The victim had been severely beaten and very unrecognizable.
The cause of death was blunt force trauma from some hard object.
She was in a foster care system.
She came to live with us at about the age of ten.
She had a huge heart.
Somebody close to her had something to do with her death.
Maybe his jealousy had reached a boiling point and he beat her to death in a fit of rage.
She described him as being in a gang
and would definitely do what he needed to do to get what he wanted.
He finds out she was pregnant and two weeks later she was found in a river.
She came forward and stated that she had witnessed the killing and gives us the name.
That information showed us that he was in the area where she was killed.
The phone pings on the towers for his phone could be what seals his fate.
[narrator] Every day in North America dozens of people are murdered.
The key to solving the toughest of these homicides
lies in the final 24 hours of the victim’s life.
To crack the case,
detectives must reconstruct that critical timeline,
the minutes and hours containing evidence
that can help unlock the mystery and catch the killer.
Draper, Utah a picturesque town just outside of Salt Lake City
that could be a postcard brought to life.
Draper is just a small commuter town
where a lot of people do work in downtown Salt Lake.
They commute back and forth.
It’s a very nice bedroom community, very nice homes and family oriented.
There are a lot of kids in Utah, a lot of larger families.
And so, it’s very common for kids to just go out in the neighborhood
and hang out with their friends.
Draper is known to be a very quiet community when it comes to crime,
especially violent crime.
It’s a very safe environment.
[narrator] But on a peaceful Sunday morning,
a chilling call comes into 911 that rocks Draper to its core.
About 10 am,
a jogger called to report that he had seen a red shoe in the water
in the Jordan River.
He was concerned because of the amount of blood near that.
[narrator] Officers race to the area to investigate.
The Jordan River cuts down the middle of Salt Lake Valley
and along that there is a bike and jogging path
and several bridges that cross back and forth over the river.
When the police arrived they saw what the jogger had reported
which was a lot of blood in a specific area right near the bridge closer to the river
and on one of the rocks there was a really large area of blood.
[narrator] Officers search for the source of the significant amount of blood
but can’t find an injured person or animal in the area.
We do a test.
It’s called a presumptive blood test.
It takes like five minutes
and then it’ll tell you whether you’re dealing with animal blood
or possible human blood.
The blood was human.
We realized something bad has really happened.
[narrator] Investigators turned their attention to the red shoe
that the jogger spotted at the scene.
It looked pretty new and clean.
It didn’t look like it had been out there for any period of time.
[narrator] Believing the person could have ended up in the Jordan River,
police launch a helicopter search of the area.
The helicopter was able to go through the river much faster.
Down the stream of ways,
they found a body floating in reeds in that area.
The police took several rafts there to retrieve the body.
It was a young woman.
She was missing her shoe
and on her other foot there was a red shoe that matched the one at the crime scene.
She had been in the water at this point for several hours.
And so, her body had swelled a little bit.
We didn’t know who she was at that time.
She was initially described as like in her twenties, female.
[narrator] Detective Travis Peterson and CSI Alyssa McElreath
are tasked with investigating the case of the murdered Jane Doe.
When we arrived at the scene,
right away I could see defensive wounds on her hands
and several abrasions to her face.
There was one very predominant injury right here on her forehead.
It was a very severe break in this skull area which is a very hard bone to break.
The cause of death was blunt force trauma from some hard object.
The types of injuries seen in this case
we’re talking about a weapon that would have both blunt and sharp components to it.
Something that would be able to cut but also bludgeon.
Something like a garden spade or shovel.
It made it clear that the person was definitely very angry.
Any time that blunt force is used,
it’s usually a sign of anger and frustration.
Our first impression and feeling
was somebody close to her had something to do with her death.
Draper police department put out a news release of the person that was recovered,
described as wearing a red plaid shirt, jeans and red shoes.
[narrator] Meanwhile across town,
Veronica Kasprzak is desperate to find her 15-year-old daughter Annie
who has been missing for almost 24 hours.
