Hey y’all, it’s Julie Mattson, and on this episode of Pushing Up Lilies, we’re delving into the twisted tale of David Tronnes, a Florida man whose obsession with home renovations and dreams of reality TV stardom ended in murder. In 2018, David was convicted of killing his wife, Shanti Cooper-Tronnes, after she disagreed with his obsessive plans to get their home featured on the show Zombie House Flipping. What started as a renovation project quickly spiraled into arguments and, ultimately, a tragic act of violence. Join me as we unpack the details of this disturbing case, exploring how ambition and obsession led to a senseless murder. You won’t want to miss this deep dive into a dream turned deadly. * Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True Crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:31 Happy Wednesday guys?
0:33 So nice to be back.
0:35 And we're having a rainy morning today.
0:38 I'm headed into the medical examiner's office here in a short bit.
0:42 I struggled so much yesterday.
0:44 I know I've visited with y'all about doctors not wanting to sign death certificates.
0:50 It is a daily struggle y'all.
0:52 Yesterday.
0:52 I spent most of the day on the phone trying to get doctors who had been caring for their patients for years and prescribing medications for years to just sign a death certificate because they know their history and we know they died of natural causes when an officer calls us from a residence and everything appears normal and it looks like a natural death and they have a doctor and they have a slew of medications prescribed by that doctor.
1:25 Our investigation is over, and we contact the doctor and ask them to sign.
1:30 But a lot of them just don't feel like it's their responsibility.
1:35 I know it's a struggle that medical examiners offices across the nation have.
1:42 It was my struggle yesterday y'all, I just wanted to strangle some people.
1:46 I was over talking to doctors and trying to explain to them.
1:52 You know, a lot of doctors think that they can just request an autopsy, and I try to explain to people, you know, autopsies aren't done on request foul play has to be suspected.
2:02 And in our office anyway, if we choose not to do an autopsy, you can pay for a private autopsy with a private pathologist.
2:10 But that's again, not something that our medical examiners do.
2:14 And there's no guarantee even when someone comes to our office for a quote unquote autopsy that they are going to get a full autopsy.
2:25 That decision is made by our pathologist.
2:28 It's on a case-by-case basis.
2:31 Sometimes even when it is done, we can't get answers.
2:35 We don't always find exactly what the cause is.
2:40 Just something to keep in mind.
2:41 Just a daily struggle, you know, outside of going to the scenes and stuff, just dealing with doctors on the phone who don't understand.
2:49 And, you know, we've often said they need a specific class in medical school on when and how to sign a death certificate.
2:58 Because even doctors who've been in practice for a long-time struggle with that knowledge on how to do it.
3:06 And I know we're not the only office that has to deal with this.
3:10 It is probably the biggest struggle, the hardest part of my day sometimes because it becomes more of a power struggle.
3:20 Sometimes it becomes, you know, don't tell me what to do and I don't have to do what you say.
3:26 And y'all, it's, yeah, hopefully today is not another one of those days, but I found a case that you might like.
3:36 I went to a bridal expo with my med spa to try to advertise.
3:43 And ironically, there was a table next to me and then the lady sold life insurance, and we were talking about years and years and years ago, we had a nurse who used to work with me who went on vacation with his wife and while they were on vacation, I think it was in Colorado.
4:02 His wife died.
4:04 She fell off a cliff and he was taking her picture, and you know, the rock slipped and down.
4:12 She went and we all thought that he probably did it.
4:17 But in a remote area like that you never really can prove it.
4:23 Stuff like that happens a lot.
4:24 And there was either a movie or a special on that same exact thing because I mean, what an opportunity, right?
4:33 You can just push them off the cliff.
4:36 Say they fell in a remote area like that.
4:39 There's no cameras, there's no witnesses unless you know the person has taken out a life insurance policy on them, married them for money or there's been some recent discord between the two.
4:54 It's really hard to prove that they were pushed and didn't actually fall.
