Latest / Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast / The Tragic Murder of Annie Kasprzak
Transcript
- 0:07Speaker 1: When fifteen year old Annie casper Zak vanished from her
- 0:10Speaker 1: home in Riverton, Utah, her parents hoped she had simply
- 0:13Speaker 1: run away, but the next day a jogger discovered a
- 0:17Speaker 1: bloody scene by the Jordan River, and hours later Annie's
- 0:21Speaker 1: battered body surfaced upstream. What followed was a deeply flawed investigation,
- 0:28Speaker 1: derailed by lies, false suspects, and a mysterious boyfriend named
- 0:33Speaker 1: l J. This is the heartbreaking and twisted story of
- 0:38Speaker 1: a teenage girl search for love and how she was
- 0:41Speaker 1: silenced forever. My name's Ben, I'm.
- 0:46Speaker 2: Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked Ingram, a true crime podcast.
- 0:51Speaker 1: The following material intended for your audience. Listen, my sleep
- 1:19Speaker 1: score isn't as good as it usually is.
- 1:22Speaker 2: Oh, mine actually is pretty good. It's okay. Sleep scores
- 1:25Speaker 2: are annoying though, because you can wake up and be like,
- 1:28Speaker 2: oh my gosh, i'd such a good sleep, and then
- 1:29Speaker 2: look at your sleep score and shit, and you're like, oh, I.
- 1:31Speaker 1: Guess I didn't, And then you feel shitty about yourself
- 1:34Speaker 1: and you feel terrible because you looked at those numbers.
- 1:36Speaker 2: This is from wearing like a what is it? I
- 1:39Speaker 2: guess it's a smart smart watch. Yeah.
- 1:40Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I accurately feel like what my sleep
- 1:44Speaker 1: score is depicting, Like I woke up feeling like that.
- 1:47Speaker 1: I go to seventy three. It's still decent. But my
- 1:50Speaker 1: coffee is extra strong this morning, for sure.
- 1:51Speaker 2: Oh, I actually beat your sleep score. But you got
- 1:54Speaker 2: up and I stayed in bed and fell back to
- 1:55Speaker 2: sleep accidentally.
- 1:57Speaker 1: Yeah, I was up at quarter to seven. You gotta
- 2:00Speaker 1: at eight thirty.
- 2:01Speaker 2: No, it was not eight thirty. It was like right
- 2:05Speaker 2: before eight.
- 2:06Speaker 1: It was after eight, for sure.
- 2:08Speaker 2: No, it was not.
- 2:09Speaker 1: No.
- 2:09Speaker 2: I am one hundred percent certain.
- 2:11Speaker 1: Nicole is clearly still groggy. She can't even remember the time.
- 2:15Speaker 2: I just like love sleeping. It's like my favorite thing
- 2:18Speaker 2: to do.
- 2:19Speaker 1: It's good. Honestly, if you can sleep in, why not?
- 2:22Speaker 1: And also if you can join Patreon, why not? So
- 2:25Speaker 1: shout out to Doc Trancy, Laura Hopper, and Jacqueline Harris
- 2:30Speaker 1: who joined up on our Patreon and are supporting our
- 2:32Speaker 1: soul and great they're supporting us talking about our sleep
- 2:36Speaker 1: scores at the beginning of episodes, you.
- 2:38Speaker 2: Know, and yeah, we keep recording in the mornings so
- 2:41Speaker 2: we don't have like a well beveraged open of sorts.
- 2:45Speaker 1: You know, but we still have beverages. Like I got
- 2:47Speaker 1: my extra strong coffee this morning. Yeah, it's not that,
- 2:51Speaker 1: it's just you know, time of day. And trust me,
- 2:54Speaker 1: there's some mornings where a breakfast beer is warranted.
- 2:58Speaker 2: What makes it extra strong exactly?
- 3:01Speaker 1: I put more coffee in it. I made it strong.
- 3:03Speaker 2: Oh okay, like more grounds in there. Yeah, okay, I see, yeah,
- 3:06Speaker 2: I see, okay. I'm not a coffee.
- 3:09Speaker 1: Drinker, so I'm just like, I wanted a strong coffee
- 3:11Speaker 1: this morning, so I put like double the grounds.
- 3:13Speaker 2: Usually do shit. I feel like that make it taste
- 3:16Speaker 2: like poop.
- 3:18Speaker 1: It's definitely a lot more bitter. Okay, Yeah, it's still good.
- 3:22Speaker 2: Okay, Well, anyway, it sounds like you got a doozy,
- 3:25Speaker 2: of course, Yeah for us.
- 3:27Speaker 1: This morning, I do. And I think we are going
- 3:30Speaker 1: to go back to not quite so much of a
- 3:32Speaker 1: doozy in the next episode. I got a little bit,
- 3:34Speaker 1: are you sure about that? I got a little bit
- 3:36Speaker 1: of a fun one for next time. I was going
- 3:38Speaker 1: to do it this time, but then I came across
- 3:40Speaker 1: this case. I'm like, you know what, one more before
- 3:42Speaker 1: we get to the funny, goofy hilarious case that is
- 3:47Speaker 1: the next. I don't want to give it away, so
- 3:49Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say anymore.
- 3:50Speaker 2: More fun one on a Friday is kind of better.
- 3:52Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, it'll be a fuck it Friday is what
- 3:55Speaker 1: I used to call it when I was working nine
- 3:58Speaker 1: to five's.
- 3:58Speaker 2: Oh okay, I forgot about that.
- 4:01Speaker 1: It's not just me. That's what me and coworkers used
- 4:03Speaker 1: to call it the fuck it Friday because hey, the mentality.
- 4:06Speaker 2: Of just fuck it the weekends here, like exactly, all
- 4:10Speaker 2: this shit will be there for you next week.
- 4:12Speaker 1: Exactly exactly. That's Monday's problem. That's a Monday bend problem,
- 4:16Speaker 1: sort of, Oh my gosh.
- 4:17Speaker 2: Okay, but I had the worst Monday. I think it
- 4:20Speaker 2: was last week because I did that and then my
- 4:22Speaker 2: Monday was just bonkers.
- 4:25Speaker 1: Yeah, sometimes you got to watch out for that because
- 4:27Speaker 1: you can wreck you Monday's. Yeah, it's got to be a.
- 4:31Speaker 2: Balance, Yeah, yeah, it does.
- 4:34Speaker 1: Anyways, let's get to this case. You ready, I am
- 4:37Speaker 1: okay so Born on January tenth, nineteen ninety seven, and
- 4:41Speaker 1: Grace Casperzek, affectionately known as Annie, entered the world under
- 4:46Speaker 1: circumstances that would shape nearly every part of her life.
- 4:50Speaker 1: From the beginning she faced the kind of instability no
- 4:53Speaker 1: child should have to ever endure. Her biological home was
- 4:56Speaker 1: filled with abuse and neglect, and by the time she
- 4:59Speaker 1: was just a tod child, Protective Services had intervened, removing
- 5:03Speaker 1: her from the care of her birth parents. But instead
- 5:06Speaker 1: of landing into a safe and stable home, Annie's journey
- 5:10Speaker 1: through the foster system became a revolving door, a story
- 5:13Speaker 1: unfortunately all too familiar for many in the foster system.
- 5:17Speaker 1: Over the span of just a few years, she was
- 5:20Speaker 1: placed with and returned by nine different foster families.
- 5:25Speaker 2: Oh no, she went.
- 5:26Speaker 1: Through nine different foster families before she even turned nine herself.
- 5:31Speaker 2: Oh that's heartbreaking.
- 5:32Speaker 1: Hey, So to understand who Annie was, you have to
- 5:36Speaker 1: start there with that aching sense of impermanence, you know,
- 5:40Speaker 1: the kind of emotional whiplash that leaves a child feeling
- 5:42Speaker 1: basically just disposable. Right, So, at an age when most
- 5:47Speaker 1: kids were learning their multiplication tables and getting bedtime stories,
- 5:51Speaker 1: Annie was learning that love could be conditional and that
- 5:54Speaker 1: home could disappear overnight.
- 5:57Speaker 2: Oh that is so heartbreaking because that's just like, I
- 6:01Speaker 2: don't know, You're just your survival needs are not being met.
- 6:05Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, and yeah, you don't have what many of
- 6:09Speaker 1: us take for granted every day.
- 6:11Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 6:13Speaker 1: However, in two thousand and seven, everything changed for Annie.
- 6:18Speaker 1: That year, her life intersected with Veronica casper Zak, a
- 6:23Speaker 1: dedicated case manager with Utah's Division of Child and Family Services.
- 6:27Speaker 1: Now Veronica wasn't just doing a job. She saw Annie
- 6:31Speaker 1: not as a case file, not as a broken child,
- 6:33Speaker 1: but someone who really deserved a real shot at life. Now.
