- I'm craig melvin,
And this is dateline: Secrets uncovered.
- Ann's dad called me and told me ann was dead.
- I looked down the basement, could clearly see
Somebody's legs.
- Cara says, I don't know, maybe she fell down the stairs.
- I had nightmares for months.
- There was paint all over the place.
One of the most odd scenarios I could have ever dreamed of.
- What do you make of the paint? - To cover up.
It's simple as that.
- Things were moved before we got here.
This isn't what it's made out to be.
- I know they had their problems.
I think every relationship struggles.
- Annamarie was a big spender. She owed other people money.
- It was a relationship of extremes.
Hot, cold. Wild, calm.
- There's a guy named mark. - He was a married man.
Clearly, there was an emotional affair
Between mark and ann, at a minimum.
- When buttons are pushed, people get angry.
People get upset.
- A history making case.
And after four trials, a surprising verdict.
- Ladies and gentlemen, this whole investigation
Started with a lie. - It was a blow.
It was a real a gut punch.
- You know, love is crazy.
♪
- Hello, and welcome to dateline: Secrets uncovered.
Ann and cara rintala were trailblazers,
Among the first same sex couples in the u.S. To marry.
They appeared to have it all,
Juggling demanding jobs as paramedics
With raising a young daughter.
But when ann was found dead,
A series of ugly secrets emerged,
Handing detectives a complicated mystery.
Here's dennis murphy with down the basement stairs.
- March 29th, 2010
A dank, rainy day in granby, massachusetts.
Cara rintala, a 30-something mom,
Was out running errands with her two year old daughter.
When they got home around 7:00 p.M.,
They found something truly shocking.
Cara's wife lying at the bottom of the basement stairs.
Cara grabbed their daughter and raced to her neighbor's,
Then home again, this time alone.
She was.
When sergeant gary poller of the granby police department
Arrived at the rintala house about 7:20,
He heard cara before he saw her.
- It was, "she's dead. I can't believe she's dead."
Crying, uh, lots of crying.
- Nothing prepared sergeant poller for what he saw
When he went down those basement stairs.
There was cara rintala sitting on the floor
With a female-- look like a female party
Across her lap.
Later found out it was annamarie.
She had her eyes open. Her arms were out, um,
Extended like this.
- There was blood smeared and streaked
And something truly weird.
- Paint all over the place.
All over this female that she had across her lap.
- Within minutes, more first responders arrived.
A surreal scene because both cara
And her wife were paramedics,
Had worked with some of the same responders,
Now helping an hysterical cara out from beneath
Her wife's body.
- I said, oh my god, you know, you got to be kidding me.
The phone calls to family and friends started
Later that night, a shattered cara on the line.
The news heartbreaking, incomprehensible.
- It was devastating.
- 37 year old annamarie cochrane rintala
Was dead.
- Ah, it couldn't be-- it couldn't be true.
It's just wrong.
- As police videoed the basement,
Massachusetts state trooper jamie magarian,
The lead investigator arrived at the scene,
Studied it, let it talk to him.
Any obvious injuries to the victim here?
Are we talking about stab wounds,
Bullet hole, lacerations, abrasions?
- The things t-that strike me, you know,
There's a large amount of blood
And there's several lacerations to the head.
- It seemed as though the body had been there for a while.
- When I touched the deceased for the first time
With the rigor mortis setting in,
I thought how long that body had been on that floor.
- There was an open paint bucket at the scene
And paint, light colored paint everywhere.
- The paint, to me, is fresh paint.
It's wet.
There was a thin layer of paint on the deceased
That appeared to be dry in some spots,
But then there was other paint on the deceased
That was still wet,
And a large amount of paint on the floor that was wet.
- Did this look like the case of somebody who had
Taken a bad fall, and somehow ends up
Knocking into the paint cans
And causing the paint to spill over them?
- No, because in the configuration
Of where the deceased was in relation to the stairs
And where the paint bucket was, you couldn't fall
Directly down those stairs and tip that paint over.
- Other things spoke to the trooper--
Items on the basement floor with blood under them
Like a laundry basket. What's that tell you?
- It tells me that, you know, things in this crime scene
Were moved before we got here.
