The Trail Went Cold - Episode 462 - Lucille Rinaldi

The Trail Went Cold

Robin Warder

True Crime, Tv & Film

4.5 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christmas Eve 1963. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 34-year old Lucille Rinaldi, who happens to be five months pregnant, is bludgeoned and suffocated to death inside an apartment belonging to her husband, Frank Rinaldi. Even though Frank was supposedly out Christmas shopping when the crime took place, he is charged and convicted of Lucille’s murder after investigators learn that Frank took out a life insurance policy on his wife and there are also allegations surface that he was a closeted gay man. However, after the Supreme Court of North Carolina rules that the jury was unfairly prejudiced at Frank’s trial, his conviction is overturned and he is acquitted at his retrial. Was Lucille Rinaldi actually murdered by her husband or did the real killer manage to get away with it? On this week’s holiday-themed episode of “The Trail Went Cold”, we explore a controversial and sensationalist Christmas Eve murder case. Join us on Saturday, December 20 at 8:00pm ET for an online streaming marathon where we will be watching classic segments from “Unsolved Mysteries”. You can enter our screening room by clicking on this link. Additional Reading: "Time of Death: The True Tale of a Quest for Justice in 1960s Chapel Hill" by Nora Gaskin https://www.newspapers.com/image/652430172/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/939529735/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/791770654/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/1026944384/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/463569154/ https://www.newspapers.com/image/463569188/ https://indyweek.com/news/archives-news/cautionary-tale-d-a-jim-hardin/ “The Trail Went Cold” is on Patreon. Visit www.patreon.com/thetrailwentcold to become a patron and gain access to our exclusive bonus content. The Trail Went Cold is produced and edited by Magill Foote. All music is composed by Vince Nitro.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Christmas Eve
0:01.0	1963
0:02.5	Chapel Hill, North Carolina
0:05.1	34-year-old Lucille Rinaldi, who happens to be five months pregnant, is bludgeoned
0:11.0	and suffocated to death inside an apartment belonging to her husband, Frank Rinaldi.
0:16.8	Even though Frank was supposedly out Christmas shopping when the crime took place, he is charged and convicted of Lucille's murder,
0:23.4	after investigators learned that Frank took out a life insurance policy on his wife, and allegations surfaced that he was a closeted gay man.
0:31.0	However, after the Supreme Court of North Carolina rules that the jury was unfairly prejudiced at Frank's trial,
0:37.1	his conviction is overturned,
0:39.3	and he is acquitted at his retrial, so the truth about who is actually responsible for Lucille's
0:44.4	murder remained shrouded in mystery. After that, the trail went cold.
0:53.5	Music The
0:57.0	The Hello everyone and welcome to a special holiday-themed episode of The Trail Went Cold.
1:31.5	I'm your host Robin Warder, and this week we're going to be exploring a controversial crime which occurred on Christmas Eve,
1:38.9	the 1963 murder of Lucille Rinaldi. As a lead-up to the holiday season, it's always been a tradition for
1:46.0	this podcast to cover mysteries that took place around Christmas time, and while this was a pretty
1:51.3	sensationalistic case in North Carolina during the 1960s, it almost seems to be forgotten about
1:56.9	today. The victim in question was Lucille Rinaldi, who hailed from Connecticut, but decided to
2:03.2	travel to Chapel Hill to spend the holidays with her husband, Frank Rinaldi, who was pursuing his PhD,
2:09.5	and working as a part-time instructor at the University of North Carolina. The Rinaldi's had been
2:15.3	married for nearly five months at this point, and Lucia was around
2:18.4	five months pregnant, but while her husband was out Christmas shopping with a friend, Lucille wound
	...

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