Teen murder suspect appears in court

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Colorado teenager accused in his Utah girlfriend's 2012 beating death was in court Thursday, marking his first hearing since he was ordered to stand trial for murder as an adult.

Lawyers for 17-year-old Darwin Christopher Bagshaw pushed to keep part of his case in juvenile court during the hearing, saying that that could keep him in treatment-focused juvenile services longer.

"I'd like him to spend the next bit of time in juvenile services rather than the adult system," said defense attorney Bill Russell.

A judge ruled last week that Bagshaw, who is from Grand Junction, must stand trial as an adult, but said an obstruction of justice charge could stay in juvenile court. Prosecutors now want to toss the obstruction charge alleging he led police astray during the investigation. They say the split could hurt their murder case.

"We are in the business, in this case, of prosecuting a homicide," said prosecutor Patricia Cassell. "We don't want to be derailed from a murder charge."

Judge C. Dane Nolan set a new hearing in the case for next week.

The Associated Press doesn't normally name juveniles, but it is doing so in this case because he's being charged as an adult and because of the nature of the crime. He has not yet entered a plea on the murder charge.

Prosecutors say 15-year-old Anne Kasprzak died after she told people she was pregnant but her boyfriend, then 14, didn't want the baby. Medical examiners later determined she was never pregnant, and her parents said she'd lied.

She ran away from home on March 10, 2012. Her badly beaten body was found in the Jordan River the next day after a jogger noticed blood on a footbridge over the river about 20 miles south of Salt Lake City. An autopsy later showed Kasprzak suffered multiple blows that crushed her face and head.

Police say that when they went to question Bagshaw, they noticed he was wearing new shoes. Officers asked for his old shoes, and as he was handing them over he volunteered that Kasprzak had gotten a nosebleed at a friend's house and dripped blood onto his shoelace, according to authorities.

He asked the friend to confirm the story to investigators who couldn't find any of the girl's blood at the friend's house.

The investigation took a detour when a person said two ex-convicts in their early 30s had knocked out the girl and driven away with her after she refused to have sex with them, though officers eventually determined the story was made up.

Police arrested Bagshaw in October, more than two years after the death.

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