Possessed (37 page)

Yet, Stefan was a good person, the kind of man who took Ana in when she needed help, even though he feared her, even though he said repeatedly that he wanted her out of his life. She reached out to him, and he was there for her, a tragic mistake that cost him his life. “If you want to know everything that there is to know about Stefan Andersson, we know from the last moments of his life. We know that he was a secular man and a scientist and not religious, but when a woman said, ‘I would like to say a prayer for you,' he was gracious, and said, ‘Sure.'” Jordan continued, “We know even at that moment, his last moments on earth, as he lay there getting beaten to death, he refused to hit a woman. Refused to defend himself. Refused to strike back. This secular man, even before his death, turned the other cheek.”

At that, Jordan looked at Ana Trujillo. “That is who you killed.”

Concluding, Jordan pleaded, “Send the message that here in Texas we hold murderers, even female murderers, accountable.”

The jury filed from the courtroom to deliberate, and a hush stayed over the courtroom. In a matter of minutes, many in the audience silently filed out, fanning across the hallways. How long would it take? What would the jurors decide?

When the jurors came back in that same afternoon, all the questions were answered. Ana Trujillo stood beside her attorney and heard their verdict. For the murder of Stefan Andersson, she was sentenced to life in a Texas prison. Ana
wouldn't be eligible for parole until the year 2043, when she would be seventy-four years old.

As the sentence was read, Ana turned her face to the side and sobbed.

Minutes later, outside the courtroom, something truly remarkable happened. Stefan's family stood to the side, quiet, with Annika and a few of his closest friends, when Ana's mother and stepfather approached them. “Saying we're sorry isn't enough. Sorry is for bumping into someone, not something like this,” Gene Tharp said. “But we are truly sorry for your loss.”

At that, the two families hugged and cried together.

A
month after the trial, I had interviews scheduled with the attorneys in the case. My first was John Jordan at the district attorney's office, in the Harris County Courthouse, where the trial had been held. Rather than jubilant over what many saw as a big win—a life sentence for a woman convicted of murder—he seemed satisfied with the verdict yet introspective. “At the end, no one wins,” he said that day. “Everyone in a case like this loses. Stefan's family, Ana Trujillo's family. Everyone loses. Especially Stefan Andersson.”

Sarah Mickelson, who would soon be married and become Sarah Mickelson Seely, too, felt a sense of sadness along with relief that justice had been done. “This case made me believe that people get it right,” she said. “For so long, people wanted to believe that Ana Trujillo was the victim. Much of the news coverage assumed that as the woman, she killed in self-defense. But when twelve people came into a courtroom and heard the facts, they ultimately saw the truth of who Ana Trujillo had become.”

Later that afternoon, I sat in Jack Carroll's office. While the prosecutors had put the case behind them and gone on, he appeared morose, and I had the sense that Ana's fate continued to haunt him. One of the first things he mentioned was that in courtrooms, out on the street, other attorneys stopped him to say they didn't understand how a woman who'd claimed self-defense had ended up with the maximum sentence. “People know that I lost it, and that she got life, and that's all that matters,” he said. In hindsight, he had come to the conclusion that perhaps he hadn't seen his client
clearly, as a jury would, and that he should never have put her on the stand.

Along with the attorneys, following the trial, I, too, considered the case, thinking about all I'd heard in the courtroom and judging what I didn't yet know, what I needed to investigate as I went ahead with this book.

I'd first heard about Ana Trujillo the day after Stefan's murder. I was in London at the time, on vacation with my husband, when it hit the international news in full force. The BBC, CNN, and other networks included it for days in their newscasts, anchors in front of images of exaggerated stiletto shoes. At the time, I hadn't planned to write about the case. It seemed perhaps too sensational. When I returned home to Houston, however, I read more about those involved, and I changed my mind.

