A Killer Renovation (Rebroadcast)

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Speaker 2 Tonight, a wife and mother dead was the husband leading a secret double life.

Speaker 1 And at a money pit of a mansion, all part of a mystery I discovered in Orlando. And all new 2020 begins right now.

Speaker 4 Hi, family.

Speaker 1 Did you have any idea where this case was going to take you?

Speaker 6 None at all.

Speaker 1 Lots of twists and turns.

Speaker 7 I said, this is like a 2020 episode.

Speaker 8 I said, what is happening? And he said, someone's deceased.

Speaker 9 I saw crime tape and police tape. I saw police cars.

Speaker 1 This is outside your house.

Speaker 9 I was just thinking, I hope my mom's okay.

Speaker 11 They said, Jeff, your daughter's been phoned.

Speaker 13 She's dead.

Speaker 1 Did they tell you how she was found? Did you have any idea how she had died?

Speaker 8 They said the bathtub, something about the bathtub.

Speaker 15 The detectives knew that Shanti had been attacked and that it was a brutal, vicious attack.

Speaker 18 Obviously, there was something horrible going on inside that house.

Speaker 19 That's the roof.

Speaker 19 Okay. There's no insulation in this whole house.

Speaker 21 Holy cow, there's no house on the inside of this house.

Speaker 7 It was bizarre some of the things that were happening.

Speaker 23 You don't even want to know the details. It's more twisted than you want it to be.

Speaker 6 Shanti called her one day crying and said, I'm so scared. I just need to get out.

Speaker 6 Hello?

Speaker 6 My baby.

Speaker 6 I saw the wait.

Speaker 24 She's not breathing. I'm trying to do CPR.
I can't. Okay, listen to me.
Okay, who is it that's not breathing? My wife, sorry, I'm Shanti.

Speaker 24 Take a deep breath. Listen to me.
I'm going to get the paramedic so we can try and get her some help, okay? Don't hang up.

Speaker 1 It's late afternoon, April 24th, 2018. David Traunas, the owner of this Orlando home, has just called 911.

Speaker 1 He sounds distraught as he describes how he just found his wife Shanti unconscious in the shower.

Speaker 26 I said, What happened?

Speaker 25 I found her in the shower.

Speaker 27 He was hysterical, almost unintelligible. I mean, you couldn't understand what he's saying.

Speaker 20 Okay, is she awake right now? No.

Speaker 20 Is she breathing?

Speaker 20 Is she breathing?

Speaker 20 Oh, I tried to do ZPR. I can't get her to breathe.

Speaker 28 I responded to the scene that afternoon.

Speaker 28 When I first saw David Traunas, he was beyond grief-stricken, screaming and crying and sobbing. And on the floor next to the bed, a female laying on her back, obviously deceased.

Speaker 28 She had obvious blunt force trauma, and it was very evident that this was not an accidental death. This wasn't a natural death.
This was a murder.

Speaker 1 Take me back to April 24th, 2018.

Speaker 1 You both are on duty.

Speaker 6 I was called to my corporal's desk. At the same time, Detective Sharp was coming in.
She had heard it on the radio when they were asking for the homicide unit to come to Delaney Park.

Speaker 1 Now, when you hear that it's Delaney Park, what's your reaction? Are you expecting something bad?

Speaker 6 Never.

Speaker 3 Delaney Park is a beautiful historic neighborhood in downtown Orlando.

Speaker 18 When people think of Orlando, Florida, they think of all of the theme parks, but we're about 30 minutes away from Disney and all the hoopla that goes on there.

Speaker 19 Good evening, I'm Greg Warren.

Speaker 18 And I'm Arthur Sigowski. Tonight we've uncovered

Speaker 31 affiliate in Orlando. I've been been covering news in Orlando for 20 years.

Speaker 31 Murders don't happen in Delaney Park.

Speaker 31 This is a picturesque, perfect, quaint community. Brick streets, beautiful oak-lined sidewalks, beautiful, expensive homes.

Speaker 28 Every house looks different, has a different feel, and makes for a great Mayberry-type atmosphere.

Speaker 32 I think people make an effort to know their neighbors.

Speaker 33 When I first moved here, I noticed we had a Wisteria Avenue and I thought, wow, how apropos. This is so much like Wisteria Lane on Desperate Housewife.

Speaker 25 I hope I'm not interrupting.

Speaker 35 Welcome to Wisteria Lane.

Speaker 33 With all the manicured lawns and the beautiful streets, and everybody knows everybody. Everybody knows what's going on.

Speaker 1 What were your first thoughts when you pulled up to this house? It was a beautiful home when we first got here.

Speaker 6 Obviously, it's not maintained now, but it was very well maintained.

Speaker 1 So you make your way back there and begin to check out what turns out to be a crime scene.

Speaker 6 What turns out to be a crime scene?

Speaker 6 I noticed the gargoyles right away because I just remember looking up and thinking, this is crazy.

Speaker 6 The first thing I see when I come to this residence for a homicide are these gargoyles staring at us from the roof. It was ominous.

Speaker 1 David's wife's body has been found in the upstairs garage apartment separate from the main house.

Speaker 29 They had moved out of the main portion of this house so that it could be renovated and they were living in the garage suite.

Speaker 1 Living in that home are 39-year-old Shanti Cooper-Tranas and her 49-year-old husband, David.

Speaker 36 This was a second marriage for both David and Shanti, and they were living in this house with Shanti's son from a prior marriage, eight years old at the time, Jackson.

Speaker 36 Merry Christmas!

Speaker 1 It was way too close.

Speaker 1 Oh, but a beautiful face, though.

Speaker 14 Shanti was a successful working mother.

Speaker 27 She had a finance consulting business and it was her own business. She was a hard worker, she was diligent, she was smart.

Speaker 23 A very confident, strong presence. She walked in the room, you noticed her, and she knew it.

Speaker 38 Hi, mommy!

Speaker 30 Beautiful young lady, full of life.

Speaker 4 Very strong type A personality.

Speaker 25 Hi, maybe.

Speaker 10 Hi, I think.

Speaker 9 Messenger?

Speaker 23 She was also a wonderful mother.

Speaker 23 And that was her biggest thing. When she had Jackson, she doted so much on him.
That was her life.

Speaker 9 She was a great mom

Speaker 9 and she was a very good person.

Speaker 1 What kinds of things did you like doing together?

Speaker 9 We went to a lot of theme parks. There's an aquarium downtown.
that was really fun. We went to the movies a lot, and just like normal day-to-day basis, talking with her, just having a good time.

Speaker 1 What made her happy?

Speaker 9 A lot of little stuff would make her happy, like, I mean, me, I'm not trying to be sound-like, but I would make her happy. You know what I mean?

Speaker 25 I would imagine that's true.

Speaker 27 So, Jackson spent some time with Shanti and Dave, and the rest of the time with his biological father, Jim Cooper.

Speaker 3 It was shortly after 4 p.m.

Speaker 28 when I arrived on scene. School was out for a good hour at that point.
There's an eight-year-old who hasn't been picked up yet.

Speaker 28 So I radioed to headquarters and said we need to get a hold of the school.

Speaker 40 There is a student by the name of Jackson Cooper. He's in second grade, eight years old.
Can you see if his father would be able to pick him up? Normally,

Speaker 40 the mom here would pick him up, but it's not going to be possible.

Speaker 21 Okay, the school's going to call him to come pick up his son.

Speaker 1 So you get a call.

Speaker 2 So I get a call around four o'clock from the school saying no one's picked him up.

Speaker 8 And I knew something was wrong.

Speaker 1 Would it be unlike her not to pick Jackson up?

Speaker 8 It would be very unlike her.

Speaker 13 Yeah,

Speaker 8 she would never.

Speaker 1 So your radar went up?

Speaker 2 Yeah, immediately.

Speaker 8 I went and picked him up.

Speaker 8 And then I... made the biggest mistake of my life and I drove to their house with Jackson.

Speaker 9 We pulled up to the house. I saw crime tape and police tape.
I saw police cars. I saw a bunch of officers standing outside.

Speaker 1 What are you thinking? This is outside your house.

Speaker 9 I was just thinking, I hope my mom's okay. I talked to her the night before, everything seemed fine.
She told me good night.

Speaker 9 I told her I love her. She told me, love me.

Speaker 8 I told Jackson to stay in the truck and don't get out.

Speaker 28 And then they came and asked me who I was,

Speaker 8 and I told them I was her ex-husband. I said, what is happening? And he said,

Speaker 8 someone's deceased.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Shanti's current husband, David Traniz, has been taken to police headquarters, waiting to talk to investigators. Thank you.

Speaker 8 Just have a seat there.

Speaker 19 And as soon as they get here,

Speaker 24 they'll be in and talk to you, okay?

Speaker 6 I have to start with him because he found her. They live together.
They're married. But that doesn't mean that he's responsible for her death.

