Accused: "They will probably kill me for this"

Prosecutor Mike Halkitis holds up an image in opening remarks showing the thumb of the 16-year-old Joshan Ashbrook where he says there was a piece of hair embedded in a cut. The DNA in that hair matches the defendant's, Halkitis said. [David Degner | Times]

NEW PORT RICHEY -- Opening arguments in the Phillup Alan Partin murder trial began this morning at the West Pasco Judicial Center.

Partin, 42, is charged with first-degree murder. He could be put to death if convicted of the 2002 death of 16-year-old runaway Joshan Ashbrook. He has already done time for taking a life, convicted of strangling a Miami man in 1987.

Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis was first, laying out the prosecution's case against Partin:

Ashbrook's body was discovered in the brush off Shady Hills Road on Aug. 1, 2002. She had stab wounds to the face, neck and arms, the medical examiner determined, and something had been wrapped tightly around her wrists, ankles and neck.

Cause of death: blunt trauma to her head and neck.

Then Halkitis spent 75 minutes connecting Partin to Ashbrook: the surveillance cameras that caught Partin and Ashbrook together at the Port Richey Wal-Mart Supercenter the day before she was found dead; the landlord who saw them together in Partin's room that day, then later found a blood stain linked to Ashbrook; the hair found on Ashbrook's thumb linked to Partin; the tire tracks near the body similar to the kind of tires on Partin's old pick-up.

Partin spent 15 months playing a cat-and-mouse game with detectives, Halkitis said. But by the time they tracked him down and arrested him North Carolina in October 2003, the prosecutor said, the defendant seemed well aware of where this could all lead to.

Soon after his arrest, Partin called a friend in Colorado. Police taped the call.

"They will probably kill me for this," Partin said.

The jury will hear the defense's opening later this afternoon.

Jamal Thalji, Times staff writer