Phillup Alan "Sonny" Partin (born June 29, 1965, in
Sacramento,
California)
is an American convicted murderer currently on
Florida death row
Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting Capital punishment, execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of ...
at
Union Correctional Institution. Partin was sentenced to death by a 9–3 vote in favor of the sentence by a jury on December 1, 2008, for the July 31, 2002 murder of 16-year-old hitchhiker Joshan Ashbrook.
Murder
Evidence at Partin's trial showed that he picked up Ashbrook as she hitchhiked along U.S. Highway 19 in Florida on July 31, 2002. He and Ashbrook spent the day fishing and swimming with Partin's daughter, then 6, before returning to the
New Port Richey
New Port Richey is a city in Pasco County, Florida, United States. It is a suburban city included in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was counted at 16,728 in the 2020 census.
History
B ...
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 his daughter off at the home of a
foster mother, Jean Prestridge, later known as Jean Edenfield, in
Wauchula and left the state. His daughter Patrisha's two sisters lived with this foster mother in her Wauchula home. Jean kept Patrisha for five days but then gave her up to foster care. He was a fugitive for more than a year before investigators tracked him to
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Fayetteville () is a city in and the county seat of Cumberland County, North Carolina, United States. It is best known as the home of Fort Bragg, a major U.S. Army installation northwest of the city.
Fayetteville has received the All-America C ...
. He was arrested there on October 28, 2003.
Background
Partin was a prostitute with male clients. Partin was convicted of second-degree murder in Florida after he killed one of his clients, Gary Thorne, a math teacher from
Key Biscayne. Thorne was strangled with a telephone cord in his home. He was convicted of second-degree murder, armed robbery and armed burglary in 1989 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Partin was released from prison on August 1, 1995. He then worked in construction and had a daughter, Patrisha Windham (born c. 1996), with Martha Windham. He had sole custody of his daughter prior to Ashbrook's death.
See also
*
List of death row inmates in the United States
References
1965 births
2002 murders in the United States
Living people
American robbers
American prisoners sentenced to death
American people convicted of murder
People convicted of murder by Florida
People from Sacramento, California
Prisoners sentenced to death by Florida
{{US-crime-bio-stub