- 6:38Speaker 1: At the time, Veronica was pregnant and navigating her own
- 6:40Speaker 1: family changes, but that didn't stop her from making a
- 6:43Speaker 1: life altering decision. She and her husband, Dennis Casperzak decided
- 6:49Speaker 1: to adopt Annie.
- 6:50Speaker 2: Oh yes, okay, this is hopefully good here.
- 6:55Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a rare storybook moment in a life
- 6:58Speaker 1: that honestly had known so few of these, like fairy
- 7:02Speaker 1: tale type moments, and many people, unfortunately in these positions,
- 7:06Speaker 1: don't get the lucky break that she finally got herself. Yeah,
- 7:11Speaker 1: but in this moment, Annie finally had a real family.
- 7:15Speaker 1: She gained two younger brothers. In the process, she gained
- 7:17Speaker 1: a structured home, and perhaps most importantly, people who didn't
- 7:20Speaker 1: give up on her.
- 7:21Speaker 2: Oh Man.
- 7:23Speaker 1: Veronica would later describe how hard it was for Annie
- 7:25Speaker 1: to trust anyone in the house at first, which it's
- 7:29Speaker 1: totally expected a response from a child who's you know,
- 7:32Speaker 1: lived through so much chaos. But over time that trust
- 7:35Speaker 1: began to grow. Even when Veronica and Dennis eventually divorced,
- 7:40Speaker 1: they continued to co parent the children in a healthy,
- 7:43Speaker 1: cooperative way. Any sense of safety wasn't disrupted by more
- 7:47Speaker 1: family drama. Instead, the love didn't leave just because the
- 7:50Speaker 1: marriage did, right, It still was there now. The Casperzak
- 7:54Speaker 1: family eventually moved to Riverton, Utah, a quiet suburb of
- 7:58Speaker 1: Salt Lake City, and began to build something Annie had
- 8:02Speaker 1: never really had before, which was consistency as well. Veronica
- 8:06Speaker 1: remarried a man named James Brader, who became a father
- 8:10Speaker 1: figure to Annie. He later recalled that Annie had him
- 8:13Speaker 1: wrapped around his little finger and that she could convince
- 8:16Speaker 1: him to do just about anything with a smile or
- 8:18Speaker 1: a heart film place.
- 8:19Speaker 2: Oh man, okay, she deserves that.
- 8:22Speaker 1: Yeah. But at this same time, though, too, she now
- 8:24Speaker 1: has you know, James as his father figure. She still
- 8:28Speaker 1: has Dennis as well. Okay, so Dennis would also you know,
- 8:31Speaker 1: get a significant other, So she now basically had two caring,
- 8:34Speaker 1: loving families. Okay, so this was a co parenting, co
- 8:38Speaker 1: existing relationship, and yeah, there was two loving homes that
- 8:43Speaker 1: she was a part of. For the first time, Annie
- 8:46Speaker 1: had what many kids would take granted for home, a
- 8:49Speaker 1: support system, people who would fight for her, in a
- 8:52Speaker 1: future that seemed you know fully possible, but the top.
- 8:58Speaker 1: By the time she hit her teens, Annie was finally
- 9:01Speaker 1: living what most kids would consider just ordinary, and for
- 9:05Speaker 1: her though, it felt extraordinary. She had a room of
- 9:08Speaker 1: her own, she had two little brothers who adored her,
- 9:11Speaker 1: a mom who understood her trauma more than most probably could. Yep, Veronica,
- 9:17Speaker 1: after all had walked beside her, not just as a parent,
- 9:19Speaker 1: but as someone who had once advocated for her when
- 9:22Speaker 1: she was just another case file, right when people looked
- 9:26Speaker 1: at her and she was just another folder sitting on
- 9:28Speaker 1: a desk. So she had transformed from that to all this.
- 9:35Speaker 1: It was quite the dramatic change. Now, life in Riverton,
- 9:39Speaker 1: Utah bra Annie a sense of stability. She never knew
- 9:43Speaker 1: that stability I already mentioned. She enrolled in some academy,
- 9:46Speaker 1: a public charter school, where she tried to carve out
- 9:49Speaker 1: her place in the world. People knew her and described
- 9:52Speaker 1: her as funny, passionate, warm hearted, and deeply emotional. She
- 9:57Speaker 1: was a kind of girl who loved big. She cried
- 10:00Speaker 1: hard and wanted things in her life to have meaning,
- 10:03Speaker 1: especially with relationships. But like many kids who grew up
- 10:07Speaker 1: in the shadow of early trauma, Annie sometimes carried her
- 10:10Speaker 1: heart too openly, too urgently. She longed for connections, deep,
- 10:14Speaker 1: unconditional ones, the kind that would fill the gaps by
- 10:18Speaker 1: the years of abandonment that she had felt in her
- 10:20Speaker 1: early childhood. But it's not unusual for teens who've endured
- 10:25Speaker 1: instability to seek grounding relationships to have their heart on
- 10:28Speaker 1: their sleeve per se, and for Annie, that desire found
- 10:32Speaker 1: its outlet in romantic attachments. In twenty ten, she started
- 10:36Speaker 1: dating a classmate named Darwin Christopher Bagshawe, who went by Chris.
- 10:40Speaker 1: They were both still so young, Annie just thirteen and
- 10:43Speaker 1: Chris just a year younger, but their relationship quickly became intense.
- 10:48Speaker 1: To Annie, Chris just wasn't another boyfriend or anything. He
- 10:51Speaker 1: was a symbol of everything she wanted, love, permanence, and
- 10:55Speaker 1: a future. Friends later recalled that she even wrote about
- 10:58Speaker 1: him constantly in their journals as their relationship progressed, describing
- 11:03Speaker 1: her hopes, dreams, and even planning their life together. One
- 11:06Speaker 1: entry expressed that all she wanted for her birthday was
- 11:09Speaker 1: to be pregnant and to start a family of her.
- 11:12Speaker 2: Own at thirteen.
- 11:15Speaker 1: Well, probably not thirteen, because thirteen is when she met Chris,
- 11:20Speaker 1: when he was twelve, Okay, so it's probably closer to
- 11:23Speaker 1: about the age of fifteen when this entry was in
- 11:27Speaker 1: the journal.
- 11:27Speaker 2: They've been together like already a little while.
- 11:30Speaker 1: Yeah, so a therapist might say that Annie was trying
- 11:33Speaker 1: to rewrite her own past, you know, to give a
- 11:36Speaker 1: child the kind of love and security that she was
- 11:39Speaker 1: denied when she was a kid. But now, at fifteen
- 11:41Speaker 1: years old, that kind of emotional weight was hard to manage,
- 11:44Speaker 1: let alone communicate, and Chris, who by most accounts was
- 11:48Speaker 1: more reserved, didn't always know how to respond to Annie's intensities.
- 11:53Speaker 1: Their relationship became an on again, off again, sometimes warm,
- 11:57Speaker 1: sometimes tense sort of situation, but never really entirely over.
- 12:03Speaker 1: It's also worth noting Annie wasn't reckless or out of control,
- 12:06Speaker 1: though with these sort of ideals or ideologies, I should
- 12:09Speaker 1: say she was thoughtful and sensitive. She dreamed of becoming
- 12:12Speaker 1: a therapist one day, even hoping to one day help
- 12:16Speaker 1: kids who had lived through the pain like she did
- 12:17Speaker 1: when she was younger. She had insights, maturity, and emotional
- 12:21Speaker 1: depths far beyond her years, but that doesn't always protect
- 12:25Speaker 1: you from making teenage mistakes. Her friends loved her for
- 12:29Speaker 1: her loyalty, teachers remembered her as a bright student with
- 12:33Speaker 1: big potential, and to her family, she was still the
- 12:35Speaker 1: same little girl who had always been through more than
- 12:38Speaker 1: most adults could ever imagine, still trying to find her
- 12:41Speaker 1: place in the world sort of situation right, a world
- 12:44Speaker 1: that never really felt quite safe. But in twenty twelve,
- 12:48Speaker 1: as the pressures of adolescence had piled up, something started
- 12:51Speaker 1: to shift. Annie's romantic fixation on Chris deepened, and with
- 12:55Speaker 1: it came the start of a fantasy, one that would
- 12:57Speaker 1: spiral far beyond anything she could get control, one that
- 13:01Speaker 1: we kind of already talked about a little bit in
- 13:03Speaker 1: the ideas of wanting to start a family room right,
- 13:09Speaker 1: her world revolved around two things, her love for Chris
- 13:13Speaker 1: and her dream of building that family. Now, to the
- 13:16Speaker 1: outside world, they were just another high school couple, Annie
- 13:20Speaker 1: fifteen and Chris fourteen, and they'd been together for about
- 13:22Speaker 1: a year and a half, practically a lifetime in teenage years.
