91-Year-Old Man Has No Idea Police Are About to Arrest Him for 𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 | HO

The quiet life—and the one person she regularly saw

Coworkers described Karen Novara as reliable and dedicated—someone who worked for decades, mostly kept to herself, lived alone, and wasn’t known to be in a relationship.

Detectives searched for threats: problems with neighbors, a history of burglaries, signs of fear.

Nothing obvious surfaced.

But one consistent thread remained, according to investigators: her stepfather was one of the only people she regularly saw.

That alone doesn’t make a suspect.

Families visit.

Pizza gets dropped off.

Cookies change hands.

Still, police needed a timeline. They needed to know when she died, not just when she was found.

And on Novara’s wrist, they noticed something that could answer that question with chilling precision.

A Fitbit Alta HR.

The Fitbit that prosecutors say became a witness

To many people, a fitness tracker is just a gadget—steps, sleep, maybe a heart rate graph no one checks.

In this case, investigators say, it became an impartial recorder of a woman’s final minutes.

Police obtained warrants and sought data connected to the device. Detectives said the Fitbit synced through a computer in Novara’s home and uploaded to servers, giving them a minute-by-minute picture.

According to investigators, the data revealed that on September 8, at 3:20 p.m., Novara’s heart rate suddenly spiked—consistent, they believed, with stress or physical struggle.

Then, at 3:28 p.m., it dropped sharply and stopped.

If accurate, it meant Karen Novara died on September 8.

Not September 13, the day she was found.

Five days earlier.

And that window overlapped with Anthony Ao’s revised story: that he had been at her home that Saturday afternoon delivering pizza.

Cameras tell their own story

Detectives didn’t stop at digital biometrics.

They went looking for eyes on the street.

Neighborhood surveillance—Ring cameras and other systems—captured views near Novara’s driveway, police said. In footage reviewed by investigators, they reported seeing a small dark gray compact car appear and remain parked during the crucial time period.

Investigators say the driveway was empty at 2:58 p.m.

At 3:12 p.m., a vehicle consistent with a Toyota Corolla appeared.

Clips around 3:14, 3:19, 3:21, and 3:33 still showed it there, detectives said.

By 3:35 p.m., it was gone.

Novara’s mother later confirmed, according to investigators, that she and Ao owned a dark gray 2007 Toyota Corolla—and that Ao was driving it that day.

The effect was stark: surveillance placed the car at Novara’s home from roughly 3:12 to at least 3:33, covering the exact period when the Fitbit showed the heart rate spike and stop.

Ao also claimed he saw Karen later drive past his own house, waving, with someone else in the car—an apparent attempt to suggest she was alive after he left.

But detectives said cameras near his neighborhood showed no sign of her vehicle at all.

With that, investigators concluded Ao had become their prime suspect.

And on September 25, 2018, they moved in.

“You’re being detained right now.”

Ao’s arrest had none of the drama of a high-speed chase.

It was abrupt, controlled, and—based on video—deeply confusing to the man at the center of it.

“What’s going on?”

“Turn around.”

“You’re being detained right now.”

At the station, detectives laid out what they said they had: the car, the timeline, the device data, and the narrowing window in which Karen Novara died.

One detective confronted him with the surveillance time stamps.

“There’s one… that shows your car parked in the driveway… right about 3:13 on the 8th.”

It showed the car leaving at 3:33, the detective said—about 20 minutes later.

Then the Fitbit.

“When we found Karen, Karen was wearing what’s called a Fitbit… it also has a heart rate monitor built into it.”

“The heart rate monitor indicated she passed at 3:28.”

Ao’s response, investigators noted, was not an explanation—just a collision of disbelief and denial.

“And I was there at 3:28.”

The detective pressed on: if she died at 3:28 and he left at 3:33, why did he leave after she was dead?

Ao insisted she was alive when he left.

“She came and closed the door,” he said, according to the interrogation.

But detectives pointed to another detail: pizza pieces found beneath her.

To them, it suggested she had been eating at the table when the attack occurred—not walking a visitor out.

“The data isn’t lying,” the detective told him.

The clothing evidence—and the dispute

After the arrest, investigators executed search warrants at Ao’s home.

According to court documents cited by investigators, they found clothing with stains: men’s pants with red-brown marks, a jacket with splatter, and a blood-stained shirt. They also described signs someone had tried to clean blood in the garage.

Testing, authorities said, indicated the blood belonged to Karen Novara.

Ao denied responsibility.

“I did not do it.”

“Never. Never.”

Detectives pushed him to explain how blood could be present on clothing in his home.

He said he didn’t know.

“I have no idea.”

The case, however, was never tested in front of a jury.

Ao pleaded not guilty.

And while prosecutors prepared, his health declined in custody. In August 2019, he was hospitalized due to complications from pre-existing conditions, authorities said.