We were really concerned because nothing like this had ever happened before.
Sometime in the day, my ex-husband calls me
and says that there was a body in the river which was close by our house,
and so, it was concerning.
So we called the-- the police department and I say, "My daughter is missing.
We’re right in this area.
I just need some sort of confirmation that it is or isn’t her."
Annie’s parents were able to provide information
verifying that Annie had been wearing red shoes
and she had some type of surgical scar on her abdomen
that was consistent with the body that was recovered.
The police come and they tell us that it is Annie
and then they tell us that somebody killed her.
I get this overwhelming rush
and sinking feeling in my body
and then I became hysterical.
[narrator] Veronica can’t imagine anyone wanting to harm her adopted daughter,
15-year-old high school freshman, Annie Kasprzak.
Annie was the oldest child of her biological mother.
She was removed at the age of three
and really struggled in placement in the foster care system.
I met Annie for the first time when she was turning eight.
I was her caseworker.
I had spent a lot of time with her.
She was just little and lively
and I knew that getting adopted was what she needs to have a chance.
Annie came to live with us at about the age of ten
and she became the immediate big sister.
My boys at the time were six months old and three years old
and they just loved and idolized her
and that was really something that she had been missing.
Annie had a huge heart.
She didn’t want anybody to feel alone or left out.
She was in the ninth grade
and really embracing the idea of going to high school,
hanging out with her friends, starting to be able to be allowed to date.
[narrator] To find Annie Kasprzak’s killer,
detectives will need to unravel the final 24 hours of her life.
Annie’s parents provided information that the night before on March 10th,
they had gone out for the evening
and Annie had stayed home to care for her younger brothers.
Around seven o’clock pm,
her parents Veronica and James returned,
Annie was there and everything still appeared to be just fine.
[Peter] Annie said she was going to go down in her room
and that was the last time that they had seen her.
That was around 7:45.
I was talking on the phone to my sister.
We talked until about 8:40 pm
and then I go downstairs fully expecting to find Annie talking on the phone
and she’s not there.
And I yelled at my husband that Annie’s not in her room.
I call the police and I report her as a runaway.
We wanted it noted so that if she got in trouble
or showed up somewhere else, they would know to bring her home.
[Travis] So by 8:40 pm, Annie was gone.
So that narrows down the window of what the time of her death would be.
[narrator] Veronica tells detectives
everything she’s learned about Annie’s movements following her disappearance.
Annie’s parents said that they had the Find My iPhone app on Annie’s phone
the night of March 10th
and they had information showing that she was in the area of a golf course.
The golf course is basically the west bank of the Jordan River area.
They tried calling several times with no response, no answer.
Annie’s parents thought that if Annie were running away
that she would be running to her boyfriend, Chris.
So veronica called Chris at 9:01.
Veronica asked if Annie was with him and he said no, she was not with him.
Annie’s phone died at about 9:20 pm
and then the runner reported seeing the blood and a shoe
the next morning at 10:00 am.
[narrator] Veronica tells detectives she believes
the answer to who killed her daughter lies in a note Annie left behind.
[Alyssa] When Veronica went to go check on Annie, she found a runaway note.
In the note, Annie made the statement
that she had told her friends that she was pregnant
and that she had lied about it
and she felt bad, so this is why she’s running away.
She apologizes and says that she’s running off to California.
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard
that she’s told her friends that she’s pregnant.
I’d had meetings with the school counselor
where she had told the counselor that she had had sex and was pregnant.
And I said, "No, she’s not. We’ve been to the doctor."
We knew what she was doing.
I think she lied to her friends about being pregnant for two reasons.
Number one, she really didn’t want to be pregnant
and I think she had somehow convinced herself
sometime soon that she would be pregnant.
She wanted to... to feel that level of... of connection
and I think it was her way to be the center,
to be the drama, to have their attention, to have their support.
