BROOMFIELD — When police searched Alexander Pacheco’s home computer after finding his 13-year-old girlfriend’s body in a Broomfield ditch, they discovered a file titled “Kelsey.doc.”
“I love the thought of necrophilia,” Pacheco wrote, according to a Broomfield police detective’s testimony Wednesday. Pacheco wrote that a dead body never judged him, played games with him or hurt his feelings, the detective said.
Publicly presenting the evidence against Pacheco for the first time since he was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of Kelsey Shannon, prosecutors said he strangled and stabbed the girl, had sex with her corpse and bragged about it to friends.
After eight hours of testimony during a preliminary hearing Wednesday in Broomfield District Court, a judge agreed to reconvene May 26 before ruling whether evidence exists for the case to proceed. Pacheco, 18, of Broomfield, also faces charges of child abuse resulting in death and abuse of a corpse.
Wearing a buzzed haircut and an orange jumpsuit, he showed little emotion during Wednesday’s gruesome testimony.
Although Pacheco has never confessed to police to killing his girlfriend, who went missing three months before her remains were discovered Jan. 21, Detective Chris Kearns said Pacheco told friends “I killed her” and sought help to destroy the body. Pacheco was arrested Jan. 24.
Defense attorney Megan Ring questioned the credibility of the teenagers who shared confession stories with police, pointing out that the group regularly does drugs and that one of the friends met Pacheco just a few weeks before Kelsey disappeared.
The Adams County Coroner’s Office hasn’t ruled on a cause of death.
“No cause of death has been determined, and (Pacheco) has made no confession or acknowledgment that he had anything to do with Kelsey Shannon,” Ring said.
Police arrested Pacheco the day after they interviewed one of his friends, who said Pacheco had a lock of Kelsey’s hair, admitted to killing her and said “she went cold in 30 seconds,” Kearns testified Wednesday.
