Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Annamarie Cochrane Rintala

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Just like love knows no gender, neither does jealousy, dysfunction or murder. In honor of domestic violence awareness month we are partnering with The Network/La Red to bring awareness to issues of domestic violence within the LGBTQ community. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-annamarie-cochrane-rintala/ 

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Brett. And today, I want to tell you a story that is really important to me because it emphasizes the importance of an issue. We've spent a good amount of time on this show. As many of you may know, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And this month, I felt that it was really important to highlight this issue and specifically highlight it within the LGBTQ community. I actually recently read an article from the Boston Globe where the director of this organization

called The Network of Red was interviewed. Her name was Beth Leventhal, and she actually said that domestic violence is very much under-recognized within this community. So we want to bring attention to it here. Because just like love knows no gender, neither does jealousy, dysfunction, or murder. Our story starts in western Massachusetts, and one of the best, or maybe worst things depending on how you look at it, about a region like this is that everybody knows everybody. Or if you don't know them, you probably know someone who does. And this is also true of groups within those communities, like paramedics, local law enforcement,

emergency medical personnel. Everyone is familiar. Anna Marie Cochran-Rintala grew up in a big, tight-knit Italian-Irish family in western Massachusetts. She loved animals and especially loved her dog who she named Snuggles. And she had another dog named Charlie, which is a great name for a dog, I'm just saying. So it was very clear from a young age that she had a heart for service. According to Daily Hampshire Gazette, Ann Marie initially wanted to actually be a veterinarian when she was growing up, but she eventually found her pathway in helping people instead, and she chose to be a paramedic. It's a really unique person that it takes to be a paramedic.

It's a super stressful job where the stakes couldn't be higher. You literally have someone's life in your hands. You hold it close and you try and keep it safe. It is a service job in every sense of the word. Oh, definitely. And it's not a job where you just wake up one morning and go, I think I'm going to change careers and hop in the back of an ambulance. You have to go to school and get special training and certification. You have to really want and love to do this. Exactly. And finding a calling can be a really important part of growing up and maturing into adult,

but it's far from the only thing that matters. There's, you know, puberty, life experience, happy things, embarrassing things, making mistakes, you know, forging milestones and so much more along the way. And you start to learn who you are. And for Anna Marie, growing up also meant figuring out that she was a lesbian. She didn't come out to her family right away. In 1988, Anna Marie was 16 years old. The AIDS crisis had been raging for years, leaving fear and shame and death in its wake.

This was the same year that HIV positive Indiana teenager Ryan White testified in front of the presidential commission on the HIV epidemic. So it was in the news. It was everywhere. It was a really frightening time to be an LGBTQ person, especially an LGBTQ young person. Yeah. I mean, I cannot imagine how hard that must have been for them. Well, yeah. And especially since Anna Marie went to Catholic school and came from like a very religious background, there was no guarantee of affirmation or tolerance or even a safe place to live

once her family found out. And it's actually a really interesting story that Anna Marie's Uncle Pat told Boston Magazine of how he tracked her down one day in this like grungy motel one night when she's like 16. And he was sent there by her family, like fully expecting her to be in the room with like a boy. And they were like, we don't want to like be the ones to find her like you go find her. We know she's there with a boy. And he opens the door and it's a girl instead. And that's how her family learned about her sexual orientation.

Fortunately, Anna Marie was very lucky and her family was totally fine with it. They didn't do anything horrible. They didn't throw her out. They didn't force her into any kind of conversion therapy or anything like that. They loved and accepted her for who she was. And she was so relieved. Anna Marie had a big personality. She was super outgoing, always ready with a joke or a smile. And she lived her life by a simple motto, live, laugh, love.

She put her desire of helping people to good use in her career as a paramedic. And in this job in 2002 is where she meets Kara Rintala. Kara's seven years older, also a paramedic. And personality wise, she could not be more different from Anna Marie. She's quiet, reserved, and where Anna Marie is boisterous, Kara is less impulsive and she's more deliberate in how she responds to things. Now, when they start dating, family and friends of both Kara and Anna Marie think that it's kind of a strange match.