[Keira] Adolescence is an overly traumatic time.
It’s a time of storm and stress.
And so, I think why people, you know, may invent pregnancies
it’s wish fulfillment. I want to be needed. I want to be loved.
I want to have something to love,
or how do I sort out this social milieu in ways
that, you know, I can cope and deal with.
[narrator] Veronica tells investigators
that whenever Annie had told them she was pregnant,
she always declared her on-again off-again boyfriend, Chris Bagshaw
was the baby’s father.
Annie’s parents made it very clear that Annie was close to Chris.
That they believed that if she were to run away that Chris would be involved with that.
So it did point detectives immediately toward Chris,
to find him, to find out where he was around the time of her death.
[narrator] 15-year-old, Annie Kasprzak
has been found brutally murdered and dumped in a local river.
Police already have their first person of interest,
Annie’s 14-year-old boyfriend, Chris Bagshaw.
Annie met Chris about a year before she died, almost exactly.
He was the same age as she was and the same grade that she was.
Chris lived in an apartment with his dad which was also right next to his grandmother.
He wasn’t quite the outwardly bad boy,
but he would make comments such as nobody’s really going to love me,
which to Annie was like the ultimate challenge.
"Wait a second, you think nobody’s going to love you?
Well, guess what? I’m going to."
And so, it was like she was trying to convince him
that he was loved and that he was lovable.
And he would pull her in and then push her back
and they had the quintessential teenage,
"I love you, I hate you", relationship.
[narrator] Looking for clues that could unravel the mystery of Annie’s murder,
investigators search the teen’s bedroom.
When we searched her room, there were storage tubs of all of her journal entries,
just plain notebooks and journals everywhere.
She loved to doodle and she loved to write.
She was a great little poet too.
Annie used her journal entries as a way of venting or getting stuff out.
There were comments about several things
that she had going on in her world at that time.
There were a lot of details in reference to Chris.
There were comments made about being pregnant.
There were comments made about running away.
One of the things the detectives noticed, there was a timeline in there.
She had documented that around March 1st,
Chris learned about the fact that she was pregnant.
So, we have Chris learning about Annie being pregnant on March 1st
according to her journal,
and her running away, and then found deceased March 10th.
Obviously, the timeline became very concerning
in reference to Chris’s possible involvement.
One of the first things you have to find in a murder case is... is a motive.
Then we see very near the time that she was murdered,
less than two weeks before, Chris finds out she was pregnant.
Now, we knew she wasn’t pregnant,
but what she wrote there was that she had told him that she was,
and two weeks later she’s found in a river.
[narrator] To establish whether Annie and Chris had contact
the night of the murder,
police pull her cell phone records.
[Travis] That night there were several calls between Annie and Chris
up until almost nine o’clock.
There were lengthy phone calls,
others that would have been a missed call or not answered call.
With the number of phone calls
it appeared that there was some type of issue between Annie and Chris.
[Peter] Chris had reported to Veronica in that 9:01 pm phone call
the night of Annie’s disappearance,
that he wasn’t with Annie that night.
He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t talked to her.
So, now those phone records certainly started to raise red flags
about his interaction with Annie that night.
[narrator] To get more answers,
detectives pay a visit to Chris at his house.
We’re talking with Chris and his father,
asking if he knew anything about Annie being killed.
At that point, Chris started to get really red and flustered
and I also noticed he’s got brand new shoes on,
so we asked for clothes and his shoes
that he was wearing that night.
And as he was about to hand them to me,
he just wanted to give me a heads up
that earlier in March, Annie had a bloody nose
and some of her blood got on his shoes.
[narrator] With Chris’ story raising more red flags,
investigators hone in on his timeline.
He said that the last time he had seen Annie
was like Wednesday or Thursday of the week prior.
That he’d seen her while they were hanging out at their friend Spencer’s house
and he hadn’t seen her or talked to her since.
