Possessed (35 page)

Ana Trujillo on the stand

(
Pool photos, Brett Coomer/
Houston Chronicle)

Earlier in her testimony, Ana said their habit was to both take off their shoes as soon as they entered the apartment, putting them near the kitchen counter. Stefan's were found precisely where she described, as was one of her stilettos, suggesting they'd followed that routine on that night. She'd also complained that her ankle hurt, and she hadn't wanted to wear heels, begging the question why on this night, she would have left them on? Yet in her breathless description, she said she had done just that and still wore the high heels as they fought.

The battle, she said, unfolded in segments, and at one point Stefan tried to undress her, implying that he intended to rape her. It was then, she said, that
he
grabbed one of her shoes and hit her in the back of the head. Those in the courtroom who'd heard the evidence were presumably confused by the account, little of which fit the crime-scene photos or prior testimony. Ana did have a bruise on the back of her head in the jail two days later, but James Wells testified that he'd pushed her to get her off of him, and she'd hit her head on the doorjamb. And in the jail, Ana told a doctor the bump was from the fight with Wells.

So much appeared to be Ana repackaging what she'd done to Stefan and claiming he had taken those same actions against her. First, she said he'd hit her with the shoe. Then, moments later, she testified that he sat on her chest, suffocating her, exactly what the assistant medical examiner surmised had happened to Stefan, based on bruising found in his back tissue.

As Ana Trujillo's much-anticipated testimony progressed, little made sense. She'd said Stefan had one of her shoes and hit her with it, then she tried to escape. Yet in her confusing version of the battle, she then described pulling a stiletto off and hitting him with it. Was she saying she tried to run with one five-and-a-half-inch stiletto on and one off?

Perhaps the most troubling aspect was the issue of the
gaping time discrepancy. That approximately hour and a half loomed large, the span between 2:13, when a neighbor heard a man shout, and Ana's 9-1-1 call at 3:41. Her explanation was that at times Stefan grew calm and talked. After a while, she also said that some of that time lapsed when she'd passed out during the fight although she felt uncertain for how long.

Finally, she said Stefan grasped her ankles and put her in the hold Carroll's martial arts expert had demonstrated. Trapped and in pain, she said she had no option other than to strike with the only weapon she had, her remaining shoe. Yet although all the evidence placed Stefan close to the floor, where the blood spatter was found, she testified that he was on top of her.

As they fought, their bodies twisting and moving, she said she managed to ultimately climb on top of him. “How many times did you hit him with the shoe?” Carroll asked. Ana said she wasn't sure.

As blood sprayed from the wounds on his head and face, pouring into a pool on the carpet near his head, Ana said Stefan growled at her. On the witness stand, she made a guttural sound, demonstrating. “I had no idea I was hurting him that badly. I became afraid, almost panicked. I reached over, and I'm like, ‘Oh, God, what's going on? What happened?'” She slapped him, she said, to keep him awake, and began CPR. Why didn't she get help when she realized how badly Stefan was hurt? The lobby, she said, seemed miles away, and she couldn't find her phone. She feared that if she stopped CPR, Stefan would die.

The phone rang—Reagan Cannon's 3:37
A.M.
call to Stefan from Ana's cell phone—she then made her call to 9-1-1, and before long, Officer Bowie arrived on the scene.

Ana Trujillo sobbed as she described begging Bowie to give Stefan CPR or to let her continue. He said no. In contrast to his testimony, Ana claimed he drew his weapon and pointed it at her, screaming to get down. There seemed so many contradictions. If he had, wouldn't Karlye Jones have
heard? She'd testified that while the walls were thick, she could hear talking in the hallways.

“I said, ‘Please, can't you give him CPR?'” Ana Trujillo sobbed. “And he didn't touch him. He just left him there. And he wouldn't let me go to him.”

Later that morning, at HPD headquarters, why didn't she ask about Stefan, about his fate, until so far into her interview with detectives? Carroll asked.

“I thought they were taking Stefan to the hospital and helping him,” she said. “I did not. I did not. He wasn't dead. He did not pass away.”