5:00 Of course, you get that dumb criminal who text messages their friend and tells them, you know, which is when they get caught.
5:07 But this story just kind of reminds me of that people try to cover it up and people aren't good at it.
5:15 And if there's a history of arguments and problems and financial issues and life insurance policies are involved, it doesn't look good, it doesn't look good for the other partner when your significant other ends up dead.
5:31 This particular story is about a Florida man, and he was found guilty of first-degree murder after his wife refused to appear on the reality TV show Zombie House Flipping with him after he was exposed for lying about millions of dollars as well, he became angry at her.
5:54 David Tronnes was sentenced to life in prison for the 2018 murder of Shaun T Cooper Tronnes who was found partially submerged in the bathtub and covered in blood in their Orlando home.
6:11 Again, this story raises a lot of eyebrows, but Trois initially reported that his wife slipped and fell in the bathtub although he found her.
6:25 He just assumed that that's what happened and that's what he told police he had of course, became under suspicion and then had pled not guilty and was found to have schizophrenia.
6:39 He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
6:41 And in 2021 was found incompetent to stand trial and he was sent to a state mental hospital.
6:49 And then two years later, they filed paperwork saying that he was competent when he finally was found competent, the trial took place.
6:59 He used his schizophrenia diagnosis to kind of pretend that he really couldn't stand trial.
7:06 Shanti when she married David, she believed that he had inherited, and he told her that he had inherited between 4 to $6 million from his father.
7:19 You know, just led her to believe that he had some form of income and money.
7:25 But after the wedding, she found it kind of strange that she was having to pay all the bills and reportedly had been paying for a big part of renovating this house that they had bought, that was in his name by the way.
7:43 And then he decided to renovate it and then decided that he wanted to be on the reality TV show, Zombie House flipping.
7:52 But apparently at some point, the renovation became a problem as we know things like that can be stressful on a marriage and a couple things like moving and renovations and disagreements with how people want things done.
8:09 And so she had ultimately refused to appear on the show and he became upset which essentially led to her murder Tronnes told police that he found her in the bathtub in her pajamas, she was covered in blood, partially submerged in water and he pulled her out of the bathtub, carried her to the living room and was attempting CPR whenever he called 911.
8:41 The really strange thing is, and this is why Ems is very, very important to us and just their observations, things that at the time you don't really think are going to be important, become important later because both of them, David and Shanti were completely dry at the time Ems arrived.
9:06 The story of him pulling her out of a bathtub and him saying that she was partially submerged and that she had pajamas on, I mean, your body is going to dry faster than a fabric that's going to absorb all this water.
9:24 She should be soaked.
9:25 I mean, she should literally be soaked, and Ems gets there and both of them were completely dry.
9:32 The fact that they notice that good for y'all because I teach a class occasionally on first responder forensics.
9:42 And basically, it's called don't step in that.
9:46 And it's basically a class for first responders who go on scenes.
9:51 And it just kind of reminds them to be observant of what's going on and also teaches them a little bit about evidence and what to touch, where not to step, you know, just kind of things to watch out for.
10:08 It's a great class.
10:09 I really enjoy teaching it because it opens people's eyes to things that they never really even thought of.
10:16 It lets them know what's important to us.
10:19 It's great.
10:20 I love educating EMS and first responders.
10:23 But Shanti's autopsy report revealed blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation.
10:31 Now maybe if she did slip and fall in the shower, she could have hit her head on something that would cause the blunt force trauma.
10:38 But strangulation, I kind of doubt that happened when she was just in there on her own.
10:45 Four months later, the fake millionaire was arrested and charged with her murder.
10:51 Now, the two had only been married for about a year when Shanti discovered that David did not have the millions that she thought he had apparently.
11:05 And I found this in one of the stories and I always look at multiple stories when I do my research and just kind of combine them all together to give y'all as much information as I can find.
