By Joy Bergmann
A Manhattan jury heard opening arguments Friday in the second-degree murder trial of Anya Johnston, 29, for the stabbing death of her Upper West Side neighbor Susan Trott, 70, on the evening of October 17, 2018.
Defense attorney Jeremy Schneider left no doubt as to the murderer. “Sue Trott was killed on October 17th by that young woman [Johnston] right there, stabbing her with a distinctive knife that she bought on Amazon nine months earlier…everybody agrees to that,” he said. “She did it because she was crazy.”
Schneider unfurled details from Johnston’s biography, proclaiming: “She never stood a chance.” Born prematurely in Russia, Anya spent four months in a neonatal unit before landing in an orphanage with one caregiver for every 10 babies, he said. In 1997, Isabel Johnston adopted the four-year-old as a single mother and brought her to New York without any records about Anya’s birth parents, Schneider said.
The ensuing years were a continual struggle to fight Johnston’s “lifetime of mental disease,” Schneider said, citing numerous suicide attempts, hospitalizations, special schools, therapists, and medications. Medications, he added, that she stopped taking one month before Trott’s murder. “On October 17th, she was not in her right state of mind,” he said.
Under New York law, Schneider’s insanity defense must convince jurors that Johnston should not be held responsible for her actions because, at the time of the incident, she was suffering from a “mental disease or defect” and lacked substantial capacity to know or appreciate the nature and consequences of her actions – or to understand that such conduct was wrong legally or morally.
Assistant District Attorney Hannah Yu urged jurors to find Johnston guilty. Despite Johnston’s “extensive psychiatric history,” Yu said, Johnston had the “capacity to know and appreciate” that she was stabbing Susan Trott that night and “she knew it was legally and morally wrong.”
Yu pointed to Johnston’s multi-year employment at Symphony Veterinary Center, saying co-workers will testify to her being a trusted, responsible colleague who showed bursts of anger, but was “never delusional and quite capable of performing her duties” as a receptionist and assistant. Yu said Johnston’s diary will reveal how she had been “fantasizing about and planning the murder for months.” Yu added that forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jason Hershberger will testify that Johnston was “either indifferent to or actively enjoyed” stabbing Trott, and was able to “appreciate that it was wrong.”
The Crime Scene
During initial testimony, prosecutors presented video and photo evidence showing the bloodsoaked crime scene in Trott’s 14th floor apartment at 710 West End Avenue.
NYPD Officer Tyesha McCloud testified she discovered Trott’s body at around 4:30 a.m. on October 21, 2018, nearly four days after the murder. McCloud said she had been sent to the apartment to perform a “wellness check” on Trott after Susan’s worried business partner Eric Boscia had been unable to reach her.
During his testimony, Sergeant Matthew Noftsier from NYPD’s Crime Scene Unit discussed a video “walkthrough” of the apartment and photos showing large blood stains and bloody sneaker footprints on Trott’s beige living room rug. A long blood smear ran from the living room down the hallway to Trott’s bedroom where her partially decomposed body, clad in a black shirt and pants, lay face up on a stain of dried blood. Close-up photos showed a gaping wound on Trott’s neck and a Y-shaped wound to her lower back. Noftsier recalled “a foul odor” in the apartment.
Noftsier said he used luminol to highlight more footprints inside the home that headed out into the hallway and up a stairwell to Johnston’s 15th floor apartment. After obtaining a search warrant, he entered and explored that unit, confiscating a pair of Anya Johnston’s black pants, a green plaid jacket with visible bloodstains, and a pair of Converse All-Stars. ADA Yu said forensic evidence will show “Sue’s blood was all over” Johnston’s garments.
To learn more about what prosecutors say happened on the night of the killing, please read WSR’s 2019 story.
What’s Next
Judge Ruth Pickholz said the trial may run for several weeks in Manhattan Criminal Court.
Based on the evidence previewed on opening day, jurors will be hearing much about Johnston’s medical history. Psychiatric experts will testify for each side.
If the jury returns a “not responsible” verdict, Johnston would proceed to court hearings to assess her dangerousness and determine appropriate confinement to a New York forensic psychiatric center. Evaluations and court oversight would continue during treatment; such post-acquittal confinement can sometimes continue for decades.
If the jury convicts, Johnston would face a minimum sentence of 15 years to life in state prison.
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thank you, Joy
Poor girl.
This is beyond tragic. But if the prosecution can’t show another motive, what are we to think? That she was a competent person, yet killed Ms. Trott for no reason and in such a clumsy way that she was bound to get caught? She had almost four days to get rid of the evidence.
