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