- Late that night, cara went to
The granby police department for an interview.
It was almost midnight
When detective lieutenant robin whitney hit record.
Turning the clock back to 8:30 that same morning,
When ann got home from her overnight shift.
Playtime with the couple's daughter, brianna, followed.
There was lunch and then a request from ann,
Who was trying to nap before another overnight shift.
And that's why, cara said, she and brianna ended up
On that afternoon of errands.
They left the house about 3 p.M.,
She told detective lieutenant whitney,
The goodbye to ann just matter of fact.
Mother and daughter shopped at the mall,
Going to mcdonald's to grab food and then-- change of heart--
Going to a burger king instead for mac and cheese.
Then home, brianna spotted ann's body first.
After she left brianna at the neighbors',
Cara went downstairs to ann.
And then, she said,
She sat with her arms around her wife's body.
It was a poignant picture, to be sure.
A dead wife, a devastated spouse,
A little girl who lost a mother.
But what had really happened at the bottom of those stairs?
♪ the news of ann cochrane rintala's death
Reverberated among her friends and family for days.
A young mother, her daughter, still a toddler,
Was dead on the basement floor.
How did you find out something awful had happened?
- I was at my desk at work, and my wife at the time
Called me and said, "sit down."
- I heard there was an accident. That's what I heard.
- A huge loss.
Because if ever there was a woman
Who took life in big gulps, it was ann.
She loved laughing, singing and parades on the 4th of July.
- The parade and the music and the fireworks.
And it was just, like, a huge celebration.
Like, that was ann.
Like, if she could have celebrated every day,
She would celebrate every day.
- Jen cochrane, ann's former sister in law.
- I remember my 30th birthday party.
She was there and she would be the emcee
And that was her.
I can't even explain what she would do.
And you would laugh to the point where your stomach would hurt,
But that was her.
- Even as a little girl
Growing up in a big irish-italian family
In springfield, mass, ann loved the limelight.
Her uncle pasquale martin.
The first time I had seen her take the stage
And sing mambo italiano, it just knocked me out.
- Not afraid of the spotlight? - Nah, she loved it.
- She could belt it out to the rafters,
But was she any good?
Her friends, tj donahue and mary patron
Aren't diplomatic. - She thought so.
- She was bra-- oh! - No, she-- she had--
She could carry a tune, but she thought
She was much better than she actually was.
- It didn't really matter. - It didn't.
- Because she had the charisma to kind of pull off anything.
- When she settled into a career,
The bright lights she went for were atop an ambulance.
That's how she came to be a paramedic.
That was another thing about ann,
She wasn't all, "look at me in the spotlight."
She wanted to serve, too. - She liked helping people.
So I'm not surprised that she ended up working with people.
- Did she like the adrenaline of it?
Running hot with the blue lights going?
- I would say yes. - I would say yes, 100%.
- You can see that in her character?
- Definitely. - Yeah, t-that's who she was.
- It was under those flashing lights back in 2002,
That and met another paramedic named cara rintala
And fell for her.
Like ann, cara was compassionate.
But, in other ways, she was ann's opposite.
If everything about ann was larger than life,
Everything about cara was contained, even cautious.
Sandy montana is cara's mom.
Carl montana, her stepdad.
- She had a plan. Always had a plan.
Was very, uh, conscious of where she was headed in life.
- After a couple of years together
Ann moved into cara's house in the western mass town of granby,
And they decided to adopt.
This is a real step, sandy. I mean, this is a commitment.
- Yeah. And so I don't think it was looked upon lightly.
I remember that cara wanted a 2 or 3 year old boy,
And they ended up with a six day old girl.
Weeks after brianna came into their lives,
Ann and cara quietly went to the courthouse and got hitched.
She and anna are defining their relationship
At a very prominent time in american sexual politics.
- Oh, yeah.
- And especially in the state of massachusetts,
Which was taking the lead on same sex relationships
And courts and all of a sudden,
Couples are getting married in the courthouse.
- Well, um, I don't think that cara would have gotten married,
But ann really wanted to have the same last name as brianna.
- In the years that followed,
There were happy times with brianna,
The little girl who meant the world to them.
