By Joy Bergmann

On Monday, a Manhattan jury found Anya Johnston, 29, guilty of second-degree murder for the October 17, 2018, stabbing death of her neighbor Susan Trott, rejecting an insanity defense presented by Johnston’s attorney. 

Johnston did not visibly react as the verdict was read. Her mother, also in the courtroom, sat silently as well. 

Judge Ruth Pickholz is scheduled to sentence Johnston on May 1, when she could receive a prison term between 15 years to life. 

Susan Trott’s longtime friend and business partner Eric Boscia expressed relief at the verdict. “I feel a big weight off my shoulders knowing justice has been served,” he said in a call with WSR. “It’s been such a long, surreal experience.” 

The trial offered a window into Johnston’s mind and clinicians’ struggle to understand and diagnose her mental condition. Testimony from 19 witnesses – along with more than 50 exhibits – also illuminated the timeline of events leading up to and following the death of Trott, who was 70. 

Dueling Expert Opinions

Prior to trial, two forensic psychiatrists interviewed Johnston to evaluate her mental state. They reviewed thousands of Johnston’s medical records from long before, contemporaneous with, and after the murder. And they read Johnston’s diary. Their expert assessments – documented in lengthy reports admitted into evidence and discussed during their testimony – came to very different conclusions as to whether Johnston should be held responsible for the crime. 

Dr. Eric Goldsmith, the defense’s expert forensic psychiatrist, testified that, on the night of the murder, Johnston was in a “very disturbed, psychotically depressed state of mind,” had “lost touch with reality,” and met diagnostic criteria for schizoaffective disorder. Because of her serious mental illness, Goldsmith believed she “lacked substantial capacity to appreciate that her conduct was wrong,” and should be found not responsible. 

The prosecution’s forensic psychiatry expert Dr. Jason Hershberger refuted that assessment, calling Johnston “a psychopath” who had been “preoccupied with violence and homicide for years,” and, when she fatally slashed Trott in the neck, she knew what she was doing, and knew it was wrong. He added that he believed Johnston was either “indifferent to…or actively enjoyed the wrongfulness” of killing Trott. 

Hershberger pointed to 2018 medical records documenting how Johnston “objectively lacked psychotic symptoms” like hallucinations or delusions. He believed a better diagnosis to be borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and unspecified depressive disorder – mood disorders that do not incapacitate at a level meeting the insanity defense standard in New York. Hershberger believed Johnston should be held responsible for the murder. 

Complex Psychiatric History

Attorneys for both sides presented excerpts from Johnston’s treatment records from her preschool days up through her current stay on Rikers Island. 

These records showed that, over the past decade, Johnston has attempted suicide at least six times and was hospitalized after each attempt. From age 11 until days before the killing, Johnston saw an Upper West Side neuropsychologist for therapy at least once a week.

Throughout her decades of treatment, however, psychiatrists disagreed on Johnston’s primary diagnosis, pegging her with various depressive disorders, ADHD, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, schizoaffective disorder, borderline personality disorder, and more. 

But Assistant District Attorney Harrison Schweiloch focused jurors’ attention on Johnston’s Mount Sinai West emergency room record for October 18, 2018, when she was evaluated as a suicide risk just a few hours after the murder, but days before police found Sue Trott’s body.  Emergency room doctors, who did not know about the killing, described Johnston as “calm, cooperative, with clear speech, and euthymic affect [good mood].” They found Johnston did have suicidal ideation and a plan to act on it, but no evidence of paranoia, delusions, or hallucinations. Their diagnosis:  Borderline personality disorder.

Johnston’s Disturbing Diary 

Johnston did not take the stand at her trial. But readings from her diary – spanning from November 2016 until two days before the murder – revealed a turbulent inner life. 

In the diary, she expressed hatred for her adoptive mother and contempt for clinicians, saying she had fooled them into believing she was complying with treatment. She described herself as “lonely” and alienated, engaging with people only “as tools.” In writing that she had to mask her true self at her job as a Symphony Veterinary Center assistant, Johnston said: “I have enough social skill and awareness to act and be seen as relatively normal, but I really am a monster.” Diary entries also expressed a longing for death, describing suicidal-homicidal fantasies including the “BEST DREAM EVER” about injecting people with a pet-euthanizing solution before turning the needle on herself. 