Six hours after Ana Trujillo's testimony began, the defense attorney passed the witness.

“Y
ou just conveyed to us the series of events where you beat a man to death . . . I noticed you didn't really start crying and bawling until you got to the point where you told us about the 9-1-1 call. Right?” John Jordan asked when he took over.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“You're telling us in slow motion how you beat him to death, and you didn't shed a tear?” Jordan went on to say that Ana's tears began when she recounted Reagan Cannon's phone call, in which he'd called her a liar, and became sobs when she talked of the 9-1-1 call. “Did you notice that?”

“You noticed it,” she said, somewhat indignantly.

“Yeah,” Jordan said. “I think we all did.”

Reminding Ana that the jurors watched her reactions, he asked if she realized that the only time she appeared visibly angry throughout the six days of the trial was when Janette Jordan, Stefan's new love interest, was on the stand, talking about their relationship and how they'd had lunch planned for the Sunday he was murdered. “That angered you to hear that, didn't it?”

“No,” she said.

“Because, you see, you had to make sure that we thought y'all were engaged and that he was your fiancé, to buy this whole domestic-violence stuff. Right?”

“No,” she said, frowning.

The defense attorney said during his questioning that the first time Ana saw the gruesome photos of Stefan's body was during the trial, and Jordan took the witness back to that statement, asking, “So, the first time that you see Stefan Andersson with his face bashed in because of your conduct was in this courtroom . . . and you didn't cry. Correct?”

“Yes,” she acknowledged.

Jordan paused for just a moment, looking as if he were about to sigh. It all seemed just too much, too horrible, that anyone could be that unfeeling, to look at the photos, to see the damage she had done, and not shed a tear.

“I have been crying ever since June 9, every day,” she answered.

With that, Jordan turned his attention to Ana's history, asking if was true that when she divorced, she'd sent her ten-year-old daughter to Waco to live with Marcus, her daughters' father. When Ana agreed that she had, Jordan asked, “Her father who you described as bipolar, clinically depressed, suicidal, and a rapist, correct?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Would you agree with me that during this trial, no one has said anything negative about Stefan Andersson other than that he drank too much?” Jordan asked. Ana nodded and indicated she did agree. Yet when it came to her, the prosecutor pointed out, one witness after another had talked about her drunkenness, aggressiveness, and violence. And then there was James Jimenez's testimony, in which he described Ana as suddenly attacking him by grabbing him by the hair. “When you're mad at somebody and you go to attack them, the first thing you do is pull their hair. That would be a logical deduction from the evidence, correct?”

“I don't believe so,” Trujillo said, shaking her head slightly.

“The difference is that Mr. Jimenez is six-foot-two, 280 pounds, correct?”

“Yes,” she said.

One after another, Jordan repeated the accusations that had been made against Ana Trujillo, her bizarre behavior in restaurants, on Houston's downtown streets and freeways, the charges of public intoxication and driving under the influence. “Will you agree with me that in every situation involving a man, what you basically say is that you're not interested in them . . . and somehow you end up getting charged with something?”

When it came to James Wells, Ana claimed that she hadn't bit him, but as she'd moved in to kiss him on the head, he'd jolted up, and her teeth hit his scalp. With that, Jordan drew the lines connecting the dots that revealed Ana's patterns, including that in many of the cases of violence—Brian Goodney with the candlestick and James Wells with the bite—she attacked the men and then turned around and filed police reports, saying that they had assaulted her.

“I don't see the pattern,” she said, appearing peeved. “But they're the ones that are saying I assaulted them.”

Jordan then described the incident at Bodegas, where Ana walked into the restaurant and bit Stefan on the cheek, while his friend Anders watched in astonishment. Carroll objected, and the judge asked the jurors to disregard. But then Jordan pointed out that while no one talked of Stefan's becoming violent or angry after drinking, there'd been ample testimony that Ana was a mean drunk.

