Husband tries to act

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Barb McLland, David Trronis, Shanti Cooper, Teresa Sprag
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Keith Ary
3. 10:00 – 15:00: AJ Jackson
4. 30:00 – 34:46: AJ Jackson, David Trronis, Graceville Correctional Facility, Orange County, Florida

Notable quotes from "Husband tries to act"

• According to CBS News 50-year-old stay-at-home husband David Trronis desperately wanted to appear on reality television in late April of 2018 he managed to secure himself a spot on the show Zombie House Flipping where he.

  about David Trronis · at 0:01

• Morning i'm sorry this is taking so long you are David I believe okay all right i'm Detective Teresa Sprag and this is Detective Barb Mclland first of all on behalf of the…

  about Teresa Sprag · at 3:35

• No we're pretty We love it we love the This is Keith Ary the producer of the house flipping show that David wanted to be on when you would be interacting with the Toronto related to your work on the house and also the show who.

  about Keith Ary · at 9:21

• Establish a timeline so when you're when she comes home Sunday it's you Jackson and Shanti and you just stay home and have a is it a pool get together we only have them every…

  about AJ Jackson · at 13:38

• First-degree murder as charged in the indictment. So it says we all dated at Orlando County Orange County Florida on the 18th day of October 2023 signed by the poor person in the midst of this tragedy Shanti's impact as a mother was shown.

  about Orange County, Florida · at 33:11

• Recess this is his latest mug shot he is currently being housed at the Graceville Correctional Facility in Maximum Security where he is expected to remain.

  about Graceville Correctional Facility · at 34:32

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• AJ Jackson — Person · 3 mentions · first at 13:43
• David Trronis — Person · 2 mentions · first at 0:04
• Shanti Cooper — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:19
  Would be featured renovating his newly bought house with his then wife 39-year-old financial consultant Shanti Cooper the only problem was that Shanti wasn't nearly as…
• Teresa Sprag — Person · 1 mention · first at 3:44
• Barb McLland — Person · 1 mention · first at 3:47
  You are David I believe okay all right i'm Detective Teresa Sprag and this is Detective Barb Mclland first of all on behalf of the Linda Police Department we want to say how…
• Keith Ary — Person · 1 mention · first at 9:28

Companies & orgs

• Zombie House Flipping — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:13
  Television in late April of 2018 he managed to secure himself a spot on the show Zombie House Flipping where he would be featured renovating his newly bought house with his…

Places & events

• Orange County, Florida — Place · 1 mention · first at 33:16
• Graceville Correctional Facility — Place · 1 mention · first at 34:36

Full transcript with timestamps

0:01 according to CBS News 50-year-old stay-at-home husband David Trronis desperately wanted to appear on reality television in late April of 2018 he managed to secure himself a spot on the show Zombie House Flipping where he would be featured renovating his newly bought house with his then wife 39-year-old financial consultant Shanti Cooper the only problem was that Shanti wasn't nearly as interested in being on TV so she refused to sign off on the program which resulted in David beating and then strangling her to death in the early hours of the following morning he called 911 roughly 12 hours later at 3:51 p.m

0:45 hello i'm trying to do CPR i can't Okay listen to me can you tell me what your address is police and paramedics soon arrived at the residence where they were met with a hysterical David performing CPR on Shanty in the living room his immediate explanation was that he found her lying unconscious in a partially filled bathtub bleeding from the nose and mouth he was then taken to the police station as a witness where they swapped out his bloodstained clothing for a custody suit he was also given a water a blanket and a box of tissues then taken to room six where he was reassured that someone would be right with him to answer his questions which wasn't entirely true he was left in there by himself for 4 hours and 9 minutes before he knocked on the door to use the bathroom yes sir hi i'm sorry to bother you man to the bathroom yeah absolutely it wouldn't take a genius to recognize that David's behavior is already