We did confront him about the multiple calls that he had had with Annie
in the night in question.
And then his story changed.
[Travis] We asked Chris about what he was doing on the night in question.
Chris said that he was at home
and then received a call from his dad around 7:45
letting Chris know that he would be coming home with a friend
and that Chris was to go spend the night at his grandma’s house
which is two or three doors down from his in the apartment complex.
Chris said that he put some clothes together,
went to his grandma’s house initially for a couple minutes just to leave his stuff
and then he walked to a friend’s house.
When he got to the friend’s house, nobody answered the door,
so he immediately returned to his grandma’s house.
He arrived there right around nine o’clock
and played video games, watched movies
until he fell asleep sometime around 11:30 that night.
We interviewed his grandma
and she did verify the-- the events of Chris’ actions that night.
[Alyssa] With Chris having an alibi for the night,
we weren’t looking at him as the suspect anymore.
[narrator] With Chris’ alibi clearing him,
investigators focused their attention on Annie’s supposed pregnancy.
We talked to Chris about his relationship with Annie.
It was different than what Annie had described in her journals.
Chris described it as more of a friendship
and they had been sexually involved or had sexual contact one time.
Chris said that he was told by Annie she was pregnant
and that it was not his.
He’d revealed that Annie was telling him an individual named LJ
was the father of the baby.
[Travis] LJ was older.
He lived up in Ogden, Utah and he had a criminal history.
Chris described LJ as a gang member connected with a gang in California.
Chris was very vocal and verbal about concerns they had about LJ.
There are local gangs here
because we live in the western United States,
sometimes there is an affiliation or an association
with southern California gangs.
There is a potential that the place Annie was saying she was going California
had some sort of a tie to this person who had ties to gangs.
[narrator] Chris tells detectives that LJ belongs to the Bloods gang.
The West Side Bloods are a pretty infamous and ruthless street gang,
among the most dangerous in California.
So you’re talking apex predators even among other violent street criminals.
Like most gangs, their markets if you will, run the gamut.
Prostitution, trafficking in people and narcotics, then of course, murder.
[Travis] Chris said that he communicated with LJ one time.
LJ made threats against him.
It seemed to be because LJ might be jealous
or concerned that Annie had such a close relationship with Chris.
[narrator] To validate Chris’s statements,
investigators turned to Annie’s close friend Spencer Crittel.
Spencer and Chris and Annie were this little trio
where the three of them were often going around and hanging out.
[Travis] Spencer had said that Annie had called him a couple times
before Annie went missing.
He’d missed the calls.
She did leave voicemails for him.
She seemed to be upset, but he said that he did not talk to her that night
and that the last time he’d seen her was middle of the week
prior when Chris and others were with Annie and him at his house.
[Peter] At that time Spencer corroborated Chris’s claim
that Annie got this bloody nose.
He said, "Yeah, we were all over here and Annie just got a bloody nose.
It was really weird."
He also told us that Annie and Chris were friends more than anything.
[Travis] But Spencer also indicated that she did have a boyfriend named LJ.
Spencer’s report of LJ was that he had hacked into Annie’s email
and sent a scary message to her that was intended for Chris and Spencer had seen it.
Spencer also described LJ as a violent person,
so now Chris and Spencer both made statements
about the fact that Annie had told them that LJ would hurt them or could hurt her.
She described LJ as being very aggressive
and would definitely do what he needed to do to get what he wanted.
The question is, was he responsible for this crime?
Could she have met up with LJ to run away with him
only to find that his jealousy had reached a boiling point,
to the point that he beat her to death in a fit of rage?
[narrator] In the brutal murder of high school freshman, Annie Kasprzak
investigators are zeroing in on a prime suspect,
Annie’s secret boyfriend and alleged gang member LJ.
There was a cloud of mystery around LJ when it came to Annie and her friends.
She kind of chose what she told some people and not other people.