- 13:27Speaker 1: But for Annie, the relationship wasn't just about romance. It
- 13:30Speaker 1: was about her anchor, a way to finally feel like
- 13:34Speaker 1: she belonged somewhere. And then came the rumor. Somewhere along
- 13:40Speaker 1: the line, Annie herself started telling people that she was
- 13:43Speaker 1: in fact pregnant with Chris's child. The story, of course,
- 13:47Speaker 1: spread fast around school like wildfire it would, and while
- 13:51Speaker 1: teenage gossip is nothing new, this time it stuck. Friends, classmates,
- 13:56Speaker 1: and even Chris's own family hurt it all, and had
- 14:00Speaker 1: even written about the pregnancy in her personal journals, including
- 14:03Speaker 1: one entry on her birthday where she wished for a
- 14:05Speaker 1: happy boy or girl, healthy boy or girl.
- 14:08Speaker 2: Yeah, it is interesting to me that she does want
- 14:11Speaker 2: to have a kid so early.
- 14:15Speaker 1: I mean, some people know what they want, and when
- 14:17Speaker 1: you're someone who's been through that sort of turmoil when
- 14:19Speaker 1: you're young, you're forced to mature quite early, right.
- 14:22Speaker 2: So she could be seeming a lot like you did
- 14:25Speaker 2: mention that actually more mature, yeah, for her age.
- 14:28Speaker 1: While other people her age are probably you know, worried
- 14:30Speaker 1: about soccer practice and the math test. She's so entranced
- 14:33Speaker 1: in family and values and you know, so that.
- 14:38Speaker 2: And she's like, I found my man, Let's do this
- 14:41Speaker 2: the right thing exactly.
- 14:43Speaker 1: So she had this longing for somewhere to belong and
- 14:46Speaker 1: she learned when she was adopted that you know, a
- 14:49Speaker 1: family is actually a loving and it's a healthy situation
- 14:55Speaker 1: when you actually have that. So she's now actively searching
- 14:58Speaker 1: for one of her own. Because I mean, even at
- 15:01Speaker 1: fifteen years old, whether you want a family or not,
- 15:03Speaker 1: you understand that. You know, that's what people typically do.
- 15:06Speaker 1: They grow up, they have a family, they get a
- 15:08Speaker 1: place together, or have kids. Right, that's the typical sort
- 15:11Speaker 1: of like North American at least, like everyone does it,
- 15:15Speaker 1: why don't you. Yeah, So that picture is there and
- 15:20Speaker 1: she understands it and that's what she wants.
- 15:21Speaker 2: Well, actually that was you, wasn't it.
- 15:24Speaker 1: I mean kind of yeah, yeah.
- 15:26Speaker 2: Yeah. We met when I was fifteen and you were
- 15:29Speaker 2: when we were I think we were about fifteen, yeah,
- 15:31Speaker 2: and Ben was like I didn't know this at the time,
- 15:33Speaker 2: but you were like, I'm going to marry her? Did
- 15:36Speaker 2: you think that right? Or something to that kind of.
- 15:38Speaker 1: I mean in high school, I wasn't looking for a girlfriend.
- 15:41Speaker 1: I was looking for a future with a person.
- 15:43Speaker 2: Yeah, and I was just and then you asked me
- 15:45Speaker 2: to go on a date or whatever and I was
- 15:47Speaker 2: like sure, yeah, and that's how it started.
- 15:50Speaker 1: Yeah, So there you go. So maybe you.
- 15:52Speaker 2: Understand that more than most I'm.
- 15:54Speaker 1: Very much so emotionally mature, but every other way I'm
- 15:58Speaker 1: definitely immature. So I can relate to her in that
- 16:02Speaker 1: value for sure. Now, Chris later told police he didn't
- 16:06Speaker 1: believe the rumors of her being pregnant. He said Annie
- 16:09Speaker 1: had told people that she was pregnant after allegedly sleeping
- 16:12Speaker 1: with a different boy, someone who is named l J. Now,
- 16:16Speaker 1: that name would come up over and over again through
- 16:19Speaker 1: the situation, LJ, this older mystery guy. But the fact
- 16:25Speaker 1: was Annie was not pregnant. It was in fact a
- 16:28Speaker 1: rumor that she started on her own. Her parents, in fact,
- 16:31Speaker 1: took her to do a pregnancy test, which came back negative.
- 16:34Speaker 1: They even helped her get onto birth control, not out
- 16:37Speaker 1: of like a form of punishment or anything, but out
- 16:39Speaker 1: of love and the realism of the situation, the possibility
- 16:43Speaker 1: of her getting pregnant young. Right, the understood she's growing up.
- 16:46Speaker 1: They didn't expect perfection, just you know, open and honesty.
- 16:49Speaker 1: And here's a form of staying, you know, keeping yourself
- 16:52Speaker 1: safe and maybe your future safe. And when the time
- 16:54Speaker 1: is ready and you're ready, maybe you can wean off
- 16:57Speaker 1: it and there you go, you have a kid. Then right,
- 16:59Speaker 1: totally over the situation was That's where they were at.
- 17:02Speaker 1: But this begs a question, why did Annie lie about
- 17:05Speaker 1: being pregnant in the first place. Now, this is where
- 17:08Speaker 1: the story gets harder and sadder. Annie didn't lie because
- 17:12Speaker 1: she was trying to manipulate people or stirrup drama. She
- 17:15Speaker 1: lied because deep down she wanted to be pregnant for real.
- 17:18Speaker 1: That's what she wanted and that's what she dreamed of.
- 17:22Speaker 1: Now Veronica, Annie's adoptive mother, later explained in a heartbreaking
- 17:27Speaker 1: term sort of situation, how she felt about it. She said,
- 17:30Speaker 1: Annie wanted to create a family that she never had.
- 17:33Speaker 1: You know, a child, in her mind meant an unconditional love.
- 17:36Speaker 1: At meant stability, It meant never being alone again.
- 17:40Speaker 2: Oh jeez.
- 17:42Speaker 1: She had spent her early years in foster care, shuffled
- 17:45Speaker 1: from home to home, rarely feeling like she would was
- 17:48Speaker 1: anyone's priority, and that kind of trauma leaves very deep
- 17:51Speaker 1: scars on an individual. Mm hmm, and sometimes it makes
- 17:55Speaker 1: kids desperate for something permanent. Annie thought being a mom
- 17:58Speaker 1: would give her that. In her mind, a baby meant love,
- 18:01Speaker 1: a baby meant control, a baby meant she mattered.
- 18:04Speaker 2: Oh gosh, I mean yeah, that makes sense.
- 18:07Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, the lie she told would spiral far beyond
- 18:10Speaker 1: her control, though. Chris, whether confused, angry, or scared, began
- 18:14Speaker 1: distancing himself from her. He told others that she'd cheated,
- 18:18Speaker 1: that she made up the pregnancy to trap him, and
- 18:20Speaker 1: that this LJ, whoever he was, was the real father
- 18:23Speaker 1: if there was a pregnancy, and all of it, though,
- 18:26Speaker 1: was hearsay with no proof. To Annie, the love she
- 18:30Speaker 1: had for Chris, it was still very much so real.
- 18:33Speaker 1: She still wanted to be with him, and she still
- 18:35Speaker 1: believed in some way that they could run away together
- 18:38Speaker 1: and build a new life, and that dream became so big,
- 18:42Speaker 1: so urgent, that she left her house in the middle
- 18:45Speaker 1: of the night one night, Saturday, March tenth, twenty twelve.
- 18:50Speaker 1: It started like any other day in the Kasperzac household.
- 18:54Speaker 1: Veronica and her husband, James Bratton, had plans to go
- 18:58Speaker 1: out for the evening, go have and Annie, now fifteen
- 19:02Speaker 1: years old, stayed home to babysit her two younger younger brothers.
- 19:06Speaker 1: It wasn't an unusual situation, just a normal Saturday night
- 19:09Speaker 1: in Riverton, Utah, really, But behind the quiet domestic routine,
- 19:13Speaker 1: something was brewing. Earlier that day, Annie had been texting
- 19:17Speaker 1: and calling her boyfriend Chris. She had this idea in
- 19:20Speaker 1: her mind that they were going to run away together,
- 19:23Speaker 1: maybe California, maybe somewhere else far away, who knows, Somewhere
- 19:27Speaker 1: they could start fresh, away from the judgment and pressure
- 19:31Speaker 1: that had been building ever since she started telling people
- 19:33Speaker 1: that she was pregnant. At around seven forty five pm,
- 19:37Speaker 1: Veronica and James left for dinner. Before they walked out
- 19:40Speaker 1: the door, Annie had changed her clothes into jeans and
- 19:43Speaker 1: a T shirt that stood out to Veronica, but unfortunately
- 19:48Speaker 1: only in hindsight. Annie usually dressed down when she was
- 19:51Speaker 1: staying in like we many of us, do, you know,
- 19:53Speaker 1: put on some shorts or PJ pants, sweats, comfy clothes, right, yeah,
- 19:57Speaker 1: so why change into something you'd wear out if you
- 20:00Speaker 1: weren't going anywhere at all? Now? The couple returned home
- 20:04Speaker 1: at around nine PM. James went to help get the
- 20:08Speaker 1: boys ready for bed, while Veronica walked down the hallway
- 20:10Speaker 1: towards Annie's room. When she got to the door, he
- 20:14Speaker 1: was left open and inside the lights were off, but
- 20:18Speaker 1: in the bedroom there was no Annie. She was gone.