1:39 suspicious ask yourself if you'd be acting like this in the scenario he's claiming to be in you find your significant other unresponsive in a bathtub then police leave you in a cold room for 4 hours without telling you anything you might just ask someone what the hell is going on or what the status of your wife is and you probably wouldn't be all that polite and apologetic for just trying to use the bathroom he returns from the bathroom and sits there for another 3 minutes the detectives will now enter the room to commence the interrogation the time is 9:08 p.m i'm Detective Sprag can I get your first name first name is David david okay um we're going to grab another chair okay did you need something i was just asking for a bottle of water okay we can grab you have you been to the restroom i just wanted You just Okay how about anything else anything else i'm starving a cracker or just something salt right did

2:33 you eat lunch i did not eat lunch don't be fooled by the detective's disposition they're already certain that David has committed either first or seconddegree murder but they don't quite have enough evidence to place him under arrest which is why they need a confession david at this moment is still free to walk out of that police station so the detectives will keep the tone sympathetic and non-confrontational for the time being to keep him on that chair they'll afford him the false belief they are buying into his act as the grieving husband but as soon as he gives them his initial version of events the pressure will rapidly accelerate in a manner that David is in no way anticipating what would you like to eat and I'll run down just something just something simple just saltines or peanut butter crackers anything like that okay that's not a problem um we'll be right back here's your water money thank you i

3:21 appreciate it i take that one yes a couple of things okay is that good okay all right i'm with you i haven't eaten since this morning i'm sorry this is taking so long um you are David I believe okay all right i'm Detective Teresa Sprag and this is Detective Barb Mclland um first of all on behalf of the Linda Police Department we want to say how sorry we are for your loss so this is the first out of a total 11 of David's fake cries their intensity level will peak about halfway through this video during some of the more embarrassing performances you're ever likely to witness on the internet but from that moment on you'll notice these acts steadily diminish as the detective makes it more and more abundantly obvious that she knows he's lying um David and also for everything that you're going through I know this is very traumat traumatic for you okay they start by collecting David's basic information okay blonde or brown hair

4:31 both blue okay okay um hazel eyes maybe i'll take hazel blue hazel okay they're dirty blue yeah okay okay is there a home phone there is it's I can't remember the last four digits it's It's 407 the next three are easy 704 the opposite and I never call it the next three are 704 it's 407,704 and then it's I think it's 2808 it's might be 2406 but I have it in my phone i know haven't we had it since we were at Brier Cliff and when did you move to Florida in 2013 okay about 5 months after I met Shanti did you meet her here or there i know I'm lying and then I'm lying okay can you tell me what year that was it was 2013 2013 is when you met online okay and about 5 months later did you move here and move in with her or just move here i have so um not trying to be as accurate as possible i believe it was the end of September so you guys knew each other approximately 5 years this month they've never been more in love we were

6:04 so happy okay if you don't I know you've probably never been through anything like this in your life okay and I'm going to help you get through it if you have questions you want to stop me please do so okay um but I do need you to understand your rights before we ask you about anything that happened in that home today okay all right um you have the right to remain silent do you understand that yes i'm sorry yes sorry i'm Yes okay anything you say may be used against you in court do you understand that yes would you raise your right hand for me please do you sound solemnly swear affirming that the testimony you shall give in this case shall be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth absolutely absolutely okay all right so I need you to kind of we're going to continue kind of down this path about how you all met i know you met on match.com and about 5 months of what would it be

7:02 telephone text and we um we just started um um every other weekend um they hit it off moved in together then went looking for a house to buy in Florida we had an offer on a short sale and uh waited and waited and waited and it fell through and then we closed on the house on Cop in uh April of 2015 so you guys own the house free and clear um is your name only on it or was it both of yours when we bought the house we weren't married and so we put it in a trust and we just completed the trust paperwork he put the house in his and his mother's names while leaving his wife out of it for quote planning and financial reasons he asserts the decision was mutual but whether Shanti actually knew about this or not is unclear and you've been once you moved to Florida you've been living together the whole time just home to home just with first folks then Brier Cliff and then this resident was but you've been together the whole time have

