Jurors got the case at 2:08 this afternoon, and by 3:40 p.m. they notified the judge that they have reached a verdict. The judge says some of those in the audience will happy, some will be sad. But no outbursts by anyone.
"Everyone must respect the verdict of this jury," Judge W. Mark Ward admonishes those in the audience.
The jury enters and their verdict is guilty of first-degree murder.
Caronna watches the jury but shows no reaction.
He is automatically sentenced to life in prison.
Bartlett police didn't zero in on him because they didn't charge him until some five months later. "The flim-flam man thought he had pulled it off."
His are not the actions of an innocent man. He's a good actor. Yeah, he's distraught, but not so distraught that he couldn't buy a new Hummer or a Dodge Challenger. How many cars does one flim-flam man need?
He's got his cars,his money and his freedom and what else does he need? He needs another woman, Becky Black. He's trying to get her to leave her husband. He thinks he has his kingdom, but he doesn't have his queen. So he starts stalking her teenage daughter to get her mommy to leave her daddy? That's just plain sick. It also scared the bejesus out of her.
He told Becky she's the only one he's ever loved. He says he likes her because she doesn't pressure him, doesn't fight with him. Is there a theme going on here? That maybe his wife was pressuring him to close on the house. Henderson notes Caronna tells Becky she never makes him feel dumb and suggests perhaps his wife, Tina, a financial executive, did.
He left town and was living at a Jackson motel. If you're innocent and the police knock on your door, why do you respond saying 'I've got a gun'? If you were innocent would it take police 15 minutes to talk you out of a room? No. It might if you killed your wife.
Convicted drug dealer John Bowers is not such a great guy, but he was in a cell with Caronna who was then in a new community. Bowers is ranting and so Caronna has to establish himself in this new community and says he suffocated his wife. "(Bowers) is not an angel, but they were in the cell block together. Did his story make sense? Not completley, but the story came from Joe Caronna."
Let's run Rusty White for police chief of Bartlett. Of course, it works better with hindsight. We'll probably never see a perfect investigation, but you trust the evidence you've got.
Neighbor Jeff Cox had broken no laws when he was near the crime scene with three guns. You can't arrest someone for no reason. He had permits for his guns. He wasn't trespassing on anyone's property or breaking any laws.
Prosecutor Tom Henderson now begins the state's final closing argument.
He says trust is the key. Trust your memory and trust your common sense. Not the lawyers.
The defense says disregard Todd Gray's testimony about the garage and that the Avalanche would fit inside. But the defense says don't trust him, trust our investigator.
"You decide what happened based on the evidence in this case."
The defendant worked for a shoe company and he met Tina and talked himself into a different community. Her dad taught him finance. He now was living high, spending large amounts of money, having affairs. He's talked himself into that.
He stole from his friends, he stole from a one-year-old child's education fund. Joe Caronna was a flim-flam man. He flim-flammed Tina, everyone in the Corvette club and Becky Black. He's got a nice new world, but he's taking money from one person's account and putting it in his.
His clients didn't pay that much attention to their investment reports. They trusted him. They socialized with him. The new house they were going to buy was going to require a loan and someone at the bank looking at his finances and he couldn't let that happen. He keeps putting it off and putting it off.
On the Friday night before she disappeared, he had her believe they were going to close on the new house that night.
It doesn't really matter whether he used a plastic bag or a pillow or if was strangled. She was murdered. Who murdered her? Who had the motive, the opportunity and the means? Who acts guilty?
Four to six minutes to suffocate someone, that goes to premeditation. This is hands on, close enough to feel a person struggling. The point is you've got to hold it for four to six minutes. He kept it up for four to six minutes because he wanted her dead. He wanted his kingdom back.
He also had a half-million dollar life insurance policy on her. He throws her in the Avalanche in the garage so no one would see him dragging his wife's dead body in the car. If this is a carjacking or a robbery do you lock it up? No, you do it so you can sell it when you get it back and get a Hummer. You leave the rings on her fingers so you can sell them and add to your kingdom.
His alibi was he was working on his car that afternoon. The cellphone towers show that Caronna did not go directly to the Hathaways to the northeast to work on his car. The tower indicates he first went southwest toward Brannick before he went to the Hathaways. He dumped the Avalanche there, walked to the storage facility nearby and got his Corvette to drive back home.
White says sure, Joe went out on dates after Tina died, but he was lonely. People grieve in different ways. He hadn't seen mistress Becky Black in seven weeks in February 2009 and wanted her back. At her request, he writes out his love for her on eight pages of paper. She tries to get him to confess, but Joe insists he loves her but that he wouldn't kill his wife for her.
