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Judge Sentences Girl's Killer To Death

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By TODD LESKANIC

tleskanic@tampatrib.com

Published: December 3, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - Phillup Partin, the drifter who killed 16-year-old Joshan Ashbrook in 2002, will die for his crime.

Circuit Judge William Webb announced the sentence Monday in a courtroom filled with bailiffs and Ashbrook's relatives. The penalty brought claps from Ashbrook's family but no reaction from the normally outspoken and ornery Partin.

"I expected him to say something," said Ashbrook's mother, Tara Ramsdell. "But what's he going to say? He's said it all and been rude about it all."

The sentence came nearly nine months after a Pasco County jury convicted the 43-year-old of first-degree murder and then recommended by a 9-3 vote that he be put to death. Florida judges are not bound by a jury's recommendation but must give it "great weight" in handing down a sentence.

Partin becomes the eighth defendant from Pasco now on death row, joining the likes of Oscar Ray Bolin and Dominick Occhicone. He is the first Pasco defendant to be sentenced to death since Faunce Pearce in 2002. Pearce's sentence has been overturned and he has been taken off death row pending resentencing.

Evidence at Partin's trial showed that he picked up Ashbrook as she hitchhiked along U.S. 19 on July 31, 2002. He and Ashbrook spent the day fishing and swimming with Partin's daughter, Patrisha, then 7, before returning to the New Port Richey house where he and his daughter were living.

Prosecutors think Ashbrook was killed between 9 p.m. and midnight. The next morning, workers found her body in woods off Shady Hills Road. She had been strangled, her throat gashed and her neck broken.

Nine days after the discovery, Partin dropped Patrisha off in Wauchula and left the state. He played cat-and-mouse with investigators for more than a year before they tracked him to Fayetteville, N.C. He was arrested there Oct. 28, 2003.

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (727) 815-1084.

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