On September 10, 2019, he was pronounced dead at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center at 6:12 p.m.

He was 91.

What remains—and what never got answered

To investigators, the timeline was the backbone: a heart rate spike, a heart rate stop, and a car in the driveway.

To the defense side, the posture was clear from the start: a not guilty plea, and no confession. Without a trial, no cross-examination tested the collection methods, the syncing assumptions, or alternative interpretations of the data.

Supporters of law enforcement argue the convergence was overwhelming—digital evidence meeting physical evidence, supported by shifting statements.

Skeptics and civil libertarians warn that even powerful technology must be scrutinized: devices fail, timestamps drift, and “data certainty” can become a seductive story.

What’s not in dispute is the human fact at the center.

Karen Novara didn’t come to work.

A friend went to check.

And a woman who lived quietly for years was found dead inside her home.

The rest—the motive, the final confrontation, the truth of what happened in those minutes between 3:20 and 3:33—ended up buried in a case that never made it to verdict.

## 91-Year-Old Man Has No Idea Police Are About to Arrest Him for Murder

He looked like any other senior trying to stay young.

Light on his feet.

Back straight.

The kind of 90-something people point at in admiration—*good genes*, *good habits*, *good luck*.

Then the police approached like they already knew the ending.

“Hi. Come over here.”

“What’s going on?”

“Let me see your keys.”

A pause.

A glance.

A beat where the world still felt normal.

“All right, turn around. Turn around.”

“Wait, wait, wait… what is that?”

“Hold on. You’re being detained right now.”

“No way. Oh my gosh.”

It was a clean arrest. No chase. No shouting. No spectacle.

Just the shock of a man who didn’t seem to understand why his morning had suddenly turned into a murder case.

Because to detectives, it wasn’t sudden at all.

It was the last move in a timeline they believed had been locked in for days—minute by minute, device by device, frame by frame.

A timeline that didn’t just accuse.

It *measured*.

### The coworker who couldn’t shake the feeling

Before there was a suspect, there was a worry people tried to talk themselves out of.

Karen Novara, 67, had been at the same job for decades—working as a pharmacy technician at Regional Medical Center in San Jose. She wasn’t flashy. She wasn’t loud.

Coworkers described her as steady. Routine-driven.

The kind of employee who doesn’t just disappear without a word.

So when she didn’t show up, the office did what workplaces do at first.

They assumed time off.

A mix-up.

A sick day nobody entered into the schedule.

Then the missed day turned into another.

Then another.

And what initially sounded like “maybe she’s resting” began to feel like something else: a quiet emergency.

Amber, her coworker and friend, was one of the people who couldn’t let it go.

She lived close enough to be asked to check.

She drove over with the mental script most people cling to—*I’ll knock, she’ll answer, she’ll laugh, it’ll be embarrassing, we’ll all be relieved.*

Instead she walked into the kind of scene that rearranges a person.

In a strained call to dispatch, Amber tried to translate panic into useful words.

“I’m reporting regarding my coworker… She didn’t show up for work for last two days.”

“I’m knocking at the door. She didn’t answer.”

“The door opened… she is sitting on the chair… her face is all black spots.”

“I got scared and came out… I don’t know if she is alive.”

Police were sent.

And as often happens, the first minutes were deceptively quiet.

A door.

A voice.

A careful entry.

“Hello, San Jose police.”

Inside, Karen Novara was seated at her dining room table.

Blood was visible in multiple areas, investigators later said—on the table, on the floor, splashed across the counter, even on curtains.

There was a deep cut across her neck.

And in her hand, a kitchen knife placed in a way that might have suggested suicide to an untrained eye.

But experienced detectives tend to distrust “neat” explanations when the room is anything but neat.

Because scenes can be staged.

And people who stage scenes tend to do it for a reason.

### The first story: pizza and cookies

Outside, as patrol officers began freezing the home like a photograph—don’t touch, don’t move, don’t step where you don’t need to—family members were contacted.

One of them arrived quickly.

Anthony Ao.

Karen’s stepfather.

Older than most suspects detectives ever interview.

But not frail. Not confused. Not slow, at least not on that day.

Investigators later said his demeanor struck them.

Not necessarily griefless.

But oddly unbothered by the kind of news that normally takes the air out of a person’s chest.

He offered to cooperate.

He offered to stay nearby.

“We’re going to leave everything the way it is right now,” an officer told him.

“Good idea,” Ao answered.

Detectives asked the obvious.

When was the last time you saw her?

“Friday,” Ao said initially, according to investigators.

And he added something that sounded almost tender—pizza and cookies.

A mundane kindness.

A small visit.

In many families, it would mean nothing more than that.

But in homicide investigations, mundane details are rarely just mundane.

They’re time stamps disguised as kindness.

And detectives keep them.

### The scene that didn’t behave like a suicide

As investigators studied the room, they started listing what didn’t fit.