- 20:22Speaker 2: This is so sad because she finally has this like
- 20:26Speaker 2: home that's just perfect for her. I feel like and
- 20:29Speaker 2: shit's about to go down now.
- 20:33Speaker 1: At first, Veronica thought maybe Annie had just stepped outside
- 20:36Speaker 1: for a minute, but upon further investigation, her phone was
- 20:40Speaker 1: missing and many of her things were missing too, And
- 20:43Speaker 1: then they found the note on her bed. Oh no,
- 20:47Speaker 1: it was short and rather haunting quote. My only way
- 20:52Speaker 1: out is to run away. Please don't try to look
- 20:55Speaker 1: for me. I don't want to be found. Oh jeez,
- 21:00Speaker 1: customach sank. This wasn't just a rebellion. Annie had been
- 21:03Speaker 1: emotionally unstable lately. Let's put it, I mean, not necessarily unstable.
- 21:08Speaker 1: She's just been emotional. Let's really put it that way.
- 21:10Speaker 1: She'd been emotional lately. She's been emotional. Sure, but it
- 21:13Speaker 1: felt too final, this sort of situation too serious, so
- 21:17Speaker 1: they of course called police right away m h now.
- 21:21Speaker 1: Officers arrived and began treating case as a runaway situation.
- 21:24Speaker 1: Annie's family and friends were contacted, hoping someone might know
- 21:27Speaker 1: where she'd gone. Veronica also called Chris Bagshawe, Annie's boyfriend
- 21:32Speaker 1: and someone she believed might have answers. Right, yeah, now,
- 21:36Speaker 1: Chris didn't hesitate. He said he didn't know where Annie
- 21:39Speaker 1: had gone, but he did offer one unexpected detail that
- 21:44Speaker 1: she planned to run away with someone named.
- 21:47Speaker 2: LJ Okay, I thought that she would plan to run
- 21:50Speaker 2: away with Chris.
- 21:51Speaker 1: Well, according to Chris, LJ was this seventeen year old boy,
- 21:54Speaker 1: someone who Annie had allegedly been seeing behind his back. Okay,
- 21:59Speaker 1: so Chris said ljd snuck into Annie's house months earlier,
- 22:02Speaker 1: and that she lied about this pregnancy to cover up
- 22:04Speaker 1: for their little fling. So she's all like, I'm pregnant
- 22:07Speaker 1: with Chris's baby, when really it may have actually been Lj's. Yeah,
- 22:13Speaker 1: but as we know, there was no pregnancy anyways. Right now,
- 22:17Speaker 1: to Veronica, this must have come to a complete shocking situation.
- 22:21Speaker 2: She had no idea about this LJ.
- 22:23Speaker 1: Nice she didn't, So who is this guy and why
- 22:25Speaker 1: would Annie keep that a secret from her? And more urgently,
- 22:28Speaker 1: if she was really on the run with this older boy,
- 22:31Speaker 1: was she safe? So police now had a lead and
- 22:36Speaker 1: they started building a case around this mysterious name LJ.
- 22:40Speaker 1: It was the following morning on Sunday, March eleventh, twenty twelve,
- 22:44Speaker 1: when a jogger was running along the Jordan River Parkway trail,
- 22:47Speaker 1: just a few miles from Annie's home in River to Utah.
- 22:50Speaker 1: It was still early, quiet, peaceful, but then the jogger
- 22:55Speaker 1: came across something that made their stomach turn. Blood, lot
- 23:00Speaker 1: of it. It was pooled on the rocks near the
- 23:03Speaker 1: water and splattered across surrounding areas. Then there was a
- 23:07Speaker 1: single red shoe laying near the edge of the trail,
- 23:11Speaker 1: a kid's shoe or a teenager shoe.
- 23:14Speaker 2: Oh frig see, Because I was just like, oh, I
- 23:17Speaker 2: don't even know if I would have thought much of that,
- 23:19Speaker 2: But then I guess when you see the shoe, that
- 23:22Speaker 2: kind of amplifies it A man, Yeah, definitely.
- 23:25Speaker 1: Now, the jogger immediately called police, and officers respond quickly
- 23:29Speaker 1: and they confirmed it was in fact human blood. Now,
- 23:32Speaker 1: when the jogger called, they were like, I don't know
- 23:33Speaker 1: if it's animal human what there is the shoe too,
- 23:36Speaker 1: and there's a lot of blood pools everywhere sort of thing.
- 23:39Speaker 1: But they confirmed it was human blood. And it was
- 23:41Speaker 1: also obvious that this was no minor injury that would
- 23:44Speaker 1: have occurred. Someone had been either badly hurt or worse
- 23:48Speaker 1: or killed.
- 23:49Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 23:50Speaker 1: A search of the surrounding area began immediately. Officers walked
- 23:54Speaker 1: the trails, they combed the river banks, and called in
- 23:57Speaker 1: a helicopter for aerial view, and it didn't take a
- 23:59Speaker 1: lot before they found something more. Roughly a mile upstream,
- 24:05Speaker 1: the helicopter spotted something floating in the water. It was
- 24:09Speaker 1: a body. When investigators pulled it from the river, it
- 24:13Speaker 1: was clear this was no accident. The body was that
- 24:18Speaker 1: of a young girl, and her face had been beaten
- 24:22Speaker 1: so badly. She was so disfigured that there was no
- 24:26Speaker 1: immediate way to identify her.
- 24:27Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, I hate that her features were unrecognizable.
- 24:33Speaker 1: Her skull had multiple fractures and was caved in in
- 24:36Speaker 1: the front. This had been an extremely violent and deliberate
- 24:41Speaker 1: personal attack.
- 24:43Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds so.
- 24:45Speaker 1: Back at the police station, the call went out they
- 24:47Speaker 1: needed help identifying the victim. The press release was issued.
- 24:52Speaker 1: A local news picked it up, picked the story up
- 24:54Speaker 1: almost immediately, and that's when Veronica saw the coverage on
- 24:59Speaker 1: the news called the police hotline.
- 25:01Speaker 2: Oh my goodness her Okay, I can only imagine her
- 25:06Speaker 2: heart just must have like just burst really, like, yeah,
- 25:12Speaker 2: I couldn't even imagine that feeling of seeing that when
- 25:15Speaker 2: you know, like your daughter basically is missing him. Then
- 25:18Speaker 2: oh my gosh.
- 25:20Speaker 1: Now she gave them all the details she could think of,
- 25:23Speaker 1: you know, Annie's height, weight, hair, all that sort of stuff.
- 25:26Speaker 1: But the news it didn't get everything right. It said
- 25:31Speaker 1: that the victim was likely.
- 25:33Speaker 2: Asian Asian, Okay.
- 25:35Speaker 1: While you know Annie's Caucasian, right, Yeah, So there was
- 25:39Speaker 1: that like little flutter of hope sitting in Veronica's chest, right, like, Okay,
- 25:43Speaker 1: this may not be her, you know, putting into contact
- 25:45Speaker 1: authorities anyways, but.
- 25:47Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a lot of I would be like
- 25:49Speaker 2: just grasping at that. That's too much hope.
- 25:52Speaker 1: Yeah, But there was one last detail that kind of
- 25:55Speaker 1: seemed to shatter that hope for Veronica. The operator on
- 25:59Speaker 1: the line speaking with Veronica asked her did she wear braces?
- 26:04Speaker 1: And Veronica choked up, yes, you wear braces. Later that day,
- 26:10Speaker 1: the police confirmed the worst the body in the Jordan
- 26:13Speaker 1: River was that of fifteen year old Annie Casperzak. Dental
- 26:17Speaker 1: records and DNA testing confirmed it officially, But that shoe
- 26:23Speaker 1: that was found was a thing that told Veronica everything
- 26:27Speaker 1: she needed to know. That red shoe that was found,
- 26:30Speaker 1: the one on the trail, It had been a gift James,
- 26:35Speaker 1: Annie's stepfather had given it to her for Valentine's Day,
- 26:38Speaker 1: a pair of red shoes.
- 26:40Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's the sweetest thing ever.
- 26:43Speaker 1: And she wore those shoes all the time. As soon
- 26:46Speaker 1: as she saw the shoe, she.
