A 21-year-old Florida man has been arrested after police say he strangled his pregnant stepmother and called 911 from a cemetery to confess to killing her.
Police officers found Ian Anselmo in Sue Ellen Anselmo's SUV on March 13. The 39-year-old mother-of-six was bleeding and unconscious in the driver's seat, a cord wrapped taut around her neck.
Lake County charged Ian in the assault of his stepmother, but offered no motive in a probable cause affidavit.
Ian Anselmo, 21 (left), has been charged with assault of his pregnant stepmother, 39-year-old Sue Ellen Anselmo (right), who was strangled with a cord and later died
Police say Ian called from Greenwood Cemetery in Eustis, Florida, on March 13 and confessed to killing his stepmother
The charges are likely to be upgraded because she later died in the hospital of her injuries. Sue Ellen was six weeks pregnant with her seventh biological child at the time of her death.
She was also a stepmother to her husband's three children from a previous marriage, including Ian.
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ShareHer husband and Ian's father, 41-year-old John Anselmo, told the Orlando Sentinel of the cemetery killing, 'this whole thing seems so weird.'
In the 911 call made from Greenwood Cemetery in Eustis at around 4pm, authorities said Ian mentioned an argument. They offered few other details.
'I killed my mom. She's dead,' Ian told an emergency dispatcher, according to 911 transcripts. 'I strangled her.'
John and Sue Ellen Anselmo had separated a week before the slaying after 13 years of marriage, and the woman's family, including her grown daughter, painted a dark portrait of a turbulent relationship marred by alleged sexual and physical abuse in the family.
Sue Ellen was six weeks pregnant with her seventh child fathered by her newly estranged husband, John
John has denied beating his wife or molesting her daughter from a previous marriage when she was a teenager.
He insisted that his wife was his 'everything,' that he loved her and wanted to reconcile with her, despite her mental health problems.
But Sue Ellen's mother, Cynthia Miller, did not trust her son-in-law, and while her daughter was in the hospital she filed an emergency petition seeking temporary guardianship over her daughter.
She expressed doubt that John, whom she called a 'person of interest' in the investigation into the attack on her daughter, would make medical decisions in the best interest of his wife.
Police told Daily Commercial on Thursday that John Anselmo is not a person of interest in the case.
Miller also alleged in the petition that her daughter moved out of the family home with her young children 'due to fear for her own safety and the safety of her children.'
Sue Ellen worked as a hair stylist for 20 years while her husband, a former school teacher, was a stay-at-home dad raising five of the couple's youngest children, ages 16 months, three, four, seven and 10, including a boy with Down syndrome.
John said of his son Ian that he aspired to become a textbook editor. He was also training as a wrestler.
A GoFundMe account that was launched by a friend on behalf of Sue Ellen's mother and one of her daughters - but not her husband - has drawn more than $22,300 in donations as of Friday afternoon.
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