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When the first responders arrived at the house in western Massachusetts and walked downstairs to the basement, they were confronted with a bizarre scene, they later said: A wailing woman sat on the concrete floor cradling her wife’s corpse. Both women and the floor of the basement were covered in paint and blood.
Nineteen months after that rainy evening of March 29, 2010, Cara Rintala was arrested and charged with the murder of her wife, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala. Authorities believe that Cara, dealing with mounting financial pressures, marital discord, and a potential custody battle, killed her wife and hours later doused her body and the crime scene with paint in order to mislead investigators. Cara Rintala has consistently maintained her innocence, and her attorneys did not respond to questions from HuffPost.
Jury selection is currently underway in Cara’s murder trial, and her fate will be determined by a dozen members of her peers. For the fourth time.
The Rintalas, both paramedics, started dating in 2002, got married in 2005, and adopted their daughter as a newborn in 2007. Annamarie, 37, was outgoing and vivacious, while Cara, seven years older, was more reserved. Annamarie worked for American Medical Response in Springfield about 10 miles from their Granby home, while Cara was employed by the Ludlow Fire Department, slightly closer.
Annamarie had worked a night shift on March 28 and was scheduled to work the same shift, starting at 8 p.m., on the day she was killed.
While Annamarie was working on March 28, investigators said that a male friend was visiting Cara at their house, which upset Annamarie. She fired off a series of angry texts to her wife, authorities said, and the couple argued that night and the next morning. Shortly after Cara returned home from an afternoon running errands with their daughter, now a toddler, at about 7 p.m. on March 29, 2010, she noticed the basement door was open and saw her wife’s bare feet lying at the bottom of the stairs, investigators said she told them. Before going downstairs to check on her, however, the paramedic gathered her daughter and their dog, raced to a nearby house, asked her neighbor to take them and call 911, and rushed back home.
When paramedics arrived, they saw Annamarie’s lifeless body lying faceup across Cara’s lap, they testified. Her eyes were open and her arms were locked in a “hands up” position, and her body was so stiff that it took two first responders to pry her off her “hysterical” wife, they said. “Her entire body moved as one unit, like a board,” a police sergeant testified, referring to the rigor mortis prosecutors argued had set in hours before.
She had bled heavily from her head, said first responders, who also saw puddles, streaks, and smears of blood on the basement floor.
What made the scene so startling and confounding, though, was the paint. It was everywhere. Both women and the basement floor were covered in paint, which two paramedics and police officers later described as white, wet, and shiny. Photos from the crime scene show an overturned 5-gallon square bucket with paint spilling out of it near Annamarie’s body. Paint covered the floor beneath her body and drenched her thighs. Some of the paint appeared to be pink, first responders said, and an employee for a paint manufacturer later noted that it was designed to turn from pink to white as it dries for painting on white surfaces like ceilings. Exactly how long the paint had been drying would prove to be key evidence: After two mistrials, a paint manufacturer’s quality engineer testified and likely helped the jury reach a guilty verdict at a third trial — which an appeals judge then reversed after questioning the engineer’s methods.
First responders also said that Annamarie’s body was covered in bruises and that they believed several scalp wounds had caused the heavy bleeding.
That’s not what killed her, though. Any suspicions that Annamarie had died from a tragic fall or accident were thrown out when the medical examiner performed the autopsy.
Annamarie’s cause of death was strangulation, medical examiner Joann Richmond concluded.
Richmond testified at all three of Cara Rintala’s previous trials. She said she counted 23 bruises on Annamarie’s arms, legs, and back and she determined that severe injuries on her head had resulted from blunt force — being hit with a blunt weapon or from her head striking a blunt object or surface. She said it was possible Annamarie had suffered the injuries from falling or being pushed down the wooden stairs. Toxicology tests found no sign of drugs or alcohol in Annamarie’s system, Richmond said.
The bruises on Annamarie’s neck, abrasions on her chin, and ruptured capillaries in her eyes indicated that she had been manually strangled, causing her death, Richmond said, although the medical examiner determined her head trauma to be a contributing factor.
One thing the autopsy could not reliably determine, however, was Annamarie’s time of death.
The case hinges on where Cara was when Annamarie died — but experts disagree about exactly what time that was. Richmond testified at Cara’s first trial that she estimated Annamarie’s time of death to be between 11:15 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. — well before Cara left the house with their daughter to run errands — but acknowledged that she had listed the time of death as “unknown” in her first autopsy report. In subsequent trials, Richmond estimated Annamarie could have died up to 12 hours before she was found. But Elizabeth Laposata, a former state medical examiner who taught pathology and laboratory medicine at Brown University and testified for the defense, concluded that Annamarie had died hours later — between 2:30 and 5:30 p.m., she said. By that reckoning, Cara could have been out of the house when Annamarie was killed.
Cara’s movements were summarized in court based on investigators’ accounts of her interviews with state police, surveillance footage, sales receipts, and other evidence. The times below are approximate.
8 p.m. Annamarie arrived at work for the start of her 12-hour overnight shift. In the hours that followed, Annamarie and Cara sent a number of angry texts to each other. Annamarie was reportedly furious that Cara had a male friend at the house, and at one point texted her wife, “I hate this relationship.”
8 a.m. Annamarie left work and soon returned home.
9:30 a.m. Annamarie called her father.
10 a.m. Cara returned home after picking up a few hours of overtime at the fire department.
12:30 p.m. A call was placed from Annamarie’s phone to her aunt in Florida, who did not answer. It was the last recorded activity on her cellphone. (She received numerous texts and calls from her wife that afternoon, but never responded.)
3 p.m. Cara left the house and ran errands with their daughter.
5 p.m. Cara was spotted on surveillance footage at the Holyoke Mall, where she bought T-shirts and socks.
5:47 p.m. In security footage shown to jurors, Cara is seen circling a McDonald’s parking lot for a few minutes before getting out of the truck and throwing several items in a trash can in the rear of the parking lot. Investigators said they retrieved cleaning rags from the trash can, one of which they claimed had a faint bloodstain. They later said that DNA taken from the rag was too degraded to determine whether the stains were even human blood. Cara never explained why she discarded the rags there. She drove away without buying any food from the restaurant.
5:57 p.m. Cara arrived at the Stop & Shop supermarket, according to the surveillance footage, where a laundry basket and a red bag were seen in the bed of her truck.
6:19 p.m. Cara left the store and drove to a Burger King about five miles away, where she bought dinner for her daughter. The laundry basket and bag were still visible in the security footage, but authorities said these items were not in her truck when she arrived home, and they were never able to locate them.
7:12 p.m. Cara arrived at her…
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