But you know, like you've probably heard the saying before, opposites attract, right? Plus, they both understand how demanding the other's job is and that can be hard to find in a prospective partner. So by 2005, things seemed to be going great from the couple from the outside looking in. Anna Marie moves in with Kara that year where they share Kara's house in Granby and work on building a life together. Now, their little family grows quickly after they move in together because soon after, in 2007, they adopted baby girl named Brianna

and they get married a short time later. And I want to underscore what a huge deal this was for them. Massachusetts, where they were living, was the first state to have legalized same-sex marriage back in 2004. So like I said, from the outside, things were looking picture perfect. They were able to get married, they had their beautiful baby girl, they both worked rewarding and fulfilling jobs, all is well for a time. But the same things that make these two opposites attract eventually start to grate on both women. And one of their biggest marital strains is how each woman believes they should handle their finances.

Anna Marie is a big shopper to the point where I think everyone would probably call it a problem. She basically spends the way she lives her life. In other words, to the max. She gets into thousands of dollars of debt buying expensive camera equipment, gadgets, like you name it. And her spending has some serious financial implications for the people that she's closest to and especially for Kara. Together, they accumulate almost $100,000 of credit card debt. Oh my God.

Yeah, and money becomes a big sore spot in their marriage. I literally just read something in a Psychology Today article that said that arguments about money is like one of the top four stressors in any sort of intimate relationship. And I totally believe it. Oh yeah, I don't doubt it for a second. So Anna Marie and Kara start fighting about money, but that leads to fights about other things. Everything. And soon, their once harmonious relationship turns toxic.

By September of 2008, their marriage is in a really bad place. Anna Marie goes to the police and actually files a restraining order. And according to Edge Media, Anna Marie told police Kara had quote, struck her in the back of the head with a closed fist. And you know, it's kind of interesting. We don't know for sure when the abuse started in their relationship or exactly what form it took. There could have been name calling, gaslighting, or manipulation before any of this happened. We just don't know.

I mean, we've talked about this before. Domestic violence can escalate over time and it can take more than one form. So it's totally possible that verbal abuse or emotional abuse already occurred. And it's actually probably likely before Anna Marie actually files this restraining order. Now, Kara's arrested and charged with domestic assault and battery, but the charge is later dropped at Anna Marie's request. And we've seen this happen in other cases too. I think we talked about it in the last episode where we talked about domestic violence.

It is not unusual at all for people to go back to their abuser time and time again. It might seem so easy from the outside to talk about just walking away, but for the person in that relationship, it is hard to leave. So the two reconcile, but this is where things start to get tricky. Because the same time all this is happening, both Kara and Anna Marie, each start developing interesting relationships that will prove to complicate this case. So during this time, each woman becomes really close with male friends. Like each of them had their own separate male friend.

Okay, like how close? Emotionally close. Like it's strictly platonic and there's no evidence whatsoever to even suggest that either friendship even turned sexual or crossed romantic lines. But there's definitely some emotional ties being formed here. See, Anna Marie is super close with her co-worker Mark to the point that Mark even gives her a credit card. And of course, because of Anna Marie's spending habits,

it doesn't take long for her to spend over $7,000 on his card. Yeah, so in the words of the DA who was on like a date line special, it is very much an emotional affair. Now, meanwhile, Anna Marie and Kara's relationship isn't improving. In fact, it's getting worse on May 12, 2009, someone in their home called 911 and the dispatcher hears a woman's voice yelling like, just leave, just leave. Now, both Anna Marie and Kara say that it was their two year old daughter Brianna who accidentally dialed the number.

But that same day, Kara actually files for divorce. And according to court records, Anna Marie and Kara both cited irretrievable breakdown as their grounds for ending the marriage. A couple of weeks after filing for divorce from Anna Marie, another call is made to 911, this time by Kara. Now, she's so upset that the dispatcher can barely understand her. And eventually they're able to pick up that she's panicking about Anna Marie taking their daughter Brianna away from her.

