Possessed (30 page)

“. . . Did you see any bruising from a hand, strangulation on Dr. Andersson's neck?”

“I did not, but . . .” Duncan responded. Carroll cut off the answer, saying he wanted a yes or no answer. “Okay,” the crime-scene officer said, “I did not.”

The testimony important for both sides, the heated exchange continued, Carroll asking what the forensic officer reviewed to make his assessment of the case, particularly had he watched Ana's recorded interview with the police. Duncan said he hadn't until after he'd written his report because his role was diagnosing the forensic evidence. “I didn't put the whole story package together. That really is a task of the homicide investigator.”

Earlier that day, a decision had been made, and after Duncan left the stand, prosecutors played Ana Trujillo's recorded interview for the jurors. It was a gamble. Jordan and Mickelson wanted Trujillo to take the stand, and they
knew playing the interview might convince Carroll he didn't need to take that step. Still, they were hopeful. “We believed that Ana Trujillo wanted to talk, that she was so narcissistic she'd insist on talking to the jury,” said Mickelson. “We wanted her on the stand, but we also wanted the jury to see that interview.”

For the rest of that day and the next morning, Mickelson manned the recording equipment, displaying on courtroom monitors Ana's interview with detectives on the morning of Stefan's death. On the screen, Ana flip-flopped from one relationship to another, claiming man after man had fallen deeply in love with her, then hurt her. What was so startling was that she didn't inquire into Stefan's condition until more than an hour into the interview tape.

While it played, Carroll sat back satisfied at the defense table. “I felt like I'd won,” he'd say later. “It was a victory. I couldn't have asked for more.”

After the tape ended, Carroll told reporters how pleased he was with the turn of events, saying he no longer intended to put his client on the stand. When Jordan and Mickelson heard, the prosecutors winced at the consequence of their decision. “Yet we felt that we'd made the right call,” said Jordan. “That tape was damning, and we wanted the jurors to see the Ana Trujillo the investigators saw that night, a woman who always claimed to be a victim and one who showed no remorse and no concern about the death of a man she claimed to love.”

C
aptain Juan Riojas, a paramedic, had been on the first ambulance to respond, and along with a squad of other medical personnel, assessed Stefan Andersson. What they saw was a man who suffered incredible head trauma, who wasn't breathing and had no pulse. When Jordan asked if there was protocol for such situations, Riojas reviewed the agency's patient-care guidelines, “We arrive on scene and there is a person or a—doesn't have a pulse, is not breathing, and is
not responding due to trauma-related incidents such as exhibited that day . . . multiple trauma to the head—yes, we can pronounce him dead on the scene.”

“And did you do that?”

“Yes. We did.” What had Riojas written about Trujillo in his report: “One female detained. No injuries noted on her.”

“Is it customary to take ten minutes in a life-or-death situation to dispatch EMS?” Carroll asked. When Riojas reviewed his report, he said the initial 9-1-1 call had come in at 3:41, and he'd been dispatched seven minutes later. The defense attorney also wanted to know why an EKG wasn't used to check Stefan for cardiac rhythms. “Isn't that protocol?”

“No, sir,” Riojas answered.

This was an area Carroll saw as important, and he pushed Riojas, asking if cuts to the head bleed profusely and if alcohol thins blood, accelerating bleeding. “I couldn't tell you that, sir,” Riojas answered.

Handing Riojas photos, the two discussed the pool of blood on the carpet next to Stefan's head. While Carroll suggested it wasn't dry, Riojas insisted EMTs on the scene saw not only drying but coagulation, which he said indicated Stefan had been dead for half an hour or more.

A photo of Ana Trujillo showed smudges of blood on her face, including around her lips, and the defense attorney asked if that could have resulted from attempting CPR. Riojas said that was possible. “Is it possible that Dr. Andersson bled to death while the EMS personnel were there?” Carroll asked pointedly.

“No, sir,” Riojas said. When Carroll asked him to read the narrative from his report, Riojas did, but instead of helping the defense attorney, the report seemed to confirm that Stefan had been dead for some time, when Riojas read: “skin is cold and pale.”

