“I hope she’s not breathing.”
“Who is it that’s not breathing?”
“Her… wife.”
“I tried to pick her up. She’s… she’s dead.”
“I was feeling… what’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
“Somehow I’m still thinking that she’s going to be okay.”
“Shanti was ambushed, was blindsided, never knew what was coming. She was a very great woman. Everything about her was outstanding. Could never have expected anything to happen.”
“Hello, I found her. Way… she’s not breathing. I’m trying to do CPR. I can’t.”
“Okay, listen to me. I need… and who is it? This is David, child.”
“Okay, your name is David, okay. Who is it that’s not breathing?”
“My wife.”
“Okay, sir, I need to take a deep breath. Take a deep breath.”
“What happened?”
“I found her in the shower and she passed away.”
“Is she awake right now?”
“No.”
“Is she breathing?”
“I tried to do CPR. I can’t get her to breathe.”
“Can you get her out of the shower?”
“I pulled her… and you don’t know what happened or when anything happened?”
“No.”
“Has she been sick or something?”
“Yes, she’s been sick. Yes. Oh god, what happened, baby? Save me, baby.”
“She had had appendicitis a couple months earlier and had surgery that she had some difficulty recovering from.”
“I was standing in the dispatch when the 911 call come in, and her response was, ‘I need help and my daughter’s on the floor. It looks like her stomach has exploded.'”
“I was thinking that, as I was driving over, you know, is this going to be a murder case that we’re going to have to deal with, or is this a self-inflicted?”
“Yes, in here, please.”
“Bobby Jo was laying on the floor on her back and I noticed a lot of blood over this way.”
“She had some very unusual um abrasions on her in very unusual places on her hands and her knees. She’d been beaten and strangled.”
“Shanti was ambushed, was blindsided, never knew what was coming, and this unexpectedly brutal scene leads detectives to believe something more is going on.”
“One of the things we both noticed about the bed, not only was it hastily made and the sheets were different colors, they were white but they almost looked like brand new sheets on the bed that were crisp white and still had the creases from the box. There was cash in plain view, her purse was open in plain view, and no credit cards were taken, no cash was taken, nothing else of value was removed.”
“She was a professional woman. She had worked for a software company that built manufacturing software and then started her own business. She had a nanny that would assist her not only with Jackson but also with her business.”
“She really liked to spend time with her family, um she also loves our dogs. She loves theme parks. She would always go to theme parks, you know, once or twice a month. She was scared to go on a lot of rides, she chickened out like four times, but she still went.”
“You know, when work was done and we were able to relax, it was relaxing, barbecues on the lake, just hanging out with friends, their kids, Jackson. Nothing crazy, just when it was time to relax, that’s what we wanted to do.”
“No matter what kind of day she was having, she’d always put a smile on her face. She wouldn’t let the bad things that happened that day affect the moment.”
“She was a very great woman and everything about her was outstanding. She was just overall the best mother anyone could ever ask for.”
“When were you born here?”
“No, I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota.”
“And when did you move to Florida?”
“In 2013, 5 months after I met Charlotte.”
“Did you meet her here or there?”
“I know I’m lying. I’m lying, okay.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. Take your time.”
“You said something about having a great weekend.”
“Shanti had her appendix out, um, on February, I want to say 23rd, and she’s been in a lot of pain.”
“I’m sorry, I can’t talk about her last. Love you. You were so happy.”
“Hi, family. My dad has… I have to go, he’s right here. My dad gets up early on his job probably. Today, I don’t know, we’ll find out. Love you, Denn. Bye. Love you so much, Jack. Have a good night tonight, okay? Okay, love you.”
“They had been divorced about a year or two at the time that she met David.”
“She had recently divorced Jim, Jackson’s dad. It was beyond acrimonious. I mean, they were at each other’s, you know, for quite a while, and each other have indicted and mean and nasty things to Jackson kind of thing and blaming each other.”
“We don’t believe she was alive on Tuesday morning, so it was important where Jim was the night before.”
“Jim ended up picking up Jackson and bringing him to the house. He shows up and there’s all these police there. So we had a quite a long, extensive interview with Jim. We were able to vet everything that he told us, so we absolutely had to rule him out.”
“On that day that it happened, there was almost a chance if I didn’t pick him up he would have been in that home when this happened, and I can’t imagine.”
“Tell me about Monday night. What happened?”
“We were getting ready to go to bed at midnight. We sleep separately, um, most of the time. She has some really severe sleep apnea.”
“So where would you sleep?”
“Dusters, on the couch.”
“When the jury entered the room to the verdict was read by the court clerk, justice was delivered for him.”
“My heart was racing like a couple hundred thousand paces a minute, but when I heard the verdict I was overjoyed and it was probably… it was the best moment of my life.”
“The night of the verdict, we were walking to the truck and uh Jackson was shrugging his shoulders.”
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I feel lighter, like a weight’s been lifted.'”
“To me, the greatest satisfaction in this case was David having to be faced with the truth of what he did.”
“When this parasite came into our lives, he took something from us, and most importantly from Jackson, and what he took is not replaceable. He lost a good parent.”
“It is still unfathomable to me what he put Jackson through. I couldn’t look at him. If I knew, if I looked at him, I would do something I would regret. And I wouldn’t say his name; he doesn’t deserve that.”
“He told a lot of lies, so I just wanted to set the record straight and let the judge know that it needs to be life without parole.”
“My mom was the best person I ever knew. She worked a lot, but she never put her family over work. Early 2018, she was taken from me and my family. It’s like a hole in my heart that I can’t fill or fix. She didn’t die peacefully. She did not deserve anything that happened to her that night. She was the best mom I could ever ask for.”
“I’ll sentence you to life imprisonment.”
“David took control of so many things. He took control of the house, he took control of finances, he took control of how long Shanti lived.”
“Personally, I’d like people to know how hard of a worker she was. She knew how to get stuff done, and she did it with 100% precision. She was very good at what she did. She was more than just someone that was murdered.”
“If it can happen to her, it can happen to anybody. If one person hears her story and might think they’re in that kind of a relationship, then maybe they can get out before it’s too late. And that would be something positive that came from her memory.”
“We both worked as hard as we worked on this case for Jackson because of the tragedy to that little boy, for him having to grow up without his mom.”
“There’s not a day that goes by that they won’t grieve for her. That grief is really just love with no place to go.”
“In the end, this case largely centered on the house and the remodeling and the arguments.”
“We’re fighting for the house for Jackson, so that Jackson can decide at some point in the future what to do with this place that brought the worst incident that he’ll ever have in his life. And whether Jackson sells it, or whether Jackson takes a sledgehammer and knocks it to the ground, our fight now is to give Jackson control of what happens to this place.”
“Kind of weird, you know, having the same routine for 6 years, then all of a sudden being over. It’s like a new normal.”
“We have many more good days than bad days now. The trial’s over. We just had Mother’s Day, so we went to the beach and the flowers in the ocean ’cause she loved going to the beach with him, and we talk a lot about her, just try to honor her memory.”