A day before ann died, they attended service
At the reverend laurie souter serene church,
And everyone seemed so contented,
Fresh from a vacation.
- When I stand at the pulpit and I look around
And it's like they're here. They've returned.
I knew they were away in florida and they were full of light.
- When suzanne cordes, a friend from church,
Saw them after the service,
They struck her as a couple who had it all together.
- They were showing me pictures of a trip they had gone on,
And they seemed, like, perfectly happy.
- So how to explain that horror at the bottom of the stairs?
The investigators focused on that paint
All over the place, on the body and beside it.
They asked cara to explain.
It looked as though ann fell down those stairs.
But was it really an accident or something more sinister?
- I seriously... - You couldn't rule that out
At that point. - You can't--
You can't rule anything out.
- Trooper magarian was determined to find out.
Little did he know how long it would take.
♪ over time, investigators became convinced
That something sinister had happened
In the rintala basement.
Lead investigator jamie magarian.
- We have wet paint.
We know items are moved in the basement.
Those are all flags that come up.
- The medical examiner confirmed those suspicions.
Cause of death, strangulation. Ann was a homicide victim.
Her uncle, pasquale martin.
- Uh, t-that was tough.
- An accidental death would have been easier, wouldn't it?
- Of course it would. But to have somebody
Rob somebody from you-- steal, take, murder.
Just rip 'em from the world, I-I-- you know?
Hard to fathom, hard to swallow.
An accidental death, no one likes it.
But we're human. W-we deal with these things.
But this was far and beyond. Very hard to--
It's still hard to accept.
- Now, investigators were looking into a murder.
They began a deep dive into ann's life.
Prosecutor steve gagne and jenn suhl of
The district attorney's office joined the team.
They learned that while cara and ann both had male friends,
Ann's relationships could be complicated.
Take the things she had going
With a fellow paramedic named mark oleksak
- Mark oleksak was a very close friend of annamarie.
They started as coworkers,
Then became very, very close friends.
- The two were on intimate texting terms.
That last morning, ann texted mark,
Asking him to go to best buy for her.
Mark, at the time, is a married man.
- He was a married man, two children.
I think very clearly
There was an emotional affair, at a minimum,
That happened between mark and ann.
- Investigators didn't think the two had
A sexual relationship,
But it was clear they had a financial thing going.
Mark opened his line of credit to ann.
No small thing where ann was concerned,
Because her big passion was shopping.
- Ann's friends, tj donohue and mary patron.
- I do know that ann loves, um, jewelry.
She loves nice things-- - gadgets, right?
- Yes, gadgets, cameras. I mean she loved to spend money.
- And sometimes the spending got ahead of her.
Mark learned that. - He cosigned, I think it was,
Three total credit cards with her,
One of which had racked up about a $7,000 balance at one point.
- Another thing, when investigators asked mark
What he was doing the day of the murder,
He wasn't straight with the facts.
He told them he was at home.
Then he said he'd actually gone shopping and dined out.
That must make your nose twitch
When a guy doesn't give you the straight out story.
- I agree it's going to raise the suspicions a little bit.
- But mark had receipts for his purchases that day,
And his final text with ann were affectionate.
- Even the morning of the murder,
They were very lovey dovey on text messages
That particular morning.
- And you don't think the financial--
The outstanding debt gets you there?
- No, there was nothing to suggest that
Mark was upset about that outstanding debt.
She was paying him back for that debt.
- He seemed to be in the clear. Investigators, meanwhile,
Were looking at another possible,
A police officer named carla daniele.
Ann dated her before she met cara.
And perhaps more importantly, they had another fling
The year before ann's death,
When she and cara briefly separated.
- And from carla's perspective, perhaps the love of her life
Was coming back to her.
- And some more credit cards and more spending here, huh?
- Yes, and as with, uh, ann's friend mark,
Ann started to, uh, rack up a little bit of debt
On carla's behalf.
- Racked up about $10,000 on carla's card.
But then in late 2009, ann returned to her wife,
Left carla.
She was dumped, huh? - She was blindsided.
Carla said she was devastated.
She took it very hard.
