Murder of Tina Coronna: Husband Joe Coronna strangled her to death

Mugshot of Joe Caronna
Joe Caronna was found guilty of murdering wife, Tina Caronna. Pic credit: Shelby County Attorney’s Office

A Time To Kill on ID travels to Memphis, Tennessee, this week to examine the 15-year marriage of Tina and Joe Coronna, which ended in a brutal murder.

On October 25, 2008, Tina Coronna disappeared from her Memphis home. She was reported missing that evening by her husband, Joe Coronna, and a couple who were friends of the pair.

At this point, Joe did not seem overly concerned and suggested to an officer that she probably just got mad and left.

However, two days later, her body was discovered in the back of her SUV, which was located on a dead-end street not far from the coupe’s home. Tina’s remains had been stuffed onto the back seat and covered in two beach towels.

Her hands were bound, and her mouth covered with duct tape; she had been asphyxiated. There were thousands of dollars worth of jewelry left on her body, which caused investigators to rule out robbery as a motive immediately.

The police were stumped as to why anyone would want to kill the innocent and well-liked Tina Coronna. On the surface, Tina and Joe appeared to be in a loving relationship, but when investigators began digging, they soon found all was not well between the two.

Police grew suspicious of Joe Coronna

Tina and Joe had been married since 1993, and everything had seemed fine between the pair, but it later transpired that Joe had been having multiple affairs in the years before his wife’s murder.

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Suspicions in Joe were further heightened when it was learned that surveillance footage from a neighbors home had clocked Joe leaving his house in Tina’s SUV on the day she died. He was later spotted returning home in a different car.

Further investigation into Joe revealed that the insurance salesman had been defrauding his clients since 2001. He embezzled over $500,000 from various clients, which he used to fund his love of vintage sports cars.

On March 8, 2009, five months after Tina’s murder, the police finally issued an arrest warrant for Joe. Unfortunately, Joe realized he was in trouble and managed to flee Memphis before the cops could grab him.

He spent the next two weeks on the run before the police received a tip-off from a member of the public, and he was arrested at a motel in Jackson, Tennessee.

When the case went to court, prosecutors argued that Joe had killed his wife because he was afraid she’d reveal that he had been stealing money from his insurance client.

The most significant blow to Joe came on the gift day of his trial when a fellow inmate took the stand to say that Coronna had confessed to suffocating his wife with a plastic bag.

In 2012, Joe Coronna was found guilty of murdering Tina Corrona, his wife of fifteen years, and was sentenced to life in prison. A year later, he was also found guilty of fraud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghhzZHvl9tc

More from A Time To Kill

Follow the links to read about more murders profiled on A Time To Kill.

Ex-con William Cumber was given a second chance by his girlfriend Sabine Musil-Buehler when he left prison. He repaid her good faith in him by murdering the businesswoman and burying her on a Florida beach.

David Moffitt broke into the home of his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, Justin Michael, and shot him dead as he slept. Moffitt’s plan to frame another ex-boyfriend unraveled when he got in a car accident as he fled the murder scene.

A Time To Kill airs at 10/9c on Investigation Discovery.

Joe Caronna murdered his wife, Tina Coronna, and left her remains bound an SUV. The police later discovered that wasn’t his only dark secret.

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