Lawyer for Lake man who killed pregnant stepmom in cemetery seeks sentencing leniency

An Orlando lawyer defending a Lake man who killed his pregnant stepmother by strangling her in a Eustis cemetery has asked a judge to depart from sentencing guidelines calling for a minimum of 37 years in prison and a maximum term of  life.

In a 31-page court filing, defense lawyer Richard Hornsby cited Ian Anselmo’s history of mental disorders and a cultish family upbringing as reasons justifying a prison term of 15 to 20 years. Sentencing had been set for Tuesday but was postponed until September.

His siblings also sent hand-printed letters to Circuit Judge Brian Welke begging him to not take Anselmo away.

“Ian and I have always been very close,” wrote 12-year-old Korak. “He is super funny and smart, which makes him very fun to talk to and play with. He is always teaching me something new, whether it be a word or an animal fact.”

A jury found Anselmo guilty in April of second-degree murder in the killing of Sue-Ellen Anselmo, 39, and her unborn child.

Sue-Ellen, who’d hired a divorce lawyer the day before she was strangled, had picked up her stepson and driven to the cemetery near the family home where they could talk. He was so excited about the family possibly reuniting he ran barefooted from the house to greet her.

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Ian Anselmo, who aspired to be a professional wrestler, broke her jaw, choked her unconscious with his bare hands and strangled her with a mobile phone cord. He then called 911 with his stepmother’s cellphone and waited in the backseat of her SUV for police to arrive.

Sue-Ellen had left the marital home with the couple’s five youngest children about a week before she was killed.

In closing remarks to the jury, Hornsby heaped blame for Sue-Ellen’s death on her estranged and often-controlling husband John. The lawyer had asked jurors to find Ian Anselmo not guilty by reason of insanity and to write on verdict forms that John was guilty.

They did neither.

In his latest filing, Hornsby quoted testimony of Dejah-Thoris Waite, one of nine children in Sue-Ellen and John’s blended family, who described her stepfather’s strict authoritarian rule as abusive and “mafia-esque,” requiring an uncompromising loyalty to the “Anselmo Code.”

Waite, Sue-Ellen’s biological daughter, also testified there would be “repercussions” for leaving the family.

Hornsby argued in the filing that mental health professionals who evaluated Ian Anselmo testified “the father’s control over the children, and Ian in particular, was unnaturally strong. And whether true or not, all the children genuinely believed Sue-Ellen posed a mortal danger to their safety and the safety of their younger siblings and they were worked into a frenzy of fear and anxiety over being separated … ”

According to trial testimony from psychiatrist Tonia Werner, which Hornsby summarized, Ian Anselmo said he begged Sue-Ellen not to split the family for the children’s sake and she responded, “They’ll get over it,” after which he blacked out and awoke in the back seat of the car crying with his hands covered in blood.

shudak@orlandosentinel.com