The murder of Annamarie Cochrane Rintala by her wife Cara Rintala is explored in detail on the latest episode of Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall.
Rintala murdered paramedic Annamarie by strangling her, then staged a scene for when police officers arrived so they would think she had died in an accident.
She claimed she had come back from running errands with the couple’s two-year-old daughter Brianna to find her wife’s lifeless body at the bottom of the stairs in the basement at their home in Granby, Massachusetts.
When officers arrived, they found Rintala cradling Annamarie’s paint- and blood-covered body in her arms and crying, saying she thought she must have fallen down the stairs.
The pair had had a volatile relationship but Rintala maintained she had nothing to do with Annamarie’s death in March 2010.
However, she was arrested 19 months later and charged with her murder. Two trials ended in mistrials because the juries could not agree on a verdict.
However she was then found guilty in 2016 and jailed for life with no option of parole. She is currently incarcerated at the MCI Framingham correctional facility in Massachusetts.
The Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall episode, titled The Painted Paramedic, follows the timeline of the case and includes interviews with those close to it, including some of Annamarie’s friends and family.
Deadline: Crime With Tamron Hall airs Sundays at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.