Possessed (7 page)

After the marriage in July 2001, Ana's girls lived with them in a brick one-story on a tree-lined street. They settled into married life, both going to work. As there often are in blended families, life wasn't without challenges. While Arin, Ana's younger daughter, then just three, adjusted easily, calling Fox “Daddy,” the older girl, Siana, then nine, seemed to resent him. “She didn't like it when I told her to pick up, or what to do,” said Fox, who described himself as finicky about keeping the house in order. “There was a lot of tension.”

For the most part, they lived a quiet life. A homebody, Fox enjoyed staying in on weeknights. On weekends, they sometimes went out to dinner or with friends. When they did, they drank socially. If there was music, Ana loved to dance. And there were those nights when he wanted to leave, and she argued that they stay and close up the bar.

At the house, she decorated with her artwork, paintings and drawings she did on her days off. Jim paid for the house and other expenses, and Ana was responsible for the
groceries. More often than not, however, she ran out of funds before the end of the month. “She'd take the girls shopping, and she'd be overly generous,” Fox said. “She went through money. After a while, I understood that it was just Ana, the way she was.”

Along with the heated discussions over money, there continued to be tension between Fox and Ana's oldest, Siana, who would later say that she found her stepdad to be “anal.” Admitting that he could be fastidious about the house, Fox said his relationship with Ana's oldest was strained, and she would later describe it as the two of them “bickering a lot.”

For the most part, Fox got along well with Ana's family. He liked Trina, Gene, and Ana's siblings, and they quickly meshed. When his son visited, Ana worked hard to connect with the boy, taking him places with her girls. When he left, she was generous with him as well, coaxing Jim into gifting his son with $20 for his wallet. “She was a good woman, always concerned about others. She didn't cook much, so I did. Things were really normal,” Fox said later, thinking back to their marriage and trying to put the Ana he knew in context with the future that awaited her. “There are things, well, yes there were problems, but the way she changed, that's something I still don't understand.”

Yet there were those issues from her growing-up years that seemed to haunt her. At times, Ana talked about all she believed she'd missed out on from such a young age, charged as she was with looking after her younger siblings, saying she'd been robbed of a childhood. On Sundays, Jim took the girls to church, but Ana refused. “Ana hated churches,” he said. “She talked about being a Jehovah's Witness, and how she wasn't even allowed to play sports, how she said she was shunned by the other kids. Never celebrating holidays, even Christmas or her birthday. She said it ruined her childhood.”

Perhaps, then, it wasn't surprising when four years into the marriage, in January of 2006, when Jim Fox said he wanted to move to Houston to be closer to his son, Ana decided
to make changes as well. Once his transfer was approved, they drove the two hours into the city to find a home. On the shores of Lake Houston, Ana fell in love with Summerwood, a heavily treed subdivision cut from the forest, half an hour northeast of the city. The area was under construction, a brand-new development, and they picked out a lot on Baron Creek Lane. For the house, they chose a plan for a 3,100-square-foot, four-bedroom, two-story. The design had a stately look, with a column leading to a high arch over the front door.

Their home under construction until the fall, Ana didn't wait to give notice at Coca-Cola. Later, she said, “I'd worked all my life. My girls were getting older, and I wanted to be more flexible. I wanted a stress-free environment.”

For his part, Fox agreed to the plan when Ana laid it out. She'd been unhappy for months, complaining about one of the men at work. “I thought it was a little odd. She'd been at Coke about ten years,” Jim Fox said. “But I didn't push.”

Rather than work at Coke, she enrolled in a school to become a massage therapist, her plan to open a studio close to their new home. “I want my own business,” she told Fox.

When he considered it, he decided it could work well for his wife. “I thought she was a caring person, so I thought she'd be good at it. I wanted to support her.”

That spring, Jim Fox rented an apartment near the new house, under construction on Baron Creek. They chose white brick for the exterior and inside a white-tile floor in the entry, all white walls and white carpeting. Meanwhile, they put the Bryan house up for sale, and Ana continued to live there while she attended the Healing Handz Massage Academy.

The program at Healing Handz was just opening, and Ana enrolled for its first session. Housed on a horse ranch, the owners offered a three-hundred-hour curriculum that satisfied all the state licensing requirements. The owner, Susan Hartzog, would later describe Ana as friendly and
warm, always trying to help others. “I don't remember all my students, but I remember Ana,” she said. “We have a disabled son, and Ana was kind to him.”

Thursday and Friday evenings and every other Saturday, Ana arrived at the school immaculately dressed, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, ready to work. Throughout the sessions, she talked about her family's plans, excited to be moving to Houston. The house in Bryan remained on the market, but everything seemed to be falling into place. At the school, Ana wore scrubs, but when Susan happened upon her in town, she noticed how well dressed Ana was, nearly always wearing stylish high heels. “She looked like she came from money,” Hartzog would recall. “I always assumed that her parents were upper-class.”

Ana training at massage school

(Courtesy of Susan M. Hartzog)

That May, Ana completed her course work, on everything from business practices to hydrotherapy, and she and the girls moved with Jim into the apartment, where they watched over the new house as it was built. One day walking the lot, looking at the house rising on its foundation, they met Jon Paul and Ruth Espinoza, an attractive and affable young couple expecting their first child building a one-story on the adjacent lot. Their Realtor had told them that the Foxes, their new neighbors, were “a nice family with two girls.”

