Husband killed his wife after she refused to appear on home renovation TV show
When David Tronnes bought a house in Orlando’s upmarket neighbourhood of Delaney Park, he became obsessed with transforming it into a dream home. The sprawling 19th-century property covered more than 4,000 sq ft and had a pool, a separate flat and even a few gargoyles. Tronnes was convinced it had huge potential and he bought the house for cash.
He had moved from Minnesota to Florida after meeting girlfriend Shanti Cooper online in 2013. She had recently been divorced and had an eight-year-old son she adored. The clever businesswoman had a lucrative software firm and Tronnes, who was 11 years her senior, appeared to offer the stable future she was looking for.
He had confided in Shanti that he’d inherited more than $4 million. He’d just got divorced, too, so it felt like a fresh start for them both.
Extensive renovations
In 2015, Tronnes bought the property for just over $600,000 and started extensive renovations. Two years later he and Shanti were married and living in the house where building work was underway.
Shanti worked from a home office while Tronnes managed the project. But while he claimed to have money, Shanti found herself paying for everything, from their wedding to the property’s remodelling bills. The house was held in a trust fund for Tronnes and his mother. Even after their marriage, Shanti’s name wasn’t included on the documents. Nevertheless, she put about $250,000 into the project.
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The couple bought this Florida home for $600,000 in 2015 (cbsnews.com)Contractors were on site and demolition had started, but the scheme quickly turned into a costly failure. Tronnes had insisted on the removal of most internal walls, presumably in an attempt to create an open-plan area, but it left the building an unsafe shell, meaning the main part of the house was too dangerous to live in. By 2018 Shanti was working and sleeping in the flat while Tronnes was having to live in the garage.
With the house in such a dire state, Tronnes contacted a property renovator who had appeared on Zombie House Flipping , a US reality TV show that features homes that need bringing back to life. When the developer saw the house, he could see it was a complete disaster and approached the producers who agreed to feature it on the show.
With filming due to start in May 2018, Tronnes believed it would be the answer to all his problems. But there was a complication. The show’s producers needed Shanti on board, but they’d got the impression she was reluctant to take part. Was it because she still wasn’t named in the house’s trust fund – despite having invested a quarter of a million dollars in it – or were there bigger problems in the couple’s marriage?
On the afternoon of 24 April, Tronnes called 911 and begged for help. “My wife… I found my wife, she’s not breathing,” he cried. He said he’d returned from walking the dogs to find his wife floating face down in a half-filled bath. He’d pulled her out and performed CPR, but to no avail. The emergency services arrived and declared 39-year-old Shanti dead.
While Tronnes suggested his wife had died in a tragic accident, officers observed that she appeared to have been badly beaten. They also noticed that the bath was dry and there was no evidence of water having splashed on to the floor, which would have been expected had Shanti been hauled from the tub as Tronnes claimed.
He said he had dialled 911 within five minutes of finding his wife but there was no way that the bathroom area – or Shanti – could have dried out so quickly. Tronnes was a suspect from the start and was taken to the police station for questioning that lasted for several hours. He claimed he had been doing chores before taking the dogs to the park. He returned to the house at about 3pm.
He described finding Shanti in her pyjamas, in a bath full of water, on his return. He suggested that she might have slipped or blacked out. But Shanti also had a bruised eye and cheek and there was blunt force trauma to her head that a fall couldn’t account for. A post-mortem revealed she had been beaten and strangled. Officers found blood on her bed, suggesting that might have been the place where she was attacked.
Throughout the interrogation, Tronnes appeared to be crying, but officers noted that he hadn’t shed any actual tears and he was accused of faking his grief. He was eventually released while the police carried out further investigations. Tronnes argued that Shanti might have been killed by a burglar. He claimed $5,000 in cash was missing, along with his wife’s engagement ring, which had been valued at $15,000. Officers later found the missing ring among his possessions. There were no signs of forced entry at the house and there were plenty of other valuables that hadn’t been taken.
Sex with strangers
Investigators discovered that Tronnes was a member of a gay bathhouse where men met to indulge in anonymous sex with strangers.
He had been there the day after his wedding and two weeks before Shanti was killed.
Finally, on 29 August, 2018, four months after the killing, Tronnes was arrested and charged with the first degree murder of his wife, Shanti Cooper-Tronnes. At Tronnes’ trial in October this year, a Florida court was told that just days before her death, Shanti had walked out of a meeting with producers of Zombie House Flipping. The prosecution argued that this had angered Tronnes, who believed the reality show was the answer to their problems, after the house he’d bought had turned into a money pit.
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Shanti and Tronnes enjoying a family day out (Facebook)Shanti had also discovered her husband had lied about the millions he claimed to have – and that he had a weakness for anonymous sex with men. He had visited the bathhouse about 70 times and witnesses testified to seeing him having sex there.
The prosecution claimed that Tronnes had beaten and strangled his wife in her bedroom, then cleaned up before the police arrived, which is when he suggested she’d fallen into the bath. The defence argued that an intruder could have broken in and killed Shanti, but after a six-day trial the jury disagreed and found Tronnes, 55, guilty of first degree murder. Soon afterwards, he was sentenced to life in prison.
Shanti’s teenage son described his mother as “the best person I ever knew”. He told the court, “Early 2018, she was taken from me and my family. It’s like a hole in my heart that I can’t fill or fix. She didn’t die peacefully. She did not deserve anything that happened to her that night.”
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