What drew me to this case wasn't how Stefan died, but why. For a long time, I had a hard time reconciling his murder with who Stefan Andersson had been, a talented scientist. I couldn't imagine what brought him and Ana together, and when I saw references to indications in the press that he might have been abused by her—a reversal of the roles the sexes played in other cases I'd covered in my thirty years as a crime reporter—I thought that perhaps this case was worth exploring.

Since none of the coverage centered on Ana's spiritual beliefs, her conversion to witchcraft, I didn't know about that angle until I sat in on the trial and the tarot book was shown to jurors. Like others in that courtroom, I was stunned. In the year that followed, while I worked on the research, I found ever-increasing evidence of how entrenched Ana had become in her beliefs, and how they'd twisted her mind.

Was Ana truly possessed? I don't know.

Members of Ana's family told me that they believed that Ana had developed some type of mental illness. They cited this undiagnosed disorder as a reason for her actions, excusing what she had done because she was sick. I found that
hard to believe. By all accounts, she'd functioned well until she moved to Houston, and by then she was thirty-eight years old. No one told me they had ever seen any signs of a psychiatric condition before that time. The changes occurred only after she became interested in the occult, abused alcohol, and smoked her chemical-laced herbal cigarettes.

In the years following Stefan's death, an increasing amount of information was reported in studies about the synthetic marijuana Ana smoked, some concluding that it could cause delusions and aggression. Perhaps that was what plagued her. It might have been as simple as that these substances altered her mind. Yet some of those I interviewed said Ana's strange actions started before she smoked the drugs, while she lived in her suburban home with her second husband, Jim Fox. Remember how the neighbors noticed odd things happening around the house? Including the evening Jon Paul Espinoza thought he saw a demon-like animal perched on her roof?

“Did Ana have powers?” Teresa Montoya rhetorically asked one afternoon. “No. People don't have power unless we give them power. Unless we believe. I chose not to believe, so she never had any power over me.”

Perhaps that's true. In contrast, Christi Suarez believed, and that allowed Ana Trujillo to enter her dreams. Early on, Suarez talked to me at length for this book, but near the end, she had second thoughts, fighting fears that Ana would again invade her life. Suarez even worried that Ana, housed in a high-security prison hundreds of miles away, would somehow be able to take revenge.

As for me, there were days when I wondered.

Those of you who read my books know that I always attempt to personally interview the convicted killers. I did that in this case as well, within months of the trial. I filed a request with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, and Ana agreed and signed the necessary forms to allow the interview. The following week, I drove to the prison, a four-hour trip. Along the way, some rather odd things happened.

First, on a deserted highway outside Waco, a large snake shot out at my car off the shoulder. I stepped on my brakes. Perhaps it felt the draft from my car, for as I passed, it instantly whipped back to the grassy edge. In my rearview mirror, I saw it slither off as I slowly drove away.

Later, precisely as I pulled into the prison parking lot, a forgotten tune came on my radio, one I hadn't heard in many years: the Charlie Daniels Band's rendition of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” In the song, the devil is in search of a soul to steal and challenges a brash young fiddle player to a contest.

The truth is, however, maybe, after hearing so much about devils, demons, and black magic, I was looking for signs. Especially after I arrived at the prison security gate and was turned away. The warden came out to personally explain that Ana had changed her mind, withdrawing her consent to the interview. As I drove off, I thought about what others had said about her, and I wondered if Ana was in her cell chanting, attempting to conjure up snakes in my path.

On second thought, however, I live in Texas, where, although I'd rarely seen one in more than three decades, I know that snakes are plentiful. And in retrospect, perhaps the song wasn't so odd either since I was listening to a seventies music station. Of course, it did take me back a bit when I realized that I'd unwitting walked into a case that involved the occult in what was to be my thirteenth book. But still, coincidences do happen, more often than we realize, I think.

One thing I became certain of working on the book was that, true or not, Ana Trujillo thought she had powers and communicated with spirits.

First, nearly everyone who crossed paths with her during those later years thought she was sincere when she described herself as a witch and carried her voodoo doll in her bra. In addition, there were those odd notes, including the one in which she appealed to a spirit to appear.

