The mother of Ana Trujillo — who remains in jail for fatally stabbing her boyfriend with a stiletto heel in the infamous Museum District stiletto heel murder case — took to the witness stand on Tuesday in an attempt to convince a Harris County criminal court to lower her daughter's bond from $100,000 to between $10,000 and $30,000.
District Judge Brock Thomas ultimately denied the reduction, ruling that Trujillo's planned relocation to her parents' home in Waco is too far from the Houston courts. The judge ended the session by announcing that the official trial will begin Jan. 7, 2014.
Maria Tharp, the mother of the 44-year-old defendant, spoke through tears on several occasions during the hearing as she gently dismissed concerns about her daughter's 2010 DWI arrest and struggles to find regular employment beyond occasional gigs as a TV host on Houston community access shows under the name Ana Fox
"She's having a hard time at the jail . . . She's a stand-up lady and she's tough, but some of the inmates are getting on her."
In an attempt to address any potential flight risk fears, she also noted that while Trujillo was born in Jalisco, Mexico, her entire life has been spent in Texas.
Even though the alleged killer has long has maintained a permanent legal status in the United States, the Mexican consulate may assist with paying the bond, according to Trujillo's attorney Jack Carroll.
"I think we have a highly defensible case," Carroll said after the court appearance, noting that life behind bars has been to be no picnic for his client.
"She's having a hard time at the jail . . . This is a case with some notoriety. She's a stand-up lady and she's tough, but some of the inmates are getting on her and some of the guards are being abusive."
A Murder Defense?
While he would not go into details, Carroll said he has obtained new and possibly damning information about 59-year-old victim Alf Stefan Andersson, the University of Houston professor and biomedical researcher who the defendant stabbed dozens of times with her sharp heel in an act she's labeled as self defense.
Aside from a pair of brief obituaries in the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News, details of Andersson's life have remained scant since his death on June 9. A native of Sweden with a dual U.S. citizenship, he received his PhD in pharmacology from the Uppsala University before settling in Dallas during the 1990s. He took a post at the University of Houston in 2009 to concentrate on women's reproductive health.
According to public records, Andersson's only run-in with the law appears to have occurred in January 1998, when Dallas police arrested him for driving while intoxicated. The charges were dismissed and his driving license reinstated shortly thereafter.
Friends of Andersson and Trujillo recall frequent public fights between the couple, who had been together for roughly a year at the time of the killing.
In this case, high heels turned into instruments of death.
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