NORTHAMPTON — Two paramedics who responded to the Granby home of Cara and Annamarie Cochrane Rintala on the night of March 29, 2010, testified Thursday on what they found, while a defense attorney sought to highlight inconsistencies with their previous testimony on the second day of Cara Rintala’s fourth murder trial in Hampshire Superior Court.

Gene Os and Michael Pandora, both now retired as paramedics, testified they knew the Rintalas well, having worked with them for 10 to 15 years. They all worked at one time for American Medical Response ambulance service. Os said he had visited their house and played in golf tournaments with them, and Pandora said he recruited both of them to work part-time shifts at the Granby Fire Department.

Under questioning from First Assistant District Attorney Steve Gagne, Os testified that Cochrane Rintala was in a state of rigor mortis when he found her around 7:23 p.m., about 10 minutes after the emergency call.

“I didn’t understand, there was paint all over the place,” he said. “It was wet and shiny.”

Cochrane Rintala was beyond lifesaving efforts, he said. Her skin was ice cold, and her eyes were fixed and dilated.

He went upstairs to talk with Cara Rintala, who was with Granby Officer Gary Poehler in the kitchen. She was upset and crying, he said.

He asked her about Annamarie’s medical history, when she had last spoken with her, and what she had done since. She said they’d spoken on the phone between 2 and 4 p.m., according to Os, and then she had gone out with their daughter, Brianna.

They came home to find a light on in the basement. Then she saw a foot at the bottom of the basement stairs. She took Brianna and their dog to the neighbor’s house asked him to call 911, then ran back to the basement. She tripped and fell at the bottom of the stairs. She found her wife face down, and she rolled her over onto her lap and held her in her arms.

After a while, Os said, Cara Rintala, who had paint on her hands, face and clothing, wanted to wash up.

“I didn’t have a problem with that,” he said. He went with her to the bathroom. While she was washing, he testified, a little trickle of blood came out of her nose.

Defense attorney Rosemary Scapicchio pressed Os on whether he had any training in assessing the degree of rigor mortis in a body. She asserted that he didn’t mention the bloody nose in his notes, and that his report gave a rather different account of the situation with the dog and the neighbor. Os agreed that a nosebleed could easily follow from a sustained period of hysterical crying.

Under questioning from Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Suhl, Pandora testified that he noticed paint and dried blood on Cara Rintala’s clothing when he first saw her that night. He gave similar testimony to Os on his observations of Cochrane Rintala’s body, but added that the skin around her face and arms was purplish, suggesting to him that she must have been face down for some time.

Pandora also testified that Cara Rintala told him she last saw Annamarie alive at around 10 a.m.

Suhl asked him if Cara Rintala had ever said anything to him about why she or Annamarie had left the Granby Fire Department. Pandora said she had told him that there were problems at home, that Annamarie had opened a credit card in her wife’s name and charged $25,000 on it. He said she didn’t seem unduly upset about it.

“She said she’d let the divorce lawyers handle it,” he said.

Scapicchio went after Pandora’s comment about dried blood on her client’s clothing, establishing with the aid of transcripts that he’d never mentioned dried blood in his testimony at three previous trials. She also pressed him on a statement in his report that there was “no trauma” on Cochrane Rintala’s body.

“I was referring to major trauma,” Pandora said.

Cross-examination issue

In the afternoon, before retired forensic pathologist Joann Richmond began her testimony for the jury, she was questioned by the attorneys as a result of a defense motion to preclude any testimony relying on conversations with former State Police Detective Jamie Magarian.

The commonwealth has not called Magarian as a witness, and Scapicchio said any testimony regarding time of death that relied on his statements would deprive her client of her constitutional right to cross-examine witnesses.

Richmond told Gagne she had relied on descriptions given by the officer and paramedic who moved Cochrane Rintala’s body, and that Magarian had only called her to ask “how soon would a body be stiff as a board and ice cold.”

Judge Frank Flannery allowed the defense motion, but said he saw no Sixth Amendment issue with allowing Richmond’s testimony. Scapicchio registered an objection.

Magarian was called as a defense witness at Rintala’s 2016 trial after the commonwealth declined to put him on the stand.

Detailed descriptions

Earlier in the day, Scapicchio questioned former Granby Police Sgt. Mark Smith about his testimony Wednesday that Cochrane Rintala’s arms were 6 to 8 inches off the floor, when he had never mentioned a distance in testimony at the three previous trials, and also why he’d used the term “rigid” for the first time to describe the condition of her body.

Scapicchio also probed Smith on what he had learned from sitting in on an interview with the wife and daughter of Mark Oleksak, a friend of Cochrane Rintala, and other aspects of Oleksak and Cochrane Rintala’s relationship, a line of questioning to which Flannery eventually called a halt.

Under questioning from Gagne, Smith said he had never been asked at Rintala’s previous trials to estimate how far off the floor Cochrane Rintala’s arms were, and he said the terms stiff and rigid in his mind were interchangeable.

Gagne asked him if Oleksak was ever considered a suspect in Cochrane Rintala’s death.

“I don’t think so,” Smith replied.

Friday’s session is due to start with Richmond continuing her testimony.

Staff Writer James Pentland can be reached at jpentland@gazettenet.com. 

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