And as a result of this call, they actually end up both going to court, both filing restraining orders against each other, but their tempers don't cool off at all. By the time they're in court, which we know doesn't happen the next day, they're like still arguing so bad in front of this district court judge that according to Boston Magazine, the judge tells them, quote, I don't think either of you are stable enough to be parents and I am this close to filing criminal charges against both of you, end quote.

Oh my God. So you can see that this is just getting so messy. Yeah. I mean, that's not even a healthy environment for a kid to grow up in either. Right. And the judge's warning does its job though. It's a huge wake up call to both Anna Marie and Kara of just how bad their relationship has gotten and how bad it is for Brianna to be around it.

And they get this like, holy crap moment, like we could actually lose custody of our child. Anna Marie and Kara decide that the best thing to do for the two at this point is to separate. Anna Marie is the one who moves out of the house while Brianna stays with Kara in the house. Sometime in June of that same year, Anna Marie gets back together with her old girlfriend, Carla,

who was also a member of this like tight knit emergency personnel community. Now in Carla's case, she's not a paramedic. She's actually a police officer in Springfield where Anna Marie grew up. Their relationship moves pretty fast. And within a couple of months, they move in together. Just like with Mark, Anna Marie gets access to Carla's credit. And again, within just a few months, spends a ton of money. Do you want to guess how much money she spends on this girl's card?

Oh, let's see. With Mark, it was $7,000, right? Mm-hmm. I'm going to go $12,000. It was 10. You went a little overboard. But so $10,000. So much.

Can you even imagine? Now, so at this point, she's already racked up over $17,000 of debt, not even in her own name. Her shopping addiction is getting out of control. I honestly can't even imagine, like, what is she spending all this money on? Well, so she loved photography and she was like a budding amateur photographer. So according to the Daily Hampshire Gazette, she was like obsessed with Canon camera equipment.

And I don't know if you know a lot about that kind of equipment, but it adds up really fast. Just looking at their website while I was researching for this episode, I mean, I could see where her or anyone else could easily spend a lot of money on camera bodies, like fancy lenses, accessories, like all of it. Right. You could easily go to the store one time and spend $10,000. So by November 2009, Anna Marie and Cara have been separated for about six months.

Their tempers have cooled a little. They're trying to work through their issues and they've even separated their finances to reduce that stress on their marriage. Now, regardless of anything else, they still have a child together. And at some point they decide that the most important thing is that their daughter grows up in a two-parent household without having to go back and forth for visitation. And so they decide to get back together once again and give their relationship one last shot. So Anna Marie breaks up with Carla and moves back to the Gandy house with Cara.

Now, despite having almost $100,000 of credit card debt between the two of them, Anna Marie and Cara decide to take this exciting Caribbean cruise. Now, on this trip, they're determined to turn over a new leaf and they even decide to renew their wedding vows. Their plans for a beautiful new future are well in motion. But then the plan goes so far off the rails, no one could have seen it coming. The cruise wasn't the answer to their problems. In fact, if anyone was paying attention, nothing in their relationship had changed. Even before the cruise ship left when they were at a relatives house in Florida,

Cara was still making verbally abusive comments to Anna Marie. Though they might have ignored all of these signs early on, it didn't take long to recognize that despite their attempts to fix their marriage, Anna Marie and Cara's relationship was still a toxic combination and they were still fighting. Though most of their fights now revolved less around money and more around their respective male friends. And this is actually most evidently shown in this like text exchange between Anna Marie and Cara on March 27, 2010. Anna Marie had gone into work for an overnight shift and throughout her shift, she was like text yelling at Cara about how she was so hurt and so upset that Cara was hanging out with her guy friend Mike.

Okay, wait, there are a lot of moving pieces and people in this story. I just want to get this straight. Yeah, a lot of them have the same name too, or kind of the same name. Anna Marie was the one who initially became really, really close to that other guy, Mark, that he gave her a credit card and let her spend all that money, right? Right. But Anna Marie is mad that Cara is also spending time with a close guy friend, this Mike guy. Yes.

