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PROVO — Prosecutors say a man charged with filming a teen girl's suicide in Payson Canyon last year sent a letter from jail urging his friend not to speak with investigators.
Tyerell Przybycien, 19, was charged Wednesday with two counts of witness tampering, a third-degree felony.
He wrote the letter on Sept. 19, saying it would help if the friend also would encourage four other people in particular and anyone else who associated with him not to speak with authorities, according to an affidavit filed in 4th District Court.
The recipient of the letter and one of the four others testified at a preliminary hearing last year and may testify at a trial set for December, an investigator in the Utah County Attorney's Office wrote in the affidavit.
"I will encourage you to use your right to remain silent as anything YOU say is held against ME in court," the letter states, according to the affidavit. The court documents identify those mentioned in the letter only by their initials.
Przybycien, of Spanish Fork, faces charges of murder, a first-degree felony, and desecration of a human body, a class B misdemeanor, in the 2017 death of 16-year-old Jchandra Brown. He has pleaded not guilty to both.
His attorneys have said Brown was knowingly responsible for her own death and that his actions don't fit a charge of murder.
Prosecutors have argued that even though the 16-year-old Brown sought to take her own life in May 2017, Przybycien, then 18, bought a rope and other items used in the suicide, drove her to a remote campground and tied the noose.
Resources for those grappling with thoughts of suicide are available in Utah and nationally, through the SafeUT app; a national hotline, 1-800-273-8255 (TALK); and a Utah crisis line, 801-587-3000.