Speaker 1 Did you have any idea where this case was going to take you when you started off?

Speaker 6 None at all.

Speaker 1 Lots of twists and turns.

Speaker 7 Lots of twists and turns.

Speaker 10 And I think I said to Detective Sprague, I said, Teresa, this is like a 2020 episode. It was just crazy.

Speaker 19 All right, I'll just have you come on in here for right now.

Speaker 19 Just have a seat.

Speaker 27 I don't know how long they will be, okay?

Speaker 1 David Traunas is waiting at the Orlando Police Department where detectives want to talk to him about the unexpected death of his wife, Shanti.

Speaker 15 So the detectives asked Dave if he would be willing to come to the police station and give a statement as standard in any homicide investigation.

Speaker 29 But as the husband who makes the 911 call, there's obviously things that are going to be investigated about that person.

Speaker 45 I'm Detective Teresa Sprague, and this is Detective Barbie Collin.

Speaker 1 He's down at the station.

Speaker 1 He's cooperative.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he was very cooperative.

Speaker 29 He turned over his clothes. He provided all the physical evidence and submitted himself for photographs.

Speaker 1 You brought David Tronas?

Speaker 6 This is interview room six. This is where we interviewed Mr.
Traunas. Okay.

Speaker 1 So now he is a man who has just lost his wife,

Speaker 1 clearly upset about it. I mean, you let him know that you feel badly for what has happened, right?

Speaker 45 First of all, on behalf of the Atlanta Police Department, we want to say how sorry we are for your loss,

Speaker 45 David,

Speaker 45 and also for

Speaker 45 everything that you're going through. I know this is very traumatic for you.

Speaker 1 What did David tell you about the morning and that day and how things played out?

Speaker 6 He said when he gets up just after seven that Shanti came downstairs to have a cigarette. He said that she had you know some work calls to attend to.

Speaker 27 She went back up and then she came back down again about 915 or 9.20 and that he says that's the last time he saw her.

Speaker 45 She usually comes down when she wants to eat or smoke or take a break.

Speaker 13 He said after that he walked the dogs.

Speaker 27 he went to a park nearby for about two hours, then he came back, did some yard work,

Speaker 41 he cleaned the pool.

Speaker 1 How does he say that he finds Shanti then? Because the day is ticking along, it's getting to the end of the day.

Speaker 6 So he gets home and he didn't say anything to her until around 3.45.

Speaker 45 I was just going to check if she wanted to go get spreadson.

Speaker 1 They have to pick up Jackson.

Speaker 6 Right. But he said when he entered the loft apartment, the first thing that he noticed or observed was he said hello and he didn't get a response.

Speaker 6 And then he heard the sound of trickling water, slowly trickling water.

Speaker 6 He proceeds to the bathroom where he says he finds his wife face down in a tub full of rose-colored water.

Speaker 45 The water's like half full.

Speaker 45 She's submerged partially.

Speaker 45 And it's just just extremely

Speaker 45 awful and it doesn't look natural.

Speaker 20 Obviously, she fell or something happened.

Speaker 1 You don't know anything much about this couple.

Speaker 6 We know nothing about them. So initially, I want to start at the beginning.
How did you two meet? How long have you known each other?

Speaker 6 He said that she was divorced from her husband. He was recently divorced from his wife.
And that they had met on match.com.

Speaker 6 He was living in Minnesota at the time and they started kind of an email affair.

Speaker 22 I remember her telling the friend group that she had met this guy on match and he was really nice.

Speaker 1 In emails, Shanti describes a pretty nasty divorce.

Speaker 35 My relationship with my ex-husband became toxic.

Speaker 1 Yet she seems excited about her new connection with David.

Speaker 9 I am looking for it all, Dave.

Speaker 35 I want to be in love, so deeply, so pure, and something that is lasting and a growing living thing she would just brag about how awesome he is and how great it is i have had a pep in my step since we started this little email affair

Speaker 15 david described his relationship with shanti as a second shot at love that they had a very deep soulful like connection

Speaker 6 they started to visit one another

Speaker 6 She would go to Minnesota, he would come here.

Speaker 45 We just started every other weekend flying. Oh, back and forth.

Speaker 12 David had worked as an engineer at 3M in Minneapolis, was apparently successful as he was able to retire early from that job with a sizable amount of income.

Speaker 27 He was able to essentially retire in his 50s.

Speaker 14 In a matter of months, Dave and Shanti went from meetingonmatch.com to David moving from Minnesota, uprooting his life, coming to Florida.

Speaker 15 It happened very fast.

Speaker 1 Did he talk about the romance? Were they deeply in love? Did he share anything about that?

Speaker 16 He did.

Speaker 7 He said that they were deeply in love.

Speaker 23 She gushed about him. She was just like, he treats me so great.
He, you know, dotes on me. And he would, you know, be very affectionate.

Speaker 22 Shanti and Dave were overly affectionate to the point where it was almost like gross. It was a little nauseating at times.

Speaker 50 Dave and Shanti ultimately were married in 2017 at a courthouse wedding in Orlando.

Speaker 11 Shanti says, hey, I got some news to tell you.

Speaker 52 And then she flashed this rock.

Speaker 13 I mean, this was a rock.

Speaker 11 And she says, hey, Dave and I just got married.

Speaker 27 She made a Facebook post, you know, showing off the ring.

Speaker 23 This was a custom ring and she just glowed about it and always wore it and just loved to show it.

Speaker 1 They'd been together five years and married just over one when Shanti is found dead.

Speaker 1 What did he tell you about what the state of their relationship and their situation was at the moment?

Speaker 7 He did say that things had been a little bit stressed lately due to her having an illness earlier in the year.

Speaker 27 She had had appendicitis, a pretty severe case. She had surgery on a few months previous, and she had been sort of weak and ill from that.

Speaker 45 She's been

Speaker 45 in a lot of pain, and

Speaker 45 she didn't want to tell me, you know, tell Jackson or any of her clients.

Speaker 6 He said that her recovery had been slow, and she was just now starting to find foods that she could keep down.

Speaker 1 Detectives Sprague and Sharp continue talking to David Traunis.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, as the investigation ramps up, Shanti's friends and family are stunned by news of her death.

Speaker 22 It just was so

Speaker 22 unreal.

Speaker 22 I remember all of us just breaking down

Speaker 22 with the news.

Speaker 10 They said,

Speaker 11 Jeff, your daughter's been found.

Speaker 13 She's dead.

Speaker 10 I passed out.

Speaker 10 The chair I was sitting in, I passed out, hit the floor.

Speaker 23 You just had so many questions going in your head going, what in the world? What happened?

Speaker 1 It's the question police are trying to answer. Who could have possibly killed Shanti?

Speaker 6 We're running an investigation on Mr. Tranas.
We're running an investigation on any other possible suspect.

Speaker 1 She had been married before.

Speaker 1 She and her ex-husband had had a pretty contentious divorce. They did.
Was that factoring into your mind that she could have had some disagreement with somebody outside of the household?

Speaker 6 Yeah, especially after we interviewed him.

Speaker 48 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 6 So is he a suspect? Yes, you betcha. He's a suspect.

Speaker 1 At the Orlando Police Department, Shanti Cooper-Tronas' current husband, David, is being questioned.

Speaker 45 I've never been more loved, you're so happy.

Speaker 1 And detectives are also talking to her ex, Jim Cooper.

Speaker 47 Jim Cooper was previously married to Shanti, and their divorce was a contentious one.

Speaker 14 So police had to look into Jim.

Speaker 6 He came to the station and in speaking with him about his marriage to Shanti, it was good in the beginning and it wasn't good at the end. So is he a suspect? Yes, you betcha he's a suspect.

Speaker 1 Tell me about meeting Shanti.

Speaker 8 I went out with some friends of mine and this beautiful woman just walked up and started talking to me. We were together for the next 16 hours and that's how it started.

Speaker 1 So you just hit it off?

Speaker 8 Just like that.

Speaker 1 Aye, Shanti.

Speaker 18 Aye Shanti.

Speaker 1 Matani. Matani.

Speaker 18 Thank you.

Speaker 18 Thank you, James Cooper.

Speaker 1 To be my lawful wedded husband.

Speaker 20 Be my lawful wedded husband.

Speaker 1 I now pronounce you husband and wife.

Speaker 1 Were you blissfully happy?

Speaker 6 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 8 I just thought she was the cat's meow.

Speaker 25 Merry Christmas!

Speaker 9 Jim, Merry Christmas!

Speaker 8 And then in early 2009, we got the news and we were so happy.

Speaker 1 She was pregnant. Yep.
And Jackson was born. Yes.

Speaker 42 Jackson, 11 months old.

Speaker 1 Almost gonna walk.

Speaker 1 And then things took a turn. How did the marriage begin to have problems? I guess

Speaker 8 she got a little detached from us.

Speaker 29 The circumstances of the divorce were that she had been unfaithful to him because she was unhappy with him.