8:04 you ever broken up we had a couple fights from I think when we were living a brier club we spent a few nights he says that he just spent a few nights with his mom then drifts off into a statement about how Shanti was dedicated to work the detective will now cut him off and steer the line of questioning back to the argument she's just when you guys would argue when you would go to your mom is it was just because she was busy all the time or what would the what would the beef be work had a lot of stress involved and um she would sometimes um it we always agreed you know later that she was just overworked and um tired and so she'd get a little snippy or short or yell scream what just irritability irritable small irritability sometimes it just I'm not I'm not that's not really you know I don't really do that it's not really you know that much stand there um so I just you know I would just say when we take a break I just let it

9:08 in a little cool down period and every time we did it we came back i think we only did it twice but we're stronger okay and has that happened since you moved where you are now cuz now we've got the added stress of the renovation no we're pretty We love it we love We love the This is Keith Ary the producer of the house flipping show that David wanted to be on when you would be interacting um with uh the Toronto related to um your work on the house and also the show who was your primary point of contact oh Dave was um he would communicate her desires i would see her but the it was more like Dave's full-time job almost i guess I would say um did you ever know during your time that you knew Dave um to have any other job i was aware that he had worked for he had explained to me that he had worked for a a chemical company up north somewhere i actually never knew what Dave did for a living when when my husband had asked

10:15 him he said he was into sales but I don't I don't really know what that means david never worked in sales or at a chemical company you're now about to see Keith explain that he insisted on having a formal sit down with Shanti to make sure that she was fully on board um it was difficult to get them both together but I I explained ultimately that we couldn't go forward if I wasn't able to sit down with them both ultimately you're able to get this this sitdown scheduled tell uh tell the jury about that meeting uh I arrived at the house to meet Dave and Shanti um and she was uh by my estimation unhappy to to be there um and it was in a sort of a tense state he it was obvious that she was un unhappy with something and she was only there as long as she absolutely had to be and then left this all occurred 6 days before Shanti was murdered um we love what we're doing to the house we love the vision that we have for the

11:17 house it's totally I mean she wanted divorce what she wanted so bad it made me happy it made her happy it was a thing that we did together she wanted to quit her job when we got the house done or just kind of you know slowly phase out of it she thought you know a couple of times that she would need to take really need to take a break and definitely slow down and definitely not add a whole lot more work her she could she could do more if she did to i'm sorry I can't talk about it that's funny and that's very normal i think that's very normal um because it's you're not going to process this for a really long time so I know it seems like a really bad thing now notice how quickly he manages to pull himself out of the depths of despair and into casually talking about his house flipping show we um Keith also does our lives are busy i'm so sorry you're qu I know you're asking simple questions but um Keith

12:30 does a TV show home improvement keith the guy you mentioned Ory okay it's called Zombie House Living keith asked them to be on the show which meant that um we would get a lot of what they call tradeouts and um promotional sponsorship to do any financial incentive to do that big that's what they called trade i'm sorry that's what they called tradeouts so they were sponsors um that's one of the things I was working on yesterday was putting together a list of the sponsorships the window doors cabinets i mean and so maybe instead of getting granite you get quartz or maybe instead of getting you know middle range cabinets you get high-end stuff um and we're also um working on kind of a just an amazing open concept stairway in the middle of the house that was going to go all the way up to the bond and so they'd come in and start filming would they film you all or just the work no no yeah it's just it's just the house they're

13:26 the stars pay no attention to David's no no no he fully understood that he would be featured prominently on the show as the main builder construction guy the so-called stars he's talking about are the hosts the detective will now establish a timeline so when you're when she comes home Sunday it's you Jackson and Shanti and you just stay home and have a is it a pool get together we only have them every other Sunday it's our family day and uh we do like to have an early meal watch a movie so do you recall Sunday night about what time everybody goes to sleep since we're all We go to bed early on school nights so um 8:30 we're winding down 9:00 lights are low shantie's son gets picked up the next day at around 5:00 p.m 5:00 p.m.ish okay all right and then do you guys go anywhere do anything or you stay at home i think we made dinner um together that night so that would have been Monday night did