In 2018, Johnston’s diary entries began to describe an action plan. “I have made the Decision…That one will die, as I do,” she wrote. She named the month – October – and said she felt a “relentless calm,” about her mission, adding: “If you insist on getting in my way, I’ll kill you.” Johnston wrote that she had “a blade and oh god you better believe I WILL use it.” In the diary’s last line, written two days before the murder, she hints at one other to-do item. “I cannot WAIT to rip you apart lady, it’s gonna be beautiful.” 

Johnston never mentioned Susan Trott in the diary, nor did Trott’s name appear in therapy notes or medical records or in conversations recalled by Johnston’s co-workers who testified at the trial.

Why’d She Kill Sue? 

According to witness testimony, trial exhibits, and her interviews with the evaluating forensic psychiatrists, Johnston had decided to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge on the night of October 17, 2018. She’d taken laxatives for three days prior to prevent soiling herself upon death. And she’d put a M48 Cyclone dagger and a smaller knife – both purchased on Amazon months earlier – in her backpack. The weapons were to fend off any Good Samaritans who tried to stop her from jumping.    

Johnston spent that Wednesday afternoon running errands on the Upper West Side:  closing a TD Bank account, purchasing bead glue at Michael’s, and picking up fresh berries at Whole Foods. 

By 6:15 p.m. she was back home at 710 West End Avenue but, “didn’t want to be by myself at home…I just needed a distraction,” Johnston told the evaluating forensic psychiatrists in interviews recounting her thoughts and movements that day. 

Johnston took her backpack and went looking for company. She first stopped by a couple’s apartment on the 12th floor; she used to cat-sit for them. But they weren’t home. 

Johnston then thought of Susan Trott, whom she knew was another kindhearted animal lover. The two didn’t have a relationship beyond being neighbors since the day in 1997 when Isabel Johnston adopted almost-three-years-old Anya from a Russian orphanage.

According to Johnston’s retelling, Johnston knocked on the 14th-floor door and Trott welcomed her in. They chatted in the living room about work and pets and life. Johnston mentioned her plan to end hers. Alarmed, Trott told Johnston she mustn’t do that, too many people cared about her. Trott said she would get Johnston some help. 

Johnston became enraged. No one was going to thwart her suicide plan. 

As Trott turned away, perhaps looking for her phone, Johnston plunged the cyclone dagger into her lower back. Trott let out a small scream and tried to fight back. Johnston then slashed Trott’s neck, severing her jugular vein and carotid artery as well as her windpipe, leaving her unable to breathe and bleeding profusely. She died moments later.  

Johnston then dragged Trott’s body into the bedroom and shut the door. As she left the scene, she locked the apartment door, something Trott never did in her decades of living in the doorman co-op. Johnston headed to her 15th floor apartment, leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind her. 

There, prosecutors said, Johnston washed herself and the dagger, carefully putting it back in its original sheath and box, and put it in her backpack. She made her way down to the first floor stairwell and left the backpack there. 

She left the building at 7:46 p.m. and went to the Brooklyn Bridge. 

But doubts crept in. 

Johnston told the evaluating forensic psychiatrists that, while on the bridge, she realized she didn’t want to leave her mom or her cat Sammi, whom she loved, but had also severely abused. 

She called her mother, told her what she had been planning, and promised to come home. Isabel summoned the NYPD to be in the apartment when Anya arrived at 11:12 p.m. They would ensure her safe transport to Mount Sinai West for evaluation. 

A Surreal NYPD Encounter

Johnston didn’t flinch or flee when she discovered uniformed officers in her home. She didn’t know if they knew about Trott’s body downstairs. (They didn’t yet.) 

In NYPD body-worn-camera video footage shown during the trial, Johnston appears calm and quiet. She answers some of the police questions about how she spent her day, but does not respond when an officer inquires about some scratches on her face. 

At one point, Johnston is heard saying: “I want to get my backpack. It’s downstairs on the first floor.” After an officer retrieves it, Johnston takes the backpack into her kitchen, removes the berries from Whole Foods, and puts them in the refrigerator.

Security cameras showed Johnston and EMTs leaving for the hospital at 11:35 p.m.  

Upstairs, her mother and police searched her backpack, worried she might have hoarded pills or something else to harm herself, an NYPD officer testified. They discovered the cyclone dagger, a smaller knife, and latex gloves. 

Only on the following Sunday morning would their significance become clear when the NYPD discovered Sue Trott’s body after her business partner Eric Boscia called and requested a wellness check.

Two weeks later, on October 30, 2018, officers arrested Anya Johnston in the hospital. 

And five and a half years after that, seven women and five men found her guilty of second-degree murder. 

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, counselors are available 24/7 to listen and provide support. Call or text 988 to reach NYC’s Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. 

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