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Suspect Called Himself A 'Dead Man'

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By TODD LESKANIC, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 30, 2007

NEW PORT RICHEY - Phillup Alan Partin must have had an inkling investigators were closing in on him when he spoke with longtime friend Fred Kaufman in late October 2003.

Phillup Partin

"I am so [expletive] scared, you know?" Partin tells Kaufman in a phone call recorded by Pasco County sheriff's investigators. "Cause I know I'm a [expletive] dead man. I'm a [expletive] dead man. You're talking to a walking, talking dead man."

Three days later, deputies in Fayetteville, N.C., arrested Partin on a first-degree murder warrant. Investigators had nabbed the man they think killed New Port Richey teenager Joshan Ashbrook more than a year earlier.

Partin goes on trial in Pasco Circuit Court on Monday.

Should jurors find him guilty of premeditated murder, Partin could be sent to Florida's death row. Three years ago, the always animated Partin told a judge he was ready for that.

"I've got a tattoo on my back," he said to the judge. "It says, 'Live free or die.' Either you people kill me or you people send me back to the streets."

Partin, 42, has pleaded not guilty.

He is no stranger to the justice system. On March 31, 1989, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for killing a Miami man in 1987. With Florida's prisons overcrowded, though, he was released early in 1995.

Partin Was Suspect Early On

Seven years later, electric company workers discovered Ashbrook's partially clothed body in woods off Shady Hills Road. Her throat had been slashed, her neck broken.

Joshan Ashbrook

Partin became a suspect early in the investigation when detectives learned Ashbrook had made a call from his cell phone the day before her body was found.

Investigators traced Partin to Kaufman's Buchanan Drive home in Port Richey, where he and his 7-year-old daughter, Patrisha, had been staying. Detectives found Ashbrook's blood on the walls and carpet in Partin's room.

Kaufman and Partin had met in prison years before and remained friends. When Partin decided to move from North Carolina to Florida in July 2002, Kaufman agreed to put him up, along with his daughter.

Ashbrook, 16, lived with her family on Sheelin Drive in New Port Richey. A drug user and habitual runaway, she left home for the final time July 31, 2002, to avoid going to a drug treatment center, investigators said.

Authorities say Partin and his daughter picked up Ashbrook while she was hitchhiking on U.S. 19 and drove her to Kaufman's house, where the three spent the afternoon in Partin's room.

After finding Ashbrook's blood in the room, investigators concluded Partin killed her there.

When a detective called the cell phone Ashbrook had used to make a call shortly before her death, he got Partin, who gave him a phony name and said he had given Ashbrook a ride and let her use his phone, according to court documents.

He seemed evasive and refused to meet with the detective, according to court records. Investigators suspect Partin left the state soon after, but not before dropping off his daughter at the Wauchula home of Jean Prestridge, one of the girl's former foster parents.

Running From The Law

In a deposition taken in August, Patrisha, now 12, remembered it this way: "He dropped me off there, and he said he would pick me up that day and take me back to Fred's and he never did. So I stayed. I lived with Jean for awhile, and then I went to foster care."

It isn't clear whether Partin moved around or went directly to Fayetteville after he left Florida. He was in Fayetteville long enough to land a job as an air conditioning technician, investigators said.

By the time Partin and Kaufman spoke by phone in October 2003, Partin had been on the run for about a year. A Pasco County grand jury had indicted him the month before.

On a tape of that conversation, Partin sounds almost giddy about his luck in avoiding arrest. He brags about getting into a fight and speaking with police about the altercation but then being let go.

"They didn't even ask me for my [expletive] name," Partin says in a cavalier tone.

When Kaufman brings up Ashbrook and the murder allegation, though, Partin quickly changes tone.

"Dude, man, I can't talk to you."

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (727) 815-1084 or tleskanic@tampatrib.com.

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