Woman Charged With Murder in Horrifying Pool Fight Case

0:00A 70 year old woman was found floating dead in a community swimming pool, and police say it was no accident. Now a woman referred to as an acquaintance is charged with her murder. We are digging in to what the investigation has uncovered so far and the questions that still need to be answered. I'm Anjana Atlivi, and this is Crime Fix. It's been nearly a week since an elderly woman was found dead in an apartment complex swimming pool in Alabama, and the community is still reeling. And while police have been keeping a lot of the details about their investigation secret, we are learning more about the accused killer. On Thursday, September 3rd, 911 dispatchers got a call. It was around 9.30 pm, and the call was about a person who was unresponsive at the swimming

1:05pool of an apartment complex. First responders tried to save the 70 year old woman who's now been identified by local media outlets as Terry Lynn Walker's and Niga. According to a press release from Hoover Police on the Facebook page for the police department, investigators soon found their suspect. She is 30 year old Anastasia, Sudasana, who it appears also uses the name Anastasia Ramben online. Here's what the police release says. Detectives responded to the scene to begin their investigation and located a person of interest near the area and determined she was an acquaintance of the victim. Evidence showed a physical struggle occurred just before the victim's death, which is being investigated as a homicide. The official cause and manner of death will be released by the Jefferson County Coroner slash medical examiner's office upon the conclusion of the investigation. Anastasia, Sudasana, was arrested and booked into jail without bond.

2:08Prosecutors have now charged her with murder, the apartment complex where Terry Walker's and Niga was found. It's really nice. It's in a nice area. And the photos I've seen online show a beautiful, beautiful setting. Hoover is actually a nice, fast growing suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Authorities have not revealed a possible motive for this deadly encounter. According to local Alabama media outlets, Sudasana was in a Ukrainian orphanage as a child before being adopted by an American family. She was featured on a Birmingham news segment in 2022, talking about helping her family escape Ukraine following the invasion of Russian troops. Anastasia has prior her arrest back in 2024. She was charged with public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest. The clerk told me that Anastasia was actually found guilty of resisting arrest, but the other charges were dismissed.

3:10So to really dig in to the mystery of all of this, I want to bring in John Phillips. He's a victim's rights attorney, and he's licensed to practice in eight states. Get that, including Alabama. So John, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Thank you. It's always good to talk about my home. I know the Hoover and Birmingham area quite well, and it's a really compelling case you have this morning. Yeah. Well, I'm so glad that you are familiar with Hoover and the Birmingham area. So let's dig into this. This is stunning to me. I think this really grabs your attention when you see that a 30-year-old woman, this Anastasia, she is charged with murder after the 70-year-old woman, Terry Lynn Walker, is found unresponsive and dead in a swimming pool. And this is a swimming pool at an apartment complex. So where do you begin with this? It seems confounding to me. Obviously, there was an autopsy.

4:11Obviously, so we start backwards, right? There's a call to police at some point. Police find a body underwater. They got to then figure out, OK, how did this body, how did this person die? Who is it? I think they've now identified the victim as Miss Walker. And then look around, look left, look right. Oh, we found this other person. It's a person of interest. Now they're going from a person of interest to somebody that's going to face charges. And there's still a lot of unknowns as to, you know, they think they have the who done it, but the why done it and the how done it certainly seem to remain. Yeah, and you're right. We have a lot of questions here. I mean, first of all, how do they identify this person of interest in Anastasia? You know, was it eyewitnesses? Was it surveillance footage? And you know, my big question here is, you know, this happened.

5:13It appears on a weekday or so. So how many people are out at the swimming pool at this time of day when this is occurring? You know, I mean, it could be any number of people depending on the work hours of the people who live in the complex, that type of thing. You've got to, you've got a ton. We do some negligent security work. So, you know, plus there's cameras. You know, people have ring doorbells and if they're, you know, back door front doors facing the pool. Like there's so much that people, you know, so many videos, so many, you know, so many witnesses, ear witnesses, eyewitnesses, and I'm sure police are kind of combing through that to try to figure out the story and must have enough to, you know, to issue, you know, the start of the process to find probable cause to hold her. I think she's being held without bond, which is pretty common to start off with Alabama,

6:14you know, given the consequences of this being a, you know, chapter 13 murder case. And you know, was it, you know, what happened here is the question. Was it self-defense? Was the, you know, was the, was she hurt outside of the pool and put into the pool? And she drowned in the pool. The age gap of 40 years is certainly something that makes us all go, hmm, you know, this, this could have been domestic, you know, girlfriend, girlfriend kind of thing, but probably not with the age gap in the, in the, you know, them being the same gender. Did they know each other? Were they fighting over, you know, somebody playing music too loud? What happened here? Right. And that's the big question. What happened here? The police are being tight-lipped. That is not unusual in these murder investigations. Sometimes you get these police departments, John, that'll put it all out there in a probable cause statement or something like that. But in this case, they're just saying, look, this is what the call was.