The Espinozas initially believed the Realtor's
assessment: that the couple living next door was an average, happy family, one without secrets. But before long, their opinions of Ana Trujillo Fox changed. “I got the impression there was something strange going on over there,” said Jon Paul. “Things just didn't seem right.”

Ana at her massage-school graduation party

(Courtesy of Susan M. Hartzog)

A
s fall arrived, Jim and Ana and her two daughters, Siana and Arin, moved into the Baron Creek house. Unusual in suburban Houston where interiors tend toward the traditional or have more of a country Texas flare, Ana decorated the all-white insides—walls and floors—with contemporary black-and-white furniture: in the living room, black-leather couches with a white-marble table, black bookcases, and black-granite kitchen countertops. One room in the four-bedroom house was Ana's art room, and she stacked her paintings against the walls in Jim's office.

By then, Ana's mother and stepdad ran a secondhand furniture store in Waco. At times, they bought better pieces in good condition. Once Ana and Jim moved in, Trina and Gene brought two bedroom sets from the shop for their granddaughters' bedrooms.

Baron Creek was larger and more affluent than any house Ana had ever lived in, and she seemed happy, at least at first. “Ana saw what money could buy. With her second husband, she lived a life she hadn't known before,” a relative said.

A
t first, all seemed well on Baron Creek Lane.

Jon Paul Espinoza, an insurance salesman, and Jim became friends, stopping to chat outside, sometimes cutting each other's lawns when one or the other was on the road. On the weekends, the two families waved when they pulled into their driveways to unload groceries, or flowers to plant in their yards. “At first Ana seemed very nice,” said Jon Paul's wife, Ruth. “But before long, a little odd.”

One day, when Jon Paul asked Jim where Ana worked, he explained that she had just quit her job at Coke to become a licensed massage therapist. Saying that she had a traveling table she could bring with her, Jim said Ana was making appointments in private homes and offices until she had a studio set up. Jon Paul liked Jim Fox, and little Arin, by then nine, who rode her bike on the street and seemed a happy, friendly girl. Both the girls were pretty, young images of their mother. Quickly after they all moved in, Jon Paul began feeling uncomfortable around the woman next door. “Ana was very attractive, but it was like she knew it,” Jon Paul said. “She was a flirt.”

Before long, Ruth, too, began wondering about her neighbor. One day, Ana stood outside in a see-through shirt, without a bra. “Did I just see that?” Jon Paul asked when they walked inside.

“I don't trust her,” Ruth responded. “I think you should stay away from her.”

When Jon Paul was outside, however, Ana made it
difficult to avoid her. At times, it was as if she lurked, waiting for him, ready to approach him asking for favors, like moving objects in the yard too heavy for her to carry. He helped, but then quickly walked away. Ruth's suspicions only increased that October. For Halloween, the girls and Ana elaborately decorated the house then answered the door in costumes. For the occasion, Ana dressed all in black and wore makeup and a pointed hat, portraying a sexy witch. “The word seductive came to mind,” Jon Paul said.

“I didn't like the way she dressed around my husband,” Ruth said. “I didn't get a good vibe.”

When the Espinozas welcomed their first baby, a little girl, Ana's daughters came over often. Siana and Arin appeared fascinated with the infant, wanting to hold her. Ana's girls were sweet and kind, and Ruth at times worried about them, wondering about their mother. The longer they lived next door to Ana Fox, the stranger she seemed to Ruth.

One day, Ruth stood at a window and watched for what seemed like a very long time as Ana walked in circles in the street in front of their houses. Wearing a spaghetti-strapped top and a long, flowing skirt, in sandals, Ana flounced over the concrete, twirling, holding her skirt in her hands, as if she were dancing. “It just looked so odd,” said Ruth. “She did that for a while, went inside, then came out and did it again.”

On Sundays, the Espinozas saw Jim take the girls to church, without Ana. When Jon Paul, a deeply religious man who holds weekly Bible studies at his house, mentioned it, Jim explained that Ana had been raised a Jehovah's Witness and had fallen away from practicing religion. What Jim didn't mention was what he'd found his wife doing in the house, laying out tarot cards, attempting to read them and predict the future. When he'd asked her not to do it in their house, that it was against his Christian beliefs, Ana agreed, but soon he discovered she hadn't truly stopped.

Meanwhile, Ruth grew increasingly annoyed with the behavior of her next-door neighbor, watching through a
window as Jon Paul cut the grass and Ana stood nearby, waiting to talk to him. When he stopped the mower, Ana rushed over, said something to him, then gave him a hug. Taken aback, Jon Paul quickly walked away.

“What was that about?” Ruth asked, once he was inside.

“She asked me for money,” he said. “She said she lost her wallet. I told her I didn't have anything on me.”

“Please stay away from her,” Ruth said, yet again. “I don't have a good feeling about that woman.”

Thinking about what his wife had said, Jon Paul agreed. Something about Ana Fox bothered him as well, and he'd come to think of her as the type of woman who could have power over a man. “I wasn't attracted to her, but I thought, if a man was, she could control him.”

Yet with all her flirtations, when Jim and Ana were together, Jon Paul thought that Ana appeared threatened by other women. “I knew the type,” he said. “Always jealous and upset.”