If you're going to let something slip, that's probably the situation you'd let it slip. He didn't know he was being recorded for police.
Now we have John Bowers and the jailhouse confession. Joe doesn't know him, but confesses to Bowers. Bowers said Joe told him he snapped and duct-taped her and put a bag over her head and stuffed her in the truck and hitchhiked back home.
Bowers was looking for a timecut. He wants to help society, just like he was doing when he was a meth dealer. White says they have newspapers in jail and suggests that Bowers got details from reading about the Caronna case.
Tina dressed nice, liked her makeup and jewelry, was a party girl, she was a force of nature. She would have needed $1,000 maybe to buy the party supplies that day. A target for robbers.
Detective Martin never read the autopsy report. The case officer in a homicide investigation did not read the autopsy report? That defies explanation. But he's going to get Joe Caronna.
She died of asphyxiation, but the evidence doesn't suggest a bag over her head was the cause or that she was strangled. Bowers statement was "nothing more than a bunch of self-serving baloney sausage."
The cell phone: different towers point in different directions. The FBI agent couldn't tell what kind of towers handled Caronna's cell phone calls the day his wife disappeared. He can't tell what direction someone was going or exactly where they were. Calls don't necessarily use the closest towers.
When Joe went out of town one day in March of 2009, police got a murder warrant. He didn't know about that and didn't flee to avoid prosecution. If Joe Caronna was dumb enough to kill his wife he would have left a long time ago.If police asked to search his house or his Chevelle he would have let them do it.
White says Bartlett police contaminated the crime scene - the Avalanche - by touching things inside before they were tested. They didn't test floor mats or look for other pieces of evidence or trace elements transferred from elsewhere. They didn't look for fibers or test for DNA. There were drops of blood not tested.
The bleach that some witnesses said they smelled in the house would not have been part of any crime scene coverup, he says, because Tina Caronna's body had no external wounds that would have bled. There was no blood to clean up.
Joe Caronna met numerous times with Bartlett police. He was always cooperative. They say he fled, but he had been in and out of Memphis a number of times. If he killed his wife, he had the resources to leave the country if he wanted.
White says police didn't bother to check Tina Caronna's rings for DNA in case the killer tried to take them off of her fingers. (The medical examiner says they came off easily.) White says, however, she had been dead for awhile which could have made them easier to remove.
Tina always carried a lot of cash, making her a possible target for robbery. The state wants you to think she doesn't know anything about finances, but she became a vice president with Cantor Fitzgerald and made $200,000 a year.
They want you to believe she was being held down and dominated by this Machiavellian monster over here, White says facetiously, pointing to his client, Joe Caronna.
He brought her flowers and pampered her. The other women in the office were jealous. He did love her. Why would he fake this for 15 years of marriage? Becky Black was a friend with benefits. She wanted to leave her husband, but Joe was not going to leave Tina.
A Caronna coworker, Dana McBride, said she saw a man "walking with a purpose" along Elmore Road around 6 p.m. the evening Tina disappeared. He didn't fit Joe Caronna's description.
Residents on Brannick said they were vigilant because of previous burglaries and that adds to their believablity that the Avalanche was not there until around 6 p.m. or so that evening. They notice things out of place.
Joe was not a domineering husband as the state suggests. Testimony was that she was smart, the life of the party, flew off to conferences. She was busy that day, Joe was busy that day, so it was nothing unusual that he did not call her that day until around 4 p.m.
The state wants you to believe that Joe was directing the search party, but they were all their friends and were even pursuing avenues that police would do, including checking phone and credit card records.
Then there's the Joe Underwood testimony that Tina called him at work just before 1 p.m. that Saturday. His evidence didn't fit the police theory so they called him a liar.
Police ignored a lot of evidence, including the Brannick witnesses who saw the Avalanche, Jeff Cox at the crime scene armed with three guns (he was questioned and released). It's the beginning of the investigation and they already dropped the ball.
Bartlett police had a theory that Joe Caronna killed his wife, but there was much that they ignored.
You're not here to solve the case to figure out for yourself who did it, White tells jurors. Your sole job is to take the elements of that indictment and decide did Joe Caronna kill Tina Caronna.
Police ignored a ton of evidence. What the state presented to you was motive, but that's not an element of the indictment. Because he's a thief and a philanderer, he must be a killer. that's the bulk of their case.