During long conversations with a Santeria priestess I contacted through the Voodoo Museum in New Orleans, I
heard many theories about Ana's conversion. She described Ana as “a jumper,” someone who cobbled together her beliefs by grabbing thoughts and practices from a variety of sources. The Santeria priestess suggested that Ana opened a door into the spirit world while living in the Rice Lofts, playing with her Ouija board and holding her rituals, and that she'd unwittingly released a demon into her life. When I showed the priestess a photo of that woven tower Annika found in Ana's things, it reminded her of a tool used by some practitioners to house conjured spirits. “People think they can control demons, but they can't. They grow stronger, especially the truly evil ones,” the woman told me one night, in hushed tones. “Eventually, they take over, and they want violence and blood.”

It wasn't Ana's descriptions of herself as a witch and claiming powers that convinced me she truly believed in her powers. Rather, it was something I heard on her 9-1-1 call, while talking with the police dispatcher. The woman was attempting to clarify what was taking place in the apartment, asking Ana what she meant when she said someone was about to die. After an undecipherable response, Ana's voice changed, and became clear.

“Be quiet!” she hissed.

“Hello?” the dispatcher responded, sounding confused.

Who was Ana talking to? Not the dispatcher. Stefan? This was more than an hour after the neighbor heard the last of the shouting in the apartment. It seems likely, based on the condition of his body when police arrived, that he was dead. If he was still technically alive, he certainly wasn't in any condition to be talking. Did she believe she could still communicate with him, that he was there with her?

At that moment, Ana was alone in the apartment, perhaps sitting near Stefan's body, rocking back and forth, at last aware of what she'd done. And she apparently believed someone or something was there with her, talking to her. Why else would she order, “Be quiet!”

Whatever the reality of her situation, the Ana Trujillo
who murdered Stefan Andersson had traveled a long and dangerous road from the days when she lived in a big white-brick house in a Houston suburb with her husband and daughters. Along the way, she threw away her own life, and she murdered a good man.

In the end, Ana Trujillo wasn't special at all, and there was only sadness.

“I love you, may you live forever in us within you,” she wrote in one of her disjointed notes dated the day before Stefan died. Was she thinking of him? Envisioning what she already knew deep inside that she would ultimately do? “Til I see feel you, Ana.”

T
here are always so many people who help with each book, it's difficult to decide where to start. But here goes.

Thank you to:

        
• All the folks who talked to me for this book, told me their stories, named and unnamed.

        
• Those who read the manuscript and gave me feedback: Terry Bachman and Sharlene Nelson.

        
• Edward Porter, always amenable to giving advice.

        
• Sue Behnke, for helping with research.

        
• All the folks at HarperCollins, especially my editors on this book—Emily Krump, Kelly O'Connor, and Erin Brown—along with Sara Schwager, the copyeditor, and Nadine Badalaty, who designed the cover.

        
• All the wonderful people who read my books, especially those who recommend them to others. I couldn't do this without you. I never forget that.

        
• My family and friends. You've all supported me over the years, especially when I'm elbow deep in a case or running late on a deadline. That means a bunch.

Finally, I'd like to say a few words about the woman this book is dedicated to, my friend and mentor, Ann Rule, who passed away in the summer of 2015 at the age of eighty-four.

Ann was the matriarch of true crime for a generation.
A wonderful writer, a determined researcher, she was also a great human being. Early on, she sought me out to tell me that she enjoyed one of my books. From that point forward, we talked and e-mailed. She offered encouragement, she talked me through some tough times when I hit snags, and she steered me in alternate directions when I confronted dead ends.

Over the years, Ann and I shared our stories, talking of family, writing, destiny, even the afterlife. I will always remember those conversations, and I'm sorry they've come to an end. I will think of her often, always with a smile.

Here's to Ann Rule and a life well lived. Thank you for the memories. Good-bye my friend, for now.