. Those are concurrent. So there you go. That's nice. So if you get paroled on this 60, you're going to do another five. Yeah, exactly. You're going to do way more. So there you go. Outside of court, the reactions here. A friend and neighbor, Darlene, stepped out of the courtroom and said she was on her phone.

She stepped out and was on the phone and you could hear her say, quote, it's over 65 years. And then she said into the phone, I'm coming home. Tell the street it's over. She was like the street. She's a neighbor. And it was her job to come to the trial and get information. Shouted at the HOA meeting. It's over. It's over.

Well, that's fucking hilarious. One of her sisters told the judge that she's been waiting 2,427 days to speak about the gut-wrenching grief she's languished from her sister. Said, my family's never been the same. She said, I'm not the same person I used to be. I'm broken beyond repair. Oh, no, don't say that.

The family statement said that though the trial wasn't about a Fitbit, it was about a cold-blooded planned murder of Connie Margata DeBatte, said her neighbor, a friend of the family who was their spokesperson. Connie was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, and a colleague. Most importantly, she was a loving and devoted mother to her son's

And yeah, so prison. Rick is currently at the McDougal Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut, not getting anybody pregnant. No. And the house, by the way, was sold in 2000. They bought it in 2006. Then it was listed for sale in 2019 for $399,000, then lowered 50 grand. Oh.

Then removed completely. And then finally in May of 2020, it was sold for $325,000. What a deal. It's a fucking murder house at that point. And everyone knows about it. It's the house everyone whispers about on the street. So you had to sell it cheaper. And there you go. Would you ever live in that? I don't know. There's some. I don't know. My house is 200 years old. People have died here. I have no fucking idea. So I guess I don't really know. Murdered there, have they?

I don't know. Who knows? I mean, I don't know. And I'm happy I don't. Let's just put it that way. Maybe they have. Maybe they have. So there you go, everyone. That's Ellington, Connecticut. Wow. And one fucked up ass case and one fucking bad, really bad plan and really bad story. It's not about a Fitbit. It's about a woman who, thank fuck, wore a Fitbit. Thank fuck she wore a Fitbit or this guy might have got away with everything. So this is insane. Probably not. Let's be honest here. But still.

I want to know what the unidentified DNA on that gun was, too. Just out of curiosity. It's not that he's innocent. It's not helping him any. Could have been the guy that sold it to him just a minute ago. Who knows? That's a good point. Who knows? Maybe he showed it to someone and they touched it. Who knows? I want to know where the fuck his other kid is. That poor bastard.

Oh, that kid was a younger one. I feel terrible. So that one. Yeah, it was a daughter, too. Really? Yeah. He had a daughter with the girlfriend. If you like this show, tell everyone about it. Get on whatever app you're on and give five stars because fuck does it help? I don't know why it helps. I'll never know why, but it really does help drive the show up the charts. So please do that and help us out. Also, head over to shut up and give me murder dot com and get all of your tickets. Tickets for live shows. Oh, my goodness. September 20th, Minneapolis. It's happening.

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slash crime in sports and you get a shout out to the show which is right fucking now jimmy hit me with the names of the most wonderful goddamn people on earth who would never ever ever leave it to be tracked by our fitbit to find out who murdered us hit me with them right now this executive producer or zoa noah noah's ml he's off to college zemel hey his mom's really proud of

He's off to college. Good for you. Go change the world, you son of a bitch. Don't get any STDs. Yeah. Just don't have sex. Be careful. No, no. Have sex. Carefully. Nancy Bat, she's 10 years gay. Have wild sex. Sex or free. Have sex you'll be embarrassed to tell your spouse later about. You do that too, Nancy. Congratulations. 10 years. Nancy, get out there and fuck your little tail off, would you?

Thank you. Kevin Hoydahl, Jessica Bochesney. Bochesney, maybe. Bochesney? Bo... Jessica. Thank you. Amy Barton, Melanie with no last name, and also Zach Steiner. Thank you guys so much for everything you do. Thank you. You're amazing. Other producers this week are Peyton Meadows, Liz Vasquez, Gary Howard, Janice Hill, and

Sophie Content. I think that's what it is. Content. Raheem Cannon. Thank you so much. Jennifer Carroll. Krista Hobart. Brittany Loberg. Lori Favada. Pedro with no last name. Holly Kayser Seigel. Seigel, maybe? Nick Forche. Forch? Forch? Ah, Ferch. F-O-R-C-H. Ah.

Arlo Edwards, Jody Kimball. Spent enough time on that, I guess. Carrie Carr, Catherine Coaster, Kayster Keister, Judy Griffin, Vicki Hay, Maria Brown, Pookie, Susie Pookie. All right.

Lavender Rosier. Chelsea with no last name. Ryan Saland. Sarah with no last name. SoulKiller7Eternal. Eddie Thompson. Evie. Evie. Evie Danger. Michael Blee. Nope, that's just B. It's B with a shitload of Es. All right, Mike. Now you know who you are. Chris Smith-Hedges. Genevieve Howell-Brody with no last name. Justine Tidrington. Emily Miller.

