Vet tech was ‘crazy’ when she knifed 70-year-old neighbor: defense attorney
A young veterinary technician was “crazy” and did not know right from wrong when she knifed her 70-year-old neighbor to death several years ago, the defendant’s attorney said in court – as he pursued an insanity defense in the gruesome case.
Attorney Jeremy Schneider declared “We are telling you, she did it” to jurors in his opening statement — as he tried to convince them to nevertheless find his client Anya Johnston, 29, not guilty because of insanity for the October 2018 slaying of advertising maven Sue Trott.
“The blood, the DNA, the photographs of the knife, the gruesome pictures of the wound, it doesn’t help you. I’m making your job easy,” he said.
“[Trott] was killed by that woman right there by stabbing her with a knife. It was not an accident, it was not self-defense, she stabbed her with a distinctive knife she bought on Amazon nine months earlier,” Schneider continued, gesturing toward his client, who looked pale and gaunt.
Johnston is believed to have stabbed Trott with an “M48 cyclone” – a unique, twisted dagger, the court heard.
Schneider insisted that his client’s apparent guilt was due to her mental condition at the time of the heinous attack.
“The killing of Sue Trott is an undeniable tragedy. It’s kinda like every New Yorker’s fear, you see it and hear about it in the newspapers happening on the streets or subway, where someone is attacked by a mentally ill person with no rhyme or reason,” he said Friday.
“It doesn’t make sense, it’s completely irrational, it’s not a sensible act. It is, in a word, crazy. This particular crime is just like that.”
Trott – a copywriter and advertising rep who previously worked for Levi’s and the Museum of Modern Art –was an “active and ambitious” person who was cruelly left to rot for almost four days before authorities finally found her remains, prosecutor Hannah Yu explained in her opening statement.
Yu also tried to push back on the notion that Johnston was insane.
“The defendant was never delusional and never hallucinating. She held down a job and interacted with customers and coworkers and performed her functions as a vet tech and receptionist,” Yu said.
“Anya Johnston is guilty of murder in the second degree, as she intended to kill Sue Trott and did kill Sue Trott,” she concluded.
Scheinder, however, said that at the time of Trott’s killing, Johnston – who appeared in court with her head down, wearing a purple long-sleeved shirt and black pants – was off her medication.
Johnston was so irrational that she had even started to hurt her beloved cat, Sammy, Scheider said.
“One of the only things in Anya’s life that truly gave her happiness, love and joy was her cat. She hurt her cat for no good reason. This is someone who loved and took care of animals,” he lamented.
“[Johnston] was hellbent on killing herself. She was living in an alternate reality. She wasn’t going to let Sue Trott stop her or talk her out of it,” the defense attorney said of his client’s mental state.
In Schneider’s opening statement, the court also heard about Johnston’s troubled upbringing.
Johnston was born four months prematurely, and spent the first two years and nine months of her life in a Russian orphanage “with 10 babies to one caregiver,” the lawyer described.
Later, she endured a string of hospitalizations and failed suicide attempts – the first of which occurred shortly after she was accepted into the University of Vermont in 2013.
“Think about how crazy it is that she gets into where she wants to go and as a result of that she tells people she wants to kill herself,” Schneider said.
“A couple weeks later while she’s in Silver Hill Hospital she tried to kill herself by trying to overdose,” he explained.
Yu, meanwhile, also told the court about the victim’s injuries.
“There was a gaping stab wound to her neck. An autopsy later confirmed the cause of Sue Trott’s death was a stab wound to her neck,” Yu said.
“The stab wound was so significant, it completely severed the right carotid artery and partially severed both jugular veins and the left carotid artery. It penetrated the neck 4.5 inches deep, essentially slicing through her throat,” she continued.
“The autopsy report also noted Sue Trott also had an irregular y-shaped stab wound to her lower back penetrated 2 and 3/4 inches deep,” the prosecutor added.
After the opening argument, patrol cop, Aisha McCloud, who went to Trott’s apartment on Oct. 21 at 4 a.m., told jurors what she saw when she arrived.
“When I opened the bedroom door, I saw a female, face up, deceased,” McCloud told the jury.
“She was discolored, she was stiff, she wasn’t breathing and she was black in certain areas,” McCloud recalled of the gruesome scene.
The jury later saw a troubling photograph of Trott’s neck, as well as a blurred image of her body and videos from inside the apartment.
The footage showed a pool of blood on a light gray rug in the living room, as well as blood smears on the tan fabric couch and white enamel television cabinet.
Squares of the rug had been cut out for footprint analysis.
There was also a trail of blood from the living room to the bedroom, where photos shown to the court showed Trott lying at the base of her bed, facing up with her arms outstretched and her black top hiked up to expose her stomach.
When shown the photo of Trott’s neck, the jury squirmed and looked away.
The prosecution was eventually reprimanded for introducing so many images of the victim’s apartment, with Judge Ruth Pickholz noting that “so much of this case is conceded.”