Karen had multiple wounds to the head and face, they said—deep injuries consistent with a heavy weapon.

The blood patterns looked wrong for a single controlled cut, they believed.

The distribution suggested movement.

Struggle.

Violence.

The knife in her hand felt too convenient.

A prop rather than a cause.

Drawers had been pulled out. Items scattered. The house looked disturbed.

But detectives didn’t see clear signs of a true burglary.

Instead, they saw something that often shows up after a killing: a suggestion of robbery to cloud motive, confuse suspicion, and buy time.

Then came the medical examiner’s finding that solidified what detectives already suspected.

According to investigators, the injuries could not be self-inflicted.

Karen Novara had not done this to herself.

Someone else had.

Now the question wasn’t “why did she die?”

It was “who was in that house?”

And “when?”

### The quiet victim, the narrow circle

Detectives interviewed coworkers and people in Karen’s orbit, trying to locate drama that could explain rage.

A breakup.

A stalker.

A feud.

A desperate financial issue.

Anything.

But Karen’s life, as described by those around her, didn’t come with easy villains.

She kept to herself.

She didn’t talk about being harassed.

No known history of being victimized.

No obvious enemies.

But investigators kept returning to one thing: the small circle of people who had access.

The people who could visit without raising suspicion.

The people who could be inside her home without anyone thinking to call 911.

And in that circle, one name kept standing out because it had already placed itself there.

Anthony Ao.

### The second story: actually, it was Saturday

As detectives spoke with Ao more, they noticed what they say is one of the most revealing behaviors in any interview: a shifting narrative.

At some point, Ao changed the day he last saw Karen.

No longer Friday.

Now it was Saturday, September 8.

He said he brought homemade pizza around 3:00 p.m.

And he added another detail: later that day, he claimed, Karen drove by his house, waved at him, and someone else was in the car—someone he couldn’t identify.

A living sighting.

A neat little bow on the timeline.

Detectives didn’t treat it like a bow.

They treated it like a claim that could be tested.

Because you can argue with people.

You can’t argue with the clock—assuming the clock is right.

### The wrist device detectives treated like a witness

On Karen’s left wrist, investigators noticed a Fitbit Alta HR.

A fitness tracker that logs steps, movement, sleep—and crucially, heart rate.

To many people it’s a toy.

To detectives, it was a potential witness that didn’t forget, didn’t exaggerate, didn’t get flustered, and didn’t “misremember.”

If it was connected and syncing, it could tell them what every investigator wants early in a case:

Time of death.

Not a range measured in days.

A moment measured in minutes.

Detectives obtained legal process to access records connected to the device.

According to investigators, the Fitbit data showed something stark.

On September 8 at 3:20 p.m., Karen’s heart rate spiked.

Eight minutes later, at 3:28 p.m., it dropped and stopped.

If correct, it meant Karen died on September 8.

Five days before she was discovered.

It also meant something else.

That window collided directly with Ao’s “pizza visit.”

It didn’t merely overlap.

It sat right inside it.

### The driveway footage that tightened the noose

Detectives then looked for independent confirmation that Ao had been there.

Not hearsay.

Not a story.

Video.

They canvassed for cameras.

Ring doorbells.

Neighborhood systems.

Anything pointed at the street.

According to investigators, a camera angle captured the intersection near Karen’s driveway.

At 2:58 p.m., the driveway was empty.

At 3:12 p.m., a small dark gray compact car appeared.

Footage later at 3:14, 3:19, 3:21, and 3:33 still showed it there.

By 3:35, it was gone.

Karen’s mother later confirmed, investigators said, that she and Ao owned a dark gray 2007 Toyota Corolla, and that Ao was driving it that day.

So detectives believed they now had three things snapping into place:

A claimed visit.

A car in the driveway.

A heart rate spike and stop.

The pieces didn’t prove motive.

But they built pressure.

And pressure is often what breaks a story.

### The “she waved at me” claim meets cameras, too

Ao’s claim about seeing Karen drive past his house that day could have opened a door for him.

If true, it would suggest she lived after he left.

But detectives said surveillance near Ao’s neighborhood, covering the only entrance and exit, showed no sign of Karen’s vehicle that day.

In other words, investigators believed, the “wave” story was a fabrication.

A detail designed to do one job: pull her time of death away from his presence.

Once detectives concluded that detail wasn’t supported, the case tightened.

They obtained an arrest warrant.

And on September 25, 2018, they approached the 90-year-old man who still seemed, at least on camera, to be living like someone who expected an ordinary day.

### “You’re being detained right now.”

The arrest was fast.

“Hi.”

“What’s going on?”

“Turn around.”

“Hold on. You’re being detained right now.”

“No way. Oh my gosh.”

At the station, detectives sat him down and began doing what detectives do: walking the suspect back through the timeline, then watching where the suspect tries to move.

