Possessed (20 page)

When Aguilera examined the door into the apartment, he found no signs of forced entry or damage. In the hallway, on his diagram he penciled in Ana's three suitcases. When he looked inside, he found shoes and clothes, ready for her trip to Waco. On his diagram of the position of the body, Aguilera noted that Stefan's head faced north.

As he encountered evidence, Aguilera placed yellow numbered markers adjacent to each item, then took photos with his Cannon digital camera. The bloody high-heel shoe next to the body was designated with evidence marker #1. On the record, he noted that it was a size nine and the brand was
Qupid. The heel was five-and-a-half inches, and the shoe had an approximately one-inch platform. Its mate, found beside Stefan's shoes at the wall that divided the kitchen from the living room, was marked with evidence marker #4.

Meanwhile, Duncan and Aguilera assessed the crime scene as a whole, attempting to diagnose how it happened. In the living room, they discussed the importance of the clumps of Stefan's white hair. Since they found no blood in the area, Stefan hadn't yet suffered any wounds. That led the two CSU officers to conclude that the couch must have been the site of the initial violence, during which Stefan Andersson's hair had been pulled.

Interestingly, they found no long dark hair that could have come from Ana Trujillo.

Proceeding from the couch toward the body, Duncan encountered a single drop where the living room met the entrance to the hallway. The shape was round, which meant that it had fallen vertically, while the source stood. In Duncan's mind, that drop was particularly important. Research over the years had documented that where the least amount of blood was found was usually an indicator of the location of the first bloodletting, since at that point, the source hadn't yet started bleeding profusely. That meant that if the battle began at the couch with hair pulling, by the time Stefan reached the entrance to the hallway, he had started to bleed.

At that point, Duncan entered the hallway. Walking slowly, he found forty drops of blood located six feet from Stefan's feet, positioned between that first blood drop and the body. They were round, indicating that as the blood fell, Stefan still stood upright. Nearby, four feet and six inches high, Duncan discovered a transfer stain, where something with blood on it rubbed against a wall. In his report he wrote: “These transfer stains are consistent with having been deposited by a blood-stained hand.”

On a curved wall near the body, he recorded the presence of more transfer impressions. Disappointingly, none
had visible ridge patterns, evidence of fingerprints, to link to a source. Methodically, Duncan followed the evidence, inspecting the walls surrounding the body. On all three, he recognized bloodstains “dispersed through the air due to an external force,” in other words spatter that occurred as something hit or cut into a body, causing an injury that spewed blood. The highest hit four feet eight inches above the floor, but the majority within two feet of the floor.

Looking at the blood, Duncan analyzed a horizontal pattern high up and spatter propelled at a greater angle close to the floor. In his report, based on the totality of his observations, he came to various conclusions including that “the bloodletting event moved from the living room, down the hallway, and the source of the blood progressively moved lower” as Stefan Andersson first fell against the wall—transferring the blood—and then dropped to the floor.

Another of Duncan's conclusions, based on the scene, was that the majority of the spatter came from a source “very near the floor.” In other words: Most of Stefan's wounds were suffered while he lay on the floor.

Once he'd diagnosed the blood spatter, Duncan inspected Stefan's body. Quickly, he noted clusters of puncture wounds on the scalp and the face, and on Stefan's hands and arms, what Duncan believed were defensive wounds, suffered when Stefan covered his face, perhaps in a desperate attempt to block the attack.

Since Ana Trujillo, the woman who'd been on the scene and was now waiting in an interview room in HPD's homicide department, had no noticeable wounds, the probability was that the blood had come from Stefan Andersson. But that couldn't be taken for granted. Perhaps she'd had injuries that officers hadn't seen and some of the blood was hers. To verify the source, a DNA team arrived to swab samples, ones they logged in by location, marking each by the case number to be sent to the lab.

Hours passed as the officers worked the scene. Finally,
before transferring the body to the morgue, Stefan's hands were covered with brown-paper bags secured at his wrists, to protect any evidence. If he had Ana's skin under his fingernails, her blood on his hands, it might indicate that she told the truth, that she'd struck him in self-defense.

