Prosecutors Show Garcia's Video Confession in 2010 Pham Murder

A video confession by the suspect in the stabbing murder of Vanessa Pham was played in court Wednesday, leaving the woman's relatives in tears.

Pham, 19, gave Julio Blanco Garcia and his baby daughter a ride when he said he needed to get to a hospital June 27, 2010. She was found stabbed to death inside her car along Arlington Boulevard and Garcia was charged with her murder in December 2012.

Defense attorneys say Garcia was high on PCP and hallucinating at the time. In a video confession recorded during an interrogation in December, Garcia admits to the murder.

"Like, I can't even say if I had my daughter with me, because I was really high," Garcia told police. "I remember I asked [Pham] to drop me off at the hospital, then she took the wrong way. In my mind, because I was really high, I thought she was going to do something to me. I had a knife in my backpack... and then I did what I did."

Garcia said he stabbed Pham several times in the chest as she cried. He said he drove her car for a while before he crashed, left the knife behind, grabbed his daughter and then left the scene.

Prosecutors, who are attempting to see Blanco Garcia convicted of first-degree murder, argued that the killing was premeditated.

Cell phone records place him in the area of the murder at the time Pham was killed, testimony revealed Wednesday. Four calls were tracked from Blanco Garcia's cell phone to a Merrifield-area Verizon tower in the minutes just after police believe the teenager was stabbed to death.

In the video, Garcia said he had called his mother.

An analysis of two computers taken from Blanco Garcia's apartment show that he had a keen interest in the police investigation during the 2 1/2 years that authorities were searching for Pham's killer.

A computer forensic specialist from the Fairfax County police dept, Jason Friedman, said that Blanco Garcia often entered the names "Vanessa" or" Pham" in his search engine.

Friedman discovered that Blanco Garcia visited NBCWashington.com several times to read stories about the search for her killer. Blanco Garcia also searched topics related to PCP, other drugs and drug treatment, Friedman testified.

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