Some friends thought she was making a mistake
hanging out with somebody that had gang ties.
Annie was trying to embrace living on the edge.
She had known some girls when she was in a treatment center
that had some genuine gang affiliations.
And so, she had kind of adopted this idea,
"Well, here’s a different way of belonging.
Well, here’s another type of family."
She also indicated to one of her friends
that if she had to pick a gang, she would be a Blood.
[narrator] Detectives wonder if this is Annie’s way of supporting LJ,
a member of the West Side Bloods.
A lot of Annie’s friends had knowledge
of the fact that Annie said that she was pregnant
and that LJ was the father of her baby,
but they were aware that Annie was telling people that Chris was the father
because she was concerned about what her parents would think.
None of Annie’s friends were able to provide anything about what LJ looked like.
We didn’t have a full name from them or anybody connected to him.
We didn’t know who LJ was.
Just that he was known or at least said to be a violent person.
It was very concerning. We needed to figure out who he was.
We contacted the gang units.
We made contacts with all the surrounding agencies
to see if they had kids with gang affiliations with the moniker LJ
and were never able to come back with anything
close to how we were described he is.
[narrator] Unable to locate Annie’s mysterious boyfriend LJ,
investigators shift course looking for new leads.
We received a call from west Jordan Police Department
advising us that detectives had a witness there
that was being investigated for a financial crime
and that witness was providing information
indicating that she had witnessed Annie being beaten and assaulted.
We went over to interview her.
She provided very detailed information about the night of March 10th.
This witness that comes forward, this woman, Heather,
she gives us the name Daniel Ferry
and she says she had witnessed the killing of Annie Kasprzak at Daniel Ferry’s hands.
I did recognize the name.
[Travis] Daniel Ferry had been investigated and charged with crimes in the past.
He had a history of violence.
He certainly fit the idea of a person who might do something like this.
He was involved in the drug world and was reported as being a very violent person.
At that point detectives asked, "Do you know anyone named LJ?"
And she immediately said, "Well, yeah. I know a guy named LJ."
And she gave the name of somebody that the initials lined up,
where in the gang world he may have adopted that moniker.
And she gave a description of him
and also that he was from California
which goes back to the note where Annie said she was running away to.
[narrator] Believing the confidential informant, Heather,
could break the case wide open.
Detectives questioned her about March 10th, the night Annie was murdered.
She stated that that night LJ and Annie had shuttled up to Daniel Ferry’s house.
[Travis] This witness said that Annie had been out in the garage with LJ,
believed that LJ and Annie had had sex.
When Annie came back into the house,
Daniel told Annie it was his turn and she refused.
Daniel was very upset about this, grabbed Annie by the-- the neck and head area.
Danny had told one of his other friends, "We need to take out the trash."
And then they had taken her away.
When they returned, she described their clothes as having blood on them.
When she asked where Annie was, one of them told her that Annie had gone swimming,
kind of a sarcastic response to her question.
The clear implication there was that she had ended up in the river.
It’s not often you get a first-hand witness
to an interaction with the victim right before the victim dies.
This woman who was talking to the police,
police were investigating for another crime.
So anytime you’re dealing with an informant, you do have to take with a grain of salt.
When we were putting everything together,
Annie’s phone records for that night
showed there were also phone calls Annie received from an unknown or blocked caller.
So from information provided from Annie’s friends
and then also now this witness and then what this witness personally observed,
we were very concerned that Daniel Ferry and LJ were involved with her death.
Things that are lining up, it’s all pointing that we’re going in the right direction.
[narrator] When detectives search for LJ, they don’t have to go far.
[Alyssa] We found him in the jail system.
[Travis] During the interview, we’d learned that he did know Daniel Ferry,
but he denied being with Daniel Ferry on the night in question,
said he was not at that house and had no clue who Annie was.
And then he made statements about the fact that his nickname was LG not LJ.
