A man from Florida of the US was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder in the brutal killing of his wife, who he claimed accidentally drowned in a bathtub. Prosecutors alleged that David Tronnes, 55, beat and strangled Shanti Cooper-Tronnes to death in April 2018 at their home in the Delaney Park suburb of Orlando, which was being renovated, Law&Crime reported.
The husband called 911, claiming he came home from walking his dogs to find his wife covered in blood in a bathtub partially filled with water.
But officers who rushed to the scene found the 39-year-old married mother completely dry minutes later.
During questioning after his arrest in August 2018, a detective accused Tronnes of pretending to cry over his wife’s death and showing “no trace of remorse”.
In court Wednesday, Tronnes appeared teary-eyed as prosecutors and defense attorneys made their closing arguments.
“She was brutally attacked and then strangled,” a state prosecutor said of Cooper-Tronnes.
An autopsy found the woman was hit in the head with such force that her skull was fractured, before she choked to death.
“This is personal,” the prosecutor said, referring to the victim’s manner of death.
After killing his wife in the bedroom, prosecutors said Tronnes tried to clean up the scene by wiping up bloodstains to make Cooper-Tronnes’ death look like an accident.
Tronnes’ defense team tried to downplay the state’s evidence as circumstantial — and claimed Orlando police messed up the investigation into the murder. “If the strongest part of your case is that she’s not crying enough or there’s not enough water on the floor, then that’s not proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” one of the defendant’s attorneys said, according to ClickOrlando.
Prosecutors told the court the couple, who met in 2013 on a dating website and tied the knot a year before Cooper-Tronnes’ death, had been having marital problems and arguments. Tronnes spent thousands of dollars on home renovations and hoped to appear on the reality show “Zombie House Renovations,” but his wife refused, prosecutors said.
“Cooper-Tronnes’ refusal to appear on the reality show upset Tronnes to the point that it led to her murder”, the prosecutor’s office said in a press release. Tronnes did not testify during his trial and the defense called no witnesses to the stand.
Jurors took just hours to convict Tronnes after a week-long trial. The judge sentenced the husband to life in prison after the death penalty was taken off the table at the request of the victim’s family.
Source: News Beast
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