Justin Seward, Christopher Albate, Jorian Stuckey, Ashley Groundhog for breakfast, Mustafa. Not the one for lunch. Vanessa Simpson, RRTACCS, NPS. I don't know what any of those things are. I imagine she's incredible. Hopefully that stands for something.

They're probably all degrees in something. Gwen Clark, Ashley Winters, Victoria Cummings, Shell with no last name, Chris Conley, Trey Bivens, Donna Tunks, M. Dublow. Don't do that. Dublow. Carly Williams, Marlena Goff, Abla Alqueven. Alqueven? Alqueven.

Al Rolls. Brian Scott. You got it. Lori with no last name. You can do it. Rachel Vaughn. Donnie Dennis. Christina Mayer. Jess Landers. Amy Souza. Adriana Murado. John with no last name. Mary Ledane.

Brittany Young McDonald. Sam Richardson. Ryan Killeen. Tanya Chaffins. Nancy with no last name. Samantha Rourke. Jake. Nope, that's Jack Fivecoat. Rhonda with no last name. Sam Ashby. What is Sam Ashby? Is that a thing? I don't know. Jacob and Creshawn Conkling. It's that guy or girl. Katie Novick. Jackie Mitchell. Jordan Brodegam.

Krista Davis, Phoebe Oberhaus, Jenny Talia, Jeremy Evans, Anna Fullerton, Kathy with no last name, Christy Martin, and I fucking hope it's the real one. Oh, we hope so. Incredible. She's badass. Curtis Montee, she's so rad. Yeah, she is.

Jerry. Oh, Carrie Jubert. Uh, yep. That's Carrie Jubert. Uh, Brandon Oliver, Jess Gilmer, Shay Lynn, Angela Nguyen, uh, Tanya would know last name. Angel would know last name. Paula would know last name. Tasha will get, uh, melon, melon con Emily. All right. Uh,

Dolores McKintrick. McKintrick. Dana B. Jeremy Young. Carrion with no last name. Carry on, maybe? Carry on. We shall. Whitney Lindsay. Hurricane Lolo. Wes Baldwin. Monica with no last name. Skogenheimer. Skogenheimer.

Will Cushman, Jennifer Murillo, Sarah Case, Maria Ferrante, Ali Koslovsky, Chad, Chido Dusks, Ali Blair, Kelly Lockett, Billy Tobler, Marcella Courtney, Lisa Breitfeller, Hannah Hartbarger, Erin... Stuff you give your dogs every six months? For worms? For worms, yeah.

Come on, dogs. Easter worm medication. Gather around. Aaron Cooper, KG. K with the last name of a G. James Lipka. Ross Knight. Lauren Yamans. Blair Bryant. Maybe Bear's Kid. Mimi with no last name. Lachlan Dunacliff. Michael Smith. Tattoo with no last name. Julia Kapuk. From Fantasy Island. Very nice. Nice.

What does it mean? Julia Camposano, Keeks LaGeek, Shane Lang, Ash with no last name, Paula Ann Lumaad, Dan with no last name, Lydia Griffith, Paula G., Alyssa, Alyssa, Caitlin Russell, Ashley, Lauren Crager, Robert Stevens, Jason Singer, Heather Joy Mitchell, Natasha Sterbiak,

Morgan C., Dennis, Anglart, Michelle with no last name, Chrissy Delense, maybe Shelly Scott, Jesse Johnson, Amanda Sklar, Patty Perry, Holbrook, Tiffany Gestol. Gestol? Gestol. It's the letter G and then stole. All right. Jackie Caldwell, John Vensky, Morgan Barnes, Cindy Towers, Tankerslev, Tankersley. Yeah.

This is a fucking nightmare. Veronica, this is my nightmare came to life. Veronica Gonzalez, Ricky Watson, Stefan Erasmus. The Petsapod.

Jeff Kohlmeier, Amy Clancy, Tyler Doan, Dumbbell Blonde, Sean Doherty, Leanne Cook, Martha McIntosh, Miriam Usmani, Matt Hewson, This Is Me. That's their name. This Is Me. Isabella, This Is Me, Not Knowing How to Read. Casey Iona, Cam with no last name, Paul C., D. Trevor, Adrian Neville, Jess Mascaluk. What? Mascaluk. All right.

MOS, Moskaluk, I was spelling it, just sounded out. Kayla, Kina, Kina, Callie Lamione, Pat West, I can do that. Alex Reynolds Henderson, Jason Webb, Carrie Hickman, Karen McCord, Jay Rubin, Brandon Sherman, Zachary Steiner, Jessica JC, Rach with just an H, Rach H., Aaron McFarlane, L Brown P98, P8,

don't do that to me jennifer ricchetti essence boykins teresha teresha it's not teresa that's teresha right larue hayley hogan and obviously all of our patrons thank you all so much thank you everybody so much from the bottom of our fucking hearts we can't thank you enough for all that you do for us that's just real shit man you guys keep us afloat and you keep us going and thank you for that honestly um

You're fucking awesome. If you want to follow us on social media, shut up and give me murder.com has all the links to that. You can find us, hang out with us and do all sorts of shit like that. Keep coming back. Tell your friends, keep coming back week after week. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure.

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