GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WZZM) -- Mounting financial difficulties coupled with a boyfriend who didn't pay bills culminated with Robin Root being forced out of the home she rented from the insurance executive she's accused of killing.
The mother of three supported herself through photography and working as a loan officer, but it wasn't enough to make monthly payments to Janna Kelly, who lived across from Root's rental home on Woodmeadow Dr. SE.
"I already owed her money, I couldn't afford to live there so I told her I would have to move out,'' Root told Ottawa County sheriff's deputies in a taped interview last April.
Root was served with an eviction notice after Kelly filed a landlord-tenant suit in Grand Rapids District Court. A judge in March, 2007 ordered Root to pay Kelly $2,917.
Root and Kelly were discussing payment of that judgement in December, 2007. Root told police she pushed Kelly, causing her to fall and hit her head. Kelly was unconscious but still breathing when Root said she put Kelly in the trunk of Kelly's car.
When she checked the car the next morning, Kelly was dead. Root said she drove the car to Grand Haven Township, found vacant land and disposed of the body, according to her statement to police.
The one-time Forest Hills school bus driver is on trial in Kent County Circuit Court for Kelly's Dec. 4, 2007 disappearance and death. Jurors on Thursday are expected to hear more taped interviews between detectives and Root prior to her April 27 arrest for Kelly's murder.
Earlier Wednesday, an Ottawa County sheriff's detective testified that DNA evidence collected from Root in December, 2007 matched blood found on a jacket zipper and the door handle of Kelly's car, which was found on Louise Street west of Plymouth Avenue SE just hours after police interviewed Root on Dec. 6.
After months of searching, a land surveyor found Kelly's body March 13, 2008 off of Pierce Street west of U.S. 31 in Ottawa County.
Portions of Wednesday's interview played for jurors dealt with Root's financial struggles. In 2006, a mortgage company went to court to evict Root from a home on Woodcliff Avenue SE in Grand Rapids. She then moved to the home Kelly offered for rent.
As financial difficulties mounted, she was forced to borrow money from her father to make ends meet.
"I'd pay her little bits and little bits but it was sinking deeper and deeper in a hole,'' Root told detectives. "She was frustrated and I knew that.''