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[theme music] Delaney Park is a beautiful
upper-class, if you will, neighborhood with
very large homes,
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some of them even mansions. Some of the homes have very
nice views of downtown Orlando.
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It's very affluent and
very low crime rates. More so well-to-do people
that live in these residences.
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On April 24th of 2018, I was
on-call for Orlando Police as a homicide investigator.
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And the 911 call came
in that afternoon by David Tronnes advising
that he had found his wife
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in the bathtub, unresponsive. So the call initially
came in on 911 as a sick or injured
person in distress,
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in need of medical attention. Patrol officers responded. And based on what they
observed at the scene
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and what the fire
department observed, they contacted
our homicide unit. And they felt that the
homicide unit needed
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to respond and
observe her injuries and then make a determination
if this was an accidental death,
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if this was a natural death,
if this was a suicidal death, or if this was a murder.
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I knew that Teresa was
up as lead investigator, so I walked over to her desk and
told her, hey, there's a call,
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and I want to go with you
on this investigation. It wasn't normal for
us to have, you know,
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a potential homicide
or a potential suicide in this type of a neighborhood. So when we arrived at the
scene, it was late afternoon.
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The house itself was very large. It seemed to be very
well taken care of. It was a stunning home, very
expensive, in a very exclusive
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neighborhood of Delaney Park. Beautiful when
they purchased it. To the west of the home
and the garage apartment
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was their backyard and
the pool area and a cabana area, so a very large piece of
property for this neighborhood.
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The first thing I noticed
when we got out of the car were these gargoyles. It just seemed a little ominous.
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My supervisor was there, our
Sergeant in homicide was there, and our crime scene personnel.
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They were directing
us to the apartment that was above the garage. I recall that
both officers had
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said they had spoken
to David Tronnes and that he found
her in the bathtub. You know, she was unconscious
and that he had found
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her in rose-colored water. He felt that she had slipped
and fallen in the bathtub.
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He pulled her out of the
water to do CPR on her. When I first saw Shanti, she
was on the floor, on the carpet,
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in between her bed and her desk. Yet the first thing we noticed
is she didn't appear wet.
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Her skin didn't appear pruned. Her clothing did not appear-- maybe damp but not wet.
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And the flooring
didn't appear wet. Shanti had clear
injuries on her face. Her left eye was
swollen, black and blue.
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You could see blood in her hair. Her injuries were inconsistent
with a slip and fall.
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We had observed a diamond
earring on her nightstand. Her left earring
was still in her ear
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where the most trauma
was to her face. Her right earring was removed. BARBARA SHARP (VOICEOVER):
And we noticed that she
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wasn't wearing a wedding ring. It was a very expensive
piece of jewelry. It's approximately
a $15,000 ring.
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And it wasn't on her hand
when we observed her. But when I asked David
Tronnes about her jewelry,
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I said, what did
she have on today? And he indicated her wedding
ring and her earrings.
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So I'm trying to figure out,
is this a random burglary, and she was attacked? Someone walked in and didn't
know she was there, perhaps,
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or whoever entered the home to
harm her possibly had access. There didn't appear to be
any signs of forced entry.
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Now, it doesn't mean that
there's not still a burglary. The door could
have been unlocked,
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and somebody could
have easily walked in. But there weren't any signs
of forced entry there.
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From this point forward,
although it's concerning to us that, you know, we weren't able
to resolve it straight away,
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it is also our job to
not have tunnel vision and to keep an open mind. David told us that
he had walked the dog
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and that when he came
back, he typically didn't interact with
Shanti during the day
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while she was working. He didn't have any conversation
with her during the day. DAVID TRONNES: Hi, family.
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So we had learned that she had
a young son, Jackson Cooper, who she had shared custody with,
who would sometimes stay
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with her at this residence. It was only this late afternoon,
and it was because he wanted
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to know if he should go
pick up Jackson from school or if she was going to do it.
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And when he called up to her,
I guess she didn't respond. And he went upstairs,
and that's when
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he found her in the bathtub. We typically don't call
the medical examiner until we are ready for them to
recover the body from the scene.