Doesn't that seem a little bit hypocritical? I mean, it totally does. And I think at this point, it's just another sign of how gnarly and messed up their relationship is, that they're both super jealous and possessive over each other's time. And just to show you how unhealthy it was, like, I'll actually read you some of the text messages. They were actually posted in Boston Magazine. So Anna Marie writes, quote, and this is in all caps, mind you, quote, it's becoming very clear how you feel about me. I don't like feeling this way. You are my wife. I hate the relationship we have.

End quote. To which Cara replies, quote, okay, you being over the top and crazy for no reason. It's okay. He's my friend, period, not doing anything wrong. End quote. And then Anna Marie comes back, quote, you are rude. I'm going to leave. You don't give a shit. You are rude and disrespectful. End quote. Wow, that's really intense.

Yeah, not awesome. So after this shift where Anna Marie spends most of it fighting with her wife over text, she comes home like she would on any other morning. It's 8am and she's likely tired from working a full shift, likely tired from arguing with her wife and ready to get some sleep. But she can't rest right away because Cara gets called into her job at this other fire department. So Anna Marie is left with Brianna, but not for too long because it actually turns out that they didn't need Cara. So Cara ends up climbing back in the car and heads home to relieve her wife.

So she just gets home like a couple of hours later. It was one of those things where she basically showed up and they were like, nah, just kidding. We called you, didn't need you. So when Cara gets home, she decides that the best thing to do is probably to take Brianna out of the house for a while while Anna Marie sleeps. Because listen, I don't have a kid, but I have enough friends who have kids to know that if a baby is not sleeping, you're not sleeping either. No one is sleeping. Yeah, right. So Cara goes out with Brianna.

But when she walks out the door that day, her life would be forever changed. When she and her daughter get back home from their outing around 7pm, Anna Marie is nowhere to be found. Not up watching TV, not in her bed resting. But Cara notices that the basement light is on. So she goes to check and what she finds is horrifying. There at the bottom of the basement stairs is Anna Marie's broken, lifeless body. She's wearing just jeans and a sports bra, no shirt. Her face is bloody and swollen.

And interestingly, she's like covered in paint. Now, according to Mass Live, their daughter asks mama down there, which is heartbreaking. But Cara can't even answer. She just scoops her up in her arms, bolts out of the house, running to the next door neighbor Roy's house. When he answers the door, she thrusts her daughter into his arms and screams for him to call 911. And freaking out, Cara runs back home to Anna Marie's side. But what really struck me here is she doesn't attempt CPR or anything. She just holds her even though she's a paramedic.

I don't know why it feels off to me. You'd think she'd spring into action and start performing these life-saving measures. Okay, but I bet there's a huge difference in working on a stranger like you're trained to do and then having to work on a friend or a family member. And I know we say it all the time, but you never know how you're going to react in this sort of situation. Yeah, no, that's totally true. So it's there at the bottom of the basement stairs clutching her wife's lifeless and paint-cover body that police find Cara about 20 minutes later.

But here's the thing. It's kind of a strange scene. There's Cara sitting on the ground cradling Anna Marie in her lap sobbing hysterically. And one of the first sergeants on the scene, someone who knows Anna Marie, doesn't even recognize her at first. Her face is bloated. It's distorted, covered in blood. And not only that, there's that paint everywhere. It's this pinkish-white paint, like the color almost of like Pepto-Bismol mixed with milk.

And it's all over the floor and all over Anna Marie, still wet. There's an open paint bucket of this ceiling paint down in the basement. So police at first are kind of wondering if Anna Marie fell down the stairs and maybe she like tumbled and spilled the paint as she was falling. It takes two officers to help maneuver Anna Marie's body off Cara. Like hardcore crime junkies will know that rigor mortis starts between like two and six hours after death. And when they're pulling her off of her, her body is already in rigor mortis. They've already started stiffening. Eventually, though, police manage to move her so that Cara can get up.

