48 Hours - The Usual Suspect

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

When Tina Caronna was found dead in the back seat of her car, everyone assumed it was a random crime, perhaps a carjacking gone wrong. But by the time of Tina’s funeral, whispers were swirling around Memphis that the real killer wasn’t a stranger at all, but someone much closer to home. “48 Hours" Correspondent Maureen Maher reports. This classic "48 Hours" episode last aired on 9/7/2013. Watch all-new episodes of “48 Hours” on Saturdays, and stream on demand on Paramount+. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 am Karen Cook. I'm an assistant district attorney. 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 11.30 Saturday morning to see if we could work on the Chevelle. So he came at one 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 five, 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. Wow, Tina, Tina's missing. I mean, this is Memphis. A lot of bad things happen. There have been a number of carjacking. They were frantic. They didn't know if she's broken down on the side of the road or if she'd been abducted.

Joe and I and my wife went around looking the entire night all over the place for her. Looking for that black avalanche. Joe was on his phone basically constantly. They checked hospital, stores, parking lots. They couldn't find it anywhere. They went to a police station. Gave a missing person report. Decided they'd pick it back up first thing.

Sunday morning. Sunday, the Corvette Club immediately acted just like a family would. They got together and started looking. Trying to find out what happened. They're probably one of the more well-organized search parties because they had flyers, they had groups. Nobody found anything. And everybody went home on Sunday.

Monday is when Tennis' body was found in the avalanche on Brannet. One of the neighbors, they see a foot sticking out from a blanket and call the police. Word came that there was a body and that shattered our hopes. Tina's dead. 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 said, well, you're my alibi.

Joe said he had an alibi. He was with me the entire day. I'm Maher, tonight on 48 hours. The usual suspect. When they see Tina Corona in the back seat wrapped up the 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. It's hard for Kathy Struna to picture Tina gone, as life with her close friend was always an adventure. Tina's social life revolved around cars.

As active members of the Memphis Corvette Club, she and her husband, Joe, traveled in their three corvettes to various events, frequently socializing with Kathy and her husband Matt. I would put Tina in my top five friends from my lifetime. She made you feel that special, and she was that special. That charm helped Tina professionally. Despite never graduating from college, she earned about 200,000. $200,000 a year as a vice president with the financial firm, Cantor Fitzgerald.

Joe Corona was also involved in finance, running his own company, Corona Investments. In his spare time, he tinkered on cars with friends like Gary Hathaway. He had a great sense of humor, and he was a funny guy to be around, and I actually did enjoy being around him. Tina met Joe in 1993. She was divorced with a four-year-old son, Todd. Joe also divorced was managing a shoe store, where Tina, known for her collection of hundreds of shoes, was irregular. The couple married several months after they met, and holidays quickly became family affairs.

There's Tina. Merry Christmas. Merry New Year. Happy Hanukkah. Show me that tree. She loved decorating for Christmas. Todd, now 24, has spawned memories of those early years with Joe. You think Santa did all right? He loved me and tried to act like my father. When we had fun together, we'd been to baseball games together, football games together. We went all sorts of places. Over their 15-year marriage, Tina and Joe enjoyed a lifestyle filled not just with cars, but also cruises and casinos.

Pastimes they shared with fellow Corvette club members, Gary and his wife Pat. And how were they as a couple? A very happy couple, you know, she called him Jojo. Well, they were always holding hands. Great couple. I never really saw him fight. I've never saw him argue or anything. He would always buy her jewelry if it wasn't every week or every other week or flowers. Joe accompanied Tina most everywhere.

Behavior that could seem doting. But to friends, it was peculiar. He would never let her go to a nail appointment or her appointment. And did you ever talk to her about it? She wanted desperately to please him because she really thought he was all out. She had chemistry for him. More time with Joe meant less time with Tina's mother, Clara Murphy. I could see a change in Tina, you know, after she married Joe.

I felt like Joe was trying to keep Tina from me. She made beautiful pictures. Eventually, mother and daughter were completely estranged, a rift stemming from an argument over thousands of dollars that Clara said Joe owed her family. After it was all over with, Tina gets up from the table. And she said, I've lost my family. And they left.

And I never talked to her again for 14 months. Clara says she tried communicating with Tina, but her daughter refused, until she received a surprising email. And Tina writes to you, I guess as long as I'm married to Joe. Mm-hmm. And I pray that we stay married as long as you and dad did. we will never ever get to work things out. I know how you feel about him.