7:16We found a woman. There were signs of a struggle. She was unresponsive in the pool. She passed away, obviously. And now we have a suspect charged with murder. So why do you think in some instances we get all the goods laid out? And then in others, they hold the information back and they're very tight-lipped about it. Because for all we know, in a state, you could have given a statement. We just don't know. We don't know. And so much of this depends upon the chief prosecutor of the area, you know, kind of what their policy and procedure is and dealing with media and prosecutions and the sheriff. And sometimes they conflict. Sometimes they get along about such things. But it seems like this one is what you don't want is you want to get information. And sometimes when you release too much information, you could help the defendant, right? And prosecutors, even though just as supposed to be fair and balanced, really don't want

8:19to help the defendant, you know, they think they have their case right. Which is where, you know, criminal defense lawyers come in and be like, nope, nope, nope, nope. But, you know, it just kind of depends in Hoover in and of itself. And I don't know this particular apartment complex. But Hoover in and of itself is typically the more prominent part of Birmingham. And so, you know, that area probably has a more just completely stereotyping here. I don't remember who the prosecutor and sheriff is there right now. Please, please, head. But they tend to be closer to the vest there in that area. A little bit more conservative venue. And, you know, by releasing nothing, sometimes they get, oh, you know what? Let's check my ring video. And I'm sure, you know, the policing there is being thorough and going, you know, door by door and figuring out what happened.

9:20And just, you know, until it's time for the bond hearing or, or, you know, more formal hearing, just not releasing the details. But meanwhile, inquiring minds want to know. Yeah, inquiring minds do want to know. You know, we have some information, obviously, that our victim was 70 years old. There are signs of a struggle according to police. In Estasia, our suspect who's innocent until proven guilty, of course, is 30 years old. So we have a 40 year age difference here. So what on earth could have occurred here? We don't know. But my god, like signs of a physical struggle and a 70 year old woman is found in the swimming pool. And she's dead. And now this is a murder case. So we don't know if there was some kind of altercation that led to this woman having grave physical injuries and then she ends up in the pool. Or if the physical altercation occurred in the swimming pool. So they've got to piece all of that together.

10:22They do. And the fact that they've released, you know, so we have no coroner's report. We have no, like autopsy that have been released. Like we don't know what they know. And some of it takes time. And I know in Birmingham, particularly, you know, post COVID, there was a significant backup of medical examinations and, you know, like tremendously post COVID. And so I, you know, I assume they've caught that backup. But you never know. And sometimes whether it's toxicology or some levels of trauma investigation, they have to outsource it to others to do the research. And so, you know, we don't, again, we don't, we don't know. And they've used the term acquaintance, which I think, you know, gives some level of familiarity. This wasn't two strangers. But they're also in an apartment complex. So you would think everybody would be a little bit neighborly. You know, was this the fight of the barking dog or was this, you know, was this, you know,

11:28something more serious? Was this self-defense? Because of the age gap. Now, the older I get, the more 70 is young, right? But 70 is. Right. You know, post-retirement age, I've probably still be working at 70. But it's post-retirement age. And somebody 30 years younger certainly should be able to get the advantage of that person. And it rings of a level of, you know, elderly abuse too. Like, I don't like this at all. It seems pretty horrible and certainly a horrible way to die. Yeah, horrible way to die. And this happened, I guess the 911 call was at 9.30 pm on a Thursday night. So we don't know if people were hanging out at the pool that late. A lot of times when you're at an apartment complex, you know, who knows if people actually follow the rules. But the pool is usually closed at dusk.

12:30At least that's my recollection when I lived in a condo, you know, at dusk you weren't supposed to be, you know, like at dusk or at dark, the pool closed. So you know, 9.30 at night, I would assume it was dark already. And so the 911 call comes in and there's a woman unresponsive in the pool. And so we don't even know who called 911. But you're right, there is this acquaintance relationship. They are known to one another. And also we don't know the condition of Terry Walker. We don't know if Terry Walker is a fit, well, you know, 70 year old, a 70 year old can be fit and able these days, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean somebody's old. You know, so and you know, somebody who's 40 years younger, who's a 30 year old woman, depending on how great a shape they're in, obviously could maybe get the better of that person. That raises a lot of questions to me that this happened at 9.30 pm at night.