- So was carla in the basement that March day?
Here's a person who was romantically involved,
Emotionally tied to her is dumped,
And there are money issues between them.
- She was on the short list of persons of interest or suspects,
Call them what you will.
- But carla told investigators she was at her gym,
A half hour drive from the rintala house
The afternoon of the murder.
She said she went out for a long run.
Security images supported her account.
Is carla's alibi rock solid, or does it have a window
For foul play?
- I would say it's pretty rock solid.
Unless she had access to a helicopter.
- So while carla might hypothetically fit in
To a motive for this crime, the facts of it dismiss her.
- Absolutely. - She's not there.
- Most importantly, too, she, much like mark,
Would have no idea, no way of knowing
That ann would be home alone at that time.
- That left investigators with a suspect
Who topped their list since the murder.
The person who knew ann best, who loved her
And who could get into it with her behind closed doors.
As cara admitted in her police interview...
Investigators learned their troubles were well-documented.
In 2008, ann had cara arrested for assault.
She dropped the charges.
A year later, the couple not only separated,
Each woman filed for divorce with ann asking for sole custody
Of brianna.
Each woman also applied for a restraining order
Against the other, brianna caught in the middle.
- When the other would try to pull brianna away,
That was problematic.
- So the child was the glue that held them together,
But it was also the source of a lot of this friction, huh?
- Correct.
- Money was an issue, too, as it so often was, with ann.
- Their finances were now starting to become co-mingled,
And ann's debt and ann's spending problems were part--
Starting to become a problem for cara, too.
- But in early 2010, they appeared to be
Working on their marriage.
In February, they went on that trip.
Then came March 29th, the bottom of the stairs.
And only one person investigators believed
Had the opportunity and motive to kill that day.
- All the evidence kept leading us
Right back to barton street, where that homicide occurred.
A stiff body and wet paint and cara's not working that day.
Whoever is in that house disturbing that scene,
Creating that break in, is very comfortable
That nobody else is coming home.
No one else has that comfort.
- But they knew they had a circumstantial case.
- If there was a weak spot, it was that there was
No single piece of evidence
Which conclusively said cara rintala killed her wife.
There were a lot of dots, a lot of puzzle pieces that
Needed to be connected here.
For a crime like murder, jurors nowadays,
More than ever, want something concrete.
They want forensic evidence. - Csi stuff,
They wanna see science. - Dna, fingerprint. Exactly.
- Didn't have it here. - Didn't have it in this case.
- Even so, 18 months after ann's death
In October 2011,
Cara rintala was arrested and charged with murder.
Cara's mom got a call to pick up brianna.
- And brianna, when I got there,
She said, why was mommy crying?
I had to think fast.
I said, "because she's a great paramedic
And they needed her for an important job.
And so they took her. And that's why she's crying.
Because she's not going to get to see you right away."
- Cara rintala became the first woman in massachusetts history
To be charged with the murder of her lawfully wedded wife.
An extraordinary journey
Through the criminal justice system
Was just beginning.
♪ - welcome back to dateline: Secrets uncovered.
I'm craig melvin.
Cara rintala was heading to trial
For the murder of her wife, ann.
Prosecutors believed cara strangled ann,
Then secretly staged the scene to look like an accident.
But without forensic evidence to back it up,
Would a jury believe the devoted mom
Was also a cold blooded killer?
Back to denis murphy with down the basement stairs.
- Prosecutors knew when cara rintala was arrested
In late 2011 for murder,
They had a mighty challenge on their hands.
And so it proved.
The trial opened in early 2013,
And it ended three weeks later with a hung jury.
- Breaking news... A northampton jury
Has failed to come to a unanimous verdict.
- A year later, in 2014, trial number two.
Same thing happened.
Incredible as it seems, another hung jury.
Ann's family, convinced that cara was the killer,
Was frustrated,
Wondering why a jury couldn't get there.
- I trusted her with my niece's life and she took it.
- Soon after, cara was bonded out of jail,
Free to spend precious time with brianna.
Meantime, prosecutors wrestled with the facts.
They had a circumstantial case.
No smoking gun, no eyewitnesses.
Would they go again?