That's exactly right. While the message may not have seemed hopeful, it did end with the words, I will always love you, Mom. One month later, Tina was dead. I can't imagine what her mother and her son, and they'll never be the same. Friends gathered at the Corona home to support a distressed Joe.

He walked in and there was this glass bowl with marbles in it and a candle on the table, and he flung that on the floor. He did seem upset. He came up to me and gave me a hug and says, you're not going to leave me now, are you? Joe told friends in police. He believed Tina may have been murdered in a gang-related carjacking gone bad. Is it conceivable that people might have said, hey, you know, she was carjacked or it was a random act of violence?

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. It was time for friends and family to not just mourn the passing of Tina Corona, but to come together and celebrate her life. It was standing room only. People were standing up all. It was just packed. When we were leaving to go to the graveside, hundreds of hundred corvettes lined up back following us there.

following us there. It was Joe's wish, and he wanted to keep it lighthearted, not a real sad, formal affair. But some people thought the tone of the service was wrong, and that Joe's behavior in particular was inappropriate. They played, I'll have another beer in Mexico at her funeral, which was disgusting for me. And he would do thumbs up to somebody over there on the side. I don't know.

He was sitting in the front row, bent over like this, tapping his foot to the music. We were just so numbed and confused about the whole thing. We're on Brannock Street in Bartlett. This is where they actually found the avalanche with her body in the backseat. Gary started having serious reservations about Joe as soon as Tina's body was found in the back of her truck on a quiet, dead-end store. in a Memphis suburb. And in relationship to this, where is the storage unit?

The storage unit is straight line, probably about two blocks that direction. Were you suspicious? I was suspicious, yes. Gary was at the Corona's house on Monday when police broke the news about Tina. The coincidence about where the truck was found was still bothering him when he noticed there was one car too many parked at the house. The Chevelle is normally kept in the storage shed, and his red 80 Corvette during that period was kept in the house garage. So this gets a little complicated. This is a model that is not to scale.

But it will help illustrate that in 2008, the coronas had eight cars, four that they kept at the house, and another four that Joe kept six miles away here at the storage unit. In order to get one car out of the storage shed, it's a whole lot easier to just take one car down there, swap it out, bring the other car back. So the fact that the Red Corvette and the Red Chavelle were both at the Corona House that Monday was a big problem. Why is the Red Chappelle being in the garage such a big deal for you?

Why is it so telling for you? If both of those cars are there, What car did he drive to the storage shed to get the car? He would have had to have left a car there. Every car that's normally at the house was still at the house except for the avalanche. With four cars at the house and three cars at the storage unit, the question becomes which car did Joe drive to the storage unit and leave behind in order to get the Chevelle back to the house? Gary realized the only car missing was the avalanche, parked a half mile away from the storage unit.

And the avalanche has just been found several streets over with the body of his dead wife. Exactly. Is that the moment that you said he might have done it? Gary kept his suspicions to himself until he and his wife Pat finally had a moment alone. We actually went to bed that night on Monday. And we couldn't sleep. 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. She liked Pinesaw. 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. Oh, yeah, he kind of... Quite the act. I never saw a tear shed.

He kind of stumbled back a couple of... Yeah, he was just... A couple of steps like, you know, making it look like he was going to fall. On the way back, he got in our front seat with Gary. And as they were driving along, he... gets on his cell phone and, you know, he's saying that, yeah, 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, you know. That's when I started getting afraid of him. That, that moment. Even more chilling for Gary was the realization that just, that Joe may have used him for an alibi. Obviously, I'm thinking that he had already killed her

when he called me at 11.30 and he was looking for an alibi. So Thursday afternoon, I called the bar to police and said, we're going to come over and need to talk. The Hathaway's immediately began to distance themselves from Joe Corona. But friends like Matt and Kathy Struna continued their support. We arranged for grief counseling for Joe at our church, and we took him to church with us. We had them out here for dinners at our home.

Kathy even helped Joe pack up Tina's belongings about a week or two after her death. I asked him, I said, what do you want to do with all of this? And he said, I don't care what you do with it. He said, I just want it out of here. I don't want to look at it. I don't want to see any of her stuff ever again. So we were going through everything and putting it in boxes.

And I found a box of her high school albums and photos and stuff like that. And he said, I'm just going to throw that in the trash. I said, oh, no, you're not. I said, that should go to Todd. More and more questions were coming up about Joe Corona. The Bartlett Police Department worked hard to eliminate every other logical suspect, and Joe Corona stood out. But what possible motive would a man who routinely showered his wife with flowers and jewelry have to kill her?