- 26:47Speaker 2: Knew, Okay, this is just devastating. This poor girl, fifteen
- 26:53Speaker 2: years old, just her life is just I don't even
- 26:58Speaker 2: know how to just heartbreaking, devastating. Yeah, to be that
- 27:02Speaker 2: young and have gone through what she's have gone through
- 27:07Speaker 2: her whole life, like the foster situation and now getting
- 27:10Speaker 2: freaking obviously murdered so young, Like, holy shit, this better
- 27:14Speaker 2: be solved. I'm just gonna say, I'm gonna be pissed
- 27:17Speaker 2: if we don't know who did this fair enough.
- 27:19Speaker 1: And you're kind of stumbling your words. I think what
- 27:21Speaker 1: you're trying to say is she went through so much
- 27:24Speaker 1: only to be fucking killed by some A.
- 27:26Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it, well, it's hard to describe. I
- 27:29Speaker 2: feel so terrible for her.
- 27:31Speaker 1: Yeah, And rightfully. So there was one final thing I
- 27:35Speaker 1: was going to say about the shoe, but then you
- 27:37Speaker 1: had to spill your heart out, so I let you.
- 27:40Speaker 1: But yeah, so the one shoe was sitting there on
- 27:43Speaker 1: the river bank and the other shoe was still on
- 27:46Speaker 1: Annie's foot when her body was recovered.
- 27:49Speaker 2: That is probably the sweetest gift I've ever heard of
- 27:51Speaker 2: a father giving their daughter for Valentine's Day? Are you
- 27:54Speaker 2: kidding me?
- 27:56Speaker 1: Yeah? Now, with Annie's death confirmed, investigators immediately shifted their
- 28:01Speaker 1: focus to one question, who killed her, And the person
- 28:05Speaker 1: at the top of that list was LJ, someone who,
- 28:08Speaker 1: according to Chris, was about seventeen years old, snuck into
- 28:11Speaker 1: Annie's house already months earlier, and apparently might even be
- 28:14Speaker 1: part of a gang as well.
- 28:16Speaker 2: Yeah, who the hell is this LJ guy?
- 28:19Speaker 1: Well, that's the big question, right. The story police got
- 28:22Speaker 1: about LJ was murky and strange. But if Annie had
- 28:25Speaker 1: planned to meet this guy the night that she disappeared,
- 28:27Speaker 1: he could obviously be the killer. The problem was, no
- 28:31Speaker 1: one actually seemed to really know who LJ was. Detectives
- 28:34Speaker 1: began interviewing Annie's friends, classmates, and anyone close to her,
- 28:38Speaker 1: and a few of them had heard Annie mentioned LJ before,
- 28:41Speaker 1: but none of them had ever met him. Some believed
- 28:44Speaker 1: he was real, others weren't quite so sure. One friend
- 28:48Speaker 1: mentioned that LJ had supposedly hacked Annie's email account. Even
- 28:52Speaker 1: another thought he was just a guy from the internet. Still,
- 28:55Speaker 1: no one could provide a full name and address, or
- 28:57Speaker 1: even solid description of him, but he his name had
- 29:01Speaker 1: been heard around.
- 29:03Speaker 2: He doesn't. At first to me, he didn't even seem real,
- 29:07Speaker 2: But then now he almost seems like he could be
- 29:09Speaker 2: a stalker of sorts.
- 29:11Speaker 1: No, you think, I don't know, it's an interesting angle.
- 29:14Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say any more than that. That's interesting angle.
- 29:16Speaker 2: I'm aware you just like closed up there now.
- 29:20Speaker 1: His police were scratching their heads trying to, you know,
- 29:22Speaker 1: piece together the information. A breakthrough actually came in from
- 29:26Speaker 1: a tip. A woman named Joanna Franklin contacted the police
- 29:30Speaker 1: and said that she had information, major information in fact,
- 29:34Speaker 1: about Annie's murder. But there was a catch. Joanna had
- 29:39Speaker 1: pending charges for fraud drug offenses, and she wanted a
- 29:43Speaker 1: deal in exchange for what she knew. If the cops
- 29:47Speaker 1: could promise her immunity, she said that she would tell
- 29:50Speaker 1: them everything.
- 29:51Speaker 2: That just seems far fetched. Just freaking go ahead and help, right,
- 29:56Speaker 2: my gosh.
- 29:57Speaker 1: Now, Joanna claimed that she had witnessed Annie's murder at
- 29:59Speaker 1: a house party.
- 30:01Speaker 2: Okay, well, that already doesn't seem quite right.
- 30:04Speaker 1: According to her story, Annie had been with l J
- 30:08Speaker 1: and two other men, Daniel Ferry and Vienna Vitt. She
- 30:13Speaker 1: said that there had been a violent altercation after one
- 30:15Speaker 1: of the men made a move on Annie and she
- 30:18Speaker 1: rejected him, laughing at him in front of everyone. The rejection,
- 30:22Speaker 1: Joanna said, enraged this guy. She described how Annie was beaten, unconscious,
- 30:27Speaker 1: bleeding from her nose and ears and mouth before the
- 30:30Speaker 1: men put her into the car drove off, and when
- 30:32Speaker 1: they returned they were covered in blood and said she
- 30:36Speaker 1: went swimming.
- 30:38Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, I guess that actually does kind of
- 30:43Speaker 2: make sense a bit. Then, yeah, she wasn't fully dead
- 30:47Speaker 2: at the house party, and they finished the job at
- 30:51Speaker 2: like the riverside.
- 30:52Speaker 1: So she says. It was a graphic and detailed account,
- 30:56Speaker 1: and the police wasted no time pursuing this lead. They
- 30:59Speaker 1: raided Daniel Ferry's house and found exactly what they were
- 31:02Speaker 1: expecting to see, signs of a cleanup.
- 31:06Speaker 2: Oh no, okay, okay, alls.
- 31:09Speaker 1: Were freshly painted carpet was torn up and traces of
- 31:12Speaker 1: blood were found inside. But when the DNA results came back,
- 31:17Speaker 1: it wasn't Annie's blood.
- 31:19Speaker 2: Oh shit, that's scary. Whose was it? Then?
- 31:22Speaker 1: Now, this Daniel fairy guy, he had a rock solid
- 31:25Speaker 1: alibi too. He'd been committing an entirely unrelated crime of
- 31:31Speaker 1: kidnapping at the time of Annie's murder, an awful thing
- 31:35Speaker 1: to be involved in, yes, but it ruled him out
- 31:37Speaker 1: of this case completely. So yes, he's a piece of shit,
- 31:41Speaker 1: just not the piece of shit were after.
- 31:43Speaker 2: So it's sounding to me too like Annie just became
- 31:46Speaker 2: part of the wrong crowd you think, so well, kind
- 31:50Speaker 2: of like these people whoever she was hanging out with,
- 31:53Speaker 2: don't seem like, you know, they're real winners.
- 31:56Speaker 1: These people at this this house party are.
- 31:58Speaker 2: Yeah, if she was actually there, well, And that's.
- 32:00Speaker 1: The thing with this revelation of this Daniel not being involved,
- 32:05Speaker 1: Joanna's entire story unraveled, and under pressure, she finally confessed
- 32:09Speaker 1: that she made the whole thing up.
- 32:10Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
- 32:11Speaker 1: She hadn't, in fact witnessed anything. She had seen the
- 32:15Speaker 1: news reports about Annie's death and spun a convincing story
- 32:18Speaker 1: using publicly available details. But the question is why, Well,
- 32:22Speaker 1: because she was mad at Daniel for cutting her off
- 32:25Speaker 1: from drug supply, and she wanted to get back at
- 32:27Speaker 1: him and get her own charges dropped at the same time. Wow,
- 32:32Speaker 1: So her hopes was she can clear her name and
- 32:34Speaker 1: get him falsely accused of killing Annie. What a terrible person,
- 32:38Speaker 1: all because he cut her off of drugs.
- 32:40Speaker 2: Well, and yeah, she was trying to benefit herself too. Yeah,
- 32:43Speaker 2: because I even was thinking, why the hell didn't she
- 32:45Speaker 2: call this in earlier, right like after they apparently showed
- 32:48Speaker 2: back up covered in blood.