You really do have to step back and say,
"are we going to do this a third time?"
- We did. The first thing we did was
We consulted with ann's family. They were on board.
And that, I think, gave us the strength
And the courage to step up again.
- So it was set.
Cara rintala would be tried a third time
For the murder of her wife, ann.
But first, cara had a heart to heart talk with brianna,
Now nine years old.
- She says some people think I did something bad,
Something terrible.
But I just want you to know that it's not true.
- In September 2016, trial number three opened here,
At hampshire superior court in northampton, mass.
Prosecutor steve gagne and jen suhl returned
With a streamlined argument.
- We were caught sort of in this trap
Of being responsive to the defense,
And we decided, let's play offense.
- In trial number two,
They put the possibles on the stand
Only to knock them down as viable suspects.
And that might have been confusing.
So this time, they were gone.
Now they focused on cara and the helpless victim
At the bottom of the basement stairs.
The wife who was strangled, they said
For as long as four minutes until she died.
- Her last precious breaths that she took on this earth
Were taken with the defendant's hands
Around her neck,
Squeezing, squeezing, squeezing and squeezing more
Until every last breath of her was gone.
- Prosecutors laid out a timeline for murder
That began with a nasty fight by text
The night before,
And working the overnight,
Angry when she learned cara had a male friend
Over to the house.
- "I hate the relationship we have.
"no one does that. No respect."
- Cara's response, "okay, you're being over-the-top and crazy."
- It really is, in our mind, a fuze being lit.
Something that continues to the next day.
- The next morning, the last of her life
Ann, a phone-aholic, called or texted
Friends and family members 58 times.
- I want to show you just one final entry here.
- The final call to her beloved aunt nancy
Was placed at 12:21,
Then, uncharacteristically, ann went silent.
- No, ma'am.
- No, I didn't.
- The timing of that last call was important,
Prosecutors argued, because they theorized
That karen murdered her wife soon after,
Then spent hours cleaning and covering up.
Remember that afternoon of errands?
Prosecutors showed security video
Of cara and brianna shopping
And argued it was part of the cover up.
- She leaves the house around 3:00, according to her,
But she doesn't pop up on surveillance video
Until 5:00 or so pm that evening
At the holyoke mall.
- Suddenly starts using her debit card
Left and right to make minuscule little purchases.
- So what was going on, do you think?
- She was trying to be seen.
She was trying to be elsewhere.
In short, she was creating a digital alibi for herself.
- An audio alibi, too.
Prosecutors played voicemails, all play acting, they said.
- The whole reason she's out
Is to try to let her get some sleep.
That just didn't add up.
- And now a pretty big deal, these cleaning rags.
- Can you just hold that up for the jury to see?
- Prosecutors said cara used them to mop up.
One contained a woman's dna,
Which the prosecution's expert said
Could have been ann's.
But it was what cara did with the rags
That prosecutors wanted to talk about.
That's her vehicle on surveillance video
Leaving mcdonald's.
- She decides to get out of her truck
In a pouring rain storm,
Walk over to the farthest most trash receptacle
In mcdonald's, dispose of three cleaning rags,
And drive away.
- Prosecutors also highlighted cara's odd behavior
After she saw ann's feet at the bottom of the stairs.
- Cara's a paramedic. This is her wife.
What does she do? Does she rushed down there?
Oh, my god, ann, are you okay? No.
- She raced to the neighbor's, prosecutors told jurors,
Then ran back home with one more job to do.
- Before the paramedics and the police arrive,
She makes one final desperate attempt
At covering up.
She picks up that container of paint.
She pours that paint.
- But instead of masking the evidence,
The prosecutor said,
That paint pointed to cara's guilt.
- The stiff body was clearly not something
That had just happened.
The paint being on the floor
Was something that had just happened.
- And now prosecutors played their ace.
They called a new witness to bolster their case.
Someone not heard from in previous trials.
Engineer, david giulianelli.
He really did watch paint dry,
Conducting dozens of lab experiments.
- Were you able to form an opinion
As to the time frame within which that paint
Applied to the floor? - Yes.
- And what is your opinion?
- Within approximately 30 minutes of the time
The first responders arrived?