14:31 you watch TV i did any idea what american Idol okay so you wake up Tuesday morning and you're in the garage on the couch mhm i usually wait for her to come down she came down after 7:00 probably almost 7:30 shanti went back upstairs and David started doing chores around the house he's now about to mention the last time he supposedly saw Shanti alive and then break into another fake hysteric yet this time he will get no reassuring feedback from the detective and the charade will rapidly dissipate just come down again i'm so sorry she came down again and what happened and um and I've I've thought about it i tried to think exactly what time it is but I don't know exactly i would say probably 9:15 and the way the reason I know that is she said she said she was going to the dentist and he said he was going for a walk he now attempts another fake cry but gets ignored again and um did you take the dogs for a walk i went

15:46 for a walk by yourself by myself where'd you go um I went to Lake to Orange he comes back home and feeds the dogs that's all that I can remember until I went upstairs to see when we were going to pick up okay and what happens when you enter the home is there anything unusual when you enter the garage apartment so um I could hear the water is running but it's not running it's not like the sound of the shower running it's just it's it's trickling out of the spot okay and so you walk toward the water that you're hearing yeah walking the bathroom okay just in case you didn't catch the passive aggressive nature of that response here it is again without subtitles and so you walk toward the water that you're hearing yeah I walk into the bathroom okay just look at David's face poor David really doesn't want to be getting grilled like this anymore keep in mind it's almost 11:00 p.m he likely didn't get a whole lot of

16:54 sleep the night before and he's been acting his ass off all throughout the day he'll at this point be exhausted and want nothing more than to get out of that police station but he doesn't want to challenge the detective directly and risk losing her approval hence he throws out a weak little display of passive aggression to see if she'll pick up on the hint but it of course gets ignored she will simply continue pressing with an unsympathetic tone which will cause David to revert back to appeasement he will then begin recounting the horrific circumstances under which he supposedly found Shanti and as this unfolds you will see a glaring disparity in David's emotional presentation the doors open and what happens what do you see i see her laying with her head in the right hand corner and it's just extremely awful and it doesn't look natural obviously she fell or something happened but you did shut off the water

17:50 i did shut off the water and it drained which tells me um I could hear it draining when I pulled her out i could hear So that Okay so I guess that's the that's like that's this is all weird right because she's in there the water's on and it's draining it doesn't make any It just doesn't It just doesn't make sense and it's And it's not on all the way it's on how how how like lukewarm so just past half and she's face down so the first thing you do is what if you recall I reached out and grabbed her i reached out and and and touched um her right arm the water is is rose colored so there's blood in the water itself i can see a spot of blood and you pulled her by her arms i grabbed some place on her arm tried to get kind of under it a little bit you said she seems stiff yeah hard to move

18:54 there's something so incredibly unnerving in the sound of the casual crunching of his snack as he recounts in precise detail the limp and lifeless body of his wife so we'll spare you the rest of it i had to pull her and turn her a couple of times um then she felt cold you asked how she felt cold she felt cold i grabbed the um You grabbed the what we had um when we did the bedding we took the um the um mattress cover off to wash it the detective asked David to draw a map for the purpose of illustrating the timeline of his movements she will now shift the line of questioning and begin to gradually intensify the pressure when was the last time the two of you argued

19:51 um very briefly on Saturday right before we before we left the argument was over the renovation david likely admitted to this because Shanti's son was there for it the upstairs floor was very wavy and we the the point of contention probably was do we tear all of that out and put in new structure and trusses so we have a perfectly flat floor and then a perfectly flat ceiling but I don't think it's an argument if we're both if Shanti and I are both on the same page and we're both just in agreement that and and upset reasonably and um justifiably upset that it's taking longer shanti and I aren't fighting about it we're both upset about the same thing does she feel as though you don't listen to her no I don't think so she knows I listen has any fight ever turned physical between the two of you no okay has she ever hurt you hit you struck you threw anything at you no no have you ever harmed her physically

21:00 no david continues to pretend that he doesn't notice the accusatory nature of the questioning so the detective will now intensify the pressure to a significant degree she she sheds she seems to shed um her injuries to me David seemed um really significant more significant than from a soft tissue fall more significant than from um me tripping and falling and hitting my head and being knocked unconscious she elaborates on the inconsistencies while David just sits there and nods the issue I'm having with it is I I absolutely think that she was deceased before you left to go to the park she repeats what she said a few more times while David just keeps doing what he's doing okay so I think that you've told us a significant amount of information you've been very cooperative but I also think that you've left some stuff out wow and I think you've left some stuff out that is maybe something got out of hand maybe