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But in this particular
case, Teresa, because she's so
experienced, knew that there
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might be something more. She wanted them to look. And we're not allowed
to touch the body.
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So medical examiner
investigator felt her clothing and said it was
damp but not soaked.
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Her hair was somewhat
damp, yet she appeared to have her night clothes on. So he was able to
open her eyelids,
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and then I observed the
trauma and the petechiae on the whites of her eyes. Having a background
in domestic violence,
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I had observed
petechiae quite a bit as it relates to strangulation. And it's just the small blood
vessels in the eyes that burst
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and cause red dots or hematoma. The medical examiner
agreed with us that this did
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not seem like a slip and fall. Absolutely. So, having noted those
items, we asked Mr. Tronnes
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if he would go to the station
voluntarily and be interviewed, and he agreed to do that, while
we were observing the scene.
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We knew that if she'd been found
in a tub full of water, at least the tub should be wet, though
there was no water to be
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seen in the bathroom at all. No water on the floor,
no water on the carpet. Everything was dried,
which would take
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some time for that to occur. So obviously, we
wanted to document the dry, diluted
blood on the shower
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walls and dry, diluted
blood on the tub. I wanted them to obtain
latent prints from anywhere
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on the surface of
that tub that they could find any latent prints. So we take all the necessary
information down at the scene.
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Detective Sharp and I
go back to the station to start the search warrant and
then interview David Tronnes.
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It was Shanti's day
to pick up Shanti's son, Jackson, at school. And because she didn't
arrive there that day,
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the school called
his father, and he came and picked up Jackson. I was home that day,
so when I got that call,
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I knew in an instant
something was wrong. She would never not pick
him up or at least not
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communicate with me. I called David's phone,
and I got his voicemail, and I was already driving to
the school, and I was angry.
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And then I made the
biggest mistake of my life, and I drove to their house,
which I wish I never had done.
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Jim turned down the street
and saw police cars everywhere. The entire time, Jackson
was in the car with Jim.
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I was just praying that
was somebody else's house before I got to the
end of the block.
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TERESA SPRAGUE (VOICEOVER):
David Tronnes, Shanti's husband, was taken to Orlando Police by
a patrol officer voluntarily.
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POLICE OFFICER: India 4597. Thank you. And we did not see him
until we went in to interview
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him between 8:00 and 9:00 PM. And then obviously let
him know what his rights were before speaking with us.
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So the initial interview
began with Detective Sprague speaking to David and
just getting a background
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on their relationship. He never expressed
anything other than it was just a blissful marriage.
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Mr. Tronnes had divorced a
year earlier from his first wife and was very well off
and, at 49, 50 years old,
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was basically early
retired and looking for love again and
looking to relocate him
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and his mother to Orlando. David portrayed that he was
independently wealthy and had
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millions of dollars
and was very successful through both a business
career and then
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received a large inheritance. BARBARA SHARP: They met on
one of the dating online sites
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and that he was living
in Minnesota at the time. They chatted back and forth,
would frequently fly back
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and forth to see each other. And that's when she,
you know, was smitten, was swept off her
feet by Mr. Tronnes.
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She would visit
him in Minnesota. He would come down to Florida. And they were going, you
know, every few weeks
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until, ultimately, I guess,
the decision was made he was going to move to Florida.
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He purchased the home
in Delaney Park with cash, and he put it in a trust with
him and his mother's name
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on the trust. BARBARA SHARP: He moved
in with Shanti and her son Jackson, who was
there part-time.
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He mentioned to us that
they were trying to renovate this house for quite some time.
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TERESA SPRAGUE (VOICEOVER):
And the main residence was completely uninhabitable.
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It was under
complete renovation. So for multiple years, David
and Shanti and Shanti's son
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were required to live
in a loft over a garage. He had offered that
they were getting
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along well, that they had a
vision for the renovation. David spoke very highly of
Shanti, that she was beautiful,
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but she was also
very intelligent. So what we want to focus
on is the timeline. It's just fact finding.
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It's evidence gathering. So it's an interview. It's not an interrogation. Now, when you're
doing the timeline,
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you're going to listen to
what Mr. Tronnes tells you. He slept in the
garage on a couch.