Speaker 1 There we go. So there was infidelity.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 2 I didn't want it to end,

Speaker 8 but she did.

Speaker 8 So we started the divorce.

Speaker 1 Was it a tough divorce? Was it contentious?

Speaker 52 Yes, it was.

Speaker 8 It was very difficult.

Speaker 2 And I made it difficult on her.

Speaker 9 It didn't end well.

Speaker 6 There was an affair. I remember walking out of the interview and looking at Detective Sharp and said,

Speaker 6 he's not not cleared. He's not cleared until he's cleared.
We have to clear him right away.

Speaker 1 Detectives are asking all kinds of questions. It must have made you feel like a suspect.

Speaker 44 It did.

Speaker 8 I was worried that they might waste precious time on me instead of where it should be focused on. So yeah, that was a big concern to me.
I knew

Speaker 28 I wasn't involved.

Speaker 8 I had nothing to do with this.

Speaker 1 Did they tell you how she was found? Did you have any idea how she had died?

Speaker 29 They said the bathtub,

Speaker 8 something about the bathtub, but other than that, I was just trying to figure out how to tell our son.

Speaker 1 How do you tell an eight-year-old boy that his mom's gone?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 That's got to be a hard thing to do.

Speaker 27 Yeah.

Speaker 27 The worst.

Speaker 9 And I could tell it was really hard for my dad to say this, but he told me that my mom was gone. And at first I didn't really understand what he meant, but as it sunk in, it didn't really feel real.

Speaker 9 I didn't want to believe it. I didn't, I didn't believe it.
I thought that he was wrong and he made a mistake.

Speaker 9 I was making so many excuses in my head and just to say, like, she's fine and she's alive.

Speaker 1 But the days go on and the weeks go on and you realize that she's not coming back and she's what he said was true

Speaker 9 and that she did pass away.

Speaker 27 They were able to get an alibi pretty quickly for Jim Cooper.

Speaker 29 He had just started a new job and he was off at a job site some distance away. And so he had alibi witnesses that cleared him.

Speaker 6 He had given us a play-by-play of his day.

Speaker 13 His alibi,

Speaker 7 you know, completely vetted his story.

Speaker 1 So Shanti's first husband, Jim Cooper, is cleared.

Speaker 1 Back at the crime scene, police noticed something odd. Shanti's engagement ring, the one she never took off, is nowhere to be found.

Speaker 14 And that was something that really stood out because Shanti was really proud of the engagement ring.

Speaker 31 Detectives looked into that. They're looking at what are the other options here? What could have happened? Was this a break-in?

Speaker 6 We need to know, is there anyone in this neighborhood? Anyone that might have been at the home for construction purposes or for delivery purposes or a transient that's walking through?

Speaker 36 That neighborhood, being close to downtown, close to a hospital from time to time, they do have transients who pass through there.

Speaker 29 But when they searched the apartment that day, it became clear that there was a lot of property that would easily be taken of high value that just simply wasn't taken.

Speaker 29 Her earrings, her diamond earrings were present, one in her ear, one on her nightstand.

Speaker 6 Why wasn't the diamond earring stolen if it was a robbery? Why wasn't the cash that was in plain view stolen?

Speaker 6 Why wasn't her iMac computer, her son's game box, the television, her watch, her phone, her wallet, her credit cards?

Speaker 1 None of those things taken.

Speaker 6 Everything's in plain view.

Speaker 3 There doesn't appear to be a break-in.

Speaker 17 It doesn't appear to be a robbery.

Speaker 1 So if this isn't a robbery gone wrong, what could have happened? Investigators are exploring every possibility,

Speaker 1 including the massive renovation at the Trana's home. Could that be connected to Shanti's murder?

Speaker 18 You don't really know what's going on inside two people's lives.

Speaker 21 Nobody ever does what they did.

Speaker 31 It was shocking.

Speaker 42 We were like, what happened in here?

Speaker 32 Give it up for Chicago.

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Speaker 8 This girl needs a father.

Speaker 39 I hate you.

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Speaker 1 The Toronto home is now a crime scene. And what's striking to police is that the main house under renovation is uninhabitable.

Speaker 15 David bought the house for a little over $600,000 in cash in 2015.

Speaker 52 It was a lovely historic home.

Speaker 4 It was about 100 years old, one of the most appealing and beautiful homes on our street.

Speaker 18 As a realtor, I was selling the house. It had wood floors, it had a tile roof, it had a gorgeous pool.
It was totally a dream home. When Shanti came and saw the house, she loved it.

Speaker 15 They started renovating the house pretty soon after they moved in.

Speaker 3 At first, it seemed to be, you know, typical, move something here, move something there.

Speaker 45 Two or three years

Speaker 45 since you've been doing the renovation.

Speaker 39 Right.

Speaker 39 Right.

Speaker 6 She left David in charge of that renovation and it got worse and worse and worse.

Speaker 16 David hired and fired construction crews regularly.

Speaker 11 It seemed like, okay,

Speaker 11 Dave's got this contractor.

Speaker 27 Good.

Speaker 4 Now we're moving forward.

Speaker 30 A week or two later, oh, well, we let this guy go.

Speaker 23 She would tell me, well, we tore this out and we did this, but now we got to get new blueprints because this is going on. You're just like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 9 It's just an open area. There's no floors.
There's no walls. There's nothing separating.
It's just a big open room. My mom wouldn't let me walk in there because there was nails everywhere.

Speaker 9 The floor was literally taken off. You had to walk in planks to get around.

Speaker 31 It had been ravaged inside by David.

Speaker 1 Everything was stripped.

Speaker 31 It was beyond gutted.

Speaker 18 To take out the whole interior is just...

Speaker 18 I can't even explain. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 What does he share about what's happening with the renovation?

Speaker 6 He mentioned the TV show Zombie House Flipping.

Speaker 30 Wiping out these blights on our city block by block, one zombie at a time.

Speaker 21 This is zombie house flipping.

Speaker 36 The zombie house flipping show is a show where they profile the worst of the worst homes. I mean, they're trying to renovate nightmare scenarios.

Speaker 28 Our builder, Keith, this is scraping.

Speaker 21 This is going down the stud.

Speaker 45 Keith does a TV show.

Speaker 45 He asked us to

Speaker 45 be on the show.

Speaker 21 When I met with Dave, I walked right through those doors there, and that's when sort of the enormity of the project hit me. I mean, it's, holy cow, there's no house on the inside of this house.

Speaker 6 This level of demo is unprecedented.

Speaker 21 Nobody ever does what they did. It wasn't structurally safe.
I was trying to figure out what was holding the house up, quite frankly. It was absolutely alarming.

Speaker 21 In home renovation, there's a few movies that are kind of touchstones in our industry and the movie The Money Pit is certainly one of them.

Speaker 1 It's gonna be fun fixing it up.

Speaker 57 You'll see.

Speaker 21 This house would be a prototypical money pit.

Speaker 1 With the house unlivable, Shanti, David, and Jackson stay in the adjacent apartment above the garage. Where would you cook meals?

Speaker 9 In the garage, we had a stove and a microwave and stuff and we used to cook stuff down there.

Speaker 1 Did it feel strange?

Speaker 9 It felt strange at first, but

Speaker 9 we were doing that routine living upstairs, cooking downstairs for so long, I started to get used to it.

Speaker 2 Okay, are you guys ready?

Speaker 58 There we go.

Speaker 27 About a week before the murder, David took a cell phone video just to sort of document the state of the house at that time. David just essentially walks around the property.

Speaker 27 He showed briefly sort of the main interior of the home where the work was done.

Speaker 25 Here is the

Speaker 46 house with the center supports and the first set of trusses up.

Speaker 27 He walked up and sort of showed the layout of the bedroom.

Speaker 46 It's about 800 square feet at the top of the stairs.

Speaker 13 And there's a full bath as well

Speaker 32 back in the corner.

Speaker 27 You could just sort of see the layout of the house. You're able to see the state of the construction.
This project was very important to him and that came across in the video.

Speaker 45 So where would you sleep? I sleep downstairs.

Speaker 36 Shanti was living upstairs with Jackson while David was living downstairs in the garage.

Speaker 6 He said that he slept in the garage often. Even with Jackson not there, he would sleep in the garage with the dogs on a couch.

Speaker 1 Did that strike you as peculiar? Yes.

Speaker 6 Yes. He said, you know, that she snores and so he doesn't like to sleep up there.

Speaker 27 I mean, it's just not a

Speaker 27 way that people normally live for an extended period of time. So anytime you see something like that, that's going to add, you know, pressure and stress to a relationship.

Speaker 6 From a woman's standpoint, Detective Sharp and I could not imagine what Shanti must have been thinking. That the frustration that she was having.

Speaker 6 We kept asking him from our perspective, that must have been very stressful on your marriage.

Speaker 1 Your woman's intuition was kicking in.

