Who is David Tronnes? Florida fake billionaire accused of strangling wife to death faces trial
ORLANDO, FLORIDA: At the time of Shanti Cooper-Tronnes' marriage to her husband David Tronnes, she thought that he had inherited between $4 and $6 million dollars from his father.
However, reality hit her hard as she kept getting stuck with all the bills following her marriage, and much to her surprise and disappointment, her millionaire husband not helping with so much as the groceries.
People close to her claimed that Shanti was savagely beaten and strangled in the Florida home they were reportedly renovating for the reality TV show 'Zombie House Flipping.'
Her husband, initially claimed that his wife slipped and fell in the bathtub. The defendant was headed to court Wednesday, October 11, for the start of the murder trial.
What charges does David Tronnes face?
David, who previously pleaded not guilty to a single count of first-degree murder, was found mentally competent to stand trial earlier this year despite a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
According to WESH 2, jurors selected for the trial this week were asked about how they would be affected by allegations of domestic violence.
In opening statements, prosecutors said that the couple began fighting in 2017 over their home renovation project, which prosecutors coined a “money pit.”
What happened on the first day of David Tronnes trial?
Prosecutors called several witnesses on the first day of trial including the 911 operator, a GEICO employee specializing in insurance fraud, and a crime scene investigator, and expect to call as many as 25 witnesses to the stand, McLeod reported.
What did Shanti Cooper-Tronnes know about David Tronnes?
Authorities have alleged that Tronnes killed his wife of about a year in their Orlando neighborhood after she learned he not only did not have the millions she thought he did, but he also allegedly had a penchant for going to bathhouses for anonymous sex with men.
“We all thought we knew David Tronnes,” a friend of Tronnes previously told People Magazine.
“Come to find out, what we knew was a facade. He was living a total lie,” the friend said.
Friends and relatives have called David “a miser” in interviews with police and claimed the wife that married him for his money ultimately “bought everything.”
He 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.
When did David Tronnes report Shanti's death?
On April 24, 2018, David, who was 11 years older than the single mother he had met on Match.com, dialed the emergency services and reported 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” David, reporter McLeod tweeted.
He later told police that he had pulled her from the tub and carried her to the living room, despite the fact that both were 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.
“Not one tear came out of your eyes — not one,” Detective Teresa Sprague told Tronnes in a police interrogation video obtained by the Orlando Sentinel in which she accused the husband of “fake” crying for “about seven or eight hours.” The detective added, “There is not a lick of remorse for what you did to this woman.”