Possessed (8 page)

There were times when Jon Paul felt uneasy looking at the house next door. The place appeared increasingly sinister to him, as if something lurked inside. One evening, he noticed the rooftop of the Foxes' house covered by a flock of black crows. “It just felt like there was something evil,” he said. “I had an eerie feeling that I can't explain.”

In 2007, as they approached their first anniversary in their house, the Espinozas realized all wasn't well next door, where they heard Jim and Ana argue loudly at times, especially getting in and out of their car in the driveway. To Jon Paul and Ruth, it sounded as if their neighbors' marriage was in grave trouble.

What they weren't aware of was that the situation was changing quickly within the walls of the Fox house. “That was the bad year,” Jim would later say.

That summer, Jim helped Ana lease a studio, paying the first two months' rent, in an older office building on Main Street in downtown Houston. In one of the busier parts of the city, the building was just half a block from the Rice
Lofts, apartments in the renovated historic Rice Hotel, and within blocks of skyscrapers that housed major oil companies and the courthouse district, filled with lawyers, judges, and office workers throughout the workweek.

Excited about opening her massage salon, Ana decorated, bringing in art for the walls, a couch, massage tables, plants, and a sound system to play soothing music to set the scene and help relax clients. Once settled in, she hung her framed license on the wall and sent out circulars to the surrounding offices, hoping to attract clients. From Jim's perspective, it didn't appear to go well, Ana making so little she had to ask him to continue paying her rent. But that didn't mean that Ana was home. Instead, once she began working in downtown Houston, she disappeared much of the day and late into the evenings.

“She changed like flipping a switch,” he said.

The year wore on, and Jim became increasingly upset at his wife's behavior. At first since he often traveled, he wasn't aware of what was happening at home. But then nights cropped up where he went to bed alone, Ana remaining downtown long past midnight. “I trust you,” he told her, at first.

As time passed, however, her arrivals came later and later, until he awoke at 2
A.M.
and found her side of the bed empty. “I didn't know if you were dead in a ditch somewhere,” he told her, when she walked in hours later, saying he'd been up much of the night worrying.

“Just go to bed. I'll be fine,” she responded.

The first time Ana stayed out all night, she claimed to have slept at the studio. “You can't do that,” Jim said. “You have to come home.”

The second time, he told her, “If this is what it's going to be, we're going to get a divorce.”

When he mentioned a divorce, Ana appeared surprised, then promised that she wouldn't ever stay out so late or all night again, that she'd go to the studio, take care of her clients, and drive the thirty miles home to Baron Creek Lane
to be with Jim and the girls. “I'll do better,” she said, giving him a kiss. But it didn't happen. Before long, Jim routinely went to bed alone, Ana's all-nighters commonplace. “It kept building and building,” he said.

“Find a studio closer to the house, so you can come home at night,” Jim asked.

“I love the atmosphere downtown,” she told him. “I don't want to be in the suburbs in my rocking chair. I don't want to be a housewife.”

Before Christmas 2007, Jim looked through a stack of paperwork in the house and found divorce papers Ana had filled out. She returned home that night, and he asked, “Weren't you going to talk to me about this?”

When Ana said she'd been frightened to tell him, Jim responded by suggesting that perhaps a divorce was best for both of them, saying, “It's okay. This isn't working out. You aren't coming home.”

“I don't want to be a wife or a mother anymore,” Ana said. “I just want to go out and have fun.”

A little more than a month later, in February 2008, Ana Trujillo Fox filed for divorce. By then she rarely came home before 3
A.M.
, and most often not at all. To save expenses during the divorce, Jim moved to an upstairs bedroom, and Ana stayed in the master downstairs. With Ana rarely home, Jim felt like a single dad. The tension rose, and before long, Arin asked to move to Waco to live with her father.

In Waco, Ana's family struggled with what they saw unfolding. “It was like she was doing the same thing her father had, abandoning her children,” said a relative.

That summer, 2008, Jon Paul Espinoza returned home late one evening, and walked past the Fox house on his way to the community mailbox. When he did, he felt a sense of foreboding and someone watching him. He turned, looked back, and in the glooming thought he saw an apelike creature staring down at him from Jim and Ana's rooftop. He turned away, then back, and it was still there. The second time, it was gone. “I never even told Ruth,” he said later. “I
didn't think anyone would believe me. I didn't want people to think that I was crazy.”

Not long after, Jon Paul's and Ana's paths crossed at a Shell gas station. While he filled his car tank, she came up to him dressed in a sexy top and short shorts. At first, he didn't recognize her. “I don't have cash to pay for gas for my car, and I can't believe I left my wallet at home,” she said, flirting. “I'll pay you back.”

Jon Paul gave her the money, and hurriedly left. Later that afternoon he heard Jim and Ana arguing. When Jon Paul again talked to Jim, he said that Ana had moved out for good. On a day months later, Jon Paul suddenly realized that “the crows were gone, and the house didn't have that cloud over it anymore. It was like it had never happened.”