Speaker 45 Now we've got the added stress of the renovation.

Speaker 45 We love what we're doing to the house. We love the vision that we had for the house.

Speaker 1 Could it be that stress from a home renovation was a motive for murder? So far, there's no physical evidence connecting David to Shanti's injuries.

Speaker 15 The detectives knew that Shanti had been attacked and that it was a brutal, vicious attack.

Speaker 45 Would you mind showing me your chest and back? Sure. I don't need to see anything else, just your

Speaker 45 chest, back, and arms. Sure.

Speaker 3 David was willing and showed the detectives his body that didn't show scratch marks, claw marks, something that would be consistent with a person attacking or defending themselves.

Speaker 1 Still, detectives are not buying David's story. Their time playing good cop is winding down.

Speaker 45 You're not a good liar.

Speaker 45 You're terrible at it.

Speaker 47 Terrible.

Speaker 45 And your story

Speaker 45 is BS.

Speaker 1 For hours, David Tranas has been at the Orlando police station.

Speaker 1 And back at his home, now a crime scene, investigators are gathering evidence. And what they're finding doesn't seem to match up with David's story of what could have happened to his wife.

Speaker 28 He claimed that he had found her in the tub and he pulled her out of the tub.

Speaker 45 She slept, or she

Speaker 45 fell

Speaker 45 or

Speaker 20 something

Speaker 20 caused her to collapse.

Speaker 6 We expected not only for her to be soaking wet, the floor should be soaking wet, the carpet should be wet. So if he had just taken her out, why isn't it wet?

Speaker 1 There was no sign of a bath or a shower.

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 1 Investigators at the scene noticed some severe injuries on Shanti. Injuries that don't seem to be consistent with a slip and fall in the shower.

Speaker 6 She's got swollen eyes and she's got a puncture wound to her face. She's got a gash on her ear.
She's got a lot of injuries.

Speaker 3 The detectives have seen somebody who has been battered, beaten, has hemorrhaging, who isn't sopping wet.

Speaker 12 There's no water trail.

Speaker 5 David's telling them a story that is absolutely inconsistent.

Speaker 45 Shanti did not fall and get those those injuries. Okay.
Without question. Okay.
They're much more significant than that and I need you to be significantly more honest. I told you everything.

Speaker 6 We called the medical examiner out to look at her eyes. I wanted him to open her eyelids if he could to show us if she had petite eye.

Speaker 50 When you look at those little petite eye hemorrhages, which is blood vessels bursting, and the marks on one side of her neck.

Speaker 12 The detectives knew that Shanti was also likely the victim of strangling.

Speaker 1 And that's not all. They say that when first responders got to the scene, Shanti's body was already in rigor mortis, that natural stiffening that happens to a body hours after death.

Speaker 10 It can happen in 8 to 12 hours.

Speaker 14 It could happen 24 to 36 hours.

Speaker 3 That's a really wide time span.

Speaker 15 We needed to approximate the time of the attack.

Speaker 15 We know that the last contact that Shanti had was with Jackson at about 8.30 on the night of April 23rd.

Speaker 1 Do you remember what you last talked to her about?

Speaker 9 I think it was just saying good night and I love her and I'll see her tomorrow. I'm just glad that I was the last person she talked to that night.

Speaker 47 We know that Shanti's cell phone had not moved from 11.28 p.m.

Speaker 14 on the 23rd of April until a crime scene technicians collected her phone.

Speaker 1 David says he last saw his wife the morning of her murder around 7 a.m. and then again around 9, just before he went to go walk his dogs.

Speaker 27 So she had received a text related to work at 6.58 a.m.

Speaker 13 that morning.

Speaker 27 She never responded to. Actually, the record shows never read.
So that's unusual. Everybody that we talked to said she was a workaholic and very responsive to work text.

Speaker 6 So the immediate question became,

Speaker 6 was Shanti Cooper alive

Speaker 6 on Tuesday morning? Because if she's alive that morning, then why is she in rigor?

Speaker 27 I think whatever happened to her happened before you went to the park.

Speaker 27 Okay.

Speaker 6 Do you know how long it takes someone to get stiff?

Speaker 3 Okay, I do.

Speaker 6 He tells us he doesn't know what we want to hear. He doesn't understand.
He's been completely truthful, and he doesn't understand why we don't believe him.

Speaker 1 So he's not credible in your mind right now?

Speaker 6 Not at all.

Speaker 1 David Traunis is sticking to his story, and there's a question about why he'd want to kill his wife in the first place. So Detective Sprague and Sharp decide it's time for a break.

Speaker 45 I'm going to direct you to the restroom and we'll bring you back.

Speaker 43 It was at that point in time that detectives started to take a different tactic.

Speaker 45 Hi,

Speaker 45 you doing okay?

Speaker 1 Your tone shifts with him a little bit. You've gone from being cordial now to hitting him with some hard questions.

Speaker 6 Now it's an interrogation.

Speaker 45 How do you explain

Speaker 45 this woman's head being swollen, lacerations on her face, clumps of hair missing from the back of her head?

Speaker 45 Missing? I don't have any explanation.

Speaker 45 You're not a good liar.

Speaker 45 You're terrible at it.

Speaker 45 Terrible. The evidence and her body speak for itself.

Speaker 45 And your story is BS.

Speaker 14 It was a psychological fight between the detectives and David.

Speaker 3 I mean, it was really, it was psychological warfare.

Speaker 1 And you hit him hard. You accused him of fake crying.
You went after him as well.

Speaker 45 You fake cried for about seven or eight hours, say

Speaker 45 not one tear came out of your eyes. Not one.

Speaker 27 When he called 911, he was hysterical. I mean you couldn't understand what he's saying in parts.

Speaker 20 Okay, is she awake right now? No.

Speaker 20 Is she breathing? I can't wake her.

Speaker 20 I can't wake her. Okay, listen, listen.

Speaker 27 But then, you know, he would be asked specific questions like, you know, how do you get into the house? And he was oddly able to sort of modulate and,

Speaker 27 you know, calm himself down quickly, say something clearly, and then go back to just sort of the,

Speaker 27 you know, we believe was a show of hysterical crying.

Speaker 20 Oh, God. Oh, God.

Speaker 60 There's a blue dumpster, big blue dumpster in the driveway.

Speaker 20 They have to turn in.

Speaker 60 And if they can get past it, they have to drive past it.

Speaker 6 The exasperation of the crying or the feigned crying, he shuts it off and he's completely normal at that point.

Speaker 45 You screwed up.

Speaker 45 You made a mistake. Whatever it is, I'm starting to believe it wasn't a mistake.

Speaker 1 The two detectives are becoming deeply suspicious of David, but they could never have predicted what they're about to discover.

Speaker 14 This case just taught us to expect the unexpected.

Speaker 22 Fantastic wanted the perfect life and she was private about what was happening to her.

Speaker 6 So he's leading a double life, absolutely leading a double life.

Speaker 31 Do you really know what's going on with your neighbor next door?

Speaker 13 Do you?

Speaker 31 Maybe not.

Speaker 37 Listen to Shantae Tronas.

Speaker 4 She is telling you what happened.

Speaker 1 You discovered journal entries, almost her talking to you from the grave. From the grave.

Speaker 23 And she said, he knows I know too much

Speaker 41 and he won't let me go.

Speaker 6 Why would she say I need to get out? Why did she say she was scared? Something happened.

Speaker 23 You don't even want to know the details. It's more twisted than you want it to be.

Speaker 61 Public Dave and private Dave are just absolute opposites.

Speaker 1 So he's leading a double life.

Speaker 31 Absolutely. You just saw that behind the scenes, he wasn't the person who he claimed to be.

Speaker 1 How did he behave?

Speaker 9 He'd get extremely mad. He'd threaten me, scream at me.

Speaker 1 Threatened to do what?

Speaker 9 Hurt me, break my stuff.

Speaker 45 You know, you'd fake cried for about seven or eight hours, and

Speaker 45 not one tear came out of your eyes, not one.

Speaker 1 But you're beginning to wonder

Speaker 1 whether he had poisoned his

Speaker 1 current wife and ex-wife.

Speaker 54 Yeah, you can't not wonder.

Speaker 45 You're not a good liar.

Speaker 10 You're terrible at it.

Speaker 45 And your story

Speaker 45 is BS.

Speaker 19 The body of Shanty Cooper Trones was found in her Delaney Park home in April.

Speaker 62 Her husband, who we're told, found her remains inside this home.

Speaker 62 Hello.

Speaker 62 My baby.

Speaker 62 I

Speaker 62 believe she's not breathing. I tried to do CPR.

Speaker 6 He's saying that she slipped and fell on the bathtub, but she's clothed and the bathtub is dry and she looks dry. We're looking at her injuries and she looks like she's been murdered.

Speaker 31 She has bruising on her face.

Speaker 10 Her skull is cracked.

