Van Gundy, 56, had been the upstairs neighbor of Pandora and Charles Zan II. Pandora Zan, 46, is on trial this week on eight counts related to Charles’ Oct. 17 stabbing death that include three counts of complicity to commit aggravated murder.
Investigators say Pandora’s son, Cody Henderson, killed Charles, but that Pandora planned the slaying with her son, who is to be tried in June.
Pandora Zan’s defense attorney, Al Wilmes, told the jury Monday that only Cody was responsible.
Van Gundy said the first scream woke him and he looked at his clock. It was 5:50 a.m. It was a man’s voice, which he recognized as Charles Zan’s.
The voice just asked for “help,” Van Gundy said.
He heard some mumbling, then quiet. He assumed the Zans were having a domestic dispute or that Charles Zan was having “night terrors.”
Ten minutes later, he heard the same voice cry out for help again. The voice was more subdued, but “it had agony,” Van Gundy told Assistant County Prosecutor Dan Brandt.
Van Gundy got out of bed, grabbed his cell phone and went to the window. When he looked out, he saw Pandora Zan standing by an apple tree in front of the building. She was wearing a bathrobe and her dog was with her, he said.
“She was just calmly standing there,” Van Gundy said. “I just assumed she had everything under control.”
He said he returned to bed, but lay there wondering if he should get involved. About 6:15, he heard Pandora let out a “scream and sob” and then heard her say “I’m mad at you, daddy.”
During cross-examination by Wilmes, Van Gundy said he did not see anyone flee the building during the brief time he looked out of the window.
Earlier Tuesday, Assistant County Prosecutor Erin Claypoole played the 911 call Pandora Zan made.
In it, she told the dispatcher that intruders had broken into the apartment, knocked her out, and when she woke up her husband was covered in blood.
“I don’t think he’s breathing,” Zan told the dispatcher in the recording. “I’m in the bathroom. I can’t look at it.”
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