And at this point, she's still freaking out understandably. But she says something that instantly makes police go, wait, what? The first thing she says when police get Anna Marie off her according to Boston magazine is, quote, I understand I'm the number one suspect. And quote. That's not a great look. Yeah, it's strange, right? Because we said just a little bit ago with that paint everywhere, everyone kind of thought maybe it was an accident. And as a matter of fact, there hasn't been a murder in this small town of Brandby in 30 years.

So I'm sure that was the last thing anyone had expected. But assumption of accident or not, police have certain procedures that they have to follow at a death scene. So the first thing they do is take Cara to the station for a formal interview. And she's a mess. They showed some of the interview footage on a date line episode. And you can see how upset she is. She's sort of like slumped and like fidgeting with wads of tissue in her hand. And she's having a really hard time even concentrating.

And police ask her to walk them through that day so they can start to piece together this story. So what she tells them is she goes, you know, I left the house with our daughter around three that afternoon. Again, like in order to give Anna Marie some space so she could rest. She goes, you know, we went to the mall, we bought some socks, some other random random things. After that, we go to McDonald's, but then we decide to go to Burger King instead so that Breanna could get some mac and cheese. She says like this whole time, she's like, you know, I'm calling and texting Anna Marie while we're out, but I'm getting no answer that she's not picking up the phone. She's not answering her text messages.

Okay, but why would Kara call and text Anna Marie if she knew that she was sleeping? Like, wasn't the whole point of going out to let her sleep? And I honestly don't know what she said her reason was for trying to reach her, but I'm sure that investigators were picking up on the same discrepancy as well. Now, when the interviewer asked her about her relationship with Anna Marie, Kara admits that it was turbulent and crossed the line into physical violence. She says in that same video footage, you know, quote, I'm no angel, but it was definitely back and forth. The investigator tries to drill a little more into the scene of the crime, specifically that paint.

How did it get everywhere and why was it all over her? But Kara doesn't have an explanation for how all that paint got spilled. Now, the interviewer asked her then what she thinks could have happened to Anna Marie, and she answers, you know, if I had to guess, she probably fell down the stairs. Like, it was some kind of accident. Which, like you said earlier, is likely what everyone was initially thinking. But if you thought it was an accident, what's with that whole prime suspect line? Yeah, it's a little inconsistent, but yeah, that's the theme throughout this interview the whole time.

Kara's tone is like swinging back and forth between grieving for Anna Marie and then complaining about her as a person. Like she'll say, you know, she was lazy, she was abusive, she couldn't manage her money. And like, okay, maybe let the dust settle a little bit before like ripping this woman apart and like, you know, pointing out all of your spouse's faults. But that's not what happens here. Every once in a while, Kara like switches and almost catches herself and apologizes for how she's talking about Anna Marie. But it's almost like she can't help it and she keeps going on like this for a while throughout the whole interview. After a while, police decide to let Kara go. Now at this point, not a suspect, not anything they can do to like keep her arrested.

I mean, the autopsy hasn't come back, it still could be an accident. So they don't put her in custody and now as a widow, she goes home to their daughter. While Kara is home with her daughter trying to peace her life back together, police are busy working this case, learning as much as they can about Anna Marie, Kara, and anyone else in their lives. Four days later, the autopsy report comes back. Now, while the numerous bruises across Anna Marie's back, legs, shoulders, face, all of it are consistent with falling down a flight of stairs, it turns out that it was in fact not her cause of death. Anna Marie didn't die from the fall.

She died from blunt force trauma to the head and she was strangled to death. And for whoever killed her, it took that person up to four minutes of holding on to Anna Marie's neck to finally take her life away. Because of the rigor mortis that we mentioned earlier, the medical examiner sets her time of death at some time before 3pm that day. Now, in addition to her cause of death, they find something else interesting on Anna Marie. They find 10 cat hairs. Okay, why is that significant? Well, Anna Marie and Kara only had a dog. So it was official now that she was murdered and this could be a clue as to who we're looking for.