On June 19, 2008, their divorce became final and Jim and Ana Fox's seven-year marriage officially ended. In the division of assets, Jim kept the house, they retained their individual retirement accounts, and Ana received money and her 2003 black Toyota 4Runner. At one point, she returned to the house and tried to persuade Jim to start over, one more time, saying that she'd made a mistake and wanted to reconcile and become a family. After so much heartache, he said no. “You know we've been through this,” he told her. “You made your promises. If this is the life you want, just go for it. Just go.”

After the divorce, Ana moved into a nearby apartment, so Siana could finish high school. Yet quickly, Ana Trujillo Fox dropped her suburban wife-and-mother role and moved into downtown Houston, the big-city nightlife calling her, intent on having the freedom and fun she insisted she'd been cheated out of as a child.

It was then that Ana's life took an even more bizarre turn.

“I
'll never forget the first time Ana walked into my shop,” said Teresa Montoya, the owner of a hair salon housed in a downtown Houston office building. A shapely, motherly woman with a kind smile and long, highlighted, dark hair, Montoya paused for a moment, before continuing. “Ana was all dressed up, like she always was, in a long, flowing skirt, a sexy top, and big heels. She had this air about her. I thought immediately, she had something special about her.”

“Is there a Teresa here?” Ana asked, a mischievous glint in her eye.

“Why is that?” Teresa answered.

“I heard if I want to be successful in my business, I have to meet this lady,” Ana replied.

“What?” Teresa responded, drawing out the vowel with a slight laugh in her voice.

Later, Teresa would say that it was Ana's confidence that grabbed her. “I wanted to get to know her.”

During that first encounter, Ana had a pedicure in Montoya's salon, and they talked. From that day forward, the women became the best of friends. Partly it was timing; Montoya had just lost someone close to her to cancer, and she felt a void. “Ana came in like a ray of sunshine and made me happy,” she remembered.

When Montoya went to see Ana's studio, she found her just down the street on the seventh floor of an aging low-rise office building in an older corner of Houston's ultramodern
downtown. By then, Ana had added a small stocked bar, to offer clients drinks with their massages. There were things Montoya noticed early on about her new friend. One was the way Ana wooed people, flirting and playing up to them, winning them over. The other was that Ana had the ability to quickly change, to mesh with different people. “She had so many sides to her,” said Montoya. “Ana was like a drug. Once she walked in, the party was on. She took things to a higher level. She was dramatic, and when she focused on someone, she made them feel special.”

The two women quickly realized that they had a lot in common. They were both in the beauty industry. And they were both opening new chapters; Montoya had recently married, and Ana appeared excited about the direction her life was taking. “Ana was beautiful,” said Montoya. “I don't care if she put on a rag. She looked like a million dollars. When you have a body like that . . .”

The first time Ana gave her new friend a chair massage, Montoya came away impressed. Although just five-foot-five and 120 pounds, Ana had a muscular body. “And she had strong hands,” said Montoya. “For a woman, Ana was very strong.”

One testament to Ana's physical prowess was that evenings she worked as security at Venue, an upscale hip-hop bar on the first floor of her office building. “I watched for individuals who could cause problems,” she said, describing her job there.

That statement would later prove ironic as others saw her own actions spiral out of control.

T
he days unfolded in a haze, from lunches where the two women laughed and drank wine, to happy hours at downtown restaurants, swank establishments busy with a mix of patrons unwinding after a day's work. In Houston, Ana Trujillo Fox quickly made a stir. Out on the street, in restaurants, she stopped and talked to people. In the bars at night, she danced. It soon became obvious that Ana enjoyed
having the eyes of the crowd on her, especially men's. “Ana got a lot of attention when she danced,” said Montoya. “Ana was fun, just a little bit wild. And everyone wanted to be her friend.”

Ana dancing in a downtown bar

One day early in the friendship, before Ana and Jim Fox's final split, Ana brought Montoya to the Summerwood house. The hairdresser noticed Ana's paintings, many stacked around the floor. One was of two women standing on high rocks, one figure holding a cross. In Ana's explanation, she was one of the women, and in the painting she was trying to find her way. “I wish I'd been on a high rock like that, so I could see where I was going,” she said.

“Why haven't you hung them?” Montoya asked.

“I'm not sure I'm staying,” Ana replied. That day she told her new friend that her first marriage had been a mistake and that she'd married Jim Fox because she needed a stable home for her girls. When they talked further, Ana said that she'd been a housewife since she was a girl, first watching
over her younger siblings, then caring for her husbands and children. As she eyed the years ahead, that part of her life was ending.

“Downtown Houston was blossoming,” said Montoya. “It was becoming a scene, and Ana wanted to be part of it. She was ready, after never having any freedom, to enjoy her life.”

The trouble, however, started early, the first ripple two months before the divorce papers were signed.

T
he center of Ana Trujillo Fox's Houston quickly became the area in and around the Rice Lofts, trendy apartments built in a historic hotel on Texas Avenue. On the national registry of historic places, the Rice had a colorful past, including the big-band-era nights when Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra played in the second-floor Crystal Ballroom, with its impressive chandeliers and a wide balcony that looked out onto the city streets. After its glory days, the hotel closed, and the building fell into disrepair, until in downtown's rebirth it was refashioned into expensive apartments occupied by professionals. On the street level, the Rice's first floor housed popular nightspots and restaurants.