- That would be many hours after prosecutors
Said ann died,
The final coat of a slapdash cover up.
But motivation.
Why did the more sensible one of the two,
By most accounts, turn on her fiery partner?
Prosecutors said the seeds were planted
Some ten months earlier,
And they played an audiotape from
A contentious court hearing to prove it.
- It was may 2009.
Ann and cara had each filed those restraining orders
Against the other.
A district court judge heard them
Sniping at each other and erupted,
Threatening to have dcf,
The department of children and families,
Take custody of briana.
- It was a turning point.
Because of the judge's warning,
Each woman now knew that one wrong move
Could cost them custody of the daughter they adored.
So the prosecutor's theory of what happened on March 29th,
There was a violent fight and ann went down those stairs.
Whether she was pushed or not, they couldn't say.
What mattered, they told jurors,
Was what happened at the bottom of the stairs.
- The defendant had to make a choice
Call for help,
Likely face criminal charges,
Lose her home, lose her daughter,
Lose her livelihood.
Or, on the other hand,
Make ann go away.
And she made her choice.
- Now it was over to cara's defense team.
They'd managed to avoid conviction twice.
Could they do it a third time?
- Down, kick, down, kick.
Cara rintala's family and friends agree
On a couple of things.
First, that cara is a great mom.
And if she has to sing herself silly
To entertain her daughter, well, she's in.
The second thing friends say is this.
Cara did not murder her wife, not in a million years.
Suzanne cordes.
- Cara would never do that.
The woman that I know,
The devoted, faithful mother that I know
Would never, ever do that to her wife.
- When the third trial commenced,
Friends and family sat behind cara in court,
Practically willing a victory.
Attorney david hoose opened as he had
In trials one and two for the defense.
- This case, ladies and gentlemen,
Is about unconscious bias,
A mindset that caused the investigators
And the experts to focus
On one theory, one person,
And to ignore everything that didn't fit.
- That one theory was, of course,
That cara murdered her wife
In the course of one final, terrible fight.
The mindset, attorney hoose said,
Was there from the very beginning
In the neighbor's 911 call.
Listen to the dispatcher's words.
- And attorney hoose said, remember this question
From detective lieutenant whitney
A scant seven minutes into the lengthy police interview
On the night ann died.
- Even that powerful voice from court.
- Cara's side insisted that noisy scolding
From the judge
Was anything but the trigger for murder.
Did that scare them? - Yeah, absolutely.
That was when they did a turnaround,
And they decided they had to, you know, grow up.
- Straighten up for the daughter.
- Yeah, pretty much.
- And by March 2010,
Although prosecutors hadn't acknowledged it,
The defense told jurors the couple had put
Their troubles behind them.
- They focus on a nine month period,
Which was undeniably a rocky patch
In this relationship.
A nine month period out of a nine year relationship.
- But what about that angry volley
Of text messages the night before the murder?
The fuss over cara's male friend's visit?
Attorney hoose hit that hard.
- The commonwealth wants you to believe
That this was the battle of all battles
And the fight that ended everything.
Well, you know, you've gotta have some proof of that.
And they don't.
And I'll tell you why.
You can look at these texts, and once again,
Cara is the calm one.
Ann is the one who goes from 0 to 60
In about three seconds.
- And by the next morning, the defense attorney said,
Ann was going her breezy way,
Promising her buddy mark that big kiss in a text.
- Not a word about fighting with cara.
Not-not a word, even like, uh,
Gee, things aren't too good around here right now.
Cara and I had a big fight.
Nothing like that.
- Then to that afternoon of errands
And from cara's side, an explanation
For the trip to that trash can at mcdonald's.
- Because that's what they did. - Pay.
- They had to pay for their trash bags in granby.
So they were dumping their trash
Wherever and whenever they could.
- Very low levels.
- The defense brought in its own expert
To knock down the prosecutor's argument
That one of the rags contained ann's dna.
- I have no idea who--
What the source of the dna on that rag is.
- It's-it's a solid paint--
- But perhaps the most damaging evidence against cara
Was the paint.
Attorney hoose went after the prosecution's paint guy
On cross.
