Florida man accused of murdering wife, leaving her to die in ritzy Orlando bathroom heads to trial

Shanti Cooper-Tronners (left), David Tronnes (right). Photo: State Attorney’s Office.

A 55-year-old Florida man accused of murdering his wife inside their wealthy Orlando home heads to trial this week.

David Tronnes told first responders he found his wife, Shanti Cooper-Tronnes, dead in a half-full bathtub — but when detectives started investigating, they found the bathtub and her body completely dry.

In a police interrogation video, Tronnes told detectives how he allegedly found his wife on April 24, 2018:

“The water is half-full. She is submerged partially, but she’s also partially not submerged. One of her legs is kind of sticking up and out a little bit. And it’s just extremely awful. It doesn’t look natural, obviously she fell or something happened. I tried to pick her up, I turned the water off. I tried to pick her up. She’s stiff. It’s hard to pick her up. It’s like a sack of potatoes.”

David Tronnes. Photo: Orlando Police Department, 2018

Later in the video, Tronnes explained to investigators that he pulled Cooper-Tronnes’ body from the tub and into another room, stating “I didn’t know what to do.” He told police he believed she slipped and fell — and that the fall must have killed her.

However, according to Cooper-Tronnes’ autopsy report, the 39-year-old had been strangled and died from blunt-force trauma to the head. A medical examiner ruled her death a homicide.

During the same eight-hour interview with police, a detective called Tronnes out for his alleged “lack of remorse,” stating “You’ve fake cried for about seven or eight hours today. Not one tear came out of your eyes — not one. You have fake cried over this woman’s death since we made contact with you. There is not a lick of remorse for what you did to this woman.”

Shanti Cooper-Tronnes. Photo: Orlando Police Department, 2018

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The Orlando Police Department announced the arrest of Tronnes on Facebook on August 30, 2018 — more than four months after Shanti Cooper-Tronnes’ death. He was charged with first-degree murder.

In 2021, Tronnes’ attorneys claimed he was not competent to stand trial due to “ongoing manifestations of the diagnosis of Schizophrenia,” according to court documents. A judge declared him incompetent to stand trial and he was sent to a state hospital.

Mugshot: David Tronnes, 2023

Cooper-Tronnes’ son, Jackson Cooper, told local reporters that he believed Tronnes was faking the mental illness, stating “He’s just trying to get out of it because he thinks he’s going to a mental hospital and play around.”

Less than two years later, the mental hospital where Tronnes was sent filed paperwork with the court that they believed him to be competent to stand trial. In January 2023, a judge issued a final ruling and scheduled Tronnes’ trial to begin in June. However, in early June, Tronnes wrote a letter to the judge saying he was firing his attorney, Richard Zaleski, from his case “due to a serious conflict of interest.”