Shanti Cooper-Tronnes, right inset, David Tronnes, in court. (Victim’s photo from State Attorney’s Office; courtroom photo, Law&Crime file)
A Florida man has been found guilty of beating and strangling his wife in their ritzy Orlando home after a dispute over renovations.
David Tronnes was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Shanti Cooper-Tronnes, according to a news release from the Office of the State Attorney of the Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida.
After deliberating nearly five hours, a jury returned the verdict, capping a six-day trial that ended Wednesday. He was immediately sentenced to life in prison in the Florida Department of Corrections, prosecutors said.
Cooper-Tronnes was found dead on April 24, 2018, in the couple’s house in Delaney Park.
He had killed her in the bedroom before trying to clean it up before police arrived. He claimed he found his wife in the bathtub after spending the day cleaning and walking his dogs, that she had slipped and fallen.
But an autopsy report said the 39-year-old had been strangled and died from blunt-force trauma to the head, and her death ruled a homicide.
Orlando police found inaccuracies in Tronnes’ story. They said he showed little remorse during his interrogation and “never shed a tear over his wife’s death.”
“You’ve fake cried for about seven or eight hours today,” a detective told him during his interrogation. “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.”
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The Orlando Police Department announced the arrest of Tronnes on Facebook on Aug. 30, 2018 — more than four months after his wife’s death.
Thousands of dollars on a renovation and the potential to be on the reality TV show “Zombie House Renovations” started the fight that led to marriage problems.
When she refused to appear on the show, her husband became upset “to the point that it led to her murder,” prosecutors said.
In 2021, Tronnes’ attorneys claimed he could not 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.
Cooper-Tronnes’ son, Jackson Cooper, told reporters that he believed Tronnes was faking the mental illness, saying, “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 competent to stand trial.
In January, a judge issued a final ruling and scheduled Tronnes’ trial to begin in June. But 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.”
Law&Crime’s Vanessa Bein contributed to this report.
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