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Did not sleep with Shanti in the
upstairs loft on Monday night. He says he saw her again
when she came downstairs
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between 8:00 and 9:00. And I said, did
anyone see you? And he said, no. Did you take a toll road?
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And he took backroads
to the dog park. David then said that he
didn't see Shanti until almost 3
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o'clock that day, and then that
Shanti was tied up in business meetings the entire day.
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And that it wasn't
until, you know, sometime after 3:00 when it
had to be decided who was going
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to get Jackson from school,
that he'd go up there and then ultimately find her, as he
described, sort of partially
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submerged in a bathtub. Obviously, we treated him as
a witness who had found his wife
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deceased in their home. So it makes sense that we
want to know everything there is to know about them.
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But also, did she have any
problems with anyone else? Was she having problems
with people she had dated?
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Was she having problems
with her ex-husband? BARBARA SHARP: I
know a lot of people
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sometimes feel like, you
know, why are you always looking at the ex-husband? Well, statistically,
a lot of times
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it is the ex-husband or
the ex-wife, if you will, that has caused, you know,
the death of somebody.
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They wanted to get a recorded
statement right then and there. We wanted to know
everything there was to know
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about his marriage to Shanti-- when they met, their problems in
the marriage, why they divorced.
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We met on New Year's Eve,
I believe, 1999 or 2000 at a club in South Beach. She came in the room, and
you just knew she was there.
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She just had this
confidence about her and presence that
it affected you when you were in the room with her.
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And it was wonderful. And after a year,
we got engaged, and then we got married in 2002.
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That was quite a journey to
have a son together because that was something we both wanted.
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She was a very good mom,
had a great personality. We loved going to
amusement parks.
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We did that a lot. We loved going out, you
know, for walks, just doing a bunch of stuff like that.
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You know, simple things. It was the simple
things that mattered. We lived on a farm.
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She traveled for her job. So when she was away, I took
care of the farm and Jackson.
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She worked in finance,
which she did love. She stayed away for work
a little more than usual.
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And then the times that she was
home, she wanted to work more. So she became a little
detached from us.
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BARBARA SHARP: And then,
like so many marriages do, they started to kind of
go their separate ways.
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Shanti eventually had
an extramarital affair, which ended their relationship. It was a very
difficult divorce.
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It dragged out for years. I was very hurt. We at least kept a united front,
you know, in front of Jackson
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for the good of him and
raising him as best we could. I was trying to move
on with my life.
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And she had already moved
on with hers with David. I didn't care about his
relationship with her
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as long as Jackson
was safe around him. And as long as my
son is safe with him, then him and I would
not have a problem.
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You know, strangely,
when we first met with Jim Cooper,
the first thing he said to us is, where is her husband?
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And he seemed very,
very concerned. David Tronnes had
left for the day and came home and found his
wife deceased in the bathtub.
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RYAN VESCIO (VOICEOVER):
Shanti was autopsied the next morning on April 25. MICHAEL SMITH: The
medical examiner
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determined that she was killed
by blunt force trauma as well as strangulation. She had bruising on
both sides of her face.
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One of her ears was pulled to
the point it looked like it was almost pulled from her head.
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I mean, it was a
very violent attack. We knew she wasn't
sexually assaulted, and we knew there wasn't
foreign DNA inside of her.
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So we knew we weren't
looking for perhaps a rapist. And then Shanti
laid there alive,
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likely unconscious
or semi-conscious for a period of time. It could have been as
little as 10 minutes.
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It could have been
as long as an hour before Shanti's life was
ended through strangulation.
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Of keen interest to me was the
fact that she did not drown, and there were no
water in her lungs,
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although her husband
told a story of finding her face down in a bathtub. [music playing]
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RYAN VESCIO: The detectives
knew by the next day that Shanti's ex-husband, Jim,
was at work during the day
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and at home with
their son, Jackson. And he gave us his
timeline of that day. Jim Cooper drove
Jackson to school,
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pulled video from the school
to prove that happened, that he had been at lunch with
several co-workers and so forth.
