Chapter 1: What happened to Tina Caronna in Memphis?
Memphis is a music city. We have soul, we have jazz, we have blues. Everybody loves barbecue. It's one of those smells when you come to Memphis.
There is a darker side where we have cried a bit of crime and quite a few homicides.
We end up with some interesting trials. Business is good. Call your next witness. I'm Karen Cook. I'm an Assistant District Attorney General. My name's Tom Henderson. I'm an Assistant to the District Attorney General. My name is Danielle McCollum. I'm an Assistant District Attorney, and I was part of the prosecution team for the Tina Corona case. Tina Corona was a young woman from Tennessee.
She was married to Joe Corona. It always seemed like they were in love with each other. October 25th of 2008, Tina at the time was the president-elect of the Corvette Club. My wife and I were to host a Memphis Corvette Club progressive dinner at our house.
For me it's more of a social event than about the cars.
Tina was supposed to get up and go shopping for some supplies. I think Tina left sometime in the morning. She had driven the Avalanche. Joe called me at 11.30 Saturday morning to see if we could work on the Chevelle. So he came at 1 o'clock, and during the day, Joe had been trying to get a hold of Tina. She apparently was not answering her phone.
Joe called, I think it was around 5, pretty hysterical. that he couldn't find Tina.
You know, I had people starting to show up, never did see Tina.
It's not like Tina to be that late for anything.
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Chapter 2: Who were the main suspects in Tina's murder investigation?
They were sure they had a homicide. Obviously, Joseph Corona was a suspect at the beginning. My husband's always the first suspect. Joe turned at me and looked and said, well, you're my alibi.
Joe said he had an alibi.
He was with me the entire day.
I'm Maureen Maher. Tonight on 48 Hours, the usual suspect.
When they see Tina Corona in the backseat wrapped up with blankets, obviously this is not a suicide, it's not a natural cause. They know they have a homicide.
Shelby County Prosecutor Tom Henderson had a mystery on his hands.
They find no gunshot wounds, no knife wounds.
Investigators weren't even sure yet how 44-year-old Tina Corona had been killed. For that, they'd have to wait for the medical examiner. Meanwhile, friends tried to process the news that Tina had been murdered.
We were devastated because we were hoping to find her alive, of course. You always have hope till it's over. And then it's just overwhelming.
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Chapter 3: How did the Corvette Club respond to Tina's disappearance?
I think it's conceivable that the average person would believe that. The average law enforcement officer would not believe that.
The carjacking theory would immediately be called into question when it was revealed how Tina's body was found. She was in the backseat of her Chevy Avalanche, partially nude, her hands loosely bound together with duct tape. And thousands of dollars worth of jewelry had been left on her body.
I'm thinking, why would a criminal or a robber or somebody do that? You know, it didn't make sense to me. It was just an add-up.
There was a lot that didn't add up for Henderson and the rest of the prosecution team of Danielle McCollum and Karen Cook.
She was wearing sandals, and the sandals were placed perfectly side by side just to the right on the front driver's side. Law enforcement officers would look at this scene and think, this has got to be staged.
Then there was the location. Tina's body and truck were actually found in a suburb of Memphis on a safe residential street in the town of Bartlett.
Crime is everywhere, but certain types of crime are not everywhere. There weren't that many carjackings in the suburbs.
So you would expect law enforcement to be suspicious, but not Gary Hathaway, Joe's friend and alibi, who was about to make a disturbing discovery.
Tina's gone. She's not coming back.
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Chapter 4: What were the circumstances surrounding Tina's body being found?
He said, are you awake? And I said, yeah. And he goes, let's get up. He goes, I think Joe did it. I said, yeah, he did it.
Pat had already thought Joe had been acting unusual the day Tina disappeared, but she immediately became concerned when she walked into the Corona home that Saturday night and was blown away by the overwhelming smell of bleach in the couple's bathroom. Tina didn't like bleach. She didn't buy bleach. She didn't use bleach? Mm-mm. She liked Pine Sol.
Gary and Pat continued to wrestle with their suspicions. That is, until Joe asked them to accompany him to the morgue. The act he put on was just amazing.
Quite the act.
I never saw a tear shed.
He kind of stumbled back a couple of steps, making it look like he was going to fall.
On the way back, he got in our front seat with Gary.
And as we were driving along, he gets on his cell phone, and he's saying, Yeah, Gary. Yeah, it was Tina. Yeah, I've got closure now. No, no, don't send flowers. Tina didn't like flowers. Send some to charity. I looked in the mirror at my wife, and she's looking at me, and we're both going, oh, yeah.
That's when I started getting afraid of him, at that moment.
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Chapter 5: What evidence pointed to Joe Corona as a suspect?
All this time, I just kept thinking that maybe, you know, you may have done that for me, thinking that was the only way that you could get me.
And then I started thinking, at first I was scared, and then I thought, if you did, that made me feel special, made me feel like... Honey, I didn't do it.
Okay? And when I say I would do anything for you, I mean I wouldn't do something like that. He was convincing Becky that he didn't do it, and the police don't suspect him. He told her multiple times, I'm off the list, you're off the list.
Actually, Joe was at the top of the list. But investigators doubted the affair was the motive for murder, especially when they learned Tina had known for years that Joe was cheating on her. A lot of people think this was about Becky Black.
I think Becky Black was just a side issue. How many times do you usually call her every day?
Investigators were still searching for a motive when they learned about a home the Coronas were planning to buy.
Tina had been wanting a brand new house out in Fayette County, a big house. They had been discussing it since the beginning of 2008.
One week before the murder, after many delays, Tina believed the closing was finally going to happen.
This house closing was a big deal to us as far as realizing that he was really running out of time.
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Chapter 6: What was Joe Corona's financial situation before Tina's murder?
reason or cause? No, ma'am.
Detective Kevin Martin from the Bartlett Police Department was one of the lead investigators on the case.
We learned a value amount of the rings from Mr. Corona himself in the interview. And it's platinum, too. The ring is platinum. Okay. He gave us a rough figure of those rings being worth $30,000.
The avalanche was parked, locked.
If you're going to make it appear as a robbery occurred, how about not locking the door?
And if she was robbed, how about taking her rings off?
May I approach you?
But defense attorney Rusty White pounces on the opportunity to discredit the police.
Was that dusted for fingerprints? I don't believe it was, sir. Was that sent to the TBI for DNA? I don't believe it was, sir. They admitted that they didn't have the experience, say, a Memphis would have or whatever. And I think the defense really hit on that. How many murder investigations have you done in your career? Been a part of or been lead on? Lead on.
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Chapter 7: How did the trial unfold for Joe Corona?
He said he messed up and left her jewelry on.
To add to his credibility, Bowers had a few details that were not public, such as Tina's salary range. Yet he was still a huge risk for the state. Would the jury believe a convict?
I thought he was believable. I really did.
His only offense was he was a meth addict. You believed him?
Yeah. Bauer's testimony is damaging to the defense, and Rusty White demands to know if he made a deal with the DA.
You're hoping to get a time cut on your federal case by cooperating in this matter. Is that correct? I mean, I ain't been promised anything. I don't know. That's what you're hoping to get, though, right? It would be nice. I think he was the first person, for me, that actually strung all the stuff that we had been hearing together and actually put it in a timeline.
The defense then uses its best weapon, reasonable doubt. One by one, Brannock residents take the stand, contradicting each other as they recall when each one of them saw the avalanche on their street.
I thought it was Friday.
I was convinced all the time that it was Saturday.
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