11:14 And apparently one of the stories reported that he liked to go to bath houses for anonymous sex with men.
11:23 I don't know where that came out and how that information came about.
11:27 But one of the stories did report that I can imagine that that would cause some problems in the marriage as well.
11:33 We've got that and then we've also got, you know, the fact that they're trying to renovate and then boom, I thought you had some money and now a year into our marriage, I realize you don't and I'm paying for everything that can become a problem too.
11:48 The couple reportedly began fighting over the home renovations.
11:53 Back in 2017, they started all the reno I'm sure she was paying for a big portion.
11:59 If not all of the renovations.
12:02 Yeah, you get aggravated when you are the one footing the bill for everything.
12:07 It's not fair.
12:08 And especially when your husband of recent has lied about having any money at all.
12:15 But he claimed that his wife who was 11 years younger, married him for his money.
12:23 They had previously rented a home together and he had refused to pay more than a third of the rent because her young son lived there too.
12:33 And so it was kind of like, ok, there's three of us.
12:37 The child is mine from a previous marriage.
12:39 You should at least pay a third of the rent.
12:42 I mean, you should really pay half, but you should at least pay a third.
12:46 The child can't pay their own part.
12:48 But he apparently thought that was a huge deal and refused to pay more than a third of the rent because her son lived there.
12:56 David Tronnes was 55.
12:59 He killed Shanti on April 24th of 2018.
13:05 And at the time she was 39 the trial was six days long and the verdict was returned within five hours.
13:15 Now, while they were going through this renovation before all this happened, Tronnes apparently slept in the garage.
13:22 During the renovation, he slept there and then Shanti slept in a studio apartment that was located on the same property on the day this occurred.
13:33Tronnes said that he spent the day cleaning and walking his dogs.
13:38 And then he found his wife in the bathtub in her studio apartment with these facial injuries.
13:47 But the blood evidence and the bruising on the eyes told a bit of a different story.
13:53 He also showed little or no remorse in the interrogation and he never cried.
14:01 I mean, he never, I mean, you know, something's wrong when someone just like can't even show emotion.
14:08 Shanti ran a finance consulting business.
14:13 Ironically, her $15,000 diamond engagement ring was missing from her hand.
14:20 This kind of gave the appearance of a robbery.
14:24 Now I don't think that was ever really suspected, but her wedding ring was missing and apparently that was something that she wore all the time.
14:34 The tub was completely dry.
14:36 And this also is an important part of the investigation because he said that she was partially submerged in the bathtub.
14:46 And again, you know, remember she was dry.
14:49 This is an important part of the investigation.
14:53 It was found that, you know, when the police started doing their investigation, Shanti actually paid for all of the renovation work.
15:01 David was put under surveillance after the murder and was transferring money out of their joint bank accounts.
15:09 And he was also the sole beneficiary of her life insurance policy, which was over $350,000.
15:18 So if she died and he was not charged, he stood to gain close to a million dollars.
15:26 He had something in common if he could get away with it.
15:30 He while awaiting trial was apparently living with his mom.
15:35 And ironically when the police continued their investigation and went to the mom's house, Shanti's missing diamond ring was found there.
15:47 So it was pretty obvious that he had removed it from her finger and actually taken it there with him.
15:54 Now, there were writings found by Shanti that expressed her frustration in the marriage.
16:00 And I know that, you know, I've always heard if something's really bothering you write it down, I personally don't keep a journal.
16:07 I'm interested to see how many of you do because I don't keep a journal, but I've thought about it before.
16:12 I'm just like, not sure that I would be consistent.
16:17 That's probably the main reason why I haven't done it, but it does come in handy right when you end up dead and then your family finds it and they can see your frustrations and they can see that you were having marital problems when your husband seems to think that everything is fine.
16:35 But discussions to appear on the TV show prior to airing didn't turn out Great.
16:41 Shanti was obviously upset with David and the last time they had an interview with the people from the TV show, apparently, she did seem aggravated.
