A Pennsylvania man is on trial for allegedly raping and killing a woman at a Hilton Hotel after getting drunk all day and meeting her at a bar, telling police she was his “lady of the night” and had attacked him first, prompting him to give her “a few combos,” according to cops.
“I think I broke her neck,” Travis