Like, maybe we're looking for someone who has a cat. Right away, the district attorney gets involved working with local law enforcement to try and uncover who brought homicide back to Granby. Immediately, a handful of suspects emerge and right at the top is Anna Marie's ex-girlfriend, Carla, who she left abruptly towards the end of 2009. So not only is there this emotional motive like she up and left you to go back to her ex or her current wife, but there's also this financial one. Not only did she leave you for someone else, but she leaves you with $10,000 in debt. And that's basically insult to injury right there if you ask me. Now, Carla swears she couldn't have had anything to do with it because she was out of town. And that's something that police are going to have to look into, but Carla isn't the only suspect.

Police also take a good look at another significant person in Anna Marie's life, her good friend and co-worker, Mark. They were still super tight, even making plans to hang out that same time that Anna Marie was fighting with Cara about Cara's buddy Mike coming over. And just like with Carla, Anna Marie owed Mark a lot of money. So where was Mark that day? What was he doing? Now, according to him, the first time he talks to police, he says he's home all day. Then he changes his story. The second time he talks to them, Mark says that he's out running errands with his family. Wait, he has a family?

Oh yeah, a wife and an adult daughter, neither of whom knew just how deep his feelings ran for Anna Marie. So why not just tell police that in the first place? Like, he doesn't do himself any favors by changing his story. I have no idea, and I don't think police could figure out his lies either, which made him look sketchy. And things don't start looking any better for Mark when police start trying to corroborate everyone's stories. Now, when they look into Carla's alibi, remember, she tells investigators she was out of town that day, they actually find security footage from the parking lot of a gym that she was at that matches her story. She wasn't in Granby at the time of Anna Marie's death. When they try to corroborate Mark's ever-changing story, they come across something much more interesting.

Police find out that on the day Anna Marie died, Mark had purchased cat litter, which had nothing to do with the actual murder itself, but it proves he has a cat. Right, which isn't looking good for Mark. The thing is, he's not the only one who isn't looking good. There's another person police have to look at, the person who's always looked at in an investigation when someone dies, the spouse. When police try to verify Carla's story for the day, what they find is interesting to say the least. Even though Cara had receipts for all the places that she went and the places do match up to her story, the times were off. Now, she said she left the house at about three o'clock on the afternoon of March 28th,

but she doesn't show up on CCTV footage until around 5 p.m., leaving two full hours unaccounted for. But what really catches the eyes of investigators is what she's doing on those tapes. Now, the first trip to the store, like that mall or whatever, is pretty uneventful. But the tapes from the McDonald's that she stopped at show Cara driving her pickup truck to the back corner of the restaurant and then disposing of something in the dumpster. Now, in this footage, there's also a laundry basket and a bag in the back of her truck that can be seen, but when she reappears on cameras later at the next stop, the bag and the basket are gone. So police send teams to search the dumpsters around that McDonald's, and while they never find the basket or the bag,

they do find something that looks very bad for Cara. They find bloody cleaning rags. Now, the problem is, when they test the blood for DNA, though, they don't get anything conclusive, because they say that it's too degraded for any kind of positive match to Annamarie. Okay, but like, it's still blood. Like, nothing about throwing away bloody rags really says innocent. I do not like this. Well, yeah, and I mean, I think that's part of why they still cite this as evidence,

but without any DNA that like matches or nothing for 100% certainty that even came from it as human, like, it's still not a smoking gun or anything. And it's more circumstantial than anything. Exactly. It's all circumstantial. And like, realistically, like I get you have the video, but I bet it would even be really hard to prove that Cara for sure was the one that put it there, you know? I mean, when you're thinking about like a future trial, to me, this has reasonable doubt written all over it. Definitely.

Now, by this point in the investigation, police have learned that their only other suspect, Mark, probably shouldn't be a suspect at all. They find out that he had actually purchased the cat litter for an oil spill in his garage, and his wife later testifies that they never owned a cat at all. Okay, but then where did the cat hairs come from? From my understanding, Annamarie may have maybe like owned a cat in the past, and honestly, even if she didn't, this isn't a huge deal to me. Like, it's 10 hairs.

