This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Attorneys for the 17-year-old boy accused in the 2012 murder of 15-year-old Anne Kasprzak are asking that the teen's criminal charges be separated.
The teen is charged in 3rd District Juvenile Court with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony obstruction of justice. Prosecutors are trying to certify the teen as an adult and have his case tried in adult court.
But during a Thursday court hearing, defense attorney Bill Russell asked that the two charges be severed from one another before a certification and preliminary hearing set for next month.
Russell argued that the two alleged offenses — the homicide and subsequent lies told to police — were not committed in the "same criminal episode."
Russell said that if Judge Dane Nolan did sever the charges, his client was ready to plead guilty to the obstruction charge in juvenile court that day.
But Nolan told attorneys that he would file a written ruling at a later date.
Prosecutor Patricia Cassell asked the judge to keep the two charges tied to one another.
"We would ask that you do find they were in the same criminal episode," Cassell said. "They really are intertwined and linked. We wouldn't have the obstruction of justice without the underlying crime."
Cassell also argued that even if the charges were severed, prosecutors could still ask for the teen defendant to be certified as an adult on each felony charge. She said having separate hearings for the two charges was not in the interest of "judicial economy."
The teen is scheduled to be back in court again on March 2, when the seven-day preliminary hearing is scheduled to begin.
The boy — who was 14 at the time of the slaying — was charged last October with the crimes. 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.
The defendant was Kasprzak's boyfriend at the time. While police and prosecutors have remained tight-lipped about a motive in girl's death, a search warrant affidavit indicates the girl may have 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, was extradited to Utah after his arrest and is being held in a juvenile court facility.
Twitter: @jm_miller