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So we were able to
eliminate Mr. Cooper. RYAN VESCIO: And
at that point, Jim could focus on supporting
his young son, Jackson,
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who had just lost his mother. And Shanti's family
and close friends really came together
as a community,
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all focused on Jackson-- to support him, to allow
him to grieve, to help him process the worst thing that
could happen to a young child.
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The first thing we did once
the warrant was signed to search the home is we directed our
searchers and our crime scene
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personnel to secure the
most obvious evidence, which was around her
body because of how
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much blood was on the mattress
pad she was laying on. It appeared to be underneath
of Shanti on the carpet itself.
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Teresa and I began kind of
getting an idea in our head of, was this making sense, or
was it maybe more to this?
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We had two areas
of the carpet that had blood soaked down
through the carpet, so she'd been moved
at least twice.
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So now we see that
there's probably been movement of her
body from the tub, two different areas on the carpet.
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So all of the
movement seemed odd. And she appeared to be
already in rigor mortis.
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It just did not line up to me. TERESA SPRAGUE: David
brings up something also that I thought was telling.
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He indicates to us, without
us asking, that they had been intimate on Saturday
night and again on Sunday
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because Jackson had stayed
the night with a friend. We hadn't asked for that
information, but he offered it.
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He also offered that she was
menstruating at the time. BARBARA SHARP: We took that bed
apart and transported the bed
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to our crime scene
facility and found that there was a significant
amount of blood on that bed.
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But we suspected that
there was a cleanup. We discovered that
Shanti's blood was found on the inside bed
rail on the side of the bed
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where she was ultimately
found through DNA analysis. Because that bed rail
blood was cleaned up,
00:25:59
however, that also told
us that there was somebody else involved at the scene. TERESA SPRAGUE: So we have
to go through the timeline
00:26:14
of her life-- when she was last seen
alive and by whom, by other people in other ways--
00:26:21
through her cell phone, through
neighbors, through her son, through her ex-husband.
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When did people last
see Shanti alive? And what is her
day-to-day routine? We knew Jackson had been
picked up from Shanti Monday
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around 5:00 PM and
that Shanti had walked Jackson down to Jim's car. So she was alive
Monday at 5:00 PM.
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She also spoke to Jackson
that night and said goodnight to him on
the phone between
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8:00 and 8:30 Monday night. From there, it's getting
into her cell phone, getting into her computer.
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She was on her phone
for work constantly. She was extremely responsive
because she worked
00:27:01
from home and for herself. TERESA SPRAGUE: There
was no sign of life in her cellular communication,
in her text message
00:27:07
communication, in her business
communication whatsoever past Monday night. Computer forensics and
phone forensics showed that
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Shanti's phone stopped moving
at about 11:30 the night before she had passed. So according to Mr. Tronnes,
Shanti is alive on Tuesday
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morning. And he sees her twice before
he leaves the residence to go to the dog park.
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On David's phone, it showed
no movement, no activity, even though he said he had
done all of these things
00:27:40
on this particular day,
which is very unusual. So a lot of the pieces were
starting to fall in place,
00:27:47
but we still had a
lot of questions. TERESA SPRAGUE: We
interviewed people in Minnesota that knew David.
00:27:52
We interviewed his ex-wife. She said she didn't believe that
he was responsible for Shanti's
00:27:57
death and that that
did not, you know, coexist with the
man she lived with and was married to for 14 years.
00:28:13
At one point in time, after
we initially spoke to David, he said he believed
that somebody had broken
00:28:20
into the garage
apartment on that day and that there
was money missing. We knew her wedding
ring wasn't there.
00:28:28
He seemed to be very
proud of her wedding ring, that it was, you know, a
diamond and very expensive,
00:28:33
that he described. We went on an all-out
search for that ring and never found it in the home.
00:28:40
So that became concerning to us. BARBARA SHARP: David explained
to us, the one person
00:28:46
that he described that he
had seen in the neighborhood, who he described looking
like Woody Harrelson--
00:28:52
--who's an actor, indicating
that this person, you know, might be the possible suspect.
00:28:58
I reached out to
Officer Wilson, who was initially on the scene,
who's worked this area
00:29:04
for a number of years. And I asked Officer
Wilson, you know, they're saying that
there's this homeless guy
00:29:12
in the neighborhood
who allegedly looks like Woody Harrelson. And he said, I know exactly
who you're talking about.
