Oura Ring could lead investigators to body of Utah National Guardsman allegedly murdered by his cheating wife

A guy goes to sleep next to his wife and never wakes up, and the thing that might finally bring him home isn't a confession or a witness. It's a $300 piece of jewelry that tracks his heart rate and his sleep cycles. There's something almost biblical about that. The device meant to optimize his wellness may end up being the thing that convicts the person who ended his life.

We keep hearing that we live in a surveillance state and mostly we mean the government, cameras on every corner, phones listening in the kitchen. But this case is a reminder that we've built the surveillance state ourselves, one gadget at a time, because we wanted to know our resting heart rate. Nobody made this soldier strap on an Oura Ring. He just wanted to sleep better. It turns out the data trail he left behind may be more honest than the woman who was lying next to him.

There's a darker layer here too. A National Guardsman, someone who wore the uniform and presumably trusted the person he married, allegedly murdered in his own bed after what's being described as a night of infidelity and drinking. That's not a policy failure or an institutional scandal, it's just old-fashioned betrayal, the kind that's been ending marriages and lives since before anyone had a ring that counted your steps. Technology didn't create this evil. It just might be what finally exposes it.

If the ring leads them to his body, that's a small mercy for a family that deserves to bury him properly. It won't undo what was allegedly done to him, but it might be the one piece of justice his wife can't talk her way around.