- 32:50Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, in doing this lie, spinning this whole web
- 32:55Speaker 1: of lies, she wasted months of police time, she pulled
- 32:59Speaker 1: the investmentation in the entire wrong direction, and most tragically,
- 33:02Speaker 1: delayed justice for Annie. By early twenty fourteen, a year
- 33:07Speaker 1: after Annie's death, the Wild Goose Chase, sparked by Joanna's
- 33:11Speaker 1: her for non nonsense it is a good way of
- 33:13Speaker 1: putting it, investigators finally were able to turn their attention
- 33:16Speaker 1: back to where it all began. Annie's inner circle, specifically
- 33:20Speaker 1: her boyfriend Chris. Now. Initially, Chris had an airtight alibi
- 33:24Speaker 1: which took him off the suspect list almost entirely doesn't
- 33:28Speaker 1: mean that police weren't still keeping their options open an
- 33:31Speaker 1: eye on him, but he wasn't really considered much of
- 33:33Speaker 1: a suspect. He told detectives that on the night of
- 33:36Speaker 1: March tenth, twenty twelve, he had stayed at his grandmother
- 33:39Speaker 1: Wilma's house after his dad, Darwin Leeroy Bagshawe, went out
- 33:43Speaker 1: to a bar. Chris said he played video games at home,
- 33:46Speaker 1: walked to his grandma's house, dropped off his things, then
- 33:49Speaker 1: left to go visit a friend named Spencer, But when
- 33:52Speaker 1: Spencer wasn't home, he said he returned to his grandmother's
- 33:55Speaker 1: and spent the night there. His father backed the story up,
- 33:59Speaker 1: saying he saw asleep at Wilma's house at around eleven
- 34:02Speaker 1: thirty PM, and his grandma Wilma also backed it up too.
- 34:06Speaker 1: She said he was there all night and that should
- 34:08Speaker 1: have been the end of it, but it wasn't.
- 34:11Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, I am going to be so devastated
- 34:15Speaker 2: if this. If Chris did this.
- 34:17Speaker 1: As I mentioned, Chris was not at the top of
- 34:21Speaker 1: the suspect list, but police still kept an eye on him,
- 34:24Speaker 1: like just in case, right, They kept their options open,
- 34:27Speaker 1: and they quietly pulled the phone records of everyone involved
- 34:30Speaker 1: in a case early on, and as they were visited
- 34:33Speaker 1: the evidence, a troubling detail surfaced. Wilma Chris's grandmother had
- 34:38Speaker 1: called him multiple times that night, including after midnight. So
- 34:45Speaker 1: why would a grandmother call someone repeatedly if that person
- 34:49Speaker 1: was already sleeping on her living room couch.
- 34:53Speaker 2: Makes no sense.
- 34:54Speaker 1: The contradiction couldn't be ignored, and when detectives confronted Wilma
- 34:58Speaker 1: about it, she insisted she only made one call, but
- 35:02Speaker 1: the phone log said that's a lie. Now. At one
- 35:05Speaker 1: point in the investigation, Annie's blood was actually found on
- 35:08Speaker 1: Chris's shoe. He said that Annie had gotten a nose
- 35:12Speaker 1: bleed at Spencer's house and that's how some of the
- 35:14Speaker 1: blood must have ended up on his shoe. But when
- 35:16Speaker 1: police tested the floor in the surface of Spencer's home,
- 35:19Speaker 1: they found nothing, no blood, no traces of anything, and
- 35:23Speaker 1: when Spencer was interviewed, the story changed. Initially, he said
- 35:28Speaker 1: that the nosebleed happened at his house, but he admitted
- 35:31Speaker 1: eventually that he had never actually seen Annie get a
- 35:34Speaker 1: nose bleed. In fact, he had only mentioned it because
- 35:37Speaker 1: Chris told him to police. Then pulled up messages between
- 35:41Speaker 1: the two boys. One of them from Chris, reads this quote,
- 35:47Speaker 1: the cops might come to your house. I need you
- 35:49Speaker 1: to tell them Annie got a bloody nose.
- 35:53Speaker 2: No, no, no.
- 35:56Speaker 1: Another one says, quote, they took my shoes for testing.
- 36:00Speaker 1: I need you to tell them that so I don't
- 36:02Speaker 1: get blamed.
- 36:04Speaker 2: Oh gosh, okay, this is taking a turn that I'm
- 36:08Speaker 2: not liking.
- 36:08Speaker 1: Yeah, it was no longer just weird coincidences. Chris was
- 36:11Speaker 1: actively planting a sort of cover up story and getting
- 36:15Speaker 1: others to help.
- 36:16Speaker 2: YEP.
- 36:17Speaker 1: The deeper investigator's doug the more Chris's narratives started to
- 36:20Speaker 1: fall apart, and they began reanalyzing Annie's journals looking for
- 36:24Speaker 1: any clues. In the entries where Annie mentioned this LJ,
- 36:28Speaker 1: she described him in emotional, familiar terms, not as a stranger,
- 36:32Speaker 1: not as someone knew. It was someone that she was
- 36:36Speaker 1: very personal with. Then someone close to her revealed something
- 36:41Speaker 1: that changed everything. They told police that Annie sometimes called
- 36:47Speaker 1: Chris LJ. Really that meant the mysterious LJ, the violent
- 36:54Speaker 1: gang affiliated teenager Chris blamed for Annie's disappearance, may never
- 36:58Speaker 1: have existed at all, and that Chris himself might be Alja,
- 37:05Speaker 1: and if that was the case, it meant the only
- 37:07Speaker 1: person who had motive, opportunity and proximity to Annie that
- 37:11Speaker 1: night was Chris. The final piece of the puzzle that
- 37:16Speaker 1: came together was the call between Chris and Annie's mother
- 37:21Speaker 1: that night when Annie went missing, Veronica and her Veronica
- 37:25Speaker 1: and Chris, sorry, had a call. As I already mentioned,
- 37:27Speaker 1: right when Annie's missing, she called Chris right yeah. Investigators
- 37:33Speaker 1: obtained cell phone tower records and trace the location of
- 37:36Speaker 1: every ping from Chris's phone on the night she went missing,
- 37:40Speaker 1: March tenth, twenty twelve, At exactly nine oh one pm,
- 37:44Speaker 1: Chris's phone was pinged near the Jordan River, the very
- 37:47Speaker 1: place where Annie's beaten body was discovered the next morning.
- 37:52Speaker 1: It was the same time Annie had stopped responding to
- 37:55Speaker 1: calls and messages, the same time she was believed to
- 37:58Speaker 1: have died. Even more chilling, Chris answered the phone call
- 38:03Speaker 1: from Annie's mother, Veronica, just minutes after they believe Annie
- 38:08Speaker 1: had died, who was, of course, frantically calling to see
- 38:12Speaker 1: if he knew where Annie had gone. The location data
- 38:16Speaker 1: showed that he took the call from the same area
- 38:18Speaker 1: near the river bank, likely standing not far from Annie's
- 38:21Speaker 1: now deceased body, and he spoke to her mother calmly
- 38:25Speaker 1: told her he had no idea where Annie was lied
- 38:28Speaker 1: through his teeth while she was still warm laying on
- 38:31Speaker 1: the cold ground. But there was more. During a search
- 38:37Speaker 1: of Chris's home, police found something strange in the trash,
- 38:41Speaker 1: a handwritten note. It was a timeline, a detailed breakdown
- 38:47Speaker 1: of Annie's movements the night she disappeared, including what she
- 38:51Speaker 1: was wearing. There was only one way Chris could have
- 38:55Speaker 1: known the level of detail that was on this list,
- 38:57Speaker 1: because he was with her, He saw her, and he
- 39:01Speaker 1: killed her. They also analyzed the Facebook post Chris had
- 39:06Speaker 1: made after Annie's death, and it took much more of
- 39:09Speaker 1: a sinister tone in hindsight. Quote everyone wear red tomorrow
- 39:15Speaker 1: it was her favorite color. Quote the world is filled
- 39:19Speaker 1: with hate and no one understands the pain of losing
- 39:21Speaker 1: someone they care about until it's too late. Quote. I
- 39:26Speaker 1: don't know why anyone would do this to her. She
- 39:29Speaker 1: was awesome and we all loved her very much. To
- 39:32Speaker 1: his classmates and community, it looked like a grieving ex
- 39:35Speaker 1: boyfriend morning a tragedy. But now to detectives, it looked
- 39:39Speaker 1: like a manipulator trying to cement his innocence. However, Chris
- 39:45Speaker 1: wasn't just a grieving boyfriend. He was in fact Annie's murderer.
- 39:49Speaker 2: Oh you know, I didn't see that coming, I really didn't.
- 39:55Speaker 2: But he, obviously, I feel like, wanted a weigh out.
- 39:59Speaker 2: I guess of what she was dreaming of their future,
- 40:04Speaker 2: and he decided this was the way to do it.