22:21 you didn't mean for it to happen maybe you got upset maybe but there's something that happened between the two of you before you left that house because she was deceased or on her way to being deceased before you left that house now if there's an explanation I want to hear it i have told you everything but you've left out something David because this woman has significant injuries okay this is not from a fall did you harm Shanti in any way absolutely not did you choke her absolutely not did you strangle her without question no did you beat her no did you hit her with anything absolutely not okay do you have injuries i do not i do have some scratches from the vermilas and from the buganilia okay i do trim them myself aside from the scratches from his plants David had no injuries that could indicate a struggle but this might explain why you noticed a single earring on the nightstand a single what

23:37 a single diamond earring on the nightstand yes and what was the significance of that um looks like she removed it before bed and didn't get a chance to remove the other one because you believe that's when the attack occurred on the edge of the bed where the blood was found on the on the side rail yes and I think when she turned to take that earring out she didn't see it coming would you mind just for me to be able to say David is a perfect gentleman and is in the clear and did not harm his wife would you mind taking a polygraph and proving that to us absolutely okay would that be your possibility yeah okay all right the detective asks David if he wants another water to which he says "Sure." So she brings him a water and tells him they'll be right back with a polygraph machine but instead of coming right back they leave him in there for just over 2 hours during which time they decide not to

24:35 proceed with the polygraph but simply ramp up the confrontation hi you doing okay yeah i was just Did you get Did you sleep a little i did i know you've got to be exhausted or at least mentally i just want to point out some things to you that I think are unusual there's so many I really don't know where to begin to be perfectly honest with you um I I think that I find that the living arrangement I I find to be completely unusual for you to be primarily living downstairs i'm not primarily living downstairs so what I said was that I sleep down there but I don't go down there till we're done with dinner we're done watching TV or we're done for the evening okay just hear just hear me out so You you don't go upstairs during the day while she's working you leave her alone and then not not entirely i I do go up there okay but I don't I don't work up there while she's on the phone because it's distracting it's her office i think

25:55 that I've explained extremely well she didn't sleep she did but but you said he continues defending the fact that he was exiled to the garage i think it's an adjustment and a transition that she didn't feel like she could make right now because she couldn't afford the time that it would take but she's sleeping in the only part of the residence that's semi comfortable you're sleeping in the garage with the dogs how do you explain this woman's head being swollen her eyes being black and would never ever purge her so when you pulled her out of the tub you agreed with me that the water came out of the tub there's not a spot of water on the floor david the carpet isn't wet the carpet isn't wet from where she was pulled out of the bathtub sping wet all the way around to the front of the couch the carpet's not wet there's no blood on the carpet notice how little David moves compared to the detective it doesn't correlate

27:04 with anything in particular it's just sort of interesting to watch my guess is she wasn't treating me very well there's only so much anyone can take before they snap appreciate the consider yourself i'm missing what you're saying because of your suit that you're moving but I'm I'm missing it it's really loud but I miss what you said cuz you're talking so loud i'm sorry it's falling off um I appreciate the things that you've said and the genuine um consideration and thoughtfulness um behind it david you killed this woman i cooperated so I could give you all the information and all the You cooperated because you thought that your language would would overwhelm us and you thought you could pull the wool over our eyes i don't think there was any any any effort to do that all of this all these tangents all this flowery fancy language answers to questions to questions that you were asked you know you fake cried for about seven or

28:31 eight hours today not one tear came out of your eyes not one not one not on scene with the officers not in this room you have fake cried over this woman's death since we made contact with you for hours and every single time you fake cried we wrote it down not one tear came out of your eyes not one nope okay we've been extremely patient with you for a very long time i am losing my patience at this point because there is not a lick of remorse for what you did to this woman not even a little bit you're staring at a woman you're telling us you're in love with and you've done nothing the whole time but close your eyes huddle up and protect your own ass so we're just going to prove you're full of [ __ ] and solve this case and I'm glad you think that's funny i'm glad you think that's funny the investigators would exit the room shortly after this moment at 4:56 a.m david would then sit there for a little

