Jury finds Ian Anselmo guilty of second-degree murder, rejects insanity defense

TAVARES — Ian Anselmo was not insane when he strangled and killed his stepmother, Sue-Ellen Anselmo, and her unborn child, a jury declared Friday.

His attorney, Richard Hornsby, spent the week blaming Ian’s father, John, a bigger-than-life figure so overly protective and controlling that it made everyone in the family “crazy” and turned them into a “cult.”

After a week of crying and holding his head in his hands the 26-year-old showed no emotion when the two-woman, four-man jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and causing the death of the unborn child.

Everything about the case seemed strange. The fuse was lit when Sue-Ellen’s adult daughter, Dejah-Thoris Waite, wrote a letter to her mother saying she had been physically and sexually abused before she “ran away” from home at age 18.

Sue-Ellen collected her five biological children from her Eustis home and moved in with Waite.

A week later, on March 13, 2019, after what Assistant State Attorney Nick Camuccio called a series of manipulative texts by John and Ian, she agreed to meet with Ian at Greenwood Cemetery in Eustis, where he killed her. She would end up being buried in the same cemetery, but only briefly. John would later have her body dug up and cremated.

Family members described Ian as “a child in a man’s body.” He not only played with toys but talked to them, they said.

Hornsby began his closing argument Friday in dramatic fashion, pulling up a chair in front of the jury box and talking to Ian’s stuffed toy “Puffy” and plastic turtle action figure “Slash.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s no excuse, John finally got to him,” he told Puffy. “He got to everybody. That is Chloe behind me. She is the only one that escaped. She’s the only one that escaped. She told us that even after she escaped it still took her several years after her mother died to be able to escape John’s influence. But even now she still considers him to be her dad. Even though she believes that Ian hurt her mother, John is the reason Sue Ellen is dead.”

He showed jurors photos of Ian through the years with “Puffy” and “Slash.”

John claimed Sue-Ellen tried twice to commit suicide in front of the children and banged her head against the wall. Hornsby banged his head against the wall, pretending to be John while yelling to the children, “crazy, crazy, crazy!”

John accused her of drinking, being selfish with money, and using drugs.

Hornsby said John “brainwashed” the children.

He told Ian that his biological mother kidnapped him when he was 3, spurring a lifetime of fear of being separated from his family.

Hornsby showed snapshots of the family’s fenced-in backyard with an overgrown patch where the children examined birds, bugs and plants as part of their homeschooling.

“This is their whole world,” he said. They were not allowed to have friends, go anywhere, even to ride a bicycle or go fishing."

He built a compound like David Koresh, Hornsby said, referring to the cult leader whose followers were killed in Waco, Texas in a raid by federal agents.

Prosecutor Camuccio agreed in his closing argument that John “added fuel to the fire” and was a catalyst for the family’s disastrous belief system.

“They preach loving and kindness but practice hate,” he said.

He reminded jurors that Nico, who was 16 at the time, testified that she wasn’t trying to strangle her half-sister DeJah at Sue-Ellen’s graveside, but was “trying to take her eyes out.”

“Crazy” Hornsby shouted about the family’s behavior, but Camuccio told jurors that Ian was not insane under the law, which defines it as “unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions at the time of the alleged offense and did not know what he was doing or, if he knew what he was doing, did not know that what he was doing was wrong.”

In fact, there was plenty of evidence that he knew exactly what he was doing, Camuccio said. He made the 911 call. He said he strangled her. When a police officer told him there might be ants where he was lying on the grass, he said, “That’s the least of my problems.”

He also said his father would be angry with him. At the Eustis Police Department he said, “you can keep me here. I’m not trying to get out of anything.”

In a phone call to his father, he said he killed her “because she was ruining the family.”

His father told him he was “not supposed to do that.”

“I know,” he replied.

Then, there was the text from Sue-Ellen to John. “Ian told me he wants to skin me alive and cut out my intestines and strangle me with them. He said he has no problem telling me he hates me. I don’t know what to believe.”

He hit Sue-Ellen so hard it broke her jaw, then the 20-year-old training to be a professional wrestler strangled her with a phone cord and with his bare hands.

Circuit Judge Brian Welke ordered a presentencing investigation.

After the trial, Sue-Ellen’s mother, Cindi Miller, said she forgives Ian and it made her “very sad” to think of Ian having to spend time in prison.

She was not happy about the testimony of John and his two children, however.

“A lot of it was not true, and it made my daughter look really bad, and that’s not the person she was. She was beautiful. She was Miss Eustis and Miss Teen Lake County and was very talented. She was a very popular hair stylist in Eustis.”

Mental health experts squared off on both sides with different opinions, including the effects of withdrawal from prescription drugs for depression and anxiety, whether he had post-traumatic stress disorder before or after the attack, and if he suffered other disorders up to and including schizophrenia.

He had been taking medication for major depressive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for years.

It wasn’t insanity, Camuccio told the jury. It was anger. After asking permission to hear the 911 call again, they agreed.

If Ian had been found not guilty by reason of insanity he would have been sent to a mental hospital for treatment. Second-degree murder can carry a sentence of up to life in prison.

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: Jury rejects insanity defense, finds Lake man guilty of second-degree murder