- 40:07Speaker 1: Well, we'll get to that, don't worry, Okay. Now, there
- 40:10Speaker 1: was one final break in the case that came when
- 40:13Speaker 1: police traced the blocked numbers that had repeatedly called Annie
- 40:16Speaker 1: the night she vanished. For years, everyone believed that these
- 40:20Speaker 1: calls that came to her phone was from this mysterious
- 40:23Speaker 1: l JA and they were placed from a different phone,
- 40:26Speaker 1: a prepaid device that was not registered to anyone or
- 40:28Speaker 1: a household right. But tech experts working with law enforcement
- 40:33Speaker 1: confirmed the calls had actually come from the phone owned
- 40:35Speaker 1: by Chris Bagshawe. He was in fact al jail along,
- 40:40Speaker 1: and they were able to prove it through those the
- 40:44Speaker 1: story he fed police, lies about gang members, the threats,
- 40:47Speaker 1: the red herrings. It was all a smoke screen, a
- 40:50Speaker 1: way to delay, a way to confuse, and a way
- 40:53Speaker 1: to get away with murder. But the truth had finally
- 40:56Speaker 1: caught up with Chris, and by the time investigators tracked
- 41:00Speaker 1: Chris Bagshaw down in twenty fourteen, he had moved on,
- 41:04Speaker 1: at least on the surface. Now living in Colorado, he
- 41:07Speaker 1: was attending school like any other teenager, but back in
- 41:10Speaker 1: Utah he was well. The net was tightening. Let's put
- 41:14Speaker 1: it that way. The evidence was undeniable, and in October
- 41:18Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, Chris was arrested and charged with first degree
- 41:22Speaker 1: murder and obstruction of justice in the death of Annie Casperzak.
- 41:26Speaker 1: At the time of Annie's murder, Chris was just fourteen
- 41:29Speaker 1: years old. That created a legal dilemma. Should he be
- 41:33Speaker 1: tried as a juvenile or should he be tried as
- 41:36Speaker 1: an adult.
- 41:37Speaker 2: Well, it's also shocking to me that a fourteen year
- 41:40Speaker 2: old could get away with this. He seems I don't
- 41:44Speaker 2: know how he went about this, Like he didn't really
- 41:47Speaker 2: make well, he made airs, but it just seems like
- 41:51Speaker 2: he was an older person would have done this, like
- 41:54Speaker 2: he was too smart.
- 41:55Speaker 1: I don't miss something. I don't think he was too smart.
- 41:58Speaker 1: I think luck was on his side. Oh okay, he
- 42:01Speaker 1: didn't make up LJ and he made up LJ and
- 42:04Speaker 1: he used it to his advantage. I guess, yeah, and
- 42:07Speaker 1: that that's what delayed police for so long.
- 42:11Speaker 2: Well, even just talking to the mom though after this
- 42:14Speaker 2: and being calm and stuff like, yeah, this guy literally
- 42:17Speaker 2: like a freaking serial killer in the making, or what
- 42:19Speaker 2: the hell's going on here?
- 42:20Speaker 1: Well, I mean kind of what he fucking just did?
- 42:25Speaker 2: I guess, I guess because I don't know. I just
- 42:27Speaker 2: I can't imagine a fourteen year old killing his girlfriend
- 42:31Speaker 2: and acting like this afterwards.
- 42:34Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I already told you we're going to get
- 42:37Speaker 1: to why. Yeah, just wait to hear why.
- 42:40Speaker 2: Yeah, clearly I have no patience because this is just
- 42:44Speaker 2: driving me nuts.
- 42:45Speaker 1: So let's take a step back back to the should
- 42:48Speaker 1: he be tried as a juvenile or an adult. If
- 42:50Speaker 1: prosecuted in the jew juvenile system, he could be released
- 42:53Speaker 1: at only twenty one years old. Yeah, no, meaning he'd
- 42:57Speaker 1: serve only about three years for a brutal premiud killing.
- 43:01Speaker 2: Yeah, he did a grown up crime, so he needs
- 43:03Speaker 2: to be tried as a grown up.
- 43:05Speaker 1: Prosecutors and Annie's family couldn't stomach this possibility of being
- 43:09Speaker 1: released only three years after being incarcerated, and so the
- 43:12Speaker 1: state began gathering every piece of evidence that they could
- 43:15Speaker 1: to help them argue Chris should face the adult charges,
- 43:20Speaker 1: and then they got an unexpected break in that while
- 43:25Speaker 1: Chris was in juvenile detention center, he began talking, confiding,
- 43:30Speaker 1: not with detectives, but in other inmates. What he didn't
- 43:34Speaker 1: know was that this inmate that he was specifically confiding
- 43:37Speaker 1: in would come forward to police. The inmate told authorities
- 43:42Speaker 1: that Chris had confessed in chilling detail how he had
- 43:46Speaker 1: killed Annie. According to this witness, Chris said he believed
- 43:51Speaker 1: Annie was pregnant with his child and he didn't want
- 43:54Speaker 1: a baby. He was afraid what that would mean for
- 43:57Speaker 1: his life, so he told the inmate he planned it out,
- 44:01Speaker 1: suggested to Annie that they run away together, and arranged
- 44:04Speaker 1: to meet by the Jordan River on the night of
- 44:06Speaker 1: March tenth, twenty twelve. Once she arrived, he attacked her
- 44:12Speaker 1: with a shovel, now once, not twice, but repeatedly. He
- 44:16Speaker 1: beat her face until it was unrecognizable. At one point,
- 44:21Speaker 1: he told the inmate that he placed the shovel on
- 44:23Speaker 1: Annie's forehead, then stomped on it over and over again
- 44:27Speaker 1: until she stopped moving. Holy shit, Annie's skull had been crushed,
- 44:32Speaker 1: her facial bones shattered. She was found floating in the
- 44:35Speaker 1: water the next day, so mutilated that even her mother
- 44:38Speaker 1: couldn't recognize her except for one detail, a dimple on
- 44:42Speaker 1: her chin.
- 44:45Speaker 2: Ah. So he is just a complete monster in the making.
- 44:49Speaker 1: Really, Yes, The confession matched the autopsy exactly, including the
- 44:54Speaker 1: injuries to her forehead where he stomped on the shovel
- 44:57Speaker 1: which long baffled the corner and he couldn't exp planet.
- 45:00Speaker 1: But now that matched. Ugh. This was no spontaneous outburst,
- 45:07Speaker 1: no momentary lapse of judgment. Chris had lured Annie there
- 45:10Speaker 1: under false pretenses, armed with a weapon, and carried out
- 45:14Speaker 1: a gruesome plan to kill her. With the confession now
- 45:19Speaker 1: added to the mounting pile of physical and digital evidence,
- 45:22Speaker 1: prosecutors were confident this case didn't belong in juvenile court.
- 45:26Speaker 1: This was a cold blooded, premeditated murder.
- 45:29Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 45:31Speaker 1: By early twenty sixteen, nearly four years after Annie's murder,
- 45:35Speaker 1: the case was finally heading to trial. Now seventeen years old,
- 45:39Speaker 1: Chris Bagshawe was being charged as an adult for first
- 45:43Speaker 1: degree murder of his girlfriend and as well obstruction of justice.
- 45:50Speaker 1: The prosecution had built a damning case. All the evidence
- 45:54Speaker 1: we've gone over right, they have like it's a slam dunk, obviously.
- 45:59Speaker 1: But a month before the trial was set to begin
- 46:01Speaker 1: in February of twenty sixteen, Chris changed his plea. He
- 46:06Speaker 1: pled guilty to the charge of first degree murder. There
- 46:09Speaker 1: was no plea deal, no reduction in sentence offered in
- 46:12Speaker 1: exchange for confession. He simply admitted to killing Annie.
- 46:18Speaker 2: Oh okay, didn't expect that.
- 46:21Speaker 1: At his sentencing hearing, held on April twenty fifth, twenty sixteen,
- 46:25Speaker 1: the courtroom was filled with pain and the raw weight
- 46:27Speaker 1: of what had been lost. Annie's father, Dennis Casperzak, gave
- 46:31Speaker 1: a devastating account of what it was like to see
- 46:34Speaker 1: his daughter's body after she was recovered from the river. Quote,
- 46:40Speaker 1: it was something you would see being hit by a train.
- 46:43Speaker 1: The only identifiable part of my daughter was a small
- 46:46Speaker 1: dimple on her chin. Chris sat quietly throughout the hearing.
- 46:51Speaker 1: He spoke only once, offering a short apology to Annie's family,
- 46:55Speaker 1: his own family, and the court quote, I'm very sorry
- 47:00Speaker 1: for everything that's happened. He didn't even say I'm sorry
- 47:03Speaker 1: for what I did.
- 47:04Speaker 2: That's it.
- 47:05Speaker 1: He said, I'm sorry for what had happened.
- 47:07Speaker 2: That's his freakin' apology.
- 47:09Speaker 1: The judge, James Blanche did not mince his words, quote,
- 47:13Speaker 1: this is a terrible crime, about the worst crime that
- 47:16Speaker 1: one can possibly imagine. It deserves a terrible sentence. Chris
- 47:22Speaker 1: Bagshawe was sentenced to the maximum allowed under the law
- 47:25Speaker 1: given his age at the time of the murder. And
- 47:28Speaker 1: he was sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison.
- 47:32Speaker 2: Oh that's still not enough at all.
- 47:36Speaker 1: He will be eligible for parole in twenty thirty four,
- 47:39Speaker 1: when he will be thirty six years old.