So that raised some suspicion to the statements provided by that witness,
which led to some question
to whether or not LJ was really involved in Annie’s death.
After a short interview,
it becomes more apparent that he has nothing to do with the case
and he also was locked up in the jail during the time of her murder.
So we were able to dismiss LJ as a suspect.
[narrator] With the man known as LJ appearing to be a dead end,
detectives turned their attention to their other potential suspect,
local drug dealer, Daniel Ferry.
I interviewed Daniel Ferry and Daniel denied having any knowledge of Annie.
He said he didn’t know anything about what happened to her.
[Travis] We did push Daniel,
but he adamantly denied that he was involved in Annie’s death.
Daniel said that on the night in question, when Annie went missing
that he did have people to his house.
That the witness was there. So all of that was verified.
Daniel also denied that there was an LJ there.
Short time later, Daniel invoked his right to an attorney
and we did not ask any additional questions.
[narrator] Unable to speak with Daniel further,
police do a deep dive into his background.
We learned that Daniel Ferry did have a nickname that he used at one point in time
of Little Joe.
Obviously having the initials LJ
brought some suspicion as to whether or not he was the LJ
that’s being referenced by Chris.
[narrator] With suspicion swirling around Daniel Ferry,
police get a search warrant for his house.
When we arrived at Daniel Ferry’s house, the carpet was gone.
You could tell that they were painting in the house.
There were several cleaning attempts made.
There were signs like the floor-- the carpet being pulled up,
new flooring being put in,
all those go to line up that there’s something that happened in the house
and there’s something they’re doing to cover it up.
[Travis] There was damage to the wall
in areas that were consistent with what the witness had provided about seeing
that Daniel grabbed Annie, rammed her head into a wall
where she went to the ground unconscious,
along with some small areas that appeared to be blood on the walls.
Annie’s murder could have happened there. It was very concerning.
He had a criminal history.
He was a very violent aggressive person.
At this point, they arrested Danny
for probable cause of Annie’s murder.
[narrator] Detectives have local drug dealer, Daniel Ferry in custody
on suspicion of Annie Kasprzak brutal murder.
Danny had outstanding warrants on other cases
and this gave the police a small window of time
to try to corroborate the witness Heather’s story
that indeed it was Annie at Danny’s house the night that Annie was murdered.
There were different samples that were collected from Daniel Ferry’s house
to find forensic evidence to show what happened or who was involved.
[narrator] As detectives await the lab results from Daniel Ferry’s house,
they pull his phone records.
[Peter] They looked into where Danny was at the time of the murder
and his phone records didn’t put him anywhere near Danny’s house or the crime scene.
[narrator] Then the DNA results come back
and they are positive for human blood.
Every sample that they tested, the blood that was found on the wall
, the blood that was found on the floor,
any other blood that was found was not Annie’s blood.
So that exonerated Danny of being with or around Annie that night.
Now, you had problems with Heather’s story
because it didn’t match the scientific evidence.
The night of March 10th, Danny actually was committing a violent crime,
but it wasn’t against Annie Kasprzak.
He was actually tormenting somebody else.
There was a girl that owed him drug money that he had kidnapped
and used her as a human dart board
and we were able to rule out that he didn’t have anything to do with Annie Kasprzak.
[narrator] With Daniel Ferry no longer a suspect in the case,
investigators circle back to the witness, Heather,
who misled police about Annie’s murder.
[Travis] We asked her why?
And her response was basically that she knew something bad happened
at Daniel Ferry’s that night.
She felt like Daniel was dangerous
and that he should be charged for what he did to somebody.
[narrator] Heather also confessed to manipulating the details
she provided to police regarding Annie and LJ.
[Travis] She had heard the information about Annie
being found deceased on the news.
And she admitted that when she was asked about LJ
that she made stuff up as she went along just to make it believable
and it was just a coincidence that some of the facts lined up
with what we knew them to be.
[Alyssa] So we have just wasted all this time?
