San Jose Police used data from a murder victim’s Fitbit fitness device to track down her 90-year-old murder.
Data from a woman’s Fitbit device helped the San Jose Police Department track down a 90-year-old killer. Tony Aiello was arrested on Wednesday after the police received signals from his stepdaughter’s Fitbit, which reported a drastic rise in heart rate followed by a complete drop to zero.
Aiello has been charged with the murder of his 67-year-old stepdaughter Karen Navarra, who was found by police with a large knife slit on her neck. Fitbit employees were able to tell San Jose police officers when exactly Navarra’s heart rate dropped. As a result of that information, officers were able to link Aiello to her death.
Aiello initially denied that he was responsible for Navarra’s murder. When he was told that the Fitbit data placed him in the home at the time of her death, he claimed that an intruder must have broken into the home and committed the murder.
This is not the first time that Fitbit data has been used to track down murderers. A Connecticut man was arrested after Fitbit data revealed that he was lying about the circumstances surrounding his wife’s murder. In Wisconsin, Fitbit data established a man’s innocence when the company was able to prove that he was in his apartment when his girlfriend’s body was being dumped in a field.