29:36 over 2 hours before finally asking to go home but before being driven back by one of the officers they asked him if they could take his photograph he cheerfully obliged judging by his expression he may have thought he had just gotten away with murder but a grand jury indicted him 4 months later and he was arrested at his mother's house when he was told he was facing life imprisonment and that the evidence against him was overwhelming he started acting crazy and went for the insanity defense he was then sent to a maximum security psych unit where he spent 5 years before a judge ruled him competent to stand trial this is what he looked like on the day he was transferred back to jail his trial began on October 12th and lasted 6 days he maintained his plea of not guilty with his official defense being that he was out of the house walking the dogs while an unknown intruder broke in and murdered Shanti you heard about the

30:26 sleeping arrangement you heard how uh the defendant was sleeping in the garage with the dogs while Shanti was staying in the essential you know one-bedroom apartment separate and apart from him and this had been going on you know for over a year this was an intentional killing you know a random stranger that comes into a house isn't going to you know take the time that it takes to strangle a person to move them to a tub not take anything doesn't make any sense leave no sign behind no fingerprints no DNA that doesn't make any sense you have the severe beating of Shanti you have the injuries to both sides of her face you have the you know the the fractured skull the swollen shut eye the damaged eye on the other side that you saw the you know intense bruising and bleeding in both sides of her mouth this was a beating so at some point in that beating the defendant and you can infer this from the the facts intended to

31:27 cause the death he did it with a premeditated design we ask that you convict him of first-degree murder thank you the defense mainly tries to evoke empathy for the defendant but it ends up just roasting the fake crazy out of him shanti's the only source of uh the income she's the bread winner he does nothing than other than take care of the pool and the dogs it's about circumstantial evidence pure supposition all steered by Terresa Spray who prejudged this case based upon a phone call received from her from an officer at the scene about these crocodile tears this is just a hunch ladies and gentlemen a hunch if you hear horses if you hear hooves it's think horses not zebras sort of thing because that's the point you don't get to fit a square peg in a round hole because it's convenient and that's what happened here with the rush to judgment with the confirmational bias those two detectives

32:32 went into a room with David Trronis and worked him over he sat there for 16 hours bared his soul to them literally and figuratively told them what he knew told them what he saw the government's the one spinning here the government's the one taking the insignificant and stacking them into a pyramid and I'm confident that after carefully deliberating that you'll come back and return the only just verdict in this case and that's a verdict of not guilty thank you verdict reads "We the jury find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder as charged in the indictment." So it says we all dated at Orlando County Orange County Florida on the 18th day of October 2023 signed by the poor person in the midst of this tragedy Shanti's impact as a mother was shown through her son Jackson his victim impact statement was both heart-rending and dignified my family and I have been waiting for about 5 years for justice i

33:37 miss her so much i would have never thought the day before was the last time I would see my mother alive i miss the times where we would go to Universal or just the simple times like walking the dogs or going to the park she was the best mom I could ever ask for that's it fence any questions no your honor thank you Jackson mr tronis anything you wish to say prior to sentencing i think you just said no is that right okay then in this case the court will adjudicate you guilty we'll sentence you to life imprisonment luck to you sir and the court will be in recess this is his latest mug shot he is currently being housed at the Graceville Correctional Facility in Maximum Security where he is expected to remain

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Husband tries to act"?

In order: 0:00 Barb McLland, David Trronis, Shanti Cooper, Teresa Sprag; 5:00 Keith Ary; 10:00 AJ Jackson; 30:00 AJ Jackson, David Trronis, Graceville Correctional Facility, Orange County, Florida.

What is mentioned in this JCS - Criminal Psychology episode?

9 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including AJ Jackson, David Trronis, Zombie House Flipping, Shanti Cooper, Teresa Sprag, Barb McLland. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Husband tries to act"?

The episode runs 35 min; the transcript is about 5,518 words in 32 timestamped sections.

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