Cara Rintala with attorney Luke Ryan Monday in Hampshire Superior Court in Northampton. (Photo by Republican Staff photographer Dave Roback)
By BOB DUNN
@BDGazette
NORTHAMPTON — Whether Cara Lee Rintala leaves Hampshire Superior Court a free woman or spends the rest of her life in a cell is now in the hands of 12 people she’s never met.
Prosecutors allege Cara Rintala killed her wife, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala, with her bare hands in 2010 after a tumultuous, violent relationship.
The defense team claims her arrest was the result of a myopic investigation.
Northampton defense lawyer David Hoose told jurors yesterday that other people in AnnaMarie Rintala’s life had greater motive to kill her than did his client. He also said surveillance video showing Cara Rintala on the day her wife was killed don’t show someone who killed her spouse, made an attempt to clean up the scene and fled the house to establish an alibi.
“The most depraved killer out there couldn’t do that,” he said.
“The Commonwealth cannot prove Cara Rintala committed this murder, because she did not.”
First Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Steven Gagne said evidence at the scene clearly implicated Cara Rintala.
“Would the bogeyman loan shark jumping out of the bushes in the shadows have spent any time at the scene cleaning up or would the person who lived there have done that,” he said.
Jurors received their instructions and began their deliberations yesterday afternoon, the 13th day of testimony.
Rintala, 47, has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge connected to her wife’s death at age 37 in the couple’s Granby home March 29, 2010.
Her first trial ended when jurors failed to reach a required unanimous verdict after deliberating for 25 hours, prompting the declaration of a mistrial in March, 2013. Testimony in the retrial began Jan. 9.
Defense closing statement
In an hour-long closing argument, Hoose admonished investigators in the case.
“It becomes clear, they’re not investigating a murder,” he said. “They’re building a case against Cara Rintala.”
Hoose said the only reason his client is facing the murder charge at all is because she was honest and forthcoming to investigators about her sometimes difficult relationship with her wife and her whereabouts the day of the killing.
The state police detective who conducted an interview with Cara Rintala the night of the killing was “salivating” waiting for her to confess to a crime she didn’t commit, Hoose said.
He said Cara Rintala didn’t suggest investigators look into people Annamarie Rintala had close relationships with, namely co-worker and friend Mark Oleksak and former girlfriend Carla Daniele, because she wasn’t aware of how intimate those relationships were.
He alleged that Oleksak “had more of a motive and less of an alibi” citing money she owed him and lies she told him. He noted that Oleksak failed to fully account for his whereabouts the day of her killing.
“I don’t know if Mark Oleksak killed Annamarie or if he had anything to do with it, and I don’t have to prove it,” said Hoose.
Hoose used Oleksak’s behavior following the killing as a basis for determining he was a person who should have been investigated more thoroughly.
“How creepy is someone who knows your spouse’s work schedule and who sleeps in their sleeping bag after she dies?” he asked.
The accuracy of the time of death estimate provided by the now-retired state medical examiner of six to eight hours or more was also a target of Hoose who called it, “irresponsible,” due to it being based on the observations of others at the scene called in over the phone.
“Time of death is an inexact science under the best of circumstances,” Hoose said. “These were not the best of circumstances.”
Hoose decried the validity of DNA evidence that identified a drop of blood on the exterior of the shower curtain lining in the home as Cara Rintala’s, but couldn’t determine how old it was.
“What is the relevance of drops of Cara’s blood anywhere in that house if they’re not from March 29, 2010? There is none,” he said.
Likewise, Hoose said, no conclusion should be drawn from a rag found in a McDonald’s trash can in Holyoke that contained a degraded sample of DNA that likely belonged to Annamarie Rintala, because there’s no way to determine how old it was and a defense expert said it was unlikely to become that degraded by the time it was found if had been fresh on March 29, 2010.
Hoose told jurors other DNA evidence found in the basement was inconclusive and suggested someone else besides one of the Rintala women was in that basement due to some samples showing a mixture of DNA types.
Hoose said Annamarie Rintala was adept at keeping secrets from people, even those closest to her.
“We would all be naive if we believe we know everything about Annamarie,” he said.
Hoose acknowledged the couple argued, sometimes intensely, but said they would quickly reconcile and put it behind them.
Hoose pointed out text messages between the couple that went from acrimonious to loving within a few hours.
Prosecution case
Gagne called Annamarie Rintala’s death “the ultimate act of domestic violence.”
“Tragically, but perhaps predictably, things went too far,” he said.
He told jurors in his hour-long closing that an admonishment of the couple by an Eastern Hampshire District Court Judge in 2009, suggesting the couple would lose their daughter if another complaint came through the court, may have left Cara Rintala feeling she had no recourse if another argument escalated.
Gagne said once Cara Rintala saw her wife dazed and bleeding at the bottom of the stairs, “there was no turning back.”
“Cara was all-in at that point,” Gagne said.
He also told jurors a compromise between the opinions of the two expert witnesses would still put the time of death around 1:15 p.m.
By Cara Rintala’s own accounting she would have been the only other adult in the house at that time, Gagne said.
Even more telling than the time of death estimate was a flurry of incoming and outgoing activity on Annamarie Rintala’s phone the day of her death that suddenly stopped by 1:53 p.m. when a text from Oleksak about his sister’s cancer went unread and unanswered, Gagne told jurors.
“That is because by the time that text message comes in, Annamarie Rintala is dead,” he said.
The condition of the basement and body presented “big problems” for Cara Rintala’s assertion she was away from home when her wife was killed, said Gagne.
First responders described Annamarie Rintala’s body as cold and stiff when they arrived at the home abut 7:15 p.m. but paint on the body and around the basement was still wet and fresh.
“Why is Ann’s body cold and stiff at 7:15 and the paint is wet and fresh?” Gagne asked.
Gagne said Cara Rintala poured the paint in the basement as an “act of desperation” and “one final attempt” to cover up evidence of her role in the slaying before police arrived.
Apparent clean-up efforts, including “wipe and swipe” marks revealed by forensic testing that showed the presence of blood, on a set of shelves near the body.
“Who would feel comfortable enough, who would take the time to stick around to try and clean up? Someone who lives in that house,” Gagne said.
Those clean-up efforts had an “undeniably frantic component,” to them, Gagne said, and may have been Cara Rintala’s undoing.
He told the jury that Rintala had used a shovel to stage the appearance of a break-in, but that she damaged only the doorjamb, not the door itself, which would have happened if it were a real break-in. He also said an intruder wouldn’t have put the shovel back in its original spot.
“She wasn’t using that shovel to try to get into that house nor was any random stranger,” Gagne said.
Gagne said Cara Rintala left the house and left several text messages and phone calls on her wife’s phone to create a “digital alibi”, despite her claim she left the home to give Annamarie an opportunity to rest before her night shift.
Gagne said by Cara Rintala’s own description of the route, there’s at least one hour during her trip she can’t account for.
“Where were you, Cara, during that time?” Gagne rhetorically asked the jury.
Gagne asked jurors to return with a guilty verdict, “not because I say so, but because the evidence and your common sense says so.”
Jury deliberations continue today.
Bob Dunn can be reached at [email protected].