His weapon of choice? Sarcasm.
- You are the first guy, far as you know,
Who's ever testified about reading wrinkles
And cracks in paint. Is that correct?
- That I'm aware of. - Yeah.
Congratulations, you're the first, as far as we know.
- Your honor, can we please change the tone here.
- The defense attorney had to persuade jurors
That cara hadn't poured the paint.
He accused the paint expert of buying into
The first responders' observation
That the paint was wet.
- And your first responders' responses are--
Uh, these are people you've never met, correct?
- Correct. - You don't know
How much training they have,
If they've ever even seen a bucket of paint before.
Correct? - Correct.
- Yet you're willing to credit their subjective impression
That the paint was either wet or shiny, correct?
- Correct.
- Finally, the defense called of all people,
State trooper jamie magarian.
In the first two trials, the lead investigator
Had been a heavyweight witness for the prosecution.
Not this time.
The trooper was vital to the defense theory
Of a keystone cops investigation.
And the defense attorney had pressing questions for him.
- Is he going to say,
Investigator, you ran a shabby case here,
You didn't secure the scene? - Yeah, certainly.
- There were tests you didn't run.
There were things to be known.
You're relying on this junk science
Of how paint dries. - Yes, that's his job.
He just needs one nugget of doubt.
- In pursuit of that nugget,
The defense attorney grilled the investigator
About the two people of interest.
First, mark oleksak.
Remember, he changed his alibi.
But what motive could he have for murder?
Well, maybe this.
Ann the drama queen had angered him
When she left her wife for her old girlfriend.
- He described that he had a big fall out
With, uh, ann, is that correct?
- Yes. - And the fallout was
When he became aware that ann
Was seeing an old girlfriend, correct?
- Yes.
- An old girlfriend named carla daniele, correct?
- Correct.
- A wisp of doubt, perhaps,
Dating back to ann and cara's separation.
And what about carla?
Remember, she said she'd been miles away at the gym
And out running on the day of the murder.
Security images seem to support that account.
But the defense produced a bank record
Dated the day of ann's death from an atm
Closer to the crime scene than the gym.
- Did you ever ask her about how that could have happened
If she was running in east longmeadow?
- I don't know that--
I never asked her that.
- The name of the game for criminal defense lawyers
Is creating reasonable doubt.
Had hoose managed to do that?
We've got the answer next, and more.
We'll tell you why this case was still
Making headlines years later.
- This is the most unusual procedurally, uh, unique case
That I've worked on in my 20 some odd years
Of being a prosecutor.
♪
- Welcome back.
In trial number three, cara rintala's attorneys
Were determined to prove she did not kill her wife, ann.
They argued at least two others close to ann
Had motive for murder.
But could they convince the jury?
It was about to weigh in?
And in a story full of twists, there were more to come.
Here's denis murphy with the conclusion
Of down the basement stairs.
- The jury deliberated for one day,
Two days, three days.
Would it be another hung jury?
That was the question.
- If the defendant would please rise.
- It would not.
On day four, a verdict.
- She's guilty of murder in the first degree.
- What!? - What!?
- Guilty of murder one.
The most severe charge.
- You are so wrong.
- After two hung juries, it was a stunner, all right.
And the sentence was mandated.
- My daughter-- - life without parole.
- This sucks.
- It's like you can't believe it.
There's nothing, nothing, to point to cara.
How could this possibly be
The worst possible outcome? How?
- Team cara struggled to accept the verdict.
In prison, cara struggled, too,
Figuring out how to be
A long distance mother to brianna,
Who went to live with carl and sandy.
Everybody holding onto hope for a successful appeal.
That took years.
Attorney chauncey wood argued the case.
The core of our argument was that
The commonwealth introduced an opinion
From a fellow who claimed to be
An expert on paint.
And in fact, the opinion he delivered
Was not reliable.
- Five years after cara was convicted,
Wood's argument carried the day.
- The state's highest court has overturned
The 2016 murder conviction against cara rintala.
- It was a blow. It was a real, uh, gut punch.
- Prosecutor steve gagne prepared to have
Yet another difficult talk with ann's family.
Ann's father bill had passed by that point.
