Possessed (28 page)

“So you're telling the jury he wasn't an alcoholic?” he countered.

Annika shrugged slightly. “No. Of course, he was an alcoholic.” He hadn't stopped drinking, she maintained, but after rehab, he drank less. Yet Carroll insinuated the many friends she described Stefan as having were bartenders and waitresses, and that his life revolved around alcohol. Frustrated, Lindqvist countered, “Stefan knew a lot of people. He didn't judge if they were waitresses or if they were professors at the university.”

“Isn't it true that Dr. Andersson was basically a loner, and he spent most of his time alone in bars and restaurants drinking?” Carroll asked.

Stefan did frequent restaurants and bars, but not alone, she said, instead running with a group of friends. But how much did Annika know about Stefan's life once he moved to Houston? Carroll queried. For instance, what did she know about the final day of her friend's life? Stefan, she answered, was on a sabbatical, redirecting his career, and she imagined he'd stuck to his usual routine, going “from one of his
places to another, talking, socializing, being friendly, drinking, and eating.”

From the very beginning, it seemed, the trial's battle lines were drawn, and the territory fought over was Stefan's character.

Through his questions, Carroll attempted to whittle away at the image of Stefan as a distinguished man of science. For a professor, Carroll suggested Stefan's eighty-thousand-dollar salary seemed low, although Annika countered that it wasn't unusual for a PhD working in research. When Carroll implied that Stefan had been fired from the University of Houston, Annika explained that, in the world of research, grant money often dried up, and scientists were forced to look for new funding.

“You didn't talk to him; you don't know what he did?” Carroll charged, returning to Stefan's final day. “So you don't know what happened?”

“No,” she answered.

B
oth sides had organized their cases based on their trial strategies, and with his second witness, John Jordan intended to counter the scenario the defense attorney painted in opening arguments of Stefan as a lover who became violent when Ana threatened to leave. In fact, the prosecutor planned to show that Stefan had moved on and wanted her out of his life. To prove his point, John Jordan brought to the stand a woman who shared his last name—although they weren't related—the woman Stefan dated during the final months of his life.

In a business suit, her dark hair pulled back, Janette Jordan's English accent filled the courtroom as she described the Stefan she knew: “Very charming . . . very pleasant, very soothing to be around, very comforting, very intelligent.” As she portrayed it, at the time of his death, the relationship was blossoming. When the prosecutor asked if the connection was turning romantic, she said, “Absolutely.”

Throughout Annika's testimony, Ana displayed little reaction. But with Stefan's girlfriend on the stand, Ana stared intently. If she'd known about Stefan's love interest, this was the first time Ana saw her, and the woman on trial appeared to be miffed and sizing up her rival. Trujillo's look of disdain remained as Janette Jordan talked about the brunch date she and Stefan had planned for the day he died.

As always, some things weren't allowed in the courtroom, including hearsay; Stefan had talked about Trujillo with the new woman in his life, describing his ex-girlfriend as “crazy.” But the jury wouldn't hear that. Instead, all that the judge permitted was a milder phrase, that Janette Jordan's impression was that Stefan was “frustrated” over his relationship with his ex-girlfriend.

In contrast, Carroll's first question made Stefan sound lecherous, an older man who lived with Ana and planned to marry her while dating Janette on the side. “Was he trying to have a relationship with you after he proposed to her?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Janette Jordan answered.

T
he day ground on in the courtroom, and the testimony continued, including from a handful of the Hermann Park Golf Course Grill staff who described Stefan for the jury, from his arrivals for breakfast, to his first glass of merlot around noon. They all agreed he was a polite man, and none said they'd ever witnessed any anger, not even at Ana Trujillo although she'd taunted him, shouted, and made scenes.

“Did you ever see Dr. Andersson yell at Ms. Trujillo?” Sarah Mickelson asked Erika Elizondo. She answered that she hadn't ever heard him raise his voice. “If you were to describe one of the parties as being aggressive, who would that be?”

“Ms. Trujillo,” Elizondo answered.