It’s very frustrating to investigators,
but that’s what we do, we’ve to follow the evidence.
So we have to go back to the drawing board and start over again.
This is really where the metal of investigators is so important,
despite the fact that you’ve hit these roadblocks,
that you’ve been detoured to look at these red herrings,
at the end of the day you have to dust yourself off,
you have the murder of a 15-year-old girl to investigate and assault
and that killer is still out there.
As we continue to investigate more,
we’re still going back to Annie’s phone records and journals
and it becomes more apparent that there’s probably not an LJ.
This is just something that Annie probably made up for Chris.
[narrator] With yet another suspect ruled out, the investigation hits a wall.
In search of new leads investigators circle back to Annie’s close friends.
They went back to the main person of interest which was Chris.
Everyone had mentioned Chris.
The person that Annie seemed closest to was Chris.
The person tied to this pregnancy by all accounts was Chris.
[Travis] Annie’s friends also provided information
that Danny was concerned that Chris was not happy about her being pregnant.
That definitely led to some concern and suspicion
that Chris might have a desire to stop all of that happening.
[narrator] Investigators zero in on Annie and Chris’s cell phone records
looking to uncover what really happened to Annie the night of March 10th.
[Travis] We learned that there were some text messages that had been deleted
that Chris had sent to Spencer
the day that Spencer told detectives about Annie’s nosebleed.
In the messages, Chris was basically telling Spencer
that he wanted Spencer to verify that Annie did have a nosebleed,
if and when he was interviewed by the police,
so that it was consistent with Chris’s statement.
The police talked to Spencer, again,
this teenage kid who had been thrust into this situation.
Spencer pretty quickly came clean.
He recanted and said he didn’t remember the bloody nose,
but he had said that it happened because Chris had told him to.
So now the police have not only blood on the shoes,
not only a artificial story about that blood,
but a clear desire from Chris to get rid of that evidence, to try to explain it away.
Then Spencer provided information
that Chris was upset about Annie being pregnant,
that Chris was concerned that he was the father.
Spencer tells us that there was an argument that happened that night
between Chris and Annie
and that Chris did in fact go down to the river where they had a fight.
[narrator] To establish if Chris had the opportunity to kill Annie,
investigators take a closer look at his phone records.
The night of March 10th between 6:01 pm and 8:59 pm,
Chris and Annie had spoke ten times.
In reference to the blocked numbers that called Annie on that night,
we learned that Chris had been dialing star six seven to dial Annie’s number
which blocked his phone number,
so that Annie wouldn’t know that Chris was the one calling.
At this point we were very suspicious about what was going on that night
and his involvement.
At 9:01 Chris was telling Veronica he hadn’t seen Annie when she called him...
but Draper detectives were able to get cell tower information
from Chris’s phone on March 10th
and the cell tower information painted a pretty clear picture
that Chris was not where Chris had said that he was at his grandmother’s house.
That information showed us
at 9:01 Chris was in the area of the Jordan River
near the bridge where Annie was killed.
With Chris already having an alibi, his grandma saying that he was there the night
that point we weren’t looking at him as serious,
but now seeing the phone pings on the towers for his phone
that we realized there was no way he was home.
Those phone pings could be what seals his fate.
[narrator] Investigators are working the theory
that Chris Bagshaw killed his 15-year-old girlfriend, Annie Kasprzak,
believing she was pregnant with his baby.
To prove their theory, they need to break Chris’s alibi.
Chris’s phone records showed his grandmother called him that night
and we didn’t understand why she would need to call him if he was at her house,
but Chris was at the river that night with Annie.
Through very good investigation
and very credible cell phone triangulation evidence,
they were able to put him indisputably at the scene.
[narrator] Investigators charge Chris Bagshaw with Annie’s murder
and obstruction of justice for lying to police.
Chris was a juvenile, 14 years old at the time of the murder.
Juvenile courts in Utah only have jurisdiction over somebody until they’re 21.
