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Prosecutors interviewed ex-wife of man accused of killing wife in Delaney Park

ORLANDO, Fla. — In a nearly three-and-a-half-hour interview, prosecutors questioned the ex-wife of David Tronnes—who is accused of killing his wife Shanti Cooper-Tronnes—about her relationship with him and their finances, according to a recording of the interview.

Cooper-Tronnes was found dead in her Delaney Park home in April 2018.

When a prosecutor asked her about the day they met on a blind date in 1997, Carole Tronnes, David’s ex-wife, described him as attractive, smart and interesting, according to the recording of the interview.

Prosecutors released the audio recording of the interview with Carole Tronnes on Monday.

David Tronnes was married to Carole Tronnes for nearly 14 years in Minnesota before he married Shanti Cooper-Tronnes.

“It was good. It was healthy. It was loving,” said Carole Tronnes in the interview.

State prosecutor Ryan Vescio and Orlando police detective Teresa Sprague interviewed Carole Tronnes a few months after David was arrested.

They asked her about stomach problems and fainting spells that started to develop around the time she started dating David Tronnes and lasted into the first few years of marriage.

Vescio asked what was going through Carole Tronnes’s mind when she filed for divorce.

“Your question seeks information protected by the marital privilege,” she said in the recording. “I have not waived that privilege and thus will not answer."

Investigators asked her about finances, including a bank account she still shared with David Tronnes that, according to prosecutors, had as much as a half-million dollars in it in recent years.

Carole Tronnes said she forgot to take her name off the account and hadn’t used it.

She also told investigators that one of David Tronnes’s attorneys asked her to be a minority owner in an LLC he formed after Shanti Cooper-Tronnes died, which she believed he put together as part of his estate planning.

“I suspect he’s looking for somebody he trusts,” she said.

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Jeff Deal

Jeff Deal, WFTV.com

I joined the Eyewitness News team as a reporter in 2006.