Florida man convicted of murdering wife over refusal to appear on reality TV show

A Florida man who prosecutors say strangled his wife to death after she learned he had lied about his multimillion-dollar fortune and refused to appear on a home renovation reality show, was sentenced this week to life in prison. 

David Tronnes initially claimed that his wife, Shanti Cooper-Tronnes, 39, had slipped and fallen in the bathtub of their Orlando home, where she was found covered in blood by police in April 2018. Tronnes was arrested four months later.

“Evidence presented during the trial showed [Cooper-Tronnes] was killed in the bedroom and Tronnes attempted to clean up prior to police arriving on scene,” read an Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office press release issued this week. 

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“Tronnes claimed he found his wife in the bathtub after spending the day cleaning and walking his dogs, but the medical examiner testified that facial injuries, blood evidence and bruises on the victim’s eyes told a different story,” according to the office.

An autopsy revealed that Cooper-Tronnes had died of blunt force trauma and strangulation.

According to audio of Tronnes’ police interrogation after the discovery of his wife’s body, obtained by the state attorney’s office and played for jurors at trial, responding officers doubted the now-54-year-old’s claims surrounding her death from the beginning. 

“Common sense would tell you if you pull a woman — soaking wet — out of a tub at 3 o’clock and call the police within six minutes, that everything will be soaking wet when police arrive within three minutes of that,” Orlando police Detective Teresa Sprague told Tronnes. “That’s common sense.”

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Tronnes, seemingly puzzled, asked, “So how did everything dry out?”

“That’s our question,” Sprague replied.

Sprague also accused Tronnes of “faking [crying] for about seven or eight hours” in a concocted emotional reaction to his wife’s death. 

“Not one tear came out of your eyes — not one. You have fake cried over this woman’s death since we made contact with you,” the officer said. “There is not a lick of remorse for what you did to this woman.”

Despite a diagnosis of schizophrenia, according to Fox 35, Tronnes was found fit to stand trial; despite his not-guilty plea, he was sentenced to life in prison this week. A jury delivered its guilty verdict after five hours of deliberations.

When Cooper-Tronnes married her accused killer, whom she had met on Match.com, she believed he had inherited a fortune between $4 million and $6 million, PEOPLE reported. 

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That belief was cast into doubt after she was saddled with wedding costs and later home renovation bills, friends and family testified in the trial that began on October 12. 

“He always talked about how he had a ton of money, but [Cooper-Tronnes] couldn’t figure out why he was such a miser,” one of the slain woman’s friends, Melissa Burzinski, told police, according to PEOPLE.

Tronnes, according to the state attorney’s office, had spent hundreds of dollars on renovations in hopes of appearing on the A&E reality TV show “Zombie House Flipping.”

“Cooper-Tronnes’ refusal to appear on the show upset Tronnes to the point that it led to her murder,” the office wrote in a press release. 

Witnesses testified in court about the couple’s disagreements regarding the home renovation process, including one of Cooper-Tronnes’ friends and neighbors.

“Whenever we had them over, or my kid’s pool party, or I guess at the Super Bowl, they came over to our house, just the two of them,” the friend recalled, FOX 35 reported.

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“We all thought we knew David Tronnes,” one of the accused killer’s former friends previously told PEOPLE. “Come to find out, what we knew was a facade. He was living a total lie.”