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The 911 Call That Opened Hell’s Door. One Confession. A Lifetime of Terror.
The 911 call was harrowing.
"I accidentally killed someone. Please!" the man said, his voice rising.
"Who?"
"My stepmom. My name is Ian Anselmo. Sue-Ellen Anselmo, she's in the car with me. My dad is going to kill me. I guess I strangled her. I don't remember doing it. I remember the argument."
The call disintegrated quickly, with the 20-year-old howling and sobbing so pitifully that the dispatcher could not understand what he was saying, except that he was calling from a cemetery.
The graveyard had its own lurid past as the site of a murderous teen vampire cult initiation 20 years earlier, now it was a bloody crime scene, and would later become the site of the pregnant woman's burial, more family violence, and the removal of her body.
The call was just the beginning. Investigators would discover a family cult stained with allegations of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, brain-washing, and total patriarchal control.
It would end in an insanity defense, with Ian's lawyer calling the family atmosphere "crazy," and pitting psychiatrists and psychologists against each other, revealing questionable practices, motives and techniques by those experts.
Frank Stanfield, a 50-year newspaperman, covered the case from the beginning. It is one of the most twisted tales he has covered, including the vampire case, alligator attacks, murdered cops and countless "Florida man" stories.
Book Excerpt
Dejah’s letter to her mother:
“Dear Mommy: I want to start by saying I hope you choose to read this by yourself and that you decide not to share it. There has been so much I’ve wanted to tell you and have you there for, but alas, I know even if you wanted to you couldn’t.
“I’ll start with why I left the house because you never truly got an answer to that question, and at first you blamed yourself, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
“To begin, the amount of fights you and my dad had was awful for me. Every time I saw you get hit it was like I was getting hit myself. Every time you cried my heart hurt for you, and it was so terrible hearing you beg for help and for me to be so helpless and not be able to do anything.
“You are not crazy and you don’t deserve to be told you are because you get mad or fight back when you are provoked in such terrible ways.
Quotes From The Book
“I guess I strangled her.” – Ian Anselmo to police
“I left so I could have a life and not be stuck in a bubble. I wanted kids, and a family, and to get to have a job, and save money, and buy my own house. Part of me wants to think you are proud of me, but I don’t truly know. The biggest reason why I left though was because my dad was sexually abusing me, and it went on for the duration of two years off and on. – Dejah-Thoris Waite in the letter to her mother
“I can’t tell you if you’re telling the truth. 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.” – Sue-Ellen Anselmo in conversation to John Anselmo
“Is there anybody here who thinks brainwashing is voodoo, or fake or made up or stuff that defense attorneys like me kind of raise in cases?” – Defense attorney Richard Hornsby to prospective jurors
“Is this like Alice in Wonderland where up is down and down is up? Is this like the inmates’ jail where we have an extreme patriarch relationship where everybody else is subservient to the patriarch? Is this a cult? – Defense attorney Richard Hornsbyto jurors
“…he got up there and pounded his fists and said very loudly, ‘crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy’ because he can’t argue from the actual jury instruction about insanity.” -- Prosecutor Nick Camuccio on Richard Hornsby’s defense of Ian
“This family was brought up on violence. And they carried out violence. They preached loving and kindness, but they practiced hate. I agree with that. I agree that John Anselmo was where all of that started. But that’s not insanity. – Prosecutor Nick Camuccio in his closing statement to jurors
“The sheer brutality of this murder takes my breath away, and that Ian could have possibly done this. This was not a quick death or a reaction like shooting a gun. To strangle someone to the point of death, you slowly watch their life fade away. – Sue-Ellen Anselmo’s daughter, Dejah-Thoris Waite in her victim impact statement
“Sue-Ellen loved Ian. In the last text on her phone, she and Ian said ‘I love you’ to each other. I can’t imagine the betrayal that she must have felt when he was killing her the same afternoon that he texted that he loved her. – Sue-Ellen Anselmo’s mother, Cindy Miller in her victim impact statement
About Author Frank Stanfield
Frank Stanfield is a veteran newspaper journalist who worked in Central Florida for most of his 40 years in the business.