The Rice Lofts

On that evening in April, Ana patronized one of the Rice's tenants, Azuma, a posh sushi restaurant and a popular happy-hour spot. The restaurant
was hosting an AIDS fund-raiser, and Montoya stopped in briefly and saw Ana holding a glass of champagne at the bar, surrounded by men. “See you tomorrow,” the hairdresser said on her way out.

Later that evening, Ana was parked in her black SUV facing north on the shoulder of the southbound lanes of one of Houston's busiest freeways. She'd apparently been driving against the traffic. The police officer who arrested her smelled alcohol, and in his report he said her speech was slurred and her eyes bloodshot. When he shined his flashlight into Ana's still-running vehicle, her blouse was unbuttoned, exposing her breasts. “Close your shirt,” he told her. After repeating his order three times without Ana taking any action, he saw a shirt in the backseat, grabbed it, and threw it at her. “Get dressed!”

On the scene, Ana refused the breathalyzer, and at the station the officer said she became argumentative and uncooperative when he ordered her to stand on one leg. She was read her rights and booked and spent the night in a jail cell, but the DWI charge was later dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Ana Trujillo Fox's 2008 booking photo

T
he first year after Ana's divorce, Montoya often looked out her salon window and saw her friend walking briskly toward the bars in late afternoon. Off and on, Ana stopped to talk to strangers, dining outside on days when the weather permitted, striking up conversations, laughing and carefree. When she saw a homeless man on the street, she bought him a sandwich, or gave him a few dollars, then stopped to talk. The more people Ana met, the
more she became a part of the fabric of the city, cultivating friendships. One of them soon spawned an opportunity.

A young professional couple Ana met had a large apartment at the Rice, and they made an offer that Ana happily accepted. Traveling for business and rarely at home, they sublet a section of their loft to her for her massage business. The move not only gave her a more prestigious address but cut Ana's rent, and placed her closer to Montoya's salon. Soon the two women worked together, the hairdresser spreading the word about her friend the masseuse, and Ana telling her clients about Montoya's salon. When a client wanted a back massage, Montoya called Ana, who had a chair set up at the salon. If they wanted a full-body massage, Ana took care of them in her studio. “We made a lot of money, it was great,” said Montoya. “At first, it helped both of us.”

With Ana's business taking off, Montoya later estimated that her friend pulled in up to a thousand dollars a day with her massage business. In the evenings, they drank at one of the Rice restaurants, like Sambuca, a well-known hot spot in the Rice's corner slot that had live music. One night, seated outside, Ana handed a homeless woman who approached a twenty-dollar bill. “You act like you know her,” Montoya said.

“I met her in jail when I got my DWI,” Ana explained, as if it were a completely natural occurrence. “They had us in the same cell.”

To Montoya, it appeared that her friend had a big heart, always looking out for someone who needed a hand. “In her mind, she was always helping somebody,” the hairdresser said. As time passed, however, she saw another possibility. “The truth? Ana was the one who needed help.”

The longer they knew each other, the more Montoya realized that much of Ana's self-esteem centered on her ability to lure men. “Her whole self-image was based on her sexuality,” said Montoya. “What men wanted, she would do.”

Early on, Ana dated a wealthy physician, who lived in the Sugar Land area, a prosperous suburb far west of Houston.
To be accessible, Ana kept extra clothes in her 4Runner, and when the man called, she turned to Montoya, no matter what they were doing, and simply said, “I have to go.”

T
hrough her new landlords, Ana soon made a second contact that would prove important in her new life, Christi Suarez, a fast-talking, dark-haired woman with expressive eyebrows, a producer for a local public-access TV show and an events coordinator. As she had with Montoya, Ana clicked immediately with Suarez, and they, too, soon frequented Houston's clubs and bars. Through Suarez, Ana met Raul Rodriguez, the host of a public-access program that showcased local bands.

At night in the clubs, Suarez and Rodriguez watched as Ana flitted from place to place, talking to one man after another. At times, she moved with the music and gave one or another of the men a rose. “She danced for them, and the men loved it,” Suarez said. “She played up to them. Everything was based on her sexuality.”

The people Ana met were doctors and lawyers, oil executives, stockbrokers, and other professionals. Dressed in lace and skintight skirts and jeans, circulating through the bars, she sought those who appeared well-off. “Ana found out what they did. Then she made up names of companies that weren't real, and talked about how she could help them,” Suarez remembered. “Some became obsessed with her. They'd buy her anything. Give her anything.”

At one point, one admirer moved Ana into a suite at the Four Seasons Hotel, bought her clothes and gifts, and she called friends to join her. She stayed for days, lounging around the pool, until she finally grew bored. “She really wanted attention,” said Suarez. “And she wanted someone to love her.”

“He's obsessed with me,” Ana told another friend about one admirer. “It's not my fault if men want to be with me and do nice things for me.”

Raul Rodriguez saw the same things. Looking back, he
would later say that the men were Ana's downfall. “She was too free with herself, and that caused problems. She did whatever she wanted to do.”