More details have surfaced in a bizarre murder case that left a University of Houston professor dead this weekend from head wounds inflicted by a stiletto high heel shoe.
On Tuesday morning, 44-year-old Ana Lilia Trujillo and her attorney appeared before a Harris County court on charges of killing her boyfriend Alf Stefan Andersson in his high-rise apartment overlooking Hermann Park. She's being held on a felony murder charge.
Assistant district attorney John Jordan explained to a state judge that the couple had been drinking tequila at a nightclub on Saturday night, when Andersson became angry after another man offered to buy Trujillo a drink, according to multiple reports, including one from the Associated Press.
After returning to the condo at 2 a.m., the two reportedly quarreled over plans to visit Trujillo's daughter in Waco. As Andersson allegedly became abusive (according to the defendant), a struggle ensued that ended with Trujillo stabbing her boyfriend in the face, neck and head with a high-heel shoe.
Investigators told KHOU Ch. 11 that police arrived at the scene to find Andersson with 10 puncture wounds to the head and 15 to 20 wounds to his face, arms and neck.
Trujillo admitted to the attack with a claim of self-defense. She remains behind bars in a downtown Harris County jail with bail set at $100,000.
Citizens of Mexico and Sweden
Those who know the suspect — a Mexican citizen who also goes by the name Ana Fox — describe her as a tough-talking woman prepared to defend herself if need be.
“She’s a force to be reckoned with, and I don’t think she’s the victim in this case," Jim Carroll, who met Trujillo two years ago when she rented a room at a downtown hotel he managed, tells KHOU. At the time, she worked as a legal assistant and a masseuse.
“She’s a force to be reckoned with," said an acquaintance of Trujillo. "I don’t think she’s the victim in this case."
The suspect often brushed off Carroll's concern about the male company she kept.
“She goes, ‘If anybody ever screws with me,’ she’d pull up one of her stilettos and said, ‘I’ll stab him in the eyes with this,’ " he recalled.
While the University of Houston released a brief statement expressing sadness about Andersson's death, the victim's biography remains somewhat vague.
Born in Sweden, Andersson maintained Swedish citizenship after becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in the 1990s, according to Stockholm's Dagens Nyheter newspaper. He joined the biomedical research labs at UH's Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling in December 2009 as a visiting professor specializing in women's reproductive health.
Ana Lilia Trujillo
Thomas Bille is Houston's newest James Beard Award winner. Photo by Getty Images for James Beard Foundation 