Speaker 48 It was a violent attack of several blow after blow after blow.

Speaker 45 The evidence and her body speak for itself.

Speaker 45 And your story story is BS.

Speaker 45 I don't have any explanation for her,

Speaker 45 the severity of her injuries.

Speaker 6 It was a brutal beating and a brutal strangulation. If he's innocent, then he should be adamant that he did not do this.

Speaker 13 Outraged.

Speaker 6 Outraged at the accusation that I would kill my wife.

Speaker 1 They've only been married a year. Why would this man kill his wife?

Speaker 6 Detective Sheriff asked him, you know, are you having an affair? Do you think Shanti was having an affair? Is the marriage ending?

Speaker 1 Did you guys get into an argument? Was she pissed about the house?

Speaker 6 Every single thing that we suggested could be a motive, he denied.

Speaker 1 After being at the police station for 14 hours, they let Tranas go home.

Speaker 1 Knowing that he's now the prime suspect, David hires an attorney and a private eye to begin his own investigation into who killed his wife.

Speaker 6 We had left a lot of business cards with the neighbors and they called us and they said we've got a private investigator coming to the home asking us about a transient that looks like Woody Harrelson.

Speaker 6 And they had all said we don't know what they're talking about. So our 20-year veteran officers who've worked this area for a long time, I call Officer Wilson.

Speaker 28 And I said, I know exactly who you're talking about. I said, I've seen this guy in the neighborhood, in that general area for years.

Speaker 6 Late into the evening at two o'clock in the morning, they found him. I went out and interviewed him and I asked him if he knew Shanti Cooper.
I showed him pictures.

Speaker 9 Have you ever seen her before?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 9 She was actually killed in her house.

Speaker 6 Were you aware of that?

Speaker 54 No, I wasn't aware of it.

Speaker 9 No. Did you kill her?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 1 And you believed him?

Speaker 5 Absolutely.

Speaker 42 We had nothing to suggest this was a break-in or a robbery.

Speaker 1 So detectives shift their focus back to David Trannis, who's painted a happy picture of him and his wife. But was that the reality?

Speaker 1 Investigators take a closer look at that video David shot inside the house about a week before the murder.

Speaker 1 Hi, family.

Speaker 6 Love you.

Speaker 9 What's that?

Speaker 27 The interaction between David and Shanti in that video seemed a little bit icy.

Speaker 2 Guarantee we'll talk to everybody we need to talk to. We'll do whatever we can do, okay?

Speaker 25 We'll support him 100%.

Speaker 2 Like we always do.

Speaker 25 Absolutely.

Speaker 27 You know, maybe it's just a normal couple's, you know, being irritated with each other, but there was something off there. She seemed to be not pleased with him.

Speaker 10 My thought was that it was just a level of stress living in that garage apartment and

Speaker 7 just being totally frustrated with the entire situation of the renovation.

Speaker 1 In the weeks before the murder, as the home renovations continue, so does the cost. And detectives find out that was a concern for Shanti.

Speaker 36 David had paid cash for this house but Shanti was the one earning all the money. David wasn't working and so she was paying for these renovations.

Speaker 23 I remember hanging out with her and her saying, I'm paying for everything. If all of a sudden something happens, he owns this house and I have nothing to it.

Speaker 31 Shanti thought that her name was going to be put on the deed. It came up several times.

Speaker 41 It never happened.

Speaker 16 At the time of her death, Shanti spent well over $200,000 towards the renovation and construction of the house.

Speaker 23 She wanted him to go work. I remember her saying, I work, so I would like him to go do something because now this house is more than what we anticipated.

Speaker 11 Between swimming and yoga, taking care of the plants or whatever, I guess his full-time job would have been

Speaker 11 the renovating of the house.

Speaker 1 Shanti's friends and family felt something was off in the way the couple handled their their finances.

Speaker 30 The story that we were told by Shanti.

Speaker 11 When she first met Dave, he was a millionaire. The question always came up, if Dave has all this money, why

Speaker 11 doesn't Dave help out buy anything?

Speaker 11 I mean, you go to buy a TV. Oh, Shanti, you got this.

Speaker 22 He was a cheap guy, and we couldn't figure out why.

Speaker 1 And Shanti's friends had even deeper concerns about the relationship.

Speaker 6 One of her friends told us that Shanti her one day

Speaker 6 crying and said, I'm so scared, I just need to get out.

Speaker 23 That was chilling to me to hear.

Speaker 1 She was crying.

Speaker 23 And she said, he knows I know too much

Speaker 41 and he won't let me go.

Speaker 23 That's when it hit me really hard. Like, there's something more than I'm even privy to that's going on here.
A few hours later, she called and she's like, oh, we're good. I'm just going to stay.

Speaker 23 It's as if he was hovering over her, making sure that she didn't say so much.

Speaker 6 Why would she say I need to get out? Why did she say she was scared? Something happened. She saw a side of him, perhaps, that scared her.

Speaker 1 Did you see anything that worried you about the way they got along?

Speaker 9 They would get into really, really bad arguments, like screaming. Like, I could be upstairs and they could be in the backyard, and I could hear them screaming at each other.

Speaker 25 About what?

Speaker 49 Just

Speaker 9 anything to start an argument. Anything.

Speaker 1 Jackson spoke to the officers with the Department of Children and Family Services. What kinds of things did he share?

Speaker 8 The truth, there was domestic violence going on in the house, physical, mental,

Speaker 13 verbal.

Speaker 2 I was not aware of any of that. And he never told me any of that.

Speaker 1 But he had witnessed this.

Speaker 8 He witnessed it. That's how I found out.

Speaker 9 Like when my mom was around, he wouldn't act like a parental figure.

Speaker 1 How did he behave?

Speaker 9 He'd get extremely mad. He'd threaten me, scream at me.

Speaker 1 Threatened to do what?

Speaker 9 Hurt me, break my stuff.

Speaker 1 That's pretty cruel. Did you ever tell your mom?

Speaker 9 He threatened me not to, or else he'd, you know, break my stuff or hurt me.

Speaker 1 The Department of Children and Family Services never interviewed David Tranas about these allegations.

Speaker 61 What we started to see was public Dave and private Dave are just absolute opposites.

Speaker 1 The more detectives dig, the more they're finding.

Speaker 1 And they're about to unearth a secret that has them wondering if they may have stumbled upon a motive for murder.

Speaker 31 David had been dozens and dozens and dozens of times.

Speaker 6 That was a big whoa.

Speaker 23 You don't even want to know the details.

Speaker 1 So he's leading a double life.

Speaker 6 Absolutely leading a double life.

Speaker 31 Behind the the scenes, he wasn't the person who he claimed to be.

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Speaker 1 This is going to be catastrophic. We're fighting for our marriages and the girls are just putting us through hell.

Speaker 64 They make everything about themselves.

Speaker 1 I can't.

Speaker 23 Hopefully, this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

Speaker 34 Watch the Hulu original, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bonus subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 65 It started with a phone call in the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 60 911, what is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 65 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker. He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone

Speaker 65 calls for help.

Speaker 21 Is there any way you can get out of the building?

Speaker 20 I don't know without waking him and I'm scared.

Speaker 65 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 51 We've got something big going on here.

Speaker 34 The first thing you hit my mind is a monster.

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Speaker 2 My name is Ron Gordy.

Speaker 33 I lived down the street from Dave and Shanti.

Speaker 2 My partner Tom and I live here.

Speaker 29 This neighborhood feels like an extended family to me.

Speaker 33 I was out for a jog one morning

Speaker 33 and I encountered Dave.

Speaker 29 He was without a shirt,

Speaker 33 very, very skimpy, skimpy running shorts. And he was in amazing shape.
There was not a shred of body fat on him.

Speaker 4 And I

Speaker 28 felt the need to say, Dave,

Speaker 32 you look amazing.

Speaker 33 And, oh, are those new glasses?

Speaker 4 Well, they look great on you.

Speaker 32 And I'll never forget it. He lowered them.
took one look at me and he said yes well now that i have my new glasses

Speaker 33 you're much more attractive to me now that I can see.

Speaker 52 And I thought, it was an odd thing

Speaker 32 to say to me.

Speaker 2 It made me feel uncomfortable and awkward.

Speaker 3 I thought he was flirting with me.

Speaker 1 According to authorities, David and Shanti are keeping up appearances. But detectives are learning that their marriage was far from idyllic.

Speaker 1 They've just gotten a tip about a secret, which might explain what happened to Shanti Cooper Tranas.

Speaker 1 As you're looking into David's life, you discover a place called Club Orlando. Yes.

Speaker 6 Club Orlando is a local gym for gay men. David Tranas had a membership at Club Orlando.

Speaker 1 Why would he have a membership at a gay gym? At a gay gym.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so that was our question.

Speaker 6 So we traveled over to Club Orlando. We started asking questions about Mr.
Trannas. And he had been a member for 18 months, but he had frequented the club as recently as the week before her murder.

