It was March 29, 2010.
Cara Rintala, a 30-something mom, was out running errands with her toddler daughter.
When they got home around 7 p.m., they found something truly shocking: Cara’s wife, lying at the bottom of the basement stairs.
Cara ran to the neighbor’s, who called 911.
It was heartbreaking, incomprehensible.
37-year-old Annamarie Cochrane Rintala was dead.
It was a poignant picture to be sure: a dead wife, a devastated spouse, a little girl who’d lost a mother.
But what had really happened at the bottom of those stairs?
It would take a determined trooper to find out.
And little did he know how long the extraordinary journey through the legal system would take.
To find out what happened, watch the full episode, “Down the Basement Stairs” on Peacock now.
You can also watch on the NBC app or listen to it on our podcast.
Plus, listen to the Talking Dateline episode with Dennis Murphy and Josh Mankiewicz, in which they take you behind-the-scenes of the making of the episode and answer viewer questions.
After you finish watching the episode, watch Annamarie’s loved ones remember her as a fun-loving woman, who lived life to the fullest.