They started with the car.

“There’s… video camera footage… that shows your car parked in the driveway.”

“Right about 3:13 on the 8th.”

Then the leaving time.

“It also shows that car leaving at 3:33.”

They framed it almost casually—20 minutes, no big deal—until they paired it with the next piece.

The Fitbit.

“When we found Karen… she was wearing what’s called a Fitbit.”

“It also has a heart rate monitor.”

“The heart rate monitor indicated she passed at 3:28.”

Ao’s response was immediate, and to detectives, potentially revealing.

“And I was there at 3:28.”

It wasn’t a denial of being there.

It was an acceptance of the trap—followed by an attempt to escape it.

He insisted she walked him to the door.

That she closed it behind him.

That she was alive.

But detectives pointed to what they said was seen at the scene: pizza pieces on the floor beneath her.

To them, it meant she was eating at the table when the violence happened, not escorting him out like a guest.

“The data isn’t lying,” the detective told him.

Technology, the detective suggested, might be hard for a 90-year-old to grasp.

But the numbers were what they were.

They pressed him on the gap.

If her heart stopped at 3:28 and his car didn’t leave until 3:33, what happened in those minutes?

Ao’s answer didn’t change.

“I have no idea.”

“No. Why would I have an answer?”

Detectives pressed again.

“You left after she was already dead.”

Ao pushed back.

“She was alive when I left.”

A stalemate.

A suspect insisting on a memory.

Investigators insisting on a graph.

### The violence described in court documents

According to court documents referenced by investigators, Karen suffered multiple chop wounds to the head and upper body—injuries consistent with a heavy weapon, possibly a hatchet or axe.

Detectives alleged her throat was cut after she was already dead, and a knife was placed in her hand to stage the scene.

If that description is accurate, the brutality raises the question that people can’t stop asking:

What could trigger that level of rage?

And could a man in his 90s physically do it?

Investigators’ view was that age didn’t equal incapacity—especially if he was still active.

Ao, for his part, maintained absolute denial.

“Never. Never.”

### Search warrants and the clothing evidence

Investigators didn’t rely only on the timeline.

They went into Ao’s home with warrants.

And what they reported finding, they say, was damning.

In a master bedroom closet: pants with red-brown stains at the knees.

In the garage: a jacket with blood spatter and a blood-stained t-shirt.

They also alleged there were signs someone attempted to clean blood from the garage.

Laboratory testing, investigators said, indicated the blood belonged to Karen Novara.

Detectives confronted Ao with the idea that blood had traveled—onto clothing, into spaces that weren’t Karen’s home.

They showed him shirts.

They talked about “spots.”

They talked about patterns.

They talked about testing.

He insisted he couldn’t explain it.

“I have no idea.”

When asked directly whose blood it was, he didn’t offer a theory.

He offered disbelief.

“That belongs on my t-shirt.”

He denied killing her.

He denied protecting anyone.

He denied that his wife was involved.

But detectives kept returning to their central issue: in their timeline, he was in the house when her heart stopped.

“How can you explain that?” they asked.

“I have no explanation,” he replied.

### Two realities, one case

From law enforcement’s perspective, the logic was relentless.

A Fitbit shows the moment her heart stops.

A camera shows his car present then.

His story changes.

His “she waved at me later” claim isn’t supported by surveillance, detectives said.

And blood evidence, they alleged, follows him home.

From Ao’s side, the posture was also relentless.

He pleaded not guilty.

He did not confess.

He repeated that she was alive when he left.

And without a trial verdict, a jury never weighed the evidence, never heard competing experts debate the Fitbit interpretation, never tested assumptions about sync timing, device accuracy, or how the data should be read under cross-examination.

That’s the uncomfortable space this case sits in.

A narrative that feels, to some, airtight.

And to others, unfinished.

### The ending that stopped the courtroom story

Anthony Ao was charged with first-degree murder in the death of Karen Novara.

He pleaded not guilty.

But his health deteriorated while in custody.

In August 2019, he was transferred from jail to a hospital due to complications from pre-existing health issues, authorities said.

On September 10, 2019, at 6:12 p.m., he was pronounced dead at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.

He was 91.

It meant the case ended without the kind of public resolution people expect in a murder trial.

No verdict read aloud.

No sentence.

No final, definitive accounting of motive.

No courtroom showdown over whether a wearable device can become the star witness.

And no moment where Ao, under oath, had to answer the question detectives asked again and again in that interview room:

If her heart stopped at 3:28…

…and you didn’t leave until 3:33…

What happened in those minutes?

He never changed his answer.

“I have no idea.”

And Karen Novara’s final minutes—recorded as data, reconstructed through cameras, argued in interviews—remain, for many, a grim reminder of how modern investigations can be both clearer than ever…

…and still not feel complete.