The timeline shows that the Caronnas went to Knoxville the week before to a car show with the Hathaways. Joe was the designated driver. They talked about the upcoming car club party. Joe and Gary Hathaway agreed to work on Joe's Chevelle, perhaps to take them all to the party.
Tina takes the Avalanche to get the club's tables and coolers from another member. (The day before she disappears.) Joe has the Corvette that day. Storage facility owner says Joe was not there the day she disappeared, a Saturday.
That day, at 11:02 a.m. the Avalanche backs out, according the the video security tape the Cox family has across the street. They saw Joe put the Chevelle on the street and then either back the Avalanche up the driveway or pull the vehicle up to the driveway to the garage. The truck pulled out and left and never came back.
Another neighbor said she saw Tina leave that morning in the Avalanche.
Bartlett police didn't look at the video until four months later and tried to shape the testimony of Jeff and Cindy Cox, telling them their clock on the video was probably off and telling them what other witnesses were saying.
The detectives has only investigated two other homicides. "Maybe that says something good about living in Bartlett, but these guys were in way over their heads."
White says one Brannick resident saw nothing on her street at 1 p.m. that day, but at that time Joe was at Gary Hathaway's working on his car. Was it parked and moved, parked and moved? Maybe, but Joe was working on his car.
Residents on Brannick spotted the Avalanche at various times from two to three days earlier. The best evidence, Cook argues, is that of a woman who said she saw the Avalanche around 12:40 p.m. on Oct. 25, 2008, on Brannick. The woman, Amanda Panis, remembers because she was headed to work nearby and clocked in at 12:55 p.m. Other residents' relied solely on their memories which are less reliable.
Caronna suggests to friends that it was gang activity or a robbery, but Tina had $30,000 worth of rings still on her fingers and the Avalanche was still in perfect condition. Her credit cards were not used that day, either. "Common sense," Cook says.
He threw away her Bible and birth certificate, saying she won't need that anymore. He started dating. He continued an affair. He said at the funeral he wasn't worried about lipstick on his collar because he no longer had a wife.
Caronna fled to Jackson, Tenn., another indication of his guilt. He cancelled a financial meeting and said the Bartlett police had some information for him. He's arrested weeks later and is brought back to Bartlett.
The defendant had motive, the means and opportunity to murder Tina Caronna. Truth dictates and justice demands a verdict of guilty."
Joe didn't go across the street to tell Jeff and Cindy Cox until Sunday. He tells them he pulled the couple's Chevy Avalanche into the garage and closed the door while he loaded two tables and coolers for the party that night. (Testimony from friends was that Tina already had gotten the tables and coolers from friends the previous day.)
Cox did not see any strange cars or suspicious activity at the Caronnas on their video.
Two days later the Avalanche was found on Brannick Drive in Bartlett.
Friend Matt Struna found it odd that Joe had too many cars at his house the previous day. Some always were in storage, a few blocks from where Tina's body was found.
Friend Gary Hathaway thought it was odd that the red Corvette was on the driveway at Caronna's house. He became suspicious as well. He wondered how Caronna got both the Corvette and the Chevelle to the house when one was normally in storage.
Joe Caronna had the opportunity to kill his wife.
On Saturday Oct. 25, 2008, Tina Caronna was to go shopping for food and drinks for a Corvette club party that evening. Tina gets a call from friend Pat Hathaway around 9 a.m. and Pat hears an angry Joe Caronna in the background.
At 10:15 a.m. car club member Matt Struna calls Tina about the party. "That is the last time Tina is heard from. The last person that we know who spoke to Tina alive."
Around 11:30 a.m. Joe Caronna calls friend Gary Hathaway to work on Joe's Chevelle, but tells Gary he has to first go get the storage facility where it was stored on Summer.
Cell phone records show, however, that he is not where he says he is. Again he's living a lie. After 1 p.m.Caronna goes to Hathaway's house and works until four that afternoon.
The first time Joe calls Tina,however, is at 4:12 p.m. Testimony in the trial was that he normally called her frequently every day or was constantly with her.
Cook says Caronna established his alibi by arranging to work on the car, checking for Tina at Sam's later that afternoon, telling Hathaway to check the shed in Caronna's back yard, searching until late at night, but is reluctant to file a police report. He said he and Tina had a pact not to embarrass each other in public if one of them ever left.
Caronna never called Tina's mother. Wouldn't the first person you call be a member of the family? During the search with friends he tells them not to look in Bartlett (where the body was later found) because Tina never goes to Bartlett.
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