Staff photo / Ed Runyan Defense attorney Josh Weemhoff and defendant John Zanolli watch body-camera and police interrogation video during Zanolli’s aggravated murder trial Tuesday in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court. Zanolli is accused of killing his sister, Janice, on Feb. 26, 2025, at the home they shared in Masury.

WARREN — Closing arguments will be given this afternoon in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in the aggravated murder trial of John Zanolli, 62, of Masury, after testimony ended Tuesday.

Zanolli is accused of killing his sister, Janice Zanolli, 65, on Feb. 26, 2025, in the home they shared. However, as the defense said in opening statements Monday before Judge Sean O’Brien, there is little question that Zanolli killed his sister. The question is whether he committed a premeditated murder.

John Zanolli did not take the stand on his own behalf. But because Zanolli talked with investigators in a recorded interview at the Brookfield Police Department March 1, 2025, after his sister’s body was found, it was almost like he testified.

Prosecutors played the audio and video from the interview, which was recorded the day police wrestled John Zanolli into custody while Zanolli pointed a long rifle upward at his head, repeatedly telling police the reasons he thought he should die.

Jurors also viewed the body camera video from that interaction. It showed how Brookfield police Sgt. Cody Dean and other officers kept John Zanolli from killing himself long enough to disable him with a stun gun and take his weapon away.

Dean testified that Brookfield police were alerted March 1, 2025, to go to the Zanolli house on Third Street in Masury, where John and his sister lived, where they found Janice in her bed with blood on her face and hands.

A Brookfield officer and others arrived at the home before Dean and went inside, but heard a noise upstairs and suspected John Zanolli might be there. They backed out of the house. At some point, Dean and other officers went in and saw John in his room with a rifle under his chin.

One officer can be heard saying, “He has a gun to his head,” and an officer yelling forcefully several times to “Put it down. Put it down. Put it down.”

Dean’s voice took on a kinder tone as he said, “John, come on. We can work it out, Bro. Come on,” and then some back and forth between Dean and John Zanolli.

“Can you tell me what happened,” Dean asked John Zanolli. It wasn’t possible to hear what John said in return, but Dean replied, “OK. We can work through it.”

Dean and John continued with that dialogue for about 30 minutes. After about 10 minutes, John mentioned a “pact” and later apparently explained that he and his sister had made a pact that John would kill her and that he would then kill himself.

“We can work with that. It’s not too late,” Dean reassured John, trying to get him to put down the rifle.

Eventually the sound of the stun gun is heard, followed by the sound of a person yelling in pain and handcuffs being applied. The video was paused while Trumbull County Assistant Prosecutor Chris Becker asked Dean to explain some of the things John Zanolli said during that conversation.

“He was talking about a pact and a lack of courage to keep up his end of the pact that he had made with the victim,” Dean said. The pact was “murder suicide,” Dean said. The stun gun incapacitated John, Dean said.

After John Zanolli was handcuffed, Dean read John his rights, and John was taken to a police cruiser. Becker played the interview John Zanolli gave at the Brookfield police station.

“Basically we talked about it over the past few months, just sporadically,” John said of the pact. “Ever since Trump won the election, she was ticked off.”

John said his sister couldn’t commit suicide so she asked him if he would do it. John said nothing “led up to” John killing his sister the specific night of Feb. 26 at about 10 p.m.

John was asked if his sister knew when it was going to happen, and he said she did not want to know.

John said that on Feb. 26, he went to her bedroom, where she was reading. “She goes ‘What?’ And I said ‘it’s time.’ And she said ‘No. No. No.’

“I said it’s time. Then she ducked her head, and that is when I shot her,” John said. He shot her a second time, shut the door to her bedroom and left.

He stayed home that night, but did leave the house once each of the next two days for food and cigarettes.

Later Tuesday, a forensic scientist at the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation testified that he analyzed bullets and bullet fragments that were collected and the gun recovered from the house, but he could not confirm they were a match.

Trumbull County Deputy Coroner George Sterbernz testified Tuesday that the first gunshot entered Janice Zanolli’s body in her lower shoulder and exited another part of her shoulder, then entered her head near her ear. It would have been a fatal wound. The second shot, which was at an upward angle from below her chin, would have been more instantly fatal, he said.

Becker said in his opening statement in the trial Monday that the evidence “will clearly show there was no murder-suicide pact.” In fact, “There is no evidence Janice wanted to die.”

In her opening statement, defense attorney Sharay Lewis said, “Essentially what we’re asking you to decide is if (John Zanolli) planned to kill his sister. Does the evidence show there was prior calculation and design? Or does the evidence show that this was a sudden decision based on the dynamic of two adults and a threat of someone being kicked out of the house?”

She said Janice was the executrix of her parents’ estate and was going to sell the house, divide the assets among the five siblings and that John would have to move out.

She said after John killed his sister, he stayed in the house and did not tell anyone he had killed her. A family member came by three days later because they had not heard from her and discovered her body.

“He killed his sister and he didn’t have anywhere to go,” Lewis said.