began with a nasty fight by text the night before. ann, working the overnight, jealous that cara was home alone with a male friend. she lashed out, i hate the relationship we have. no one does that. no respect. cara s response, okay, you being over the top and crazy. it really is, in our mind, a fuse being lit, something that continues into the next day. reporter: the next morning, the last of her life, ann, a phoneaholic, called or texted friends and family members 58 times. i want show you one final entry. reporter: the final call to her beloved aunt nancy was placed at 12:21 p.m. then, uncharacteristically, ann went silent. do you remember if she left a voicemail on that occasion? no, ma am. you did not speak to annamarie that day, is that correct? no, i didn t. reporter: the timing of that last call was important, prosecutors argued, because they theorized cara murdered her wife soon after, then spent hours cleaning and covering up. remember that afternoon of
buy for her. can you please go sat at 6a for me. i will get there about 825a with a coffee and a big kiss. mark, at the time, is a married man. he was a married man, two children. i think very clearly there was an emotional affair at a minimum that happened between mark and ann. reporter: investigators didn t think the two had a sexual relationship, but it was clear they had a financial thing going. mark opened his line of credit to ann. no small thing where ann was concerned, because her big passion was shopping. ann s friends t.j. donahue and mary petrone. i do know that ann loves jewelry. she loves nice things. gadgets, right? gadgets, cameras. i mean in high school, she was that same kind of person. so, she loved to spend money. reporter: and sometimes the spending got ahead of her. mark learned that. he co-signed, i think it was three total credit cards with her, one of which had racked up about a $7,000 balance at one point. reporter: and another thing. after
prosecutors showed security video of cara and brianna shopping and argued it was part of the cover-up. she leaves the house around 3:00 p.m., according to her, but she doesn t pop up on surveillance video until 5:00 p.m. that evening at the holyoke mall. suddenly starts using her debit card left and right to make miniscule little purchases. reporter: what was going on, do you think? she was trying to be seen. she was trying to be elsewhere. in short, she was creating a digital alibi for herself. we are still driving. love you. bye. reporter: an audio alibi, too. prosecutors played voicemails. all play-acting, they said. on our way to burger king. call. please, please, please. the whole reason she s out is to try to let her get some sleep. that just didn t add up. reporter: and now, a pretty big deal. these cleaning rags. can you just hold that up for the jury to see? reporter: prosecutors said cara used them to mop up. one contained a woman s dna. which the prosec
us to reach. we didn t want it, but that s what it was. reporter: for ann s family and friends, it s a time to be grateful for justice. to remember the irrepressible spirit they lost, the woman who loved life and the spotlight. she would love this. she would love to be interviewed. oh, my goodness. she s watching right now. like, come on! say something funny. reporter: cara rintala got the mandated sentence life without parole. she is appealing. each week, her parents take brianna, the child they are now raising, to see her mother in a massachusetts prison. when cara was crying, she says, mommy, it s okay. you don t have to cry. you gotta be strong. you gotta be strong, that s what she said. great kid. reporter: the kid, that little girl, the other victim in this tragedy, the child who, in an instant, lost two mothers at the foot of the basement stairs.
have some proof of that. and they don t. and i ll tell you why. you can look at these texts and once again, cara is the calm one. ann is the one who goes from zero to 60 in about three seconds. reporter: and by the next morning, the defense attorney said, ann was going her breezy way, promising her buddy mark that big kiss in a text. not a word about fighting with cara. not a word even like, gee, things aren t too good around here right now. cara and i had a big fight. nothing like that. reporter: then to that afternoon of errands. and, from cara s side, an explanation for the trip to the trash can at mcdonald s. because that s what they did. they had to pay for their trash bags in granby. so they were dumping their trash wherever and whenever they could. reporter: the defense brought in its own expert to knock down the prosecutors argument that one of the rags contained ann s dna. i have no idea what the