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Never underestimate the power of technology: A slain California woman’s Fitbit data helped local police catch her 90-year-old killer.
Tony Aiello was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of murdering his 67-year-old stepdaughter, Karen Navarra, on Sept. 8, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Navarra, a pharmacy technician described by family as a “recluse,” was discovered by a coworker five days later, after she failed to show up for work.
As reported by the Chronicle, police found Navarra “slumped over in a chair, clutching a large kitchen knife with a ‘gaping’ slit to her neck.” The scene appeared to be staged to look like a suicide, the paper said.
A subsequent autopsy, however, revealed “multiple deep and intrusive wounds” to the woman’s head and face. The lacerations were likely inflicted by a small hatchet or ax—and not something Navarra could have delivered to herself.
Aiello, married to Navarra’s 92-year-old mother, initially told police he brought his stepdaughter pizza on Saturday, Sept. 8; he also claimed to have seen her later drive by his own house with someone in the passenger seat.
But that’s not what the surveillance footage says: Cameras captured Aiello’s car at Navarra’s home for at least 21 minutes—between 3:13 and 3:33 p.m. And there is no sign of her car leaving in the direction he claimed.
Here’s where the story really gets good.
Navarra’s Fitbit wristband, which counts steps and monitors heart rate, recorded a spike in her pulse at 3:20 p.m. Sept. 8, then a rapid decline. The device stopped registering a heartbeat at 3:28 p.m.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
Aiello, who claimed someone else must have been in Navarra’s house because “she walked him to the door,” was caught with blood-splattered clothes in his hamper (the result, he said, of an old man frequently cutting himself).
Aiello is being held without bail and is due in court today, the Chronicle reported.
This isn’t the first time fitness trackers have guided a homicide investigation.
As The New York Times pointed out, Fitbit location data supported a 2014 personal injury case in Canada and a 2015 sexual assault case in Pennsylvania, and a Garmin Vivosmart GPS recorded a woman’s struggle with her attacker in Seattle in 2017. Police also used a Connecticut woman’s Fitbit data to charge her husband with murder.
In Wisconsin, a man’s wearable became an alibi, corroborating his story during the time police said his live-in girlfriend’s body was being dumped in a field.
If this isn’t a perfect ad campaign for wearables, I don’t know what is.
The latest-generation Apple Watch is also marketed as a lifesaver.
Its new fall detection feature helps the wearable figure out if you’ve taken a tumble. And, if you remain unmoving for more than a minute, it automatically calls 911, or a predetermined emergency contact.
Fitbit last year launched its first smartwatch, the Ionic. It also joined Apple and Samsung in the FDA’s pilot program to reform digital health regulation. Check out Geek Pick: Fitbit Versa, and stay up to date on all things wearable here.
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