How about an affair with this woman? She thought that she was his one true love. As the investigation into Tina Corona's murder continued, friends like Gary and Pat Hathaway had grown increasingly suspicious of Tina's husband, Joe. I sat there every day expecting at any moment there's going to be half a dozen squad cars come with the lights flashing and everything and they were going to haul home home. To get him, yeah. But many questions remained, including why would Joe want his wife dead? Searching for answers, some eyes turned to a woman the coronas knew from church, Becky Black.

Becky Black was a friend of Tina and Joe's, and I started having an affair with Joe. started walking at the track at the gym, and it started growing to something more intimate, and ended up lasting for about eight to ten years. Did she cooperate? Yes. So right away, she copped to everything, the relationship. Yes. Becky Black met Joe when she was in her mid-30s, feeling unappreciated in a troubled marriage.

He was filling in the gaps of the stuff that I wasn't, you know, wasn't getting at home. You know, opening the door, putting rose on my windshield, sending flowers to me at work. He paid her attention. He paid her compliments, just like he did with Tina. And so that gave her, you know, a false sense of security with him, and she was happy. Even after police questioned Becky, she continued to see Joe. After the murder, I was kind of caught in between. It was like I considered him my best friend. Like I didn't want to betray my best friend.

But soon, her support turned to suspicion, as Joe allegedly bullied. Becky. She had had had enough. He was getting meaner, more vocal, demanding that I do this and demanding that I do that. Becky told her husband about the affair and her concerns about Joe, which she now also shared with police. Seeing an opportunity, investigators convinced Becky to keep the pretense of the relationship going and to meet Joe in her car, in a parking lot, wearing a wire. I was afraid for my family's safety, and when they approached me to do that, I was more than willing. You love me more than you did her? To be on a shadow of a doubt, I love you more than I've loved anybody. While Joe did repeatedly profess his love for Becky in those recordings, he did not

profess guilt. 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. It made me feel like, honey, that if you're- I didn't do it, okay? 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 are usually called 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. Prosecutors believe that Joe did not want Tina or the bank looking into his finances. and that the closing was never going to happen. The reality was Joe did not even have an approved mortgage. When you fill out the application, they're going to start checking your bank accounts.

And Tina would have noticed it. And if Tina noticed it, she might ask questions. What Tina would have noticed, say prosecutors, was that Joe had built a financial house of cards. Instead of investing all his clients' money, his company, Corona investments, was scamming people, including Tina, their closest friends, and even his mistress, Becky Black. They didn't know anything. The friends and family had no idea. Because he was covering it up, using some fraudulent bank accounts.

Investigators scrutinized the Corona's finances and found checks from clients and friends like the Strunas. How much money did you lose with him? $15,000. Coronavirus investments is where we had to write that check. We, trace the paper trail and find out that went into his personal account. And there was a $30,000 withdrawal from Tina's annuity, requested by Joe 10 days before Tina's murder, and deposited into his own account 10 days after her death. Police say Joe forged Tina's signature.

Over a period of eight years, investigators believe Joe Corona conned his so-called clients out of more than $780,000. Joe Corona was in trouble because his con was about to be exposed because Tina wasn't stupid. If she were to find out that he's stealing from their friends and relatives and hiding it from her and defrauding her, that would have been the end of it.

And he'd have been back working at Shoe Carnival. Oh, he would have been in jail. Finally, police had a motive. They believed Joe was so afraid of Tina learning about and exposing his scam. He killed her. With this new knowledge of shady financial dealings, authorities went to search the Corona home for evidence. But Joe was nowhere to be found.

As the pendulum starts to swing toward Joe Corona, that's when he decides he's going to bolt. And, of course, flight is a real big indicator of guilt. Nearly five months had passed since Tina's murder. And now, with Joe missing, a warrant was issued for his arrest. I thought he ran to Canada or Mexico or something. I thought Mexico, because he liked warm places. But after a 17-day search, Joe was found much closer to home. A tip to a crime stopper line led police just 77 miles away to a hotel in Jackson, Tennessee.

He has said that he was not on the run. Couldn't he have just been visiting someone? Sure, but then when the police knocked. at your door at the Howard Johnson, and you scream out, I've got a gun. Joe Corona was armed, but so were the cops who knocked on his hotel room door. And after just 15 minutes of negotiating, Corona surrendered. We're ready on the state of Tennessee versus Joe Corona. With a mountain of circumstantial evidence, prosecutors charged Corona with first-degree murder.