U
naware of the drama unfolding in the next apartment, around nine that morning, Karlye Jones woke up in 18D. At breakfast, she told her husband about the noise in the neighboring apartment the night before, so loud it made the wall shake. “Didn't you hear it?” she asked. He hadn't.

A short time later, as she got ready for her shower, someone knocked on their door. “Did you hear anything last night, strange noises?” a police officer asked.

“Yes, at 2:13,” Jones answered. “I absolutely did.”

After Jones recounted what she heard, including the yelling from the apartment, a voice she pegged as a man's, the officer asked. “Did you hear anything from a woman?”

“No,” she said.

“No screams or cries for help?”

“No,” she said again. “The only one I heard was a man.”

I
n 18B, while Duncan assessed the blood evidence, Aguilera worked his way through Stefan's sparsely furnished apartment. In the kitchen, he found nothing in the refrigerator. In the kitchen cabinets, little except Stefan's collection of unused prescription medications he'd collected over the years. The bedroom, with the bed and bookcases, appeared normal, as if nothing had happened in that room. From the look of it, whatever happened in Stefan's apartment that night played out in only two areas: the living room and the hallway, where the body was found.

In the living room, Duncan noted indentations in the carpeting, indicating at some point furniture had been moved, including the couch, which had been pushed back against a wall. Later, Ana would say Stefan repositioned it for her, so
she had space to dance. Perhaps he also relocated the glass-top coffee table, placing it in front of the fireplace, along with his large black-leather chair.

What was on the glass coffee table, too, raised questions: One of Ana's art installations, a collage of dyed, crushed paper, a Y-shaped stick, a vase with water, and a stalk of lucky bamboo, her beloved bangle bracelets in a curved line, and streaks of salt.

The apartment on the morning of the killing

That seemed odd, but what piqued the officers' curiosity were notes on the table, odd writings that were perhaps the first true indicators of Ana Trujillo's troubled mind. Remembering how much blood she had on her body, her clothing, her hands, seeing no smears or streaks on the papers, the investigators determined the writings must have been done at some point before Stefan's death. Yet what was
inscribed on those notes, jumbled with little punctuation and strange grammar, in the context of the killing, seemed particularly odd.

The coffee-table installation

“I ask the higher forces,” pleaded one.

“I love you. May you live forever in us,” read another. “Within you until all see feel you,” read a note signed Ana and dated June 8, the day before the killing.

A drawing of a heart and what appeared to be a stylized swan in black marker was on another with swirls, along with the words, “Heaven and earth; tears of blood; bring forgiveness.”

“May the shield of truth protect you. May the word of justice judge. Let the pen be mightier than the sword,” on another.

So strange and haunting, given the reality of the lifeless man in the hallway: “Let your heart lead your way and fill
your mind with beautiful memories of all of us and yours when in darkness and eyes cannot see, think of the sea water of life.”

Another that seemed especially peculiar read: “I ask for you and your Spirit & Soul To be at Peace, Your Mind calm . . . your heart pure . . . Strength.”

Whose heart? Stefan Andersson's? Was he the man who could not see, the one whose soul Ana Trujillo wanted to be at peace? Did that mean that even before the killing, she planned to close his eyes forever? Did she envision Stefan when she wrote the name of a song entitled “My Beloved Departures
”
?

As Aguilera examined Ana's purse, the scene became even more disturbing. First the CSU officer pulled out tennis shoes, then a black-and-white wallet. Lastly, he removed a softcover book. In his latex-gloved hand, Aguilera held a tarot-card book, one used to foretell the future. The page the book was open to explained the meaning of card number thirteen. An accompanying illustration pictured a skeleton on horseback, carrying a sickle.

Ana's purse/backpack with the shoes and tarot book found inside

That passage read: The “ghostly figure of a skeleton on a horse frightens newcomers because they think it signifies their imminent departure from this world. This is not so. The card simply denotes that something is going to come to an end . . . This card can mean that someone around you is coming to an end of their life.”