Our concern was, can the family
Even get through another trial?
But after some thought and after some deliberation,
They said, we're willing if you're willing.
And, uh, and we decided to go again.
- Good morning. Now before the court,
Is hampton county indictment--
- It's rare that someone stands trial
Four times for murder.
But that's what happened here.
Cara rintala's fourth trial opened in September 2023.
The prosecution pare down its witness list again.
This time, there would be no paint expert.
Instead, they stuck to what they thought
Was their strong suit.
- I would say the strongest part of our case,
In my opinion, was the time of death.
- The prosecution called a former chief medical examiner
To the stand.
- Did you in fact form an opinion
As to annamarie rintala's estimated time of death.
- My review of the evidence suggests that
Annamarie rintala died in a window of time
Between mid-to-late morning and early afternoon.
I think the evidence does not support
Death having occurred
Any later than 1:00 or so.
- And cara, by her own admission,
Was in the house until about 3:00 pm.
So that was, I think, our bedrock
Throughout this case.
- The prosecution had merely tweaked its case.
But the defense...
- Ladies and gentlemen,
This whole investigation started with a lie.
- There was a brand new team for trial four,
Led by a brash boston attorney named rosemary scapicchio.
- We put our heart and soul into her defense
Because we believe in her and we believe in her innocence.
- In this case...
- Scapicchio pounded home the message
That the investigators wore blinders
And never looked seriously at other suspects.
- They were only looking at cara rintala,
And they were working really hard
To make the pieces fit.
And if you don't look anywhere else,
If you keep those blinders on,
Then you don't have to do the rest of the investigation.
- Time of death was key to the defense case, too.
Scapicchio went after the prosecution's argument
That ann died before cara left the house at 3:00 pm.
She put her own medical expert on the stand
To cast doubt on the prosecutor's timeline.
- Give an opinion as to whether or not you could
Rule out annamarie rintala dying after 3:00.
- I cannot rule that out.
- Ladies and gentlemen, when you take the blinders off
When you look at the information regarding time of death,
Without blinders,
You'll come to one conclusion.
And that's the commonwealth has failed
To prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Because cara rintala didn't kill her wife.
- With that, a fourth jury got the case.
- You know, you can't predict what a jury's doing.
You always have hope that
Your client's going to walk out the door with you.
- What say you, madame foreperson?
- Not this time.
- We, the jury, unanimously find the defendant
Guilty of voluntary manslaughter.
- Not murder one, the verdict of her last trial,
Not even murder two.
This time, the jury found cara rintala
Guilty of a lesser charge that carried a lesser sentence.
But still, a loss for the defense.
- Devastating, to have your client stand next to you
And have a jury come back and-and say that she's guilty,
Uh, and understand, then, that she's probably
Going to go back to jail is just devastating.
- Two weeks after the trial ended,
Everyone was back in court for sentencing.
Cara in handcuffs, her daughter brianna, now 16,
In tears as she appealed to the judge
For her mom's release.
- I need my mom.
This case started when I was very young.
I do not remember my mother ann at all.
The only mother I have ever remembered is cara.
- There is not enough words in the dictionary
For me to explain my hurt, my pain.
- I'm asking you to release my mom right away--
- Ann's former sister-in-law jen cochrane was in court
For the sentencing.
She found brianna's statement hard to sit through.
- The fact that I was witness
To brianna sitting in that courtroom
And didn't even call her mom.
Called her ann cochrane.
She did not know who she was.
And there's one person to blame for that.
- Cara was sentenced to no less than 12 years
And no more than 14,
With credit for the more than seven years
She'd already served.
Another appeal is in the works.
It had been more than a dozen years since ann died.
Jen, for her part,
Said she still missed that exuberant spirit.
- I don't want people to remember
That she was lying on the basement floor,
Covered in paint.
I want them to remember her
The way that I do, which is her infectious smile.
And I want that memory.
I don't want the bad memory.
- Annamarie cochrane-rintala,
A woman who took life in big gulps,
A joyous soul with a huge smile
And a heart to match.
- And that's all for this edition
Of "dateline: Secrets uncovered".
I'm craig melvin. Thank you for watching.