State rests in Pasco murder trial

Phillup Alan Partin, center, sits beside defense attorneys William Bennett, left, and Bjorn Brunvand during opening statements at the West Pasco Judicial Center last Tuesday morning. [Brendan Fitterer, Times]

NEW PORT RICHEY – After four days of jurors hearing eyewitness testimony, of listening to and watching recordings of the suspect, of learning how forensic evidence is collected and analyzed, the state rested its case against a man accused of murdering a 16-year-old runaway.

Phillup Alan Partin, 42, faces the death penalty if convicted of the 2002 murder of Joshan Ashbrook.

Jurors in Partin's trial listened this week to eyewitnesses who said they saw Joshan with Partin on the last day of her life: July 31, 2002. They listened to Partin's own recorded words of how he picked up the runaway alongside U.S. 19 and took her shopping and fishing with his 7-year-old daughter.

The jurors also heard recordings of Partin’s own voice, of how he dodged investigators for months, how he abandoned his daughter days after the murder, and how he feared for his life if he were to return to Florida.

The jury heard how forensic scientists linked the DNA found in a hair left embedded in the victim’s thumb to Partin. They learned how experts determined tire tracks found near where her body was dumped on Shady Hills Road could have come from Partin’s Ford F-150 pick-up. They heard how a blood stain was found on the carpet of Partin’s old room months after the murder.

The medical examiner told them how the teen was brutally murdered – stabbed, beaten, strangled, her throat cut and her skull dislocated from her spine.

This is Partin's second trial in this case. The first ended in a mistrial after a Pasco sheriff's detective incorrectly testified that a stain found near the body was not forensically tested.

In a jailhouse letter mailed to the St. Petersburg Times on the eve of his trial, Partin mocked the Pasco County Sheriff's office, which spent 13 months hunting him down.

Partin also mocked the troubled disciplinary record of one of the hunters, Deputy Scott Gattuso.

The defendant really showed his ire for Gattuso this week when the deputy testified against him. Partin stared at Gattuso as he testified, even as he left the courtroom.

But back in 2002, while on the run, Partin called Gattuso and displayed a different emotion: fear.

"Just so you know,'' Partin said in the recorded phone call. "I’m scared you will throw down and shoot me.''

***

Partin’s attorney, Bjorn Brunvand, hinted at the defense strategy when he asked the judge to acquit his client.

The defense blamed the murder on the landlord whom Partin lived at the time of the murder. They lived in the same house, the defense said, suggesting a scenario of how Partin’s hairs became linked to the body.

"It’s not unreasonable that the hair could have ended up on her as she was being killed in that room,'' Brunvand said, "unbeknownst to Mr. Partin.''

That was while the jury was out of the room. But before the state finished, prosecutor Mike Halkitis took a preemptive swing at the defense’s theory in front of the jury.

He called the last state witness, John Dykstra who was the landlord's boss, to testify that the landlord worked with his cleaning crew in Palm Harbor and St. Petersburg in the early-morning ours when Joshan was killed.

The judge denied the defense’s motion to acquit Partin.

The defense is now putting on its case.

-- Jamal Thalji, Times Staff Writer

Comments

[Mistrial Juror #5]

I was one of the 1st Trial Juror Members back in Oct. 2007 I listened very closely to the testimony that the state presented. I watched Partin, his legal team and thought of the child that died. I was not 100% convinced that Partin had committed the murder but was sure he knew about it and most likey participated in it. I think he had a better chance 1st time around. And, what happened to the blood evidence that caused the mis trial? Was it hers, his or inconclusive as I suspected? Just a waste of our tax payer money to re-try this case...