- 47:40Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Okay, that's a piss off. Yeah, that
- 47:45Speaker 2: is like so much life still to live, I know.
- 47:49Speaker 1: After years of grief, false leads, and painful court proceedings,
- 47:54Speaker 1: Annie Casperzak's family finally had answers and a sentence for
- 47:57Speaker 1: the boy who took her life. Closure. Well, that's something
- 48:02Speaker 1: different entirely. Annie's mom, Veronica, stood in the court after
- 48:06Speaker 1: Chris Bagshawe was sentenced and looked directly at him. Her
- 48:10Speaker 1: voice didn't shake. Her words weren't filled with rage. They
- 48:13Speaker 1: were filled with something heavier, the truth of living with
- 48:17Speaker 1: irreversible loss. And she said this quote mayor conscience never clear. Yeah,
- 48:28Speaker 1: Annie's ashes were spread in the ocean. Veronica said it
- 48:31Speaker 1: was because Annie had always loved the sea, but also
- 48:34Speaker 1: because she didn't want her daughter to be confined to
- 48:36Speaker 1: just one place. She said she belonged to the world,
- 48:41Speaker 1: not a riverbank, not a court room, not a case file.
- 48:46Speaker 1: In the years since Annie's murder, Veronica and her husband
- 48:49Speaker 1: James have adopted five more children, giving love and stability
- 48:53Speaker 1: to kids who, like Annie, needed someone to believe in them.
- 49:00Speaker 1: The family has tried to honor her memory in ways
- 49:02Speaker 1: that reflect Annie's spirit. She had wanted to be a
- 49:04Speaker 1: therapist to help kids with stories like her own. Veronica
- 49:09Speaker 1: has spoken publicly about trauma, youth violence, and the long
- 49:12Speaker 1: term impact of child instability, trying to turn their pain
- 49:16Speaker 1: into something that helps others. But questions still linger. How
- 49:22Speaker 1: did a child with so much promise and a child
- 49:24Speaker 1: who claimed to love her end up in a story
- 49:27Speaker 1: this dark? What drives a fourteen year old boy to
- 49:31Speaker 1: murder someone over a lie? Was Chris a monster in disguise?
- 49:36Speaker 1: Or is scared deeply broken kid who made an irreversible choice.
- 49:41Speaker 1: The answer might be a mix of both. We don't know,
- 49:44Speaker 1: but what's not in question is this Annie was failed
- 49:47Speaker 1: at multiple turns by systems that couldn't protect her all
- 49:50Speaker 1: through her life, by friends who believed a fictional Ljay existed,
- 49:54Speaker 1: and by the boy who should have loved her but
- 49:57Speaker 1: insisted instead to silen her forever, and for two years
- 50:03Speaker 1: while he lived free and posted morning messages online, her
- 50:07Speaker 1: family lived every single day with a hole that only
- 50:11Speaker 1: truth could begin to fill. That truth finally did come,
- 50:15Speaker 1: but justice in a case like this always just feels
- 50:19Speaker 1: too late and never quite enough. And that's the story
- 50:24Speaker 1: of Annie Caspersak.
- 50:26Speaker 2: Huh, that's freaking heartbreaking. Yeah, I do have to say
- 50:31Speaker 2: I'm like pretty shocked that well, obviously, Annie's adoptive mom
- 50:37Speaker 2: is like freaking incredible that she went on even after
- 50:42Speaker 2: like experienced such loss with Annie, that she went on
- 50:45Speaker 2: to still help more kids. Yeah, that's pretty incredible. I
- 50:49Speaker 2: feel like I agree, because she's you know, opening her
- 50:53Speaker 2: heart to more potential loss, but also I guess more
- 50:57Speaker 2: potential love, right.
- 50:58Speaker 1: So yeah, definitely, I mean, she gave Annie a chance
- 51:04Speaker 1: in the world and love that she deserved, and unfortunately
- 51:06Speaker 1: Annie was taken away. But that doesn't mean that there
- 51:09Speaker 1: aren't other people out there that deserve the same chance.
- 51:12Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, for sure. Wow, that is unbelievable, that story.
- 51:18Speaker 2: It's just shocking almost that that Chris guy could have
- 51:22Speaker 2: so much anger really in there.
- 51:25Speaker 1: I don't know if it was even anger.
- 51:27Speaker 2: Well, it was sort of seeming like it was a
- 51:29Speaker 2: hate you know, like he hated, like a hate crime
- 51:32Speaker 2: to the extent that what he did to her body.
- 51:35Speaker 1: I mean sure, I guess. Yeah, you're right, there was
- 51:38Speaker 1: emotion in them and what he did. But the reason,
- 51:41Speaker 1: so he claimed to confess to this inmate, the reason
- 51:45Speaker 1: he killed her was he didn't want to be a dad.
- 51:49Speaker 1: My gosh, So think about that for a minute. He
- 51:53Speaker 1: thought he was killing a pregnant woman. Yeah, a pregnant
- 51:58Speaker 1: fifteen year old woman, his girlfriend who's pregnant, that's who
- 52:03Speaker 1: he thought he was killing.
- 52:05Speaker 2: I just I know, when someone is that evil, I
- 52:08Speaker 2: just can't imagine them ever later or not being a
- 52:12Speaker 2: complete psychope.
- 52:13Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, Oh, because.
- 52:15Speaker 2: It's kind of scary. He'll get out and he could
- 52:18Speaker 2: meet someone and he could, like you could literally just
- 52:22Speaker 2: lie and not tell them your whole past quite easily.
- 52:25Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 52:27Speaker 2: Oh and then okay, yeah, I don't want to think
- 52:29Speaker 2: about that actually.
- 52:31Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fucked up.
- 52:32Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is.
- 52:34Speaker 1: Chris is fucked up and he did some fucked up shit.
- 52:38Speaker 1: In my mind, absolute monster period.
- 52:42Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean yeah, there's like rehabilitation, YadA YadA.
- 52:47Speaker 1: But oh man, don't get me wrong. I hope every
- 52:50Speaker 1: single one of these people who who commit violent acts
- 52:53Speaker 1: like this, I hope every single one of them get rehabilitated.
- 52:57Speaker 1: But that does not mean that I do not hope
- 53:00Speaker 1: they still rot for what they did. Well, you still
- 53:02Speaker 1: did something fucking horrible and deserve to serve the sentence.
- 53:06Speaker 2: Annie doesn't get to just start living again at thirty
- 53:08Speaker 2: six exactly. So I just like it's hard to comprehend
- 53:12Speaker 2: that he can just get up of jail and like
- 53:15Speaker 2: live his life. Like I'm thirty six, You're not, huh.
- 53:20Speaker 1: I'm thirty seven. You're gonna be thirty six and thirty
- 53:23Speaker 1: seven in a few months.
- 53:24Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm just like, that's still like a life
- 53:27Speaker 2: to live.
- 53:28Speaker 1: You could do a lot of shit, Yeah you can.
- 53:31Speaker 2: So, oh man, that's scary. Okay, Well what yeah, this
- 53:35Speaker 2: case is just shit.
- 53:36Speaker 1: It tugs at the heart strengths, yes, sure does. But
- 53:40Speaker 1: thank you for being here, Like I said, next, episode.
- 53:43Speaker 1: We got a little bit more of a lighthearted case.
- 53:46Speaker 1: It's a funny, fun one. I don't know if there's
- 53:48Speaker 1: gonna be a whole lot to it, so it might
- 53:49Speaker 1: be a bit of a shorter case, but trust me,
- 53:52Speaker 1: it'll get you laughing for sure. It'll take us out
- 53:55Speaker 1: of this heavy stuff we've been doing lately. If you
- 53:58Speaker 1: want to check out more from our pod, we have
- 54:00Speaker 1: social media website, all that good stuff. In the description
- 54:03Speaker 1: of this podcast, we are hosted, produced, researched, all by ourselves.
- 54:08Speaker 1: It's us. We're an independent podcast, no big corporation pulling
- 54:11Speaker 1: those puppet strings. We just do what we want, when
- 54:14Speaker 1: we want, how we want, and because of you supporting us,
- 54:17Speaker 1: we get to do it that way. So thank you
- 54:18Speaker 1: so much. We appreciate you. If you want to give
- 54:20Speaker 1: us a review, join Patreon, We could appreciate it. It
- 54:23Speaker 1: really helps us keep going.
- 54:25Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you for being here. Yeah, at the bottom
- 54:27Speaker 2: of our hearts.
- 54:28Speaker 1: And until next time.
- 54:29Speaker 2: No, I think you got to say it this time.
- 54:30Speaker 2: I'm always saying it, So until next time.
- 54:33Speaker 1: Then you got to like.
- 54:34Speaker 2: I was going to, but you were already there and
- 54:37Speaker 2: I was like, I'm doing this.
- 54:39Speaker 1: Did you just me what the shit.
- 54:44Speaker 2: So until next time, stay wicked.