16:53 And then a few days after that is when she was found dead.
16:58 Interesting backstory on the two of them, David Tronnes is, was living in Minnesota in 2013 when he met Shanti Cooper on match dot com.
17:08 How many of us have done online dating?
17:11 I think before I met my husband, I had tried every single online dating application that was out there.
17:20 You never know what you're going to get.
17:22 People lie about who they are and seems that this is exactly what happened in this case and I'm not dog and match dot com.
17:30 There are equally scuzzy people on all the dating sites as there are in the bars lurking, waiting for a quote unquote victim to walk into their life.
17:44 But both of them were going through divorce at the time.
17:47 This was back in 2013 throughout their kind of long-distance courtship.
17:52 David eventually moved to Orlando and supposedly bought the house on East Copeland Drive, and this was in April of 2015 that he purchased that house.
18:06 The house was 4000 square feet, and it came with a garage apartment and a pool, and they said even a few gargoyles, which I don't know how I feel about that.
18:16 I think that those gargoyles would have had to go away.
18:18 I just picture Ghostbusters in my head whenever I hear of gargoyles.
18:22 But I know that there was a time when they put those in front of houses, little stone gargoyles for whatever reason.
18:29 But David had paid around $600,000 cash for the house, but he had put it in trust with his mother.
18:38 Shanti was not added to the deed when they married in 2017.
18:43 Also, Shanti funded the renovation which had spiraled to nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
18:51 See where this would get aggravating.
18:53 This would be a point of contention with me if my husband said he had all this money and then here we are married and I'm buying everything, Keith Ory who was a home renovator and appears on the show Zombie House Flippinglived in the neighborhood and David had reached out to them and he came over and, you know, looked at their house and David's like, yeah, we're remodeling.
19:17 And so had the idea to go on to the show and I believe in the beginning, Shanti was gung-ho you know, let's do this.
19:25 But then as probably she continued to pour money into it, she was like, I'm not going to do it anymore.
19:32 And if you're going to be on the show, you have to complete the project and that just would have meant more money and more demands on her by him.
19:41 Now, David, this is kind of interesting and I found this in another story, but David's ex-wife Carol was interviewed by the police.
19:50 You know, it's always interesting to go back to the ex, right?
19:53 Because sometimes you're going to get a lot of information that you didn't expect to get.
19:58 In this case, she kind of reported a loving marriage.
20:03 He was a great guy.
20:05 She met him on a blind date back in 1997.
20:09 But, you know, sometimes when you go to the ex, you find out a lot of things I have been in that situation where I've discovered things about boyfriends when their ex-wife and I kind of befriended one another.
20:25 And they told me the real story of things that had happened, and I'd only gotten half of the story or not even the true story at all from the person that I was dating.
20:37 But David and Carol were married for nearly 14 years, and they were in Minnesota together.
20:45 And then when he met Shanti in 2014, that's when he moved to Orlando.
20:51 Strangely, Carol experienced stomach problems and fainting spells that developed when she started dating David and lasted into the first few years of their marriage.
21:04 Now, there was never any specific implications in the articles that I read that mentioned that.
21:12 But I think they were kind of trying to imply the possibility that he was poisoning her, although they never really came right out and said it.
21:20 But I mean, we've all seen stories where the wife is sick all the time and the husband's taking care of her and trying to look like the good guy when the whole time, he's the one that's poisoning her.
21:31 She was apparently having a lot of problems during those first few years of marriage and how ironic that they started when they were dating.
21:39 But she still shared a bank account with David, and it had about a half a million dollars in it in recent years.
21:49 She claimed that she just forgot to take her name off of it and hadn't really used it.
21:54 And I don't really know about that.
21:57 I mean, if number one, my ex-husband would waste no time taking my name off of a bank account after we divorced, especially a bank account that had half a million dollars in it.