Speaker 6 We had a witness that worked in the club who had seen his activities in the club with men.

Speaker 1 What was the extent of it?

Speaker 1 Associations, just friendships with men?

Speaker 6 No, it was sexual activity in the club with men.

Speaker 14 This case just taught us to expect the unexpected. Detective Sprague talked to this employee.

Speaker 6 Do you have any knowledge whether or not David has hooked up or had sex in the club with any man?

Speaker 38 Yes.

Speaker 51 I saw David,

Speaker 38 he was giving oral sex to this guy.

Speaker 38 So

Speaker 6 my understanding was that you walked in the locker room and caught them. Is that not accurate?

Speaker 38 Well, twice. I mean, yeah, in the locker room and then behind the building.

Speaker 38 Two different men?

Speaker 51 I imagine, yes.

Speaker 31 David had been dozens and dozens and dozens of times.

Speaker 62 This stack of receipts here shows that he attended that spa.

Speaker 36 It was 78 receipts over about a two-year period. He was still going there during their marriage.

Speaker 31 In fact, he went there. Records show the day after they got married.
You just saw that behind the scenes, he wasn't the person who he claimed to be.

Speaker 4 We found out that David was frequenting Club Orlando from a friend.

Speaker 33 Neither Shanti nor Dave, nobody ever said anything.

Speaker 36 We were pretty shocked because he had been married 14 years before to another woman. He was married to Shanti.

Speaker 1 By the time detectives learn about Club Orlando, David is lawyered up and he's no longer talking.

Speaker 6 We asked a lot of questions of her friends and family, and everyone pretty much said the same thing. She wouldn't tolerate it, and we guarantee you she doesn't know.

Speaker 42 If she knew that was happening, she would have...

Speaker 23 She would have blown a gasket.

Speaker 1 She would not have continued that relationship.

Speaker 6 But did she know? Is that maybe a personal thing that she's not sharing with other people? That she doesn't want other people to know that she's aware of.

Speaker 22 Shanti wanted the perfect life. I think maybe things that were happening that didn't coincide with that were reasons why she was private about what was happening to her.

Speaker 22 I think a lot of people who had met Dave thought that maybe he was homosexual. That was just kind of the vibe he had.

Speaker 1 So he's leading a double life.

Speaker 6 Absolutely leading a double life.

Speaker 1 What does that tell you in this investigation? That maybe

Speaker 7 that she had just found out. Maybe that was what.

Speaker 7 Possibility that that was what prompted her death.

Speaker 6 We didn't know if she knew and we didn't know if that was the catalyst for the argument.

Speaker 6 Something had to have happened that caused them to argue and for it to escalate to the point where he physically harms her. in a brutal fashion.

Speaker 1 Detectives are trying to build their case and they've put David under surveillance.

Speaker 15 While Dave was putting on this public persona of the grieving husband, he was doing things behind the scenes to only serve his interests.

Speaker 15 Within several weeks, David's trying to claim life insurance money.

Speaker 47 He's transferring money out of their joint bank accounts.

Speaker 6 He was the sole beneficiary of her life insurance, which was over $350,000. He stood to gain close to a million dollars if he was not charged with her murder.

Speaker 14 David was definitely planning his exit strategy to leave this entire situation with Shanti's money and no worries behind.

Speaker 50 And when we learned of that, I made the ultimate decision that we needed to make the arrest.

Speaker 1 Four months after Shanti Cupertranas is found dead, A grand jury indicts her husband, David, for first-degree murder. He's arrested at his mom's house.

Speaker 6 Does he put up a fight?

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 1 What's his reaction?

Speaker 7 He was sitting out on his screen porch, and I think they just went up there.

Speaker 6 He willingly came down, and they said to turn around and put your hands behind your back. He said nothing.
You have a picture of that when they're arresting him.

Speaker 6 To me, it was a moment of defeat.

Speaker 11 This is one day that I'll never forget.

Speaker 30 We got him, Jeff.

Speaker 11 And I said,

Speaker 25 hallelujah

Speaker 19 we got him we are continuing to learn new details about the investigation into the murder of a Delaney Park woman how her husband David Tronas is charged with her murder

Speaker 1 David pleads not guilty. Meanwhile, detectives have gotten a search warrant to comb through his mother's house.

Speaker 14 And I'll never forget this.

Speaker 47 I was driving home from the courthouse and I get a call from Detective Sprague.

Speaker 1 And they find something surprising. The one thing they've been looking for.

Speaker 1 After David Traunis' arrest, investigators are combing through his past. He's been married before and divorced.
And detectives want to know what his first wife has to say about him.

Speaker 1 At some point, you speak to David's ex-wife, Carol.

Speaker 6 She'd been married to him for 14 years. She was very much in disbelief that Shanti had been murdered and that David Trannas was responsible for that.

Speaker 9 He was not a violent person.

Speaker 38 Do you think they've murdered his wife?

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 9 It's not characteristic with the person I am.

Speaker 6 Once we started interviewing people that knew both of them, Carol and David, they said

Speaker 6 that Carol had suddenly became ill ill within a year of being married to David Tronas.

Speaker 6 She was so sick. It was so dramatic of a change for such a lively, fun,

Speaker 6 close friend of ours. Physical stomach pain and other ailments that had been unexplained and that she'd been to several specialists.
So at that point in time,

Speaker 6 I started thinking,

Speaker 6 was he poisoning Carol? Because we always kind of suspected it.

Speaker 1 Wait a minute, she has a stomach ailment.

Speaker 1 And Shanti had had a stomach ailment.

Speaker 6 And the exact same symptoms.

Speaker 1 But you're beginning to wonder whether he had poisoned his current wife and ex-wife.

Speaker 54 Yeah, you can't not wonder.

Speaker 7 I mean, and she was sick for a very long time, very sick.

Speaker 1 Detective Sprague asks Carol Trannis about her mysterious ailment, but once again, she shoots down those suspicions.

Speaker 6 Has it ever come into your frame of thought

Speaker 6 that David Trannis cooking or making you drinks was making you sick?

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 6 And have you ever thought that any of your issues related to your health problems

Speaker 6 was him poisoning you?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 1 Detectives are never able to find any evidence that Trannis harmed his ex-wife, but they're about to hear from someone who says he's recently gotten to know Tranas in, of all places, jail.

Speaker 31 David had a cellmate, and that cellmate came forward, a jailhouse informant, to say that David said he killed his wife.

Speaker 36 Now,

Speaker 14 how is it that you started to talk to David Tronas?

Speaker 66 He was in the bunk next to mine, but he'd recognized me. Where did he recognize you from?

Speaker 66 He said that he'd recognize me from Club Orlando, which when he said that, I kind of freaked because I was going in there for quite some time.

Speaker 6 At some point, as often happens when you're in in a cell with someone, you find out what they're in jail for. And what Mr.

Speaker 6 Trannis ended up telling him, allegedly, was that he and Shanti had fought, they had argued, and that he blacked out. And when he awoke, Shanti was on the floor and she was deceased.

Speaker 58 He told me that he wears his wedding ring still because he still loves his wife and felt bad. It was an accident, is what he told me.
He felt sorry for what he did, that he blacked out.

Speaker 6 He also offered to us that David had told him that he had learned of a certain type of tree frog that had a certain type of sap that would allow you to poison someone and then kill them.

Speaker 29 He said the beauty of it is that it can't be tested for.

Speaker 6 I had kind of always thought,

Speaker 6 did he try and kill his first wife and did he try and kill his second wife in a way that wasn't violent? I remember contacting the hospital and asking them if they still had Shanti's appendix.

Speaker 6 And if they did, is it possible we could test it for any sort of, you know, substance that might be poisonous?

Speaker 6 And they said they had the appendix, but it was in a solution that would not allow for any testing.

Speaker 1 We reached out to David Tronas' defense attorney about the allegations of poisoning and the details from that jailhouse informant, and were told that both theories were summarily dismissed by the state's attorney's office.

Speaker 1 Detectives couldn't verify the information given to them by the jailhouse informant, but they were about to find something else, something they'd been looking for since the day Shanti was murdered.

Speaker 3 We had always had reason to believe that Dave was hiding evidence at his mom's house because that's where he was living.

Speaker 14 And there were several things that were missing from the house still. And I'll never forget this.

Speaker 3 I was driving home late at night and I get a call from Detective Sprague.

Speaker 12 I pick up the call.

Speaker 48 She goes, we found it.

Speaker 1 You found her engagement ring?

Speaker 7 Yes, which he had said she was wearing. He had clearly taken it off of her cold, dead body.

Speaker 31 He has that missing wedding ring in his possession.

Speaker 31 There was no break-in. No one came in and stole that and didn't take anything else in the apartment.

Speaker 15 Why tell the police that you have no idea what happened to it, but it'll ultimately be discovered on you.