I know it’s easier to believe in a world where these things happen because of evil and we can restore justice afterwards than in one where a woman who seems to have been a lovely, caring person was brutally killed because some chemicals were transmitted in the wrong way in a neighbor’s brain. The latter world is terrifying and cruel. But…I don’t think we live in the former world.
Does there have to be a difference between evil & crazy?
It’s worth mentioning that the knife bought 9 months earlier is pretty useless for anything except hurting living things.
The spiral design is advertised as making wounds which are impossible to stitch closed & would be a war crime to equip soldiers with.
It’s also worth saying, when we are talking about brains you should be careful not to consider the body it’s in. I think a lot of people aren’t used to judging a 29 year old white girl so harshly & look for reasons to understand why.
The question is “what can or should society do with people who have these chemical issues in their brains?” She may be a lovely person when on the right medications but the article says she stopped taking her meds a month before the killing. She may not be a murderer but who would feel safe having her live next door?
And that’s the thing. Someone with severe psychiatric illness should be able to live a supported, employed, manageable life with treatment if that is possible. But if for some reason they are moved to find a way to stop taking the meds, and then begin to operate under pressure of a complex delusion about someone else, and act in a way that causes harm…then tragic things can happen. Doesn’t have to be murder. Even lesser crimes can be harmful and unfixable – then we see a system whose fail-safes or redundancies have failed. Because no system is perfect, and human arrangements are not risk free. This was particularly horrible – but poor Ms Trott is no less dead than the lovely woman killed by an electric scooter on 64th street. Our traffic arrangements have gaps, risk and failings too. I suspect the toll from our rotten gun policies and laws is higher than the toll from poor psychiatric support (not to mention a huge overlap in deaths by suicide). But the suffering of those ill, and the need for humane confinement with treatment is still worth pursuing. This is terrible, violent tragedy. Thanks for the story.
I agree. The “in the community” model is not working. But it’s hard to see NYS going back to involuntary institutionalization.
this case has nothing to do with people with behavioral health problems being released “into the community.” Anya Johnston was living with her family, as far as I know.
if she is found not guilty with an insanity defense, presumably she will be placed in some sort of institution.
I’m not making a case one way or the other for how people with severe mental illness, living on the street, should be treated. But isn’t it important tp have accurate information?
I don’t think it’s hard to see us going back to involuntary treatment. I think it’s high time. We have overcorrected, and now we see the need.
I would not. But the question is whether we treat her as a murderer or as someone who needs to be (probably permanently) hospitalized.
It is frightening. But one clarification. Anya did not have 3.5 days to get rid of the evidence. On the night of the murder, she was admitted to a psych ward. The 2019 Rag story linked in the article has the timeline. It’s a bizarre, sad tale, for sure.
This is great, detailed reporting, now missing in most of the mainstream media in NY. Tragic but well-told story. Thank you Joy Bergmann and WSR!!!
Sadder than the story itself is that the crime took place over 5 years ago.
It’s just coming to trial now??
Agreed. This is an excellent article – thanks very much to WSR for writing it.
But I have a few more questions:
– has she been in jail or a psych ward for the past 5+ years
– why is it taking so long?
– Is there any chance of her not being locked up for life? If so, which verdict would have the greatest chance of that?
I know that in reality it is a very different result, but personally, as long as I am 100% sure that she will not be walking among us again, I really don’t care what happens to her
Just to mix things up a bit, I would like to say that I have mixed feelings about the death penalty, but a crime like this should definitely consider it. And again, I say that regardless of her mental state. There is no doubt or denial that she did it, so there is zero chance of “they are getting the wrong person.” So why waste resources on someone who is capable of such a horrible crime?
Leon – thanks for reading.
Anya Johnston was in a secured , hospital psychiatric unit for a short period following her arrest. But the vast majority of her pretrial confinement has been spent at Rikers Island.
I was also surprised that this case took over 5 years to come to trial. Covid delays played a part, but any other reasons have not been revealed publicly.
Thank you for the helpful follow-up!
Wheels of justice in NYS can grind painfully slow. It can take on average 368 days for a felony case to begin in NYC.
In cases involving the mentally ill it can be a few to several years before a case even begins trail
If you like a good read here is breakdown of NYS’s “speedy trial” laws.
https://www.ils.ny.gov/files/30.30%20Manual%202020.pdf
New York Times had a very good piece recently on mentally ill persons caught up in New York’s criminal justice system.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/29/nyregion/nyc-rikers-homeless-mental-illness.html
Finally remember during recent covid panic created issues with all NYS court systems.
Anya Johnson apparently has severe mental illness. It comes to the same fact discussed here over and over – a necessity of mental health institutions for those with chronic and severe mental illness. Right now it is close to impossible to have a seriously mentally ill individual committed for a long duration of time despite the degree of their illness.