Like, when you come to my house, you're covered in charlie hairs. So I would imagine she could have picked those up from anywhere at any time, you know? Even like at work, if she's a paramedic, right? Right. So this only leaves Cara on police's radar. And with all of this mounting evidence, the rigor mortis, the discrepancy and timeline, the missing bag, basket, the bloody rag, their history of domestic violence with one another, it was clear to police who did it.

And there's an interesting point I want to make. So like as they're doing this investigating, I mentioned that like, Pepto-Bismol paint, basically, that they had, right? So they look into this more, they learn more about it, and it turns out that it's actually a special kind of paint that's made for ceilings. And the way it works is the paint is pink when it's wet, and then it dries to white, and it dries within like 30 minutes or so. Okay, but when the police showed up, the paint was pink, right?

Exactly, yes. And she was already in rigor? Yes. So the paint would have had to been poured like really recently and a decent amount of time after she was murdered, right? Yeah, exactly, like everything in this case is pointing to her wife, who was in the house, who lied about the time that she was leaving. Again, I mean, the medical examiner says she died before three,

even though we don't see Cara on footage till five. Even her story is that she left at three, and then this paint is pink when they show up. Like, the timing is all off. It's all off, but everything we have is circumstantial. And eventually, the investigation stalls. The DA in charge of the investigation doesn't pursue an indictment against Cara. And some people for a while at least speculated that she didn't want to be

the first district attorney in Massachusetts history to pursue a murder charge against a woman for killing her wife. So Cara ends up going free. She goes about to live her life unhindered by murder charges. She basically, she sells her house in Granby. She moves out to Rhode Island to be closer to her parents. But it always catches up with you. Eventually, a new district attorney is elected.

And this time, they decide to go for it. On October 19, 2011, Cara Vintala is arrested in Rhode Island and charged with murder. Now, the trial doesn't start until 2013 in Northampton, Massachusetts. And in the early 90s, Northampton was known as Lesbianville, USA. Like literally, I'm not making that up. That's a quote. It's what they called it. And as you can imagine, the media has a field day with this case.

Some outlets do way better than others, but all too often, this case then and even now wasn't treated like a domestic violence case that it is. It was treated like this salacious spectacle. Like outside of LGBTQ news outlets, there isn't a lot of coverage at all about this being domestic violence, not much really other than that. And if it's referred to at all, it's referred to so many times as the lesbian murder. Now, the first trial lasted about three weeks. And there was testimony from officers and investigators and experts.

The biggest problem in this first trial is, you know, we talked about it just a minute ago. Like the important thing to me is like, OK, we have rigor set in, we have pink paint, we only have one person who was there. But like the pictures, I guess, like that they took, you couldn't see that it was still pink or they took the pictures by the time it was white and you couldn't see what the officers saw when they first showed up. The jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict and the judge is forced to declare a mistrial. Now, the prosecution is convinced that they have the right person,

so they decide to try the case again. In 2014, they go through the same process again. They see the jury, they present the evidence, they leave the jury to deliberate and deliberate they do. Only to come back with an absolute stunner. Another hung jury. At this point, with two hung juries, Kara's defense team moves to have the indictment dismissed completely. It was cited in court records that, quote, retrial was barred by double jeopardy principles because the evidence presented at her second trial was insufficient to warrant a conviction, end quote. However, the judge denies this motion from Kara's team and the Massachusetts Supreme Court agrees with them.

So, Kara is tried a third time. This time, the prosecution changes their tactic. During the first two trials, they focus on Kara's means, motive, and opportunity to kill Anna Marie. The defense, meanwhile, focused on poking holes in all of that circumstantial evidence, especially those cat hairs. And they also point out that there was even a discrepancy in the medical examiner's report. I guess, initially, it had listed Anna Marie's time of death as unknown, but later it was changed to she died before three. And we've seen this happen in other cases.