Speaker 14 It was such a crucial piece of evidence.

Speaker 1 Tronas' team would later say that the ring was never actually missing, that investigators overlooked it when they searched the house.

Speaker 1 Now detectives are about to get another crucial piece of evidence from a very unlikely source.

Speaker 16 I'd been a prosecutor 14 years.

Speaker 14 We handled thousands of cases.

Speaker 3 Never once got a call like this.

Speaker 1 Nearly a year after Shanti Cooper Tranis was murdered, authorities are still building their case against her husband, David, preparing to take him to trial.

Speaker 1 He's in jail, he's awaiting trial, and then you get a call from his lawyer.

Speaker 6 I was in the state attorney's office meeting with the state attorney on this case, and his lawyer happened to call.

Speaker 12 Defense attorney calls my cell phone,

Speaker 3 says I've been up all night.

Speaker 50 I've just

Speaker 50 sleep.

Speaker 48 I have evidence

Speaker 17 that we need to turn over.

Speaker 48 And

Speaker 17 my jaw dropped.

Speaker 6 And he said, perhaps detectives failed to collect some things from the scene that were there and they just missed it.

Speaker 1 When they arrived on the scene that first day, there was something that stood out to detectives, something that just didn't seem right.

Speaker 27 Detective Sprague had always thought that there was, you know, something missing from the scene. And the bed looks strange, it looks sort of hastily made.

Speaker 6 It was a brutal beating and a brutal strangulation. We were looking for these bloody sheets that we thought should have existed and never were found.

Speaker 6 When I said, ask him if he's got the bloody sheets. I think he's got the bloody sheets.

Speaker 6 His attorney carefully said, We had a private investigator collect some sheets

Speaker 6 and we're preserving them as evidence.

Speaker 50 Handled thousands of cases, handled homicide cases for years.

Speaker 3 Never had this happen.

Speaker 1 Tranas' defense attorney goes on to say that there was blood on the sheets, but that there was an innocent explanation for it, one that David had even alluded to when he was first questioned by police.

Speaker 15 Dave's explanation was that over the prior weekend, that him and Shanti had sex, but she was menstruating.

Speaker 45 It did get on the bed spread and it did get on the second of the bed.

Speaker 50 These sheets were balled up and put into some shelves with other sheets and bedding and towels.

Speaker 14 In the weeks after the murder, the Orlando Police Department conducted three searches.

Speaker 50 When you look at each photo from the individual searches, the closet in search one, the sheets are there.

Speaker 14 The closet in search two, the sheets are there. In search three, there's now a missing hole on one of the shelves, identified by the private investigator as where he took the sheets from.

Speaker 15 Candidly, law enforcement missed the sheets.

Speaker 31 The defense attorneys held that evidence for 11 months. 11 months.

Speaker 6 If you remove bloody sheets from the house, Mr. Traunas had to tell you there were bloody sheets in the house.

Speaker 6 And if you remove them, he had to tell you where they were, which is proof of your client's guilt.

Speaker 1 But the defense team has an explanation. When authorities interview one of the private investigators on Traundis' team, he lays it all out.

Speaker 15 He asked you to collect some sheets.

Speaker 14 He says, we want to take the sheets to have the sheets tested

Speaker 14 because menstrual blood produces different proteins than regular blood does.

Speaker 15 Then that was the reason you wanted sheets flighted.

Speaker 6 They said they had the sheets in the bottom of a bank building in a locker in Lakeland, Florida. and never conducted any tests on those sheets.

Speaker 1 Eventually, investigators do test those sheets and discover both Shanti and David's blood on them. But they say they were never able to determine exactly where the blood came from.

Speaker 1 Authorities are outraged, even looking into charging the defense attorneys and private investigators with tampering with evidence.

Speaker 1 But after an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the state attorney's office recommends that no charges be filed.

Speaker 24 Hello, this is a prepaid call from David, an inmate at the Orange County Corrections.

Speaker 12 After Dave was arrested, it's customary with homicide defendants, we monitor their jail calls.

Speaker 47 And initially, Dave only had two family members that would contact him, an uncle and his mother.

Speaker 5 She was in her 80s, clearly had some level of dementia.

Speaker 5 I don't remember anymore.

Speaker 20 I didn't think that you would be in jail and I would have to be doing your paperwork for you.

Speaker 60 Well, I didn't think I would either.

Speaker 20 So, to me, you shouldn't have been there.

Speaker 60 I didn't do anything. It's not my fault.

Speaker 16 Dave was so cold and callous.

Speaker 20 Okay, what do you want to know now? I got a bunch of paper.

Speaker 60 I want to talk.

Speaker 60 Every time I call, I explain to you that's how much money is left on your account. It's $2 to have a call with me.
is that too much

Speaker 20 it's just two dollars but

Speaker 60 but i just told you it's two dollars

Speaker 1 you can tell who a person is by how they treat their parents and authorities find powerful evidence from shanty herself implying that she felt tranus had been treating her badly

Speaker 1 you discovered journal entries also from her

Speaker 1 almost her talking to you from the grave from the grave why do you treat the dogs better than me?

Speaker 35 Is it because they don't question you?

Speaker 1 And in that home renovation video David shot, you can hear him talking to his dog.

Speaker 58 That's a girl.

Speaker 53 That's my girl.

Speaker 46 That a girl, sweetheart.

Speaker 35 Do you love me anymore? People who love each other do not act this way. Maybe it is time for a change.

Speaker 1 She felt the relationship was broken, that it was beyond repair.

Speaker 25 Irreparable, right?

Speaker 6 Yeah, and

Speaker 6 that gave us an insight into her mindset. Did she say the night before, I'm done.
I'm not bankrolling this renovation. Our marriage is over.

Speaker 6 Did she tell him she was going to leave him?

Speaker 1 That is the theory prosecutors are about to put before a jury.

Speaker 47 Jurors want to know why.

Speaker 14 Why could somebody do something this bad?

Speaker 67 When you've heard all the evidence in this case, you will conclude that the only reasonable explanation for Shanti's death is sitting right there.

Speaker 67 Two rings surrounded by a steel cage.

Speaker 67 You wanna play games?

Speaker 67 We're gonna play games.

Speaker 67 Oh my god, are you kidding me? This is gonna be a war!

Speaker 21 Stream Survivor Series War Games, November 29th at 7 Eastern on the ESPNA.

Speaker 57 Coming to Disney Plus in Hulu. Cassidy, get us home.

Speaker 55 Jonas Brother, you got it.

Speaker 57 It'll be the best Jonas Christmas ever.

Speaker 51 Can't wait to see you guys. We love you.
If they can only make it home.

Speaker 32 What's going on? Our tour plane burned? No.

Speaker 51 We cannot miss Christmas.

Speaker 1 Nothing can stop us from getting home now.

Speaker 20 Only

Speaker 10 alone this trip. You lost all three of your passports?

Speaker 56 It's Christmas. Anything can happen, right?

Speaker 57 A very Jonas Christmas movie, now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu with a TBPGDL.

Speaker 42 Right now, an Orange County trial is underway in the case of David Tronez.

Speaker 1 He's accused of murdering his wife, Shanti Cooper Tronez, more than five years ago.

Speaker 31 What's interesting is that when you see the pictures of David prior to his arrest, clean cut, in shape, as the months go by in this court case, his hair becomes shaggy and unkept.

Speaker 42 State, do you recognize the presence of the jury?

Speaker 6 Yes, Your Honor.

Speaker 35 You may proceed.

Speaker 67 The only reasonable explanation for Shanti's death is sitting right there. David Tronas killed Shanti Cooper.
He intended to do it. He did it, and he's guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 1 There's now a new prosecution team. Ryan Vescio has moved on from the state attorney's office and now represents both Jackson and his mother's estate.

Speaker 29 The crux of the state's case is the forensics. If she was there, as he describes, left side submerged, how does her right arm get into rigor straight up in the air?

Speaker 1 In the courtroom every day, 13-year-old Jackson Cooper determined to get justice for his mom.

Speaker 6 And who is it that's not breathing?

Speaker 14 The strength that Jackson had to sit there and say, I'm going to be here for my mom, it was the most awe-inspiring thing I've ever seen in the practice of law.

Speaker 1 How hard was that for you?

Speaker 9 I was just thinking that wasn't my mom. The stuff that

Speaker 9 they described,

Speaker 9 the pictures that I saw, that wasn't her.

Speaker 1 So you were able to distance yourself? Yeah.

Speaker 5 We knew that something drove the attacker, that we know was Dave, to such levels of violence.

Speaker 14 So jurors want to know why could somebody do something this bad? The state focused on the home renovations and what sort of stress that that caused.

Speaker 1 To make their point, prosecutors call Keith Ore to the stand.

Speaker 21 The house was in a state where it could potentially collapse at any given moment. The structural engineers I employed at the time had some serious concerns.