So Chris would only serve a couple years
in some type of juvenile correctional facility.
There’s a process that the prosecutors go through
to certify Chris as an adult to be tried in adult court.
Young offenders are usually given some level of leniency,
but in this case with Chris Bagshaw,
the ruthlessness of this murder
and luring her to the bridge
earmarks him to an adult offender status.
During the process of Chris being charged in adult court,
we learned that there was a cellmate that was incarcerated with Chris
that came forward and said that Chris had confessed to him that he did kill Annie.
He described accurate details about Annie’s injuries and how they occurred.
This witness that comes forward tells us
that it was the shovel that caused all the damage on Annie.
[narrator] With Chris’s jailhouse confession,
investigators are able to piece together the final hours of Annie Kasprzak’s life.
On March 10th, Annie had a normal evening.
Her parents went out for dinner while she watched her younger siblings.
While Annie’s parents were out,
[Travis] Annie received a telephone call from Chris at 6:01
and there was a dispute.
Annie was still sticking with her story that she was pregnant with Chris’s baby,
not telling Chris that she really wasn’t pregnant.
She told him she wanted to run away.
She told him that she wanted him to go with her and he agreed,
but Chris’s actual plan was to get Annie alone
so that he could follow through with killing her.
[Alyssa] Seven o’clock, Annie’s parents come home. They talk for a little bit.
7:45, Annie goes down to her room.
[Travis] 8:40 pm, Annie had snuck out of her room and left a note.
Chris was at the Jordan River parkway to meet up with Annie and he had a shovel.
[Peter] At 8:56, Annie was in the area of the Jordan River.
[narrator] At 9:01 pm, Chris answered Veronica’s call with Annie at his side.
After that call, he took that shovel
and he beat Annie repeatedly with the shovel
despite her pleas, despite her telling him, "Why are you doing this? I love you."
This was a beating, a savage beating
and he made sure that she was dead...
and then he rolled her into the river.
Chris was the pied piper.
He knew exactly what she wanted to hear
and what would get her to leave the safety of her home.
And so, he played her the song of independence,
of running away together to draw her to her eventual death.
The way that he killed her
shows a true indifference to human life.
The murder charges against Chris are transferred to adult court.
I think Chris’ motivation was he just didn’t want to be a father.
He didn’t want to be a young father like his dad.
Annie had become an object to him
that was getting in the way of what he thought his life should be
and ultimately seemed like it led to him deciding,
well, the best way to get rid of the thoughts about pregnancy
was to get rid of Annie. And so, he did that.
The callousness to bludgeon someone.
Your... your dating partner to death is... is horrendous and highly atypical.
The level of violence and planning here
suggests more of an act of instrumental violence
than it is something that’s borne out of a high level of emotion.
[narrator] Chris Bagshaw pleads guilty to first-degree murder
and is sentenced to 15 years to life.
Annie was just 15.
We always want to protect the kids, don’t want anything to happen to them.
[Alyssa] The most difficult part about this case
was that it was such a young beautiful girl
that had so many hopes and dreams.
There was a lot of ups and downs in this case
and it’s probably something that I am always going to be so grateful and proud for...
that in the end, what we were able to solve.
[Veronica] It was hard.
I felt a combination of sadness and relief.
Sadness that there wasn’t anything that I could do to change it or to fix it,
now or then...
and relief that in doing exactly what I told Annie I would do,
we would be able to prove who hurt her.
[narrator] Veronica is determined to move forward,
keeping her vibrant daughter’s memory alive.
[Veronica] What I miss is what we didn’t get to have.
I miss that we didn’t get to see her finish growing up.
I guess, I’m just still so sorry.
I’m still so sorry that it had to... to be like this.
We miss her...
but Annie was all about keep going and to try things even though they’re hard.
She was a big factor in why we adopted five more children.
And so, her lasting impact is second chances and not giving up.