David Tronnes and Shanti Cooper-Tronnes.Photo:Facebook
WhenShanti Cooper-Tronnesmarried her husbandDavid Tronnes, she believed he had inherited between $4 and $6 million dollars from his father.
Her husband — who initially claimed his wife slipped and fell in the bathtub — headed to court Wednesday for the start of the murder trial. Tronnes, who previously pleaded not guilty to a single count of first-degree murder, wasfound mentally competent to stand trialearlier this year despite a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
Tweeting from inside the courtroom, reporter Emily McLeod of News6 WKMG, said that in opening statements prosecutors said thatthe couple began fightingin 2017 over their home renovation project, which prosecutors coined a “money pit.”
David Tronnes in a mugshot.
On the first day of trial, prosecutors called several witnesses including the 911 operator, a GEICO employee specializing in insurance fraud and a crime scene investigator and expect to callas many as 25 witnessesto the stand, McLeod reported.
“We all thought we knew David Tronnes,” a friend of Tronnespreviously told PEOPLE. “Come to find out, what we knew was a facade. He was living a total lie.”
David Tronnes and Shanti Cooper-Tronnes.Orlando Police
In interviews with police, friends and relatives have called Tronnes “a miser” and claimed the wife that married him for his money ultimately “bought everything.” Tronnes even refused to pay more than one-third of the rent on a house they had previously shared because her young son also lived there, her friend Melissa Burzinski later alleged to police.
“Dave was doing things that was [ticking] her off as it pertains to money,” Burzinski told police.
Then on April 24, 2018 Tronnes — who was 11 years older than the single mother he had met on Match.com — called 911, reporting that his wife had slipped and fallen in the bathtub. The call, which was played on the first day of trial, featured a “sobbing/ wailing” Tronnes, reporter McLeod tweeted.
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Tronnes later told police that he had pulled her from the tub and carried her to the living room — although they were both dry when emergency responders arrived minutes later.
A medical examiner later found that Cooper-Tronnes died from blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation. Four months after her death, her fake millionaire husband was arrested and charged with her murder.
source: people.com