00:29:18
And, you know, he's
very standoffish. He's very skittish
around people. I think he might have,
you know, schizophrenia
00:29:24
or something like that. So now we have to find him. So the patrol
officers, one night
00:29:29
in the middle of the
night, found him, you know, down on Orange Avenue
pretty far away from the scene.
00:29:35
That person was interviewed. We had no reason to believe
that person had any involvement
00:29:40
in Shanti's death whatsoever. The very moment that I saw the
first set of crime scene photos,
00:29:50
I noticed this was
not a break-in. There were no signs of
forced entry on the doors.
00:29:55
There were no broken locks. There were no broken
windows, open windows. MICHAEL SMITH: There was cash
around that was, you know, left.
00:30:04
There was electronics. There were credit cards, you
know, cell phones, laptops, all that sort of thing.
00:30:11
There was nothing overturned. There was no
furniture overturned like there was a struggle
between two people
00:30:17
or that she had fought. And there was no DNA
that was determined to not be Jackson's-- the son--
00:30:25
David Tronnes', or Shanti's. Same with fingerprints. There were fingerprints
all over the bathroom,
00:30:30
but there was no
stranger's fingerprints. And at that point
in time, it became a war of wills between
the detectives trying
00:30:36
to get a confession
and David trying to create a story that would
cover up his responsibility.
00:30:43
We decided we needed
to confront David and what we felt at
that point were lies.
00:30:48
And so at that point, it turned
into more of an interrogation. The level of frustration is
epic, seeing him really close,
00:31:35
like maybe leaning
in, and body language tells me a lot from someone. There were several times
when David, I think,
00:31:41
was very close to saying what
happened, and he just regrouped. Detective Sharp and I had to
make the very difficult decision
00:31:52
to release Mr. Tronnes. David Tronnes was sometimes
emotional and sometimes not,
00:32:00
sometimes inconsolable
and couldn't talk and other times very calm. We observed he never
once shed a tear for her.
00:32:11
Interviewing Jim Cooper
and David Tronnes, there was a definite difference
in their personalities
00:32:17
and how they were reacting
to the death of a loved one-- a current wife and an ex-wife.
00:32:25
Jim Cooper was
distraught and angry, which, to me, says an awful
lot about kind of where
00:32:35
you lie in that investigation. As the investigation
went into the summer, we knew that there
was more out there
00:32:45
and really had to focus
into backgrounds-- into David's life,
Shanti's life, their life.
00:32:51
Where did they come from? What sort of issues
did they face? And at the same time,
we're interviewing, you know,
00:32:57
people that walk through
the neighborhood. We're interviewing the
neighbors that knew
00:33:00
them and interacted with them. So imagine our surprise when
we're interviewing the neighbors
00:33:07
who had been in conversation
with an employee at a gay man's bathhouse or gym
that had told them
00:33:15
that David had been a member
of this facility for 18 months. We discovered that David
frequented a same-sex bathhouse
00:33:32
about two miles down the
road from their home, making over 65 visits. A men's-only facility for gay
and bisexual men to have sexual
00:33:41
relations with other men. And days before her
murder, he had been there. So we interviewed
the employees there.
00:33:49
And one of them
that we interviewed had seen him in, you
know, sexual contact with two different men on
two separate occasions.
00:33:58
Was David living a second life
that maybe Shanti didn't know about or maybe that Shanti
had just found out about
00:34:05
and was not happy about? They'd been married a little
over a year at this time. And so he did paint
a very incredible
00:34:13
picture of their marriage. We think, you know, from a
woman's standpoint would be
00:34:17
causing some problems for them. As the investigation
grew through the first and second month, we
began a deep financial analysis.
00:34:32
So Shanti had indicated
to some of her friends, you know, he's claiming
to be a millionaire,
00:34:37
but he won't pay for anything. He was spending money early
on when they were dating
00:34:43
and not so much once they
started living together. It seemed to change. And he didn't work the entire
time that he knew Shanti.
00:34:49
Her dad, her biological
father, his family owned an apartment complex in India. He sold it, and he gave all
that money to Shanti to invest.
