This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A March certification and preliminary hearing has been set for the 17-year-old boy charged with the 2012 murder of 15-year-old Anne Kasprzak.
The seven-day hearing, which will begin March 2, was set Thursday during a juvenile court hearing for the teen, who appeared shackled, wearing a gray sweatshirt, blue sweatpants and shaggy brown hair.
The boy will be back in court again on Dec. 15 for a scheduling conference, where attorneys will inform 3rd District Juvenile Court Judge Dane Nolan whether the teen's certification report and their experts are ready for the lengthy March hearing.
The boy — who was 14 at the time of the slaying — was charged as a juvenile last month with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony obstruction of justice.
Prosecutor Patricia Cassell said Thursday that they want the boy certified as an adult and to have the case tried in adult court.
"I'm not going to get into why exactly," Cassell said after the hearing. "But it's the nature of the offense, for sure. It's a homicide and it's the violent nature of the offense."
The Salt Lake Tribune generally does not identify juvenile defendants unless they have been certified to stand trial as an adult.
Kasprzak was last seen alive on March 10, 2012. The Draper girl's body, battered beyond recognition — DNA ultimately identified her — was found in the Jordan River the next day.
Salt Lake District Attorney Sim Gill and Draper police have declined to comment on a motive, but a search warrant affidavit tells the story of a girl who thought she was pregnant with her boyfriend's baby.
In an interview with police, Kasprzak's stepfather James Bratcher said he learned that Kasprzak was telling family and friends she was pregnant with the boy's baby.
Her family immediately made the girl take a pregnancy test, which came back negative.
However, Bratcher pointed out to the police that Kasprzak's day planner had a notation on March 1, 2012, that said the boyfriend "finds out." Bratcher clarified that meant Kasprzak had told the boy that she was pregnant with his baby.
Kasprzak's journal, too, talks about how she believed the boy "did not want the baby that she told him she was carrying," according to the search warrant.
Kasprzak's phone records show numerous calls to and from the defendant between 7 and 8:30 on the night of her disappearance, according to a probable cause statement filed in court. After 8:30 p.m., he never called Kasprzak again, according to the statement.
Police spoke to the defendant a few days after Kasprzak's body was found and asked for the shoes he was wearing. He told officers that Kasprzak had a bloody nose two weeks before at the home of one of his friends and that some of the blood dropped onto a shoelace, the probable cause statement says.
During an interview with officers, the friend at first said Kasprzak had a bloody nose at his house, the statement says. But after officers found a text on the friend's phone from the defendant asking him to tell police the bloody nose story, the friend admitted he had lied, the statement says.
The friend also said that the defendant told him he had been at the Jordan River that night but not to tell anyone, and also instructed him to erase the messages on his phone, according to the statement.
"The defendant's shoes were tested and human blood was located in multiple areas on both shoes," the statement says. "Further testing on the human blood on both shoes yielded a DNA profile which matches the DNA profile of Anne Kasprzak."
The boy, who was living in Grand Junction, Colo., at the time of his arrest last month, waived extradition to Utah.
Twitter: @jm_miller