John Zanolli
John Zanolli’s murder trial began today with his defense team admitting that he killed his sister, Janice Zanolli, on Feb. 25 or 26, 2025, in the home they shared on Third Street in Masury.
However, the event was not premeditated, an element required to convict him of aggravated murder, said defense attorney Sharay Lewis.
“He did it,” Lewis told the jury of seven women and five men in her opening statement. “We’re not asking you to decide whether Mr. Zanolli killed his sister. What we’re asking you to decide is, ‘Did he plan to kill his sister.’”
Lewis also argued that leaving Janice Zanolli’s body in the bed where she was killed for three days does not constitute abuse of a corpse, the other offense John Zanolli is charged with.
Trumbull County First Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Becker countered that Zanolli acted with “prior calculation and design,” noting that the relationship between the brother and sister had deteriorated to the point that Janice wanted him out of the house, and that, after he killed her, he “went on with his life,” including shopping at a Brookfield convenience store and buying food from a Hubbard restaurant.
The first witnesses were another brother, Jeff Zanolli, and his girlfriend, Linda Dattilo. Jeff Zanolli said he had last seen his sister on Feb. 25, 2025, when he went to her house to help her with something. On March 1, 2025, he got a call from his brother Scott, who lives in Cleveland, who said that a friend of Janice’s had called him and was worried because she was not able to get hold of Janice.
Dattilo noted that they hadn’t heard from her for a few days, which was not normal.
Jeff Zanolli and Dattilo went to the house, letting themselves in with a basement door key that Jeff had. They walked up to Janice’s room, opened the door, saw Janice in bed, and closed the door. Jeff said he thought she might be sleeping.
Dattilo said “something didn’t sit right with me” because it wasn’t like Janice to sleep so late. She went back in the room and saw blood on Janice’s face and a hand and on the bed. She said she exited the room and told Jeff they needed to get out of the house and go to the police station.
At the police station, the office was closed – it was Sunday, March 1, 2025 – so Jeff called the 911 center number posted on the door, and reported what they found. The 911 dispatcher told them to go back to the house and wait until “a squad” arrived, a reference to an ambulance.
The couple said they did not see John at the house, but that was not unusual given that he rarely came out of his room and they did not go to the part of the house where his room is located.
The prosecution entered into evidence a series of Facebook messages between Janice and Jeff that started on Feb. 24, 2025. In them, Janice ranted about John, how he doesn’t help around the house, doesn’t contribute to the bills, had been fired from his job, was not seeking a new job, and that he “had no compassion for my position.” Janice had retired and was living on Social Security.
Janice called John a “loser” and said he “has no grasp on reality.” She said she wanted to throw him out of the house and that “she wasn’t gonna take care of him like our parents did all those years.”
Although Janice had threatened to have John evicted, she had no power to do so until the probate of their father’s will was complete, Jeff said. Their father, F. Patrick Zanolli, a former Brookfield industrial arts teacher, had died Sept. 9, 2024. Their mother, Dee, died in 2021.
Testimony will resume Tuesday, said Judge Sean O’Brien.