They now feel they have their man and his motive. But with no physical evidence, do they have a case? We didn't have the best shot in the world, but we're going to take the shot we had because that's what we're supposed to do. Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart starts pounding, horrors, hauntings, and mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Kailen Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods horror and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of The Darkly Curious, check you're looking to join a passionate community of The Darkly Curious, Check out Heart Starts pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

And remember, stay curious. There were a couple of us that had to be hit in the head with a shovel before we finally believed he could do such a horrible thing. After Joe Corona was arrested in March 2009, his friends were shattered by the level of betrayal. Oh, my God, he's been playing us all like a fool. Not everyone from the Corvette Club, however, thinks that Joe is that. guilty, like Patricia Turner. He called me from the jail in Bartlett. During the course of that conversation, he said, I did not kill her.

Do you still support Joe now as we're getting ready to embark on the trial? I support Joe from the standpoint that I believe strongly in our judicial system. And it angers me deeply that so many have already judged him. Almost four years to the day that Tina Corona was murdered, both sides are now ready to present their case to the jury. The state's proof will show that the defendant, Joe Corona, killed his wife, Tina, stuffed her back, behind the front and back seats of that truck,

and left her parked on the side of the road. And you will discover that the evidence does not fit the theory. And then when all of a sudden done, the only verdict that you can return is that Joe Corona is innocent, killing his wife. Being in a jury, it's a shared experience, but it's awesome. Four members of the jury sat down with us to talk about their reaction to the testimony.

Were you prepared for it? Yeah, nothing could prepare you for it. I mean, you just thrown in there and you just have to deal with the emotional part. It affected me more than I thought it would. I determined that the cause of death was asphyxiation. The medical examiner could not say exactly how the killer suffocated Tina Corona, only that it was a slow death. I mean, it's a pretty traumatic thing to process, and that a person could actually do that.

How long would you have to cover someone's nose and mouth for them to die of asphyxiation? If they were covered completely, they would become unconscious in 40 seconds to a minute, but to cause death that cold must be maintained for approximately three minutes. Had the medical examiner not broken down how asphyxiation happens, it takes perseverance to do it. The state starts building its case brick by brick, and Gary Hathaway is a key witness. In order to get the Chevelle, you have to take a vehicle down there, leave it, and then drive the Chevelle back. Well, the cars certainly stood out, the positioning of the cars. And also just the location of the where the truck was found in relation to the storage facility as well as the cars.

Did you consider robbery to be a feasible 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. It gave us a rough figure of those rings being worth $30,000. The avalanche was part, lot.

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 dusty for fingerprints? I don't believe it was, sir. Was that sent to the TVI 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. would have or whatever. And I think the defense really hit on that. How many murder investigations have you done in your career? A part of or been lead on? Lead on. And how many of you've been a part of? About eight. I don't think it was incompetence.

I just think that it was just an experience. And jurors wondered if it was more inexperience that led to potentially important evidence being lost. So this is your home. And then when you look kitty corner across the street, street, this is the Corona's house. Jeff Cox is a neighbor of the coronas. His home security cameras face the Corona house, and we're rolling the day Tina went missing. What do you remember seeing on the footage? I remember him moving several cars around. And how about the truck? Do you remember

seeing that going in and out? The truck left. Never came back. And could you see the driver in the footage? We could not see the driver. Well, that's your belief, please, sir. Jeffrey B. Cox. But at the trial, Cox testified police never knew about the footage until five months later. He told the jury by then it was gone, recorded over numerous times. I was disappointed when we didn't get to say that. And we would see some evidence of Tina leaving the house that day as he claimed she did. So you were expecting it to exonerate or implicate in one way? Yeah.

But the person the jury was most eager to hear from was Joe. Corona's mistress, Becky Black. You can tell us your full name? Thanks, ma'am. Becky Black. I think we all had high expectations for her because she was just surfacing in so many of the testimonies. Did Becky live up to your expectations as a witness?

No. I think we all really felt that. I think that we thought she was going to be the smoking gun or whatever. Tell me if we recognize the police? I do. What is that, please? Not a smoking gun. But jurors say a letter Joe wrote to Becky was revealing about his character and his true feelings for Tina.