Like, off the top of my head, I can think of the Alice Crimmins case, where basically the medical examiner got bullied into changing the time of death. I haven't heard any reports of, like, that happening here in this case. I have no idea why he changed it, but I could see how this could put reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors. But in this third trial, the prosecution hammers home the strangest aspect of this case, the paint. They bring in a quality control engineer from a paint manufacturer, and as Dateline put it, this man's job is literally to watch paint dry. I didn't know that was a job.

But he testifies that under ideal conditions, the paint should have been dry in about half an hour. But again, we said this, it was still wet. And like police saw at the crime scene, still pink. And according to the prosecution, and according to you and me, this proves that Cara tried to taint the scene and destroy evidence by pouring the paint all over Anna Marie's body. And if you even think about it more for, like, a little bit, Cara was with her body for 20 minutes, if you remember, from the time that she, like, told her neighbor to call 911 till, like, police showed up and she was, like, underneath her.

So I don't know, they don't say exactly when it started turning white. I don't know that anyone was really, like, noticing or even looking for that or documenting that. But, like, the paint could have, like, very well been poured after 911 was called. Like, nothing about the, like, the series of events makes sense. The defense, of course, questions the validity of the paint experiments. And they also claim that the prosecution and the investigators have an unconscious bias that basically they've made up their minds about Cara and they're willfully sticking to it while ignoring other facts and not looking closer into other potential suspects like Mark or Carla.

For the third time, a jury goes in to deliberate to decide if Cara Vintala is guilty or innocent. Four full days pass before the jury comes back. This time, they have a verdict. Guilty of murder in the first degree. Cara's motion for a reduced charge down to second-degree murder or even manslaughter was denied and she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Now, of course, the conviction was automatically appealed, but as of December 2017, when Cara's lawyers tried to get access to unerred dateline footage,

no new papers had been filed per the Daily Hampshire Gazette. As we mentioned at the start of the show, October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And this case had all of the hallmark signs of domestic violence. This didn't happen overnight. They didn't wake up one day and Cara decided to kill Anna Marie. I mean, this had been building and building for years. And awareness is great, but it's not enough. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, members of the LGBTQ community experienced domestic violence and intimate partner violence

at not just an equal but even greater rate than straight people. That same organization reports that, quote, 43.8% of lesbian women and 61.1% of bisexual women have experienced rape, physical violence, and or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, as opposed to 35% of heterosexual women. While 26% of gay men and 37.3% of bisexual men have experienced rape, physical violence, and or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime compared to 29% of heterosexual men. And I mean, to me, this goes without saying, but for transgender people, the risk of intimate partner violence is even heavier.

According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, 54% of respondents experienced some form of intimate partner violence, including acts involving coercive control and physical harm. And they found that nearly half of respondents were sexually assaulted at some point in their lifetime. Domestic violence has been a reoccurring theme in many of our episodes. I mean, if we look back, Barbara Ann Hackman, Susan Powell, Michelle Schroeder, Cara Kopetsky, and now Anna Marie, all of these cases presented differently in the types of control exerted over these victims, but they all resulted in murder. But please remember, murder or physical abuse is not the only form of domestic violence.

It can present in many ways for many different types of people. And I know it's technically Domestic Violence Awareness Month, but I think that we can all do more than just being aware. And we want to focus on how we can be a force for positive change. Every month, we've always picked a charity that we believe in, and we donate a portion of our merch sales and our fan club proceeds to that organization. And this month, we're supporting the network Lorette. According to their website, they are, quote,

a survivor-led social justice organization that works to end partner abuse in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, SM, polyamorous, and queer communities. End quote. This Boston-based organization provides support services, resources, training, community outreach, and so much more, all while survivors are at the forefront. And they have this big event called Paint the Town Lorette, where they raise funds to make a difference in the lives of LGBTQ domestic violence survivors, and we are actually working with them to support next year's event.

And if you want to support them, you can do that by either donating on their website or if you just want to learn more about what they're doing or their resources, go to TNLR.org. Again, you guys, I can't stress enough. If you want more information on this very serious issue, you can go to TNLR.org. If you want any more information on our episode or to see pictures or our sources, you can find that at crimejunkiepodcast.com.

And you can follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio check production. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?