00:35:01
And the financial picture
that we developed quickly was one where Shanti
was wildly successful.
00:35:08
In fact, paying
herself $50,000 a month out of her business
that she built from the ground up and operated.
00:35:16
Meanwhile, David was making
no income, not contributing financially to the home.
00:35:23
He convinced Shanti that he
could be his own contractor. BARBARA SHARP: I remember
looking at the main house,
00:35:29
and you could see inside,
and it was basically a shell. There was no walls. There was no floors.
00:35:36
The whole house had been gutted. TERESA SPRAGUE: And the more
demolition and the more they
00:35:40
dove into the renovation,
the worse it got. And it had gone on for so
long that her renovation
00:35:47
budget that she anticipated
was now, you know, hundreds of thousands
of dollars to--
00:35:54
in order to fix the problem. So it ended up where her
contribution was now going to be
00:35:59
perhaps $200,000 or
$300,000, and she was very concerned about that. When we first moved into
the Delaney Park house,
00:36:07
she was very happy. But as time went on,
with all the renovations, they started to
fight a little more.
00:36:14
Kind of changed
my opinion of him. I tried to keep my distance from
him because he lashed out a lot.
00:36:20
What David portrayed
and what really happened were absolute opposites. David wanted others to believe
that he was the provider.
00:36:30
But when we looked at
what the true story was, Shanti was the provider who made
hundreds of thousands of dollars
00:36:38
a year that she was
able to contribute. Shanti had to be the
breadwinner for them
00:36:44
and to bring that type
of a lifestyle for David because David wasn't bringing
anything to the table
00:36:50
to help support that. One of the things
that we discovered was that David had an entire
pot of money of his own
00:37:03
to the side that we don't
believe that Shanti ever knew about, and having
multiple accounts
00:37:09
with hundreds of thousands
of dollars that he did not want to contribute. David, upon buying the house,
put ownership of the house
00:37:17
in a trust for which him and
his mother were beneficiaries but Shanti had no
ownership interest in.
00:37:23
This is something that greatly
disturbed and bothered Shanti as she realized that she
was making investments
00:37:29
into a property that if
something went south with her and David's relationship,
she would have
00:37:34
no right to recover the monies. TERESA SPRAGUE: Shanti had
made quite a few requests
00:37:40
for her name to be put on
the trust along with David and his mother. There were either denials
or delays in doing so.
00:37:47
One item that Shanti kept
within her office space were to-do lists like all of us do.
00:37:54
And through list
and list and list, Shanti repeatedly wrote
the note, the follow-up,
00:38:01
get my name on the
house, get my name on the house, a number
of times over a period
00:38:06
of months and years. After she divorced Jim,
all of her beneficiaries on every account were
100% her son, Jackson.
00:38:22
Shanti had had a life
insurance policy with-- and actually, up
until the year before,
00:38:26
Jackson was the beneficiary. And Dave forged her signature
on life insurance policies
00:38:33
and other things, changing
Jackson as the beneficiary to him-- Which she would never do.
00:38:38
--which she would never do. And that was a
$350,000 policy. So, you know, you're looking
at, with the life insurance
00:38:45
and $800,000 in the accounts,
over $1 million, you know, that David would stand to control.
00:39:02
He had just made a request
for the $350,000 life insurance policy on Shanti. So they had indicated to me
that he was making a request
00:39:13
for the funds to be disbursed. And they had called me, and
I had requested that they
00:39:18
not disburse those funds. I made the decision
that it was time to bring the case to the grand jury.
00:39:23
The evidence only
pointed to David. I think, on that particular
day, they got into an argument,
00:39:36
and it was either over
the renovation, her being on the deed, or even possibly
her finding out about David's
00:39:44
other life, if you will,
being a member of this Orlando men's health club. MICHAEL SMITH: We do not
believe that the attack started,
00:39:55
you know, in the tub. We think it happened, you
know, sort of next to the bed and nightstand.