The back-and-forth intense, an angry-appearing Carroll charged that the EMTs were also too eager to accept Ana's
assurance that she wasn't hurt. “Could she have been in a state of shock?” he asked. “Did you check her eyes? Did you check her pulse?”

Riojas said he hadn't.

If Ana Trujillo was injured on the scene, however, the next witness found no evidence she bled. None of her DNA was found in any of the samples taken from the walls, the carpeting, or the blue-suede stiletto shoe. All the blood tested from the scene came from a single source, a male, Stefan Andersson.

T
he courtroom bristled with energy, tense, as the trial continued, both sides fighting hard. Next, Sarah Mickelson called a physician to the stand to discuss lab reports from Stefan's autopsy. In his opening statement, Jack Carroll had implied that the dead scientist had multiple addictions, not only to alcohol but drugs.

“Did you see Dr. Andersson from these results abusing any prescription medication?” Mickelson asked. The doctor said he saw no such indications of abuse. Stefan had a type of antidepressant in his system, but within the prescribed dosage. The tests found no traces of other drugs he had prescriptions for, including Vicodin.

On the other hand, Stefan's alcohol level was high at .13, above the .08 limit for driving. Yet someone like Stefan who drank daily, and fairly large amounts, while somewhat impaired, would most likely not appear intoxicated, the physician ventured. “He wouldn't be falling-down drunk.”

One of the drugs Jack Carroll mentioned in his opening was ecstasy, so Mickelson asked: “Was there any ecstasy in Dr. Andersson's blood?”

“No,” the witness replied. “. . . We ruled that out.”

Sitting at the defense table, Tim Donahue, a young attorney Carroll brought on to help with the case, took over, asking the doctor why Stefan's heart and blood-pressure medications weren't on the results. Those weren't tested for, the physician responded, since they weren't important to the
case. Quickly, much of Donahue's questioning turned to a prescription the dead man had for Abilify, which the doctor on the stand described as a drug most commonly prescribed to bolster antidepressants. Donahue asked if there was another use for the drug, to treat schizophrenia.

“Yes,” the doctor responded, and the drug also had a role in treating bipolar disorder.

“What would happen if the person is bipolar, and they don't take the medicine?” Donahue asked.

“They would not be getting therapy,” the doctor answered.

When Donahue suggested that Andersson, a PhD in pharmacology, could have taken something to mask the appearance of ecstasy, the witness disagreed, saying, “Ecstasy is something we specifically test for. So we did the test, and we did not see it.”

To make sure the jurors understood that Stefan had a reason to have the drug the defense attorneys had asked about, Mickelson inquired, “Is it fair to say that Abilify is commonly used for . . . depression?”

“Yes,” the witness answered.

“W
hat time did you arrive on the scene?” John Jordan asked Officer Travis Miller, who'd just transferred into HPD's homicide division shortly before Andersson's brutal death.

“At 4:45,” he answered. From there, the officer recounted his role in the investigation, seeking out witnesses, video surveillance, and documents pertaining to the killing. The day before, the jurors had watched the long, torturous interview detectives conducted of Ana Trujillo. Now Jordan entered another video into evidence, surveillance footage from Bar 5015, taken the final night of Stefan's life.

The courtroom quiet, on the screen the ghostly figures populated the interior of the bar. Seated on a barstool, Ana danced, flirty and free. In the former video, she said she'd tried to leave Bar 5015 for hours that night, but a drunken Stefan refused. Instead, what jurors saw was a
tired-appearing Stefan repeatedly approaching Trujillo. “Now, what we're seeing there,” Jordan asked, “does it appear that the defendant is trying to get Dr. Andersson to leave, and he's refusing to leave?”

“No,” Miller answered. “It appears like he's trying to get her to leave. She continues talking to other people, as he walks outside and is walking back and forth.”

As the video played, most eyes in the courtroom focused on the screen, but a few observed something odd at the defense table. Jack Carroll appeared not to notice, but beside him his client, a woman on trial for murder, nearly danced in her seat. The moments recorded were within hours of what she described as a brutal fight in which she killed the man she said she loved. But at the defense table, Ana never shed a tear. Instead, her eyes lit with excitement. Ana Trujillo relished being the center of attention, and she acted thrilled to have everyone in the courtroom watching her image on the screen.

