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Pasco case to be aired on 'Forensic Files' Friday

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By TODD LESKANIC | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 29, 2009

NEW PORT RICHEY - A local criminal case will go national Friday night when the popular show "Forensic Files" airs a profile of the investigation into the 2002 murder of Joshan Ashbrook.

The episode debuts at 10 p.m. on truTV and will re-air at 2 a.m. Saturday.

Show producers visited Pasco County in January to conduct interviews.

The show will tell viewers how DNA and other forensic evidence led investigators to Ashbrook's killer, a middle-aged drifter named Phillup Partin. Partin, 44, was convicted of first-degree murder last year and sentenced to death. He remains on death row.

Ashbrook, 16, was a habitual runaway whose body was discovered in the woods off Shady Hills Road on Aug 1, 2002. Her throat had been gashed and her neck broken. Nine days later, Partin left his daughter with a woman in Wauchula and fled the state.

Investigators tracked him to Fayetteville, N.C., where they arrested him more than a year later.
Key forensic evidence presented at trial included a hair embedded in a gash on Ashbrook's hand.

Tests showed that the hair belonged to Partin.

Blood stains found in the room where Partin was staying at the time contained Ashbrook's DNA. Moldings of tire tracks found near Ashbrook's body were likely made by the tires of the red Ford F-150 Partin drove at the time.

The truck was later found abandoned at a Plant City Walmart.

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