On the afternoon that Ana shouted at Stefan, then
walked out with another man, the aging professor sat head bowed, appearing sad, and embarrassed. And when Elizondo noticed Stefan's black eye, he refused to say how it happened.

With the same employees, Jack Carroll inquired more about Stefan's habits. Yes, he came early and stayed late, and all agreed there were times when he seemed intoxicated and a few where they told him they could no longer serve him. Yet what they didn't say was that at some point Andersson reacted with anger.

O
n the stand, Rosemary Gomez appeared nervous, and she grimaced at times, as if she preferred being anywhere but testifying at a murder trial. Yes, she was the cabbie who picked Stefan and Ana up at Bar 5015 shortly before 2
A.M.
on June 9 of the previous year. On that night, Ana Trujillo first lashed out at Gomez, then Stefan and Cannon. “From the moment they got in my cab, it was a problem. . . . She was angry because I wasn't doing what she said. . . . She was mad at Mr. Andersson for not saying nothing to me. . . . He was just sitting in the back of the cab as quiet as can be and just calm.”

At The Parklane, Trujillo's tirade continued when she discovered the locked cab door. By the time Gomez was alone with Stefan, the driver feared for him so much that she held his hands and prayed. “Let me take you to a motel,” she suggested.

“I'll be okay,” he said. The next day, she saw the news reports, the video of The Parklane and Trujillo in an orange jailhouse jumpsuit, wearing handcuffs. Identifying the disruptive woman who'd been in her cab, Gomez pointed at Ana Trujillo.

“Did Mr. Andersson appear completely sober to you?” Jack Carroll asked Gomez.

“Yes,” she answered.

“So, in your opinion, he wasn't drinking?”

“In my opinion, he was just quiet,” she explained.

“You lied to the police about having your common-law husband with you?” During his direct examination, John Jordan had already introduced the fact that Gomez hadn't mentioned Reagan Cannon because having him in the cab violated company rules, but Carroll took it a step further, questioning Gomez's truthfulness.

“Did you happen to know that Ana was at that bar with Mr. Andersson for six hours begging to leave the entire time?” Carroll asked. Gomez didn't answer after Jordan objected, and the judge sustained it.

“How much did he give you?”

“Twenty dollars on the credit card,” Gomez said.

“For a seven-dollar fare?”

T
here's a practice some attorneys call “kissing the ugly baby.” It's the need to address problems with one's own witnesses, embracing what could be disturbing if heard from the other side. John Jordan did this with Reagan Cannon on the stand. “You have, to put it modestly, some prior convictions?”

“Multiple,” Cannon admitted. With that, Jordan listed them for jurors, including forgery, credit-card abuse, burglary, theft, and possession of a controlled substance. Yet why Cannon rode with Gomez at night was understandable, a matter of safety. She was a woman in a big city, picking up strangers and driving them to their destinations. “You don't know who you're putting in your cab.”

Of the two people who entered the cab that night, it was Ana Trujillo whom Cannon described as drunk. “She was pretty lit,” he said. In addition, he made no secret of his disdain for her, describing the woman on trial as “cussing, belligerent, outrageous, disrespectful, and controlling. . . . She wanted to be in control of everything and just be the boss.”

One of the final things Cannon said to Stefan was, “Get her out of your life.”

When Cannon called Stefan's phone at 3:37 that
morning, Ana wailed so hard he told her to stop. She did, and talked plainly, “like turning a light switch on and off.”

When Carroll took over the questioning, he chastised Cannon, asking if he ever considered that the defense could be looking for Ana's phone. The ex-con screwed his face into a frown. “Never thought about that stupid phone, to be honest with you.”

“Did you call Ana a fucking cunt?” Carroll charged, his voice rising in the courtroom.

“No, I didn't use that word,” Cannon said. “I called her a slut.”

L
il Brown was on the witness stand when Sarah Mickelson put a photo of The Parklane in front of the jurors. Explaining the condo records, the general manager described the yo-yo pattern that began in September 2012, when Stefan first signed a form allowing Ana into his apartment, then revoked it. Back and forth, it had gone, until Stefan became so worried about Trujillo that he changed his lock not once but twice.