On the morning she pummeled Stefan Andersson to death, Ana Trujillo's tarot-card book was open to the death card.

A
bout nine that morning, a rainstorm hit Houston. At her home, Jeanette Jordan texted Stefan Andersson about their brunch date, their plan to eat outdoors at the Backstreet Café. “Weather's not good. Should we meet later?” she asked. Knowing Stefan as an early riser, she thought it strange when he didn't reply. Time passed, the heavy rains continued, and she texted again: “Hey, I know you have reservations, but let's push it back and go later.” Again, no response.

This is weird,
she thought, assuming she'd been stood up.

At the same time at the scene of the killing, Officer Miller helped with collection, watching the CSU officers bag evidence, from the tarot-card book and the eight notes found on the glass table, to hair samples and DNA swabs. Miller, Duncan, and Aguilera would spend much of their Sunday in 18B, pulling together physical evidence to help prosecutors decide if Ana killed Stefan as she claimed, in self-defense, or committed a grisly murder.

Meanwhile, at HPD headquarters, Sergeant Triplett took an elevator to the sixth floor, homicide, where Ana Trujillo waited in an interview room. A running video camera pointed directly at her, she sat in a black office-type chair on rollers beside a long table, the off-white wall behind her corrugated to minimize audio interference. Appearing anxious, Trujillo kept her head down, her hair falling heavy about her face, wearing the same bloody jeans and black top she'd had
on at Bar 5015 the previous night. At times, she bounced her knees together, like an impatient child burning off nervous energy when forced to sit.

Five minutes after the camera began recording, Detective Brian Evans, who'd briefly talked earlier with Ana in the car outside The Parklane, entered accompanied by Sergeant Triplett. The atmosphere in the room felt tense with the memory of the brutality at the condo. Yet Evans had a quiet, respectful, nonjudgmental manner as he initiated the conversation. “We wanted to meet with you in hopes that we can get your side of what happened there last night,” he said. “We need to try to . . . understand, if you could explain, your relationship with Stefan.”

Trujillo nodded. Hands wedged between her thighs, as if to steady them, her words were somewhat clearer than at The Parklane but still slurred, as she recounted how she met Stefan the previous fall in the condominium lobby. Twice she repeated her belief that, “He really liked me. In the beginning, he was very nice.” They dated, then, very quickly, “He asked me to move in.”

Evans leaned forward, as if absorbing each word, while Triplett, a veteran officer who'd worked robbery before homicide, balding with glasses and a pale complexion, slouched nonchalantly in his chair, tapping his pen on the table.

The way Trujillo told it, within a month of their meeting, Stefan Andersson asked her to marry him. In her version of their relationship, she was the wary one, suggesting they try living together first. While mild-mannered when sober, when he drank, she claimed, Stefan became aggressive. “He progressively gets out of hand, you know?” she asked, her voice rising in a question. “He starts to get angry. He gets real jealous. And he started to get violent towards me. And so I said, you know, I don't want to live like this. I don't want to live in a violent relationship.”

The officers didn't know either Trujillo or Andersson, and they listened intently. Perhaps she told the truth.
Perhaps Stefan Andersson had attacked her. The assumption was often that the woman was the victim, since in truth that was most often the case, and the man nearly always the aggressor.

As Evans and Triplett listened, Ana described herself as the kind, compassionate one, saying she'd taken care of Stefan. An artist, she said that she taught him about art and love. “I'm a very spiritual person, and it's actually ironically opposite of everything that happened,” she said, referring to the night's altercation. “I showed him about spiritual love. Spirituality and poems, that's all I did. And I myself have been assaulted. He knew I suffered from posttraumatic disorder. I can't go outside, from place to place. I stay with one individual for protection.”

The interview started out well for Trujillo, the two investigators appearing interested and attentive. Yet as she talked—neither of the men interrupting—she quickly digressed, her thoughts wandering to her past. The alcohol or her disturbed mind interceded, and both men appeared to struggle, trying to keep up as she queued up one painful episode after another from her past, layering one on top of the other without explanation.

