NORTHAMPTON — The Rintalas did not have a cat.
And the defense team in Cara Rintala’s third murder trial believes that fact could represent a significant piece of evidence.
Rintala stands accused in the March 2010 strangling death of her wife, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala, to which she pleaded not guilty. Rintala Cochrane’s body was found at the bottom of the basement stairs in their Granby home, bloodied and covered in paint. First responders arrived to find a hysterical Rintala cradling her wife’s body.
Rintala has been tried twice for the crime, but deadlocked juries in both instances resulted in mistrials. The Supreme Judicial Court ruled in January that Rintala could be tried a third time.
The defense has said from the start of this trial that investigators unfairly zeroed in on Rintala as a suspect after dispatchers characterized the 911 call that night, March 29, as a “domestic” incident. Rintala’s attorney, David Hoose, also has said that authorities failed to seriously consider other suspects during their investigation.
In the afternoon session of Thursday’s proceedings, the fifth day of testimony, Caroline Tatro, an analyst with the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory, testified that she and a supervisor identified 10 cat hairs found on Cochrane Rintala’s body.
The two women only had a dog at the time, Hoose noted.
“You examined some of Cara Rintala’s clothes, right?” Hoose asked Tatro on cross-examination. “On all her clothes and all the other clothes you examined, these were the only cat hairs that you noted, correct?” he added, referring to the hairs found on Cochrane Rintala.
Tatro agreed.
Taking his point one step further, Hoose asked Tatro to explain Locard’s Principle — a central concept in forensic science, she explained, that persons who enter a crime scene leave something behind that ties them to that scene.
So, Hoose said, “holding a cat and putting it down — that’s an example of Locard’s Principle, isn’t it?” alluding to the cat hairs that would be left behind.
“It could be,” Tatro responded.
Additionally, Tatro noted she uncovered debris near the body as well.
Hoose asked if she collected it.
“No,” Tatro said, “I did not.”
Tatro also said she identified “finger smears” of blood on one of the walls that line the basement stairs, and blood spatter on the other.
She also confirmed directional blood spatter at the bottom of the staircase near the body as well as blood on a rug, also at the foot of the staircase.
Prosecutors contend Rintala killed her wife and staged a crime scene to make it seem there was an attempted forced entry.
Hoose also asked whether analysts collected wood chips that seemed to be hacked off a door jamb outside the home. Next to that door was a shovel.
Domestic incidents Earlier Thursday, jurors heard from police officials who testified that there were domestic incidents involving the Rintalas that garnered their attention in the years before the murder.
Alan Wishart, who was a sergeant at the time, testified Cochrane Rintala came to the Granby Police Department on Sept. 27, 2008, to report that her wife had assaulted her. Wishart spoke with Cochrane Rintala and had her file a written statement.
Minutes later, he said, Rintala arrived at the station. Rintala insisted that the dispute between her and her wife, Wishart testified, was “purely verbal.”
But Wishart said that there was probable cause suggesting Rintala had physically harmed Cochrane Rintala.
“You’re not going to arrest me,” Rintala told Wishart, he testified. “That’s not going to happen.”
She was read her Miranda rights, arrested and then escorted to the booking room.
“If I told you that Anne struck me, what would happen?” Rintala asked the sergeant, he testified. That’s when she showed him the deep red mark on one side of her neck.
Cochrane Rintala filed a restraining order against her wife that same day.
“I explained (to Rintala) she couldn’t go to the house … couldn’t see her daughter,” Wishart said.
Rintala was arraigned two days later. However, despite the episode, Cochrane Rintala requested that the domestic assault and battery charge be dropped in November that year, and the case did not proceed, according to a criminal record that Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Jennifer Suhl presented to jurors.
Lynn Menard, a dispatcher for the Granby Police Department, also testified Thursday.
Suhl had Menard recount a 911 call she received from the Rintala home on May 12, 2009. The call, Menard testified, consisted of screaming and a woman’s voice “sternly” demanding “Just leave, just leave!”
Then, whoever made the call disconnected, so Menard called back.
A woman who identified herself only as “Mrs. Rintala” picked up and informed the dispatcher that her toddler child had accidentally dialed 911.
Two weeks later, on May 26, the Rintalasstood before Judge John Payne in Eastern Hampshire District Court in Belchertown after police responded to their home on yet another 911 call. This time, both of them were seeking restraining orders, and both wanted custody of their then 2-year-old daughter, Brianna.
Jurors heard an audio recording from that hearing.
“We can have criminal charges going back and forth between both of you, but the only one that’s really going to affect in the long run is your daughter,” Payne told them, his voice booming. “Because eventually, with what’s going on here, (the Department of Children and Families) is going to be involved and neither one of you will have to worry about custody because DCF will come in … and put the child in a home that’s a little more stable.”
Rintala interjected.
“I fear that … we can’t both be there,” she said, her voice quivering. “Her parents live one town away.”
Then Rintala made a plea to her wife. “Anne, please.”
That’s not going to happen, Cochrane Rintala said. “That’s my home.”
“I’m not going to play games with this,” Payne said. “The two of you can either deal with this as adults and deal with it in Probate Court as your marriage dissolves or, if you want, I’ll call DCF right now … and indicate to them that neither one of you is stable enough to deal with that child.”
And then, an ultimatum:
“You’re either going to exist in that house until you get this straightened out, or you’re going to look at criminal charges — one or both of you,” Payne said. “If I see you back in this court, I’ll be on the phone with DCF so fast, they’ll be here before you get out the door.”
The next time police would set foot in their home, it would be the scene of a homicide.
Michael Majchrowicz can be reached at mmajchrowicz@gazettenet.com.