NORTHAMPTON — It’s one of the most arresting and haunting images shown to jurors during Cara Rintala’s third murder trial: the body of her wife, Annamarie Cochrane Rintala, covered in paint at the foot of the basement stairs.
Throughout this trial, which is scheduled to resume Tuesday morning, the photo has been shown in court countless times. Investigators and first-responders have testified at various points that the paint was still wet when they first observed the body. Authorities arrived at the Rintalas’ home in Granby on March 29, 2010, to find Rintala cradling her wife’s body.
The prosecution argues that after Cochraine Rintala was killed, Rintala doused her body in a fresh coat of paint in an effort to contaminate evidence and mask her involvement. According to prosecutors, the state of the paint gives officials an idea of when it was poured over Cochrane Rintala’s body.
But defense lawyer David Hoose, of Northampton, asked Hampshire Superior Court Judge Mary-Lou Rup to dismiss an expert’s testimony about the paint, claiming it was “junk.”
Rintala has pleaded not guilty in Hampshire Superior Court to the strangulation death of her wife. Two earlier trials ended in mistrials resulting from deadlocked juries. Monday marked the seventh day of testimony in the trial, which is expected to last about a month.
David Guilianelli, a quality engineer for PPG Industries, a major paint supplier with headquarters in Pittsburgh, testified the paint in this case is one that appears pink when wet but is white when it dries.
Under “ideal conditions,” the paint is engineered to dry in about 30 minutes, Guilianelli testified under questioning by First Assistant Northwestern District Attorney Stephen Gagne. Guilianelli later concededwhile being cross-examined by Hoose that the upper end of his estimate was about four hours.
Gagne asked Guilianelli whether he had formed an opinion about how the paint came to cover Cochrane Rintala’s body based on experiments he had conducted in a controlled environment.
“My opinion is that it was poured by somebody,” Guilianelli testified.
In a photo of the crime scene, Guilianelli pointed to a curved trail of spots on the cement that appear to feed into the mass of paint surrounding and covering Cochrane Rintala’s body — evidence of a “controlled pour,” he said.
Guilianelli also pointed to photos of the body that showed partially dried rivulets appearing to stream off the body. This is evidence, he testified, that the wet paint was running off her body when her wife turned it over to cradle her.
But during a meeting with the judge at which the jury was not present, Hoose called Guilianelli’s testimony “junk,” and asked that it be struck from the record, adding that it was “pure speculation.”
Gagne told the judge, “To do that now would be irreparably prejudicial to us.”
Rup did not immediately issue a decision about Guilianelli’s testimony.
Earlier Monday, Tina Gryszowka, a DNA analyst for the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory, testified that she tested possible blood samples gathered from the crime scene and compared them against DNA samples collected from Rintala, Cochrane Rintala and Mark Oleksak, who is a close friend of Cochrane Rintala’s.
The red-brown samples taken from a shelving unit near the body as well as splatter on the staircase walls and basement floor were all consistent with Cochrane Rintala’s DNA profile, Gryszowka testified.
Most of the morning testimony focused on a single, faded red-brown stain on a rag that was recovered from a McDonald’s restaurant trash receptacle. Investigators previously testified that surveillance footage at the restaurant captured Rintala leaving her truck and apparently tossing something into the trash. Three rags were recovered.
Gryszowka testified that the sample taken from the stain on the rag was “deteriorated,” but that Cochrane Rintala was a potential contributor.
Michael Majchrowicz can be reached at mmajchrowicz@gazettenet.com.