When she talked about a man who'd raped her, at first Evans thought perhaps she meant the dead man. But then, no, it was the father of her two daughters, she said, her first husband, Marcus Leos. “I forgave him,” she said. “I brought the girls to see him. He went to rehab or whatever he did . . . He asked me for forgiveness, and I said okay.”

Although she'd just left a man's bloody body on his apartment floor and had come to the homicide unit to answer questions about what led to the killing, in the interrogation room, Trujillo rambled. Consumed with anger over the pain she carried with her from her past, she described her first husband as a good man who had drug issues. Although years earlier she'd sent her younger daughter away to live with her grandparents in Waco, Trujillo said, “I've always taken care of my girls.”

The subject was supposed to be Stefan Andersson, but he appeared forgotten. Instead, Ana ruminated about her past, focusing on her history of failed relationships with men. After dramatically expounding on her relationship with her first ex-husband, she brought up her second, Jim Fox. This time, although not violent, Trujillo labeled the problem in her marriage as his demanding nature, saying he required that things were done in certain ways. That took a toll on the family and, although he loved her, she said she left him because she had to “choose between him and my daughters.”

Yet how could that be, since soon after she left Fox, Ana pulled away from her daughters as well, Siana eventually moving out on her own, while the younger girl, Arin, lived with their father in Waco.

Reflecting on the way her life once was, when she worked at Coca-Cola, fighting her way up to a good job despite roadblocks, caring for her children and living for her family, Ana said sadly, “I did it all. I was a wife. I had a career. I took care of my girls. I cleaned the house. I cooked. Everything. And it wasn't enough.”

Those years, however, were long past, and in her monologue, Ana, as she had in the preceding years, jumped from one man to another. In each case, in her interpretation of events, the men she met fell madly in love with her. Then, when she rebuffed them, they turned on her.

The first was Brian Goodney, the man she'd had the altercation with in the Rice Hotel. To the detectives, she described Goodney as a successful businessman and stressed that he had a friend with an art gallery, someone who could have helped her with her career. Ana claimed that from her perspective the connection was purely business; she designed furniture and a line of salts and minerals for massage therapists, ventures on which she thought she and Goodney could partner. But she claimed that he fell in love with her, and when she rejected him, he assaulted her. “He hit me against the wall,” she said. “He wouldn't let me go.”

So much of what she said about her prior failed
relationships echoed what she asserted happened that very night in 18B. When she talked of the moment when she tried to leave Goodney's apartment, her shoulders rose and fell, her face twisted in a scowl, as she dramatically acted out the confrontation for the police officers. Only to stop Goodney, to escape him, she alleged, had she grabbed the candlestick from the table and hit him on the head.

After Goodney, Ana brought up an unidentified man she lived with, one who took her in and let her hide out in his apartment, when she felt unsafe. Again, she wanted only friendship, but the man wanted more. When she tried to leave, he, too, she said, became violent. She claimed he wanted her as his sex slave. “I'm addicted to you,” she quoted him as saying. “You're mine, and I'm yours. You belong to me!”

Reciting each account, Trujillo became progressively more animated, sometimes staring at the two investigators with a wild gaze. As she described the men, she used terms others had connected to the changes in her. “He looked possessed,” she said of Goodney, on the evening she claimed he attacked her. Looking importantly at the detectives, she said, “He was trying to tell me that he was black magic.”

The next man, the unidentified friend who called her his love slave, wanted even more from her. “You're everything. You belong to me. I want your spirit.” He whispered in her ear, “I want your soul.”

Although the conversation became progressively stranger, the two officers never changed their demeanors. Both Evans and Triplett simply looked at Trujillo, responding as if everything she said made sense.

From the man who wanted her as his slave, Ana moved in with James Wells. Of all the men, in her view, he seemed the kindest. “He cared for me and he loved me, you know.”