22:09 I'm sure that they looked into that to see if she had spent any of the money and see if she was lying.
22:15 I don't know why.
22:15 I mean, she wasn't implicated at all in the murder, but I just find it weird that, you know, I forgot to take my name off the bank account.
22:22 There's half a million dollars in it.
22:24 And I mean, who can, like, forget that anyway?
22:27 I thought that that was a little bit different.
22:29 But it's also funny that one of David's attorneys asked Carol the ex-wife to be a minority owner in an LLC that he formed after Shanti died.
22:43 That was all weird.
22:44 And again, you know, they weren't implicating Carol at all, but it's always helpful to bring the ex in and interview them because sometimes you get a lot of information about the past.
22:54 I don't think they really got out of her what they were hoping for.
22:57 Like I said, she kind of reported that he was a loving husband and that there really weren't any problems, but apparently, they were because they divorced.
23:08 Right?
23:09 Anyway, I thought the story was kind of crazy.
23:12 He did get life in prison for this 2018 murder important parts of the investigation are, you know, she was dry, the bathtub was dry.
23:25 The story wasn't jiving, I mean, you know, it's obvious that that was a lie.
23:32 He probably did not attempt CPR.
23:35 There was probably, well, he moved her from wherever to the living room or maybe that's where he did it.
23:41 Who knows?
23:42 But I'm curious to see how much blood was on him, you know, did he really carry her?
23:47 Did he really try CPR?
23:49 If she was covered in blood, he should have been kind of bloody.
23:51 But I don't know if he was or not.
23:53 Anyway, there's a lot of things but you know, the police go back and look at the text messages and look at the bank accounts and look at this life insurance policy that he was beneficiary of her poor son no longer had a mom because he made this choice.
24:10 Just a really sad story.
24:12 Apparently, he was a very greedy person probably was hoping that he could get away with it and use that $350,000 life insurance policy to get on the show and play the innocent widower and get his house remodeled.
24:29 Be famous and live the life he always wanted or who knows what he wanted.
24:33 But anyway, I'm glad that he was sentenced.
24:36 He showed no emotion at all in the courtroom whenever the sentencing took place.
24:42 Yeah, something's really wrong with people like that.
24:46 And you know what?
24:47 Back on match.com.
24:48 I mean, I told you I had been on several dating apps before I met my husband and even the ones that promise to do background checks are not guaranteed that you're going to meet somebody that's not shady.
25:01 I went on a dating app years and years and years ago, paid $1500.
25:07 They promised to do background checks.
25:10 And the very first person that they set me up with told me on our very first date that he had been arrested for embezzling money and stealing his ex-mother-in-law’s checkbook and writing checks on it to buy drugs.
25:25 Ok.
25:25 That's not a good way to get a second date.
25:27 But I can tell you right now, the people that I met on the dating app that required background checks were worse than the people that were using the free dating apps.
25:41 So I'm just going to say that out loud.
25:43 But you really never know, you never know a person until you move in with them and you're around them for a while and maybe even talk to their ex because, you know, I've done that before and gotten a lot of information that saved me a lot of heartache and kept me from wasting a lot of my time dating somebody that I knew was not the person for me.
26:07 Anyway, dating apps are scary, but so is just dating in general and meeting somebody in public.
26:14 I don't know what the best way is.
26:16 So I don't know if I can help you there.
26:18 I think that being introduced by a mutual friend is the absolute best way.
26:22 That's the way my husband and I met.
26:24 And I think that, you know, if people know you and know them and you trust the people that set you up, that's probably your best bet.
26:31 I think that's how my parents met as well.
26:34 Anyway, I am headed off to work.
26:36 I hope y'all have an amazing day.
26:38 I hope the county is good to me today.
26:41 Y'all pray for the same.
26:42 Have a great day.
26:43 Stay safe, and I look forward to talking to you next week.
26:46 Bye y'all.
26:47 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
26:51 If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor.
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27:02 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.