Never makes me feel dumb. Never loved for what she could get. Never pressure to do anything. I think there was a couple of things in there that actually showed his feelings toward Tina. He said that Becky would never make him feel dumb. I mean, that to me is a direct reflection on that somebody else had made him feel it way. That these were more against Tina than for Becky. So far none of the testimony was hard evidence against Joe Corona.

There's a lot of circumstantial evidence. Were you left wanting something tangible to hook this guy into this murder? Well, I certainly think so. And that moment might just come from the unlikeliest of places. John Bowers. Fellow inmate, John Bowers. Were you worried that the jury would have a credibility issue with him? Absolutely.

You know, it's a gamble. Sometimes you don't know what the snitch is going to do when they get up on the stand. He duct taped her and put a bag away here. It's been five days since the trial started. Thus far, the prosecution has only presented circumstantial evidence. Finally, they are about to call one person who claims to have some hard evidence against Joe Corona. The whole truth and nothing but the truth is to help you got. Yeah, that's John Bowers.

John Bowers is a federal inmates convicted of manufacturing meth and happened to be in the same cell. And he talked to Joe. After ranting and raving about wanting to kill his own girlfriend, Joe decided he would, you know, say, hey, yeah, I killed somebody too. Did you explain to these ladies and gentlemen what that man told you in the holding cell over the federal place? He turned around and said they were in the house and his wife bargaining. And it escalated all the way back to the garage and she was getting in the truck that he duct taped her and put a bag of where he was. Probably the most difficult thing hearing was the John Bauer's story that Joe told him

and they're holding cell. That's probably the most difficult thing to hear. He said he messed up and left her jury 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 myth addict. You believed him? Yeah. Bowers' 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. Here, Fisher, where's your right hand? You swear to tell the truth.

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. It was around 3 o'clock that afternoon. Then two more people testify. Each says they saw a woman matching Tina's description Saturday afternoon, sitting in a truck part of the afternoon. sitting in a truck parked on Brannick.

At the same time, prosecutors say, Tina was dead. Her hair was short, light color. You're sure of the time, 545? Why are you sure of the time? Well, we had to be at church around six, and we were leaving to go to church. At 545, Joe is heading to Sam's Club looking for Tina. Do you recognize that car right there?

It looks like a red corvette. Does you recognize Mr. Corona in this picture? Yes, I do. He's in the lower right corner of the pitcher. What does that say as far as the date? October 25, 2008, 554. Finally, Joe takes the stand. But the jury is out of the courtroom.

And you understand that if you're convicted as charge, you're looking at life in prison. Correct. Have you decided what you want to do in this matter? Yes, I have. What is that decision? I will not testify. Joe Corona decided not to testify. He and his attorney have declined.

repeated requests by 48 hours to be interviewed. As closing arguments begin, the defendant was living alive. ADA Karen Cook hammers home the financial motive. He stole from an elderly man, from infant to elder. He had absolutely no compunction who he stole from. And all of that was going to be coming to light

as soon as that house did not close. Corona's defense attorney Rusty White strikes back with mistakes made by the cops. They didn't swap the back of the car where the perpetrator would have been. You'll see these rings, and these are expensive. They didn't check these for DNA. Somebody tugging on a finger to take them off. I thought that was their best moment. Why?

Well, it was like the passion, and it seemed that he was really pounding on some things there. And then I thought that when the prosecution did that last, closing argument as well, then they shut the door on that. Prosecutor Tom Henderson's fiery closing reminds the jury of Tina's vicious, slow death. All he had to do during that first four minutes was stop. She could have lived, but he kept it up for four to six minutes because he wanted her dead. Finally, the case goes to the jury. Less than two hours later, we the jury find the defendant guilty of first degree murderous

charged in the indictment. Guilty. The verdict comes four years to the day that Joe Corona buried his wife, Tina. And since there's no other punishment but life imprisonment, I will impose that today. For Joe Corona, there will be no chance for parole until the year 2068. By then, he would be 104 years old. She would be hugging me, telling me that you can finally Sorry. It's okay. You can finally be happy. You can finally move on.

There's another day that goes by, I won't think about her. Love her. I miss her every day. After Tina's death, Joe was cleaning everything out of the house that was Tina's. He threw her Bible in the waste paper can. Somebody brought the Bible to me. And this is something she wrote in here. Worry is the great thing she wrote.

is the greatest thief of joy, right praying, right thinking, and right living. In 2013, Joe Corona pleaded guilty to embezzlement, money laundering, and two counts of fraud. Seven years were added to his life sentence for murder.