The following morning, Officer Miller again took the stand to detail the drinking spree at Bar 5015, when Stefan and Ana consumed a bottle of wine, four Absolute vodkas, and six shots of Don Julio Silver tequila. And as a final piece of business, the prosecutor entered into evidence Ana's booking photo, showing jurors that on the night she was arrested, she looked little like the modestly dressed woman at the defense table.

On cross-examination, Carroll returned to many of the questions he'd asked before, about whether or not Stefan was given sufficient medical care by the first responders, or if he was too quickly written off as dead. When it came to the wounds on the dead man's hands and arms, the defense attorney again posited that those could have occurred even if Stefan had been the initial aggressor who was later forced to try to shield himself from Ana. Miller agreed that was true.

When Carroll asked if Miller attempted to find sources to back up Ana's description of Stefan as violent, Miller said that he had. “We looked extensively for someone who would
take Ms. Trujillo's side in the story. Our questions were unanimously the same questions with every single person. We're not leading. We did everything that we could in order to find someone who would stand by your defendant.”

At the defense table, Carroll frowned, as if doubtful.

If earlier the prosecutors had served up a victory to Carroll by playing the interrogation tape, a situation then unfolded that worked to the advantage of the prosecutors; Carroll put into evidence a record from the Harris County Jail clinic dated June 11, two days after the killing, when Ana complained of bruises and a healing bite on her right middle finger. When the defense attorney asked if Miller knew about the fight the night Stefan died, the homicide detective said, “I knew about the fight two weeks prior.”

Carroll persisted, asking if Miller had seen any bruises, would that have made a difference in the decision to charge Ana with murder. The homicide detective denied that it would have impacted the investigation, saying the bruises in the jail report didn't match how Ana described the physical altercation she claimed to have had with Stefan, not that he beat her, but that he held her and wouldn't let go.

What about the “shiner under her eye?” Carroll asked.

“I didn't see it,” Miller said. “Neither did the other two detectives.”

Over and again, Carroll attempted to ask what Miller would have done in the situation the defense attorney said Ana was in, one in which she was being attacked. Wouldn't Miller defend himself any way he could? Each time John Jordan objected, and the judge ruled the defense attorney's question wasn't relevant, so Miller never answered.

Throughout Miller's testimony, Jordan waited. Bringing in the jail medical records had opened the trial up for the prosecutors, allowing them to put before the jury evidence about the bruises Ana suffered in her fight with Chanda Ellison. On redirect, Jordan asked if Officer Miller was aware of the violent altercation Ana had two weeks before Stefan's murder. “Did that incident involve Stefan Andersson at all?”

“No,” Miller said.

At that point, Jordan displayed on the courthouse monitors photos of Ana's injuries from the Ellison fight. Angry contusions scattered over her body including those locations she'd complained about at the jail, under her eye, on her side, her thigh, her chin, and her lip. Did the fight with Chanda explain bruising the jailhouse nurse saw on Ana?

If Ana had those injuries prior to the killing, however, shouldn't the investigators have noticed them on the night she was booked? “You didn't see any bruises when you arrested her for murder?” Carroll prodded.

“It's undetermined,” Miller said, explaining why they might have been missed. “At the time of her arrest, she was covered in blood.”

Back and forth the testimony went, the prosecutors making their points and Carroll doing his best to refute each. Who was winning? Who was losing? What would jurors remember?

T
he questioning of the detective had been heated, Carroll appearing angry at times.

As Officer Miller left the courtroom, John Jordan pulled his notes together for his next witness, one of the most important of the trial, Dr. Jennifer Ross, the medical examiner who autopsied the body. At that point, Stefan's sisters and niece left the courtroom, a not-unusual thing for families to do when grisly photos of a loved one will be shown.

First, Jordan asked Ross about Stefan's overall health. She detailed her findings, saying his arteries and heart—although slightly enlarged—were in fairly good shape for a man of fifty-nine. His liver, however, showed some disease, the infiltration of fat not uncommon with heavy drinkers, a condition that could have caused his blood to be thinner and ooze more when the body was injured, but otherwise would have had little effect.