Prosecution's expert: Ian Anselmo was not legally insane at time of killing
TAVARES — Ian Anselmo was not insane when he strangled and killed his pregnant stepmother Sue-Ellen in 2019, a prosecution psychiatrist opined Thursday during Anselmo's murder trial.
“He did suffer from mental illness, but he knew what was right and wrong,” said Dr. Tonia Werner, citing the legal definition of insanity.
She disagreed with the opinions of a defense pharmacist/toxicologist and a psychologist, and to a certain extent with his long-term psychiatrist.
Jurors earlier in the week had been told that Ian had been without his anti-depression and anxiety medications for days. John Anselmo had texted Sue-Ellen after she left him asking about missing pills — perhaps a week’s worth or more. She said she didn’t have them and would reorder some from the drug store. The Vyvanse, for anxiety, arrived the day after Ian killed Sue-Ellen in her SUV at Greenwood Cemetery.
Drug expert Dr. Daniel Buffington opined that the sudden disruption in taking Lexapro for depression and Vyvanse caused a drug withdrawal severe enough to cause psychosis.
Werner disagreed, and prosecutors played a body camera video showing Anselmo telling an ambulance attendant that he had not taken his pills for only two or three days.
John Anselmo and Ian’s sister and stepbrother testified that Ian was in a catatonic state, staring out the window after ceaseless crying in the days leading up to the March 13 homicides.
Buffington showed jurors a computer chart that included the heading “Neurotransmitter Storm.”
He had big highs and big lows in text messages, going from “I love you,” to saying he wanted to strangle her with her own intestines while begging her to come back to the family with the five children she took to her daughter’s house.
That could simply be a case of manipulation and anger, Werner said.
John Anselmo and his children’s testimony was bizarre, showing a controlling father demanding total loyalty and obedience, not allowing them to have friends or go anywhere, limiting TV to old movies and preschool cartoons, and homeschooling them.
When defense attorney Richard Hornsby asked if it was a “chaotic family environment,” Buffington replied, “That would be an understatement.”
Previous trial coverage Victim's husband and three of her children testify
The family dynamic was part of a defense psychologist’s reason for concluding that Ian was insane when he strangled Sue-Ellen manually and with a phone cord.
Among the findings of William Saunders, Ph.D., was that Ian suffered from post traumatic stress disorder.
Assistant State Attorney Nick Camuccio pounced on that opinion, pointing out that the psychologist ran a battery of tests long after the murders — not before. He certainly could have been traumatized later.
Saunders also concluded that Ian was on the autism spectrum, and that he was suffering from severe disorders related to schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia usually shows up in the late teens or early adulthood, Werner said.
There was also testimony from the family that Ian was quiet and nonviolent.
To refute that claim, Camuccio called to the stand Dolan Waite, the husband of Sue-Ellen’s daughter, Dejah Waite.
On March 6, a week before the fatal attack, Sue-Ellen and Dejah Waite collected her biological children and went with them to Dejah’s house. It wasn’t long before John and Ian Anselmo showed up, banging on the door and screaming, Dolan said.
Because of a legal technicality, jurors were not able to hear Ian’s brother, Eric, testify that Ian allegedly threatened to do the same thing to him that he did to Sue-Ellen.
Hornsby, sparring with Werner on the witness stand, played a video of the frantic, crying children at Waite’s house talking to John on the phone. Rajko, who was 10 years old, could be heard saying of his mother, “I’d kill her if she wasn’t pregnant.”
“Five days later, Ian threatens to rip out Sue-Ellen’s intestines,” he said.
Doesn’t that prove that the family “cult,” as he called it, prove that Ian was insane, he asked?
Werner said no.
“What else do you need?” he asked.
This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: Murder trial in Lake County Florida: State rebuts defense claim of insanity