Seated at the defense table beside his client, Carroll didn't protest when the business records were entered, until Mickelson referred to those documenting the night Ana cut the refrigerator hose, saying she thought she heard it talking to her. After a bench conference with the judge, Mickelson agreed not to delve into it. Rather than what was in that report, what she wanted the jurors to hear was Lil Brown's conversation with Stefan a few days later, when she cautioned him that Ana Trujillo was troubled. “Get away from that young woman,” she'd said.

Gradually, Mickelson worked forward, to the evening before the killing, putting into evidence surveillance tape from the building's loading dock, on which Stefan and Ana moved her boxes into a storage unit. Then jurors watched the lobby video of them walking out as they left for the evening. After the tumultuous cab ride, the cameras again caught
Trujillo as she stormed through the lobby. Finally, a weary Stefan, shoulders slumped, ambled toward the elevator, in the last images of him alive.

“Did you know if Dr. Andersson had a drug or alcohol problem?” Carroll asked the witness.

“I'm not aware,” Brown answered.

“. . . You felt you needed to talk to him because of his decision-making processes?”

“Absolutely not,” she said, but rather she felt the need to discuss the incidents involving Ana Trujillo.

“He would ask that Ms. Trujillo not be admitted, and then he would change his mind?”

Brown answered, “Obviously, yes, sir.”

On redirect, Mickelson asked pointedly about Carroll's question regarding whether Stefan used alcohol or drugs. The conversations Brown had with her resident, she said, didn't involve
his
behavior. “Who were they about?” Mickelson asked.

“Ana Trujillo,” Brown replied.

The Parklane's night concierge, Florence McClean, agreed with her boss's recollection of the relationship. It was tumultuous. That final night, when Ana walked in, she seemed agitated, and she shouted out to the cab where the driver held Stefan's hands and prayed. “Stefan! Come inside!” After he told her to go upstairs, Trujillo did. Minutes later, Andersson followed, dejected, uncharacteristically not responding to McClean's greeting.

“When is the next time you're made aware something has happened in 18B?” Mickelson asked.

“When the police pulled up outside,” McClean answered.

A
fter the apartment staff's testimony, John Jordan's efforts toward nailing down the time line of June 9, 2013 continued with Stefan's next-door neighbor. “I looked at the clock, and it was 2:13
A.M.
,” Karlye Jones said. “I heard a banging noise, like someone was moving furniture or hitting the
wall . . . muffled shouts.” The voice was male, Jones said, “masculine.”

Jordan looked pointedly at the jurors as he asked, “Did you ever hear the sound of a female voice asking for help?”

“I did not,” Jones said. “I heard no woman's voice at all.”

Yet moments later, when Jack Carroll asked, Jones backed off slightly, saying the voice was loud, a ten on a scale from one to ten, but then adding, “I'm pretty sure it was a man. I'm not definitely sure . . . It was very, very angry.”

“Did it sound like a man shrieking in pain?” Carroll asked.

“No,” Jones responded. “It was just an angry man.”

“If a man was talking to you in that tone, would you be afraid?” Carroll asked. Jordan objected, and that was a question Jones never answered.

F
or more than a day, John Jordan and Sarah Mickelson centered on the time line of Stefan Andersson and Ana Trujillo's relationship and the all-important final hours before his death. Throughout, Ana acted unconcerned. She rarely appeared as if truly listening. More often than not, she gazed about the courtroom and at the jury box, as if excited by the notion that she was the center of such great attention. Neither had she cried. Then Jordan played the 9-1-1 call.

“I need help,” she keened, in a garbled voice.

“Where are you located?” the 9-1-1 dispatcher asked. Ana repeated the address, her shrieking quieted when the woman told her to calm down so she could understand.

“What did your boyfriend do?”

“He started beating me up . . .”

“Is he there now? . . . Are there weapons there?”

“No ma'am,” she cried. “He just drank a lot . . . He's not breathing. . . . I need help now.”

“So what do you mean he's about to die? What's going on with him?”

The sounds of breathing, heavy and labored, and Ana ordering, “Breathe. Breathe, Stefan! . . . He's bleeding. He's about to die.”