Insurances won’t pay for it, that’s the bottom line.
Every aspect of behavior is a result of neurochemistry. Read Robert Sapolsky’s Behave if you want to understand it in detail. The real question is not whether she has abnormal brain chemistry but if that abnormality is of such magnitude that she could not distinguish right and wrong. Murder by definition is an aberrant behavior. People commit murder for innumerable reasons from a response to abuse to pure sociopathy. I am glad this is being decided by the courts with the benefits of expert testimony. Many of the comments here seem to be projections of what the commenter wants to believe based on very limited public information.
The mere fact that its taken this long to bring this crime to court is an embarrassment to our legal system and an insult to the family of the deceased. I remember (vividly) when this took murder took place 5.5 years ago. May God help and guide our kids and grandkids, as it appears that with every passing generation we are headed in the wrong direction.
As stated in above post even in best of situations it can take over 300 days before a felony case comes to trial in NYC/NYS. System simply cannot handle volume of cases much faster.
When you pile on possible special defence such as insanity that will increase time before trial begins. Court and or counsel representing defendant will request psychiatric evaluation, that takes time. Counsel for defendant also must put together a defence that involves hours of research into clients mental history.
On top of all this there was covid panic that affected all areas of state government, including court system for past four years.
the “COVID panic”? I think a better phrase is the COVID pandemic. “COVID panic” sounds MAGA.
Agreed, the trial speed is unfathomable. Whether an accused is guilty or not, they have a constitutional right to a speedy trial per the 6th amendment. Besides the human rights issues, multi year delays like this case significantly increase jail costs (and lets recitivists run free for years, if ROR’d). How to we force the justice branch of government to improve court efficiency? The money is there, it just needs to be wrenched from the fists of the prison industrial complex.
Persons are not sent to “prison” until convicted.
NYS does have right to speedy trial laws on its books. However much of what many call “delays” are simply baked into how NYC handles felony cases. This includes requirement for prosecutors to bring cases before a grand jury seeking an indictment.
https://www.ils.ny.gov/files/30.30%20Manual%202020.pdf
It is also quite common in both civil and criminal cases that counsel representing defendant or plaintiff to drag things out by seeking repeated adjournments for various reasons. Idea is to wear down opposing side via attrition.
Often it’s the defense who elects to not move quickly. They want to delay for as long as possible in and effort to help their client win at trial.
Forensic patients were one of my specialties in our New York State Psychiatric system. For 2-3 years on in-patient & 15 years on out-patient, I worked closely with several dozen adults legitimately found not guilty of violent felonies under Criminal Procedure Law. It’s not yet clear Johnston qualifies for this plea, & unfortunately, that will be determined by a judge & jury who may know little to nothing about mental illness.
That aside, contrary to popular belief, CPL status is never a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone. Typically, these people are under strict restrictions to cooperate with treatment through in-patient & out-patient for about 3 times as long as they would serve after a guilty verdict on the same crime. Throughout that time, CPL patients are also afforded much more careful mental health care & support than other psychiatric patients.
Most of our “SPMIs” (Seriously & Persistently Mentally Ill patients) are sadly & callously allowed to self-destruct &/or run wild through their own denial & noncompliance, with little to no support or interference by either government or social agencies. Especially since DeBlasio let his wife squander 3/4 of a billion dollars of City mental health budget while dismantling our public school & other services; we still have no idea where or to whom that fortune went, but Mrs. DeBlasio sure set us all up for the armies of the deranged homeless we trip over each day now.
Several very important points are brought up in this comment:
– There’s little or no interference from the government or the social welfare agencies to help those who can’t function due to the mental illness. Therefore they are free to roam around and die in cold weather or assault unsuspecting passerbyers. How can we fix that? We don’t have laws to start with that let you do that. We don’t have institutions where to place seriously mentally ill either. We need both.
– ThriveNYC is an obvious money mismanagement (to put it mildly), but no one has been looking into that. Isn’t it a duty of Mr. Stringer who is proudly running for a mayor? Why no one is asking him? Why WSR is not asking him that while featuring mayoral candidates?
Thank you for your detailed comment. It think you should write an article about it for WSR.
The pictures reminded me of the amazing kindness that Sue exhibited towards animals, and dogs in particular. I recall how she cared for a white pit bull mix named “Mr. Pink”. I also new Sue in a professional capacity and she was a great ‘creative’ (ad agency parlance) to work with. Every time I walk by her building, I think of her.
My mind forever changed once I saw a picture resembling the alleged weapon. Ghastly killing thing, not for paring apples. Allegedly bought off Amazon for what exactly?