13:31For sure. And you know, that's kind of what you would expect. You wouldn't expect an altercation like this at 9.30 in the morning when everybody's there. It's kind of towards the wee hours when, you know, people might have had drinks or, you know, vulnerabilities are gotten at the end of their patients after a long day. But nothing excuses murder. I mean, I guess legally self-defense excuses, some level of, you know, homicide. But you know, nothing excuses murder. And of course, she's innocent until proven guilty. And we don't, there's a lot, we don't know. But you know, if, if there were an average line for, you know, homicides at an apartment complex, I would expect this would fall between, you know, 9.00 pm and 2.00 am, typically, because that's when, you know, people are tired, tempers are flaring, and things are, things are happening. I know, you know, back in my day when, when I, I, in law school, when I lived in an apartment, I, there's many a time, I'd be like, oh, I could kill that guy, like loud music.

14:35But you don't, you know, you're bang on the roof a little, sealing a little bit, and you just get over it. But here, you know, we don't know what the ultimate cause was. And you know, John, from the photographs that I've seen online of this apartment complex, it looks like a nice place. This looks like a really nice apartment complex. This doesn't look like the type of place where, you know, you may have some bad stuff going on. You know, bad stuff can happen anywhere. But you know, this doesn't look like an apartment complex where you might have drug dealing happening, although that type of thing can happen anywhere. This looks like a decent place to live. You can't. And that doesn't surprise me at all, you know, given Hoover. You know, that's the zip code for Birmingham. You know, it's Vestavie Hills, there's Hoover. There's, it's one of the better zip codes to live in. There's a beautiful mall there that I used to, you know, I used to frequent, you know, it's, it's, Tuscaloosa's grown up, you know, where I went to school, but, but Birmingham,

15:36Hoover area was, was where you, you know, did the nice shopping. And so I would expect that community to have some retirees typed mixed, mixed with everybody else, you know, people that, that just, just love to live in Hoover. But you know, what, what happened here and, and, you know, handling negligent security cases, I've seen apartment complexes, you know, market themselves as the most prominent address in a town and have no security and have, you know, have, have issues that, that seep in by not regulating more, you know, but this was a, this was a community pool. This doesn't seem like, you know, necessarily a negligent security case. It seems like, you know, something went drastically wrong between these two, these two people. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Do you think though that we'll learn more details as the case proceeds? I mean, maybe not immediately.

16:38But now that we have the victim's name, and now that we at least are moving toward, learning an exact cause of death, which may, it would not be finalized for many weeks, because they still have to await toxicology results and things like that. Do you think that the authorities there may release a few more details here and there about exactly what happened or at least their theory about what happened? For sure. What I would expect, you know, kind of what, what happens next is, is the coroner's final report will be issued to the, to the parties, right? The prosecutor defend it if it hasn't already. And at some point that's going to give an impeachable, but a pretty good opinion of, of, you know, why they're using the term, you know, struggle or physical altercation, physical struggle, I think is what it said. And, you know, that's going to get into kind of the imprints and the tissue damage. And then, you know, certainly if it's a, if it's a drowning case, which some media's reported,

17:42I don't, I'm not ready to jump there if there was a physical struggle before it. But if it was a drowning case in the, you know, the water entered the lungs, that's something that, that an autopsy report is, is going to be great at. It's going to be excellent at determining that. But sometimes it's complicated with you, when you have both at the same time with comorbidities and all that. So that's, that's kind of the first line that we'll find out more. Typically there's a pretrial detention hearing where Bond is discussed. And then, you know, as a case gets, you know, further down the line, you know, local media there and, and certainly national media, like yourself, we'll, we'll be asking more questions. Signs of a physical struggle, you know, that could be injuries inflicted upon the victim, of course, but there could have also been injuries on anesthesia. That's correct. You know, typically when you're, when you're dealing with, and it depends

18:45on where the physical injuries are and what type they are, which we don't know. But, you know, it could be skin cells embedded in a fingernail. It could be, you know, gunshot residue, there's no indicator indication of a gunshot. It could be, you know, blunt force, transfers. There's so many things that, that, that we just don't know. But also, so, police made an arrest pretty quickly. And so, there's going to be some physical evidence and or admissions about how this happened that has led them to that point. No doubt. Well, we will keep a close eye on it. John Phillips always loved talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate your time. I always great to see you. Anastasia, sujrasana remains in the Jefferson County Jail in Alabama. And so, we're going to keep an

19:46eye on this case. And as soon as we learn more details, including details about what led up to this homicide and a possible motive, we'll let you know what we find out. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Angie Nellieby. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.