“You were more than friends?” Evans asked.

“Yes, yes.” Yet again with Wells, who she spoke of longingly, she said that she was unable to return his affection. “I could not love him because I did not feel anything for
him . . . He was my friend, and he always loved me like that, but I had no love. I could not love anyone.”

Wells cared for her until she first moved to The Parklane, to live with the businessman. There her drinking escalated, but she said that she drank for medical reasons, to quiet the anxiety that had plagued her since her altercation with Goodney.

After having been married to a pharmaceutical rep, she said she didn't trust prescription drugs, relying instead on alcohol to numb her pain and her art to help her find her way. “I wanted to heal myself spiritually,” she said. “I met beautiful people, and the people that I love were close, and I did art. That's all I did was art and listen to music . . . I learned how to heal myself, water therapy . . . I had to treat myself . . . I had to heal myself all the time.”

The morning ground on in the interview room, the woman seated at the table at times moaning and rocking back and forth as she described her life. She'd just killed a man, and these two investigators would decide if it was justifiable self-defense or murder. Rather than plead her case, however, rather than talk about what should have been the foremost topic on her mind, the taking of a human life, Ana Trujillo rambled on about her prior relationships, all the men who'd loved her, men she never loved in return. In each case, she was the victim, the one who suffered. The men became obsessed with her when she couldn't return their affections. In response, they became angry, possessive, and violent.

Yet she said she needed the men, for she was not a woman who could care for herself. This woman who'd pranced in front of TV cameras, who always wanted to be the center of attention, who stripped at parties and had her body painted, then walked through crowds while strangers stared at her, who posed provocatively for the cameras, this Ana Trujillo protested that she was shy and frightened, and that she needed to be protected. That was what the men were for, she said, to watch over her, and to expect nothing in return.

In her vision, she was an ethereal spirit, a beautiful presence to be sheltered by others. People fed her, bought her drinks because they loved her. Even the thought of possessing money, she found distasteful. “I didn't want to touch the money,” she said. “I didn't want to become corrupt, and didn't want to get paid or anything. You know, my friends, they would watch over me . . . because they loved the way I was.”

To compensate for her self-doubt and psychological pain, she admitted relying not only on alcohol but smoking pot. Instead of making her weak, she said, “I became strong.”

“It gave you more courage and bravery?” Triplett asked.

“Yeah. Yeah,” she said.

Although the hours droned past, there was no reason to rush the woman. The investigators were building rapport with her, hoping she would open up and talk to them about the killing. They needed to have her tell them what happened inside that apartment. Most of all, they needed to answer the biggest question: Why?

As Ana talked, it became evident that while she depended on each of the men in her past, in each case there was something about them that she disdained. James Wells, for instance, she said smoked too much, and his apartment, the one he allowed her to stay in, was messy and dirty. Yet out of kindness, her big heart, Trujillo said she accepted Wells and the other men as they were. Rather than being grateful for her ability to overlook their deficiencies, she said they saw her kindness as weakness.

Finally, at 10:23, nearly an hour and a half into the interview, Trujillo brought the conversation back to the man they'd gathered to discuss. Evans and Triplett appeared relieved as she said, “Stefan was older, beautiful. I like intelligence. He treated me very good, and he liked my art . . . I showed him the beauty of art, the healing.”

Yet here Evans stopped her. Before Ana discussed the killing, he had something he had to do, to read her the
Miranda warning: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law . . .”

Finished, he asked if she would sign a statement acknowledging that he'd read it to her, that she understood, and that she agreed to talk about Stefan's death. “Are you willing to do that?” Evans asked.

For the first time, Ana appeared concerned. “Okay . . . Are you saying I need an attorney? Are you saying . . . homicide?” After a pause, she asked, as if it had never before occurred to her, “Stefan died?”

For more than an hour, Ana Trujillo talked to police without expressing concern about the fate of the man on the floor surrounded by a pool of blood. Not once had she inquired if Stefan, a man she described as her fiancé, a man she said she loved, had survived.