00:40:00
And we think it happened either
as she was taking out an earring to go to bed or maybe putting
an earring back on to, you know,
00:40:07
get ready for her day because
she had a nice pair of diamond earrings. And one was found
in her ear, and one
00:40:13
was found in the nightstand. But there was, you know,
blood that had dripped down
00:40:17
through the side of the bed. Maybe he struck her
in the head and then, you know, continued to attack
her there and then choked her
00:40:24
and then maybe tried to clean
some of the blood and evidence off, you know, in
the bathtub after.
00:40:33
I think he made sure that
he would inherit the house. I think he made sure that all of
the finances would come to him.
00:40:40
I don't know if he
ever loved Shanti or if she was a means to an end. We were able to arrest him
on August 29th of 2018.
00:40:56
But when they pulled up and
asked him to come off the porch, and he appeared almost relieved,
almost like he was expecting us.
00:41:03
We conducted a search
warrant at his mother's house, which was where he was
living at the time.
00:41:09
And in the bedroom that
David was staying in, there was a suitcase on the
floor with various items.
00:41:18
And in that suitcase was
Shanti's wedding ring. We had been looking for
it for 4 and 1/2 months,
00:41:26
and we had, you know,
pictures from Facebook. We knew the moment we
saw that ring, that
00:41:31
was the missing wedding ring. So that gave, you know, the
implication that this really
00:41:35
was extremely cold-blooded. I mean, what that
would show, I think, is that he pulled it
off of her dead hand.
00:41:48
It took 5 and 1/2 years
to bring it to trial. And the journey to trial
took a long and winding road
00:41:55
through the COVID pandemic and
the delays associated with that, through David Tronnes trying
to fake mental illness
00:42:05
and being sent to the
psychiatric hospital for observation
and determination that, in fact, his reported
symptoms of schizophrenia
00:42:14
were fictitious. I wanted to introduce
the jurors to, you know, an overview of what they're
going to hear in the case.
00:42:21
So I just started
back, you know, at the beginning of their
relationship-- how they met, how
00:42:25
he ended up in Florida, how
they ended up in this house together with her son, how
it was kind of destroyed,
00:42:32
the state of their
marriage at the time that the murder happened,
the violent nature
00:42:35
of how she was killed,
how this was no accident. One of the best witnesses
in this case, in fact,
00:42:42
were the financial records-- David immediately wanting to
receive hundreds of thousands
00:42:50
of dollars in life insurance
after Shanti's death. When you look at David starting
to change bank accounts
00:43:01
and move money, taking
the ownership of the home into his own name,
all those items
00:43:08
point that this could have been
a crime of financial motivation. I couldn't look at
him because if I did,
00:43:15
I was afraid I was
going to do something. Just the lies that he told about
me that Jackson had to hear.
00:43:26
TERESA SPRAGUE: We hope at the
end of all of this testimony that the jury sees what we see.
00:43:34
There wasn't really
a defense offered. It was more of an attack
on the police department
00:43:40
and the detectives
and the investigation. So you never
know what a jury is going to do because
you can't get
00:43:47
your whole story out in trial. And they were
out several hours as we anticipated they would be.
00:43:55
The jury comes back. They find him guilty-- first-degree murder. He will spend the
rest of his life
00:44:03
in prison where he will die. Our goal always
from day one was to get justice not only for
Shanti but to get justice
00:44:23
for Jackson and her family. When you meet this little
boy at eight years old, he was exceptional.
00:44:31
And then to see him at
trial at 14 years old, just an extraordinary young man. There's a few
photos back then.
00:44:43
It's nice looking back to
see how it was, like, my mom and I sitting on the little
beachside on the lake,
00:44:48
having a good time. Most of my impact statement was
just saying about who she was
00:44:54
and how great of
a person she was and how that was taken
away from my family. I just wanted to let the
judge know what he took from us.
00:45:04
And the only thing I can
think of is that he's evil. When we left the courtroom,
I was hugging Jackson.
00:45:15
I said, so high school is next. And then what? Are you going to go to college? And he said, I'm going
to be a police officer.
00:45:30
And I said, you know, Jackson,
you've been through so much. Just go be happy. Your mom would want
you to be happy.
00:45:39
And he said, I'm going to help
other people like all of you helped my mom. And I said, she'd be
very proud of you.
00:45:58
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