On the stand, Janette Jordan had described Stefan as “doddery,” an English expression meaning older and slightly frail. The jurors had heard about the condition of his body in the autopsy, a slightly enlarged heart and other age-related maladies. They'd also seen his somewhat pudgy, out-of-shape corpse in the crime-scene photos. But the Stefan Ana described was a former wrestler and weight lifter, and she said, “He was very strong.”

So much made no sense. She portrayed a man very interested in sex, one who enjoyed seeing her walk nude in the apartment wearing only her stilettos. As she rambled, however, she said that she only had consensual sex with him
once. Instead, she claimed that she believed he drugged her at times, and that she'd woken up feeling like she'd had intercourse. “I know I couldn't have drunk enough to pass out,” she said, claiming he must have dosed her with a sleeping pill or the like. She said in the mornings, when asked, he said they'd had sex the night before.

Listening, John Jordan listed all the men Ana Trujillo said raped or attempted to rape her, including her first husband and former boyfriends, suggesting yet another pattern in her testimony and her behavior.

“Did Stefan lend you $7000?” Jordan asked, displaying the handwritten IOU. Carroll objected, but the judge allowed it, and Ana said Stefan had given her a loan, money she put into her business. The loan was due on July 7, 2013, not quite a month after she killed him. In her interview with police, Ana claimed money meant nothing to her, that she didn't like to touch it, but Jordan pointed out that obviously wasn't true since she'd taken the money from Stefan.

“Was that a coincidence that the tarot-card book in your purse was open to the death card?” Jordan questioned. “I just have to ask . . . You're the one who's into that stuff. I'm not.”

“Yes, that is a tarot book,” Ana answered, looking annoyed by the question. “I need to interpret what the cards mean . . . So, I'm not practicing . . . the reading of the cards. I'm studying the subject. If you say you brought it out that way, then, yes, it was a coincidence.”

“All right. Fair enough,” he answered. “That's all I'm asking.”

When it came to the timetable, the lost hour and a half left unaccounted for, Jordan suggested that Ana Trujillo had struggled to fill the gap in her testimony, hoping to explain it away, or it would look bad for her, proving that she'd waited before calling for help.

“I loved Stefan!” she blurted. “I did not kill him.”

As during her interview with police, it seemed that Stefan's killing was a mere footnote. Jordan pointed out that
on the stand Ana spent four-and-a-half hours talking about her prior relationships, and a full forty-seven minutes on the Brian Goodney altercation, when what they were all there to hear from her was an explanation of why Stefan had to die. His fervor building, the prosecutor asked why Jack Carroll fast-forwarded through much of the fight with Stefan, skipping twenty minutes at a time. Jordan's suggestion was that the defense attorney had to stretch out the assault to fill the time gap.

Posing a question, Jordan listed the assaults Ana claimed to have suffered in her prior relationships, then asked, “We've heard about these people, and you don't think it was important to tell us that Stefan ever physically abused you? . . . The reality is that he never did, did he? He's never laid a hand on you, has he?”

“Yes, he has,” she said.

There were housekeeping matters, Jordan wanted to clean up. The first was to ask Ana if she suffered from any mental illness. She said she did not. “You are as sane as they come. Correct?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“We've heard so much evidence about Stefan Andersson dominating you. Hiding your phone,” Jordan said. “Help me out. What was the other stuff that he did?”

At this, Ana sat silent, unwilling or unable to offer a single example of any physical abuse she'd suffered at Stefan's hands.

In response, Jordan laid out the range of punishment jurors had to choose from, five years to life, then talked about the different ways a murder can happen, including the killing of a bad or violent person, or the quick death of shooting someone through the head. “Can you think of a worse type of murder, when you are thinking about the nature of crime, than being beaten to death?”

“I wouldn't know,” Trujillo answered, glaring at the prosecutor.

“And as a result of that beating, bleeding to death?”

This time, Jordan's question was met with only silence. “Do you think it aggravates it if the person being beaten didn't even fight back? That the person who was beaten didn't put marks on you? Didn't grab at you? He lay there. He would rather die than fight back. Do you think, as far as the nature of the crime, it gets any worse than that?”