Speaker 1 The TV host testifies about a meeting with the Tronasis seven days before Shanti's murder.

Speaker 21 It was difficult to get them both together. She was tense, even intense, appeared to be,

Speaker 21 you know, mildly upset, annoyed, frustrated at something.

Speaker 59 Can you just describe their relationship that you observed?

Speaker 23 Yeah,

Speaker 35 very rocky, and I felt a lot of the times that I kind of was a mediator when I would go hang out with them.

Speaker 23 It felt really good to be a voice for her.

Speaker 59 The person we've been talking about is Dave Traunas.

Speaker 38 Is he in the courtroom? Yes, he is.

Speaker 59 If you could just point him out.

Speaker 23 He looked like a wet kitten that was shivering in the cold.

Speaker 59 Did Dave ever reach out to you and tell you about her death?

Speaker 9 No,

Speaker 23 never.

Speaker 23 And I was her best friend and his friend.

Speaker 31 What grieving husband doesn't call the best friend?

Speaker 1 One thing prosecutors don't tell jurors about is that alleged secret double life that David Traunis appeared to be leading.

Speaker 23 To me, it was like, why aren't we including this?

Speaker 29 We have no evidence whatsoever whether Shanti knew about it, found out about it, so it just wasn't relevant.

Speaker 1 Traunas now has a new defense team. His previous lawyers quit after failing to turn over those bloody bed sheets.

Speaker 68 You don't get to fit a square peg in a roundhole because it's convenient. And that's what happened here.

Speaker 1 With the rush to judgment, his new lawyers are arguing that detectives excluded other possible explanations for what could have happened to Shanti.

Speaker 68 They sold hard and unhappy marriage and frustration and tension due to this construction project. They bickered like a married couple was the testimony, but quickly made up.

Speaker 68 There was no tension about the house.

Speaker 27 At the end of the day, we don't know exactly why David Tronas did this.

Speaker 1 What did you think the motive was?

Speaker 47 Money.

Speaker 1 Insurance money?

Speaker 8 Insurance money, money she had invested, money she had gotten from her father to invest.

Speaker 14 Between the life insurance and the bank accounts, Dave stood to gain over a million dollars of financial control if Shanti were to die.

Speaker 5 That's the motive for this murder?

Speaker 68 To get rid of her so he can have the house alone?

Speaker 34 This was their dream home. This was their forever home.

Speaker 68 They wanted this. This wasn't all about fleecing a woman to slay her, to take her cash.

Speaker 1 Though we may not know the exact motive, at trial, Detective Spray testifies how, based on the evidence, she believes the murder happened.

Speaker 68 You noticed a single earring on the nightstand?

Speaker 25 Yes.

Speaker 34 Yeah, what was the significance of that?

Speaker 6 Looks like she removed it before bed and didn't get a chance to remove the other one. The evidence shows that the first event that occurs, that she is on the edge of that bed.

Speaker 6 The moment that she turned her head to remove her left earring,

Speaker 6 that's when we think the blow to the left side of her head occurred.

Speaker 1 And it turns out there was blood found on the side of the bed.

Speaker 1 Blood that never made sense if Shanti had actually fallen in the tub. Authorities believe it was further evidence that she was actually attacked on the bed.

Speaker 14 She never saw what was coming, had no defensive wounds.

Speaker 6 He chose to finish her off by strangling her, watching her suffer for however long, many, many, many minutes, apparently.

Speaker 1 The defense chooses not to call a single witness, saying prosecutors hadn't even proven that Shanti was in fact murdered.

Speaker 26 Government has worked,

Speaker 69 proving beyond the exclusion of every reasonable doubt that David Tronis committed this murder. If you believe it's a murder, if you believe that they've proved that it's a murder.

Speaker 6 Because

Speaker 69 when you go to the point of the things that they missed, and it still leaves the possibility that this was a fall.

Speaker 1 The attack by the side of the bed is no hunch.

Speaker 29 She's the source of blood.

Speaker 37 He killed Shante Tronas. Listen to Shante Tronas.

Speaker 1 She is telling you what happened.

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 1 So the jury gets the case.

Speaker 9 Almost five years ago, my mom was murdered, and now finally we're here. It just felt surreal.

Speaker 63 It's my understanding you've reached a verdict.

Speaker 53 Will you hand the verdict form to the court deputy, please?

Speaker 22 I was terrified that he would get away with it.

Speaker 23 You're just going, please tell me that you guys are going to see what we see.

Speaker 18 Verdict reads,

Speaker 26 we the jury, find the defendant.

Speaker 70 I want to remind everyone in the gallery that it's incredibly important for decorum after a verdict.

Speaker 1 You hear there's a verdict.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I started shaking. Almost five years ago, my mom was murdered, and now finally we're here.
It just felt surreal.

Speaker 1 Are you drawing, Jackson? You got to talk? Look what mama's doing.

Speaker 22 Sitting there waiting for it.

Speaker 70 And we can bring the jury out.

Speaker 22 Was gut-wrenching, really. It just felt like forever.

Speaker 53 Will you hand the verdict form to the court deputy, please?

Speaker 11 He handed the slip, and the judge looked at it. We're sitting here on pins and needles.

Speaker 26 State of Florida versus David Vetronas.

Speaker 16 And she says.

Speaker 28 We, the jury.

Speaker 26 We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder hated at Orange County, Florida on the 18th day of October 2023, found by the court person.

Speaker 11 I mean, I was erupting inside, and

Speaker 2 as was everybody there.

Speaker 19 David Tronas was convicted of first-degree murder for the death of Shantae Cooper Tronas.

Speaker 22 It was really, really hard to sit there and contain your composure. I mean, it was

Speaker 22 hard.

Speaker 25 Oh, relief.

Speaker 43 Thank God.

Speaker 23 It's hard. We were so happy, though, at least we have justice for her.

Speaker 6 And we know that he's where he belongs.

Speaker 1 What was that moment like?

Speaker 8 It was

Speaker 8 an absolute relief to hear it because I knew anything other than guilty would hinder us moving forward with our lives.

Speaker 70 Are you each making a statement? Will you both raise your right hand to be sworn, please?

Speaker 38 Your Honor,

Speaker 9 my mom was the best person I ever knew.

Speaker 1 You decided you wanted to speak out in court.

Speaker 9 Yes, I knew I was going to get emotional, and I knew that it was gonna be hard for me, so I tried to keep it short. She was taken from me and my family.

Speaker 9 It's like a hole in my heart that I can't fill or fix.

Speaker 38 She did not deserve anything that happened to her that night.

Speaker 7 Don't cry, sweet pie.

Speaker 39 Don't cry.

Speaker 9 I miss her so much. I was just speaking from my heart, and I just wanted people to know how good of a person my mom was.

Speaker 9 Big wood, big one,

Speaker 9 and how

Speaker 9 she deserved the world. And she was the best person that I knew.

Speaker 1 What's your reaction?

Speaker 38 Tears.

Speaker 7 He did a fantastic job. His mother would have been very proud of him.

Speaker 9 She was a good lady.

Speaker 6 She's in her own home, and she's with a man who is supposed to protect her, who's supposed to care for her, who's supposed to love her.

Speaker 6 She certainly didn't deserve the

Speaker 6 brutality that she suffered.

Speaker 9 So this coin was given to me by Detective Sprague a few weeks after it happened, and she promised me that she would get justice for my family and I. And that day she gave me this coin.

Speaker 6 Justice has a role in helping families navigate grief, but navigating grief is love with no place to go. It's that hole in his heart

Speaker 6 that not even what we did for them will ever be able to fix.

Speaker 21 Say hi, mommy. This is our first ride in Disney.

Speaker 28 Give mommy a thumbs up. Cool, dude.
Cool, dude.

Speaker 1 You said you want to do sports.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I play basketball right now, and I'll play football next year in high school.

Speaker 8 She was a fantastic mother. I mean, he's the way he is because of her.

Speaker 1 Strong young man.

Speaker 25 Yeah.

Speaker 10 You got it from her.

Speaker 9 She's a very great person, and I love her.

Speaker 1 I like the way you speak about her in the present tense. Person.

Speaker 1 In some ways, you feel she's still here with you?

Speaker 49 Of course.

Speaker 25 She's right here.

Speaker 9 Always will be.

Speaker 1 What a remarkable young man, David. Jackson is just really pretty extraordinary.
I mean, to endure this loss and to sit through the trial, he's really strong and wise beyond his years.

Speaker 2 You could really see that while you were talking with him, just an extraordinary young man. We should point out tonight that David Traunas has been sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 3 He's appealing his conviction.

Speaker 2 That's our program for tonight. I'm David Muir.

Speaker 1 And I'm Deborah Roberts from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News. Good night.

Speaker 63 It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at Whitehouse Farm. But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.

Speaker 14 I know there's going to be a twist, won't they? A massive twist.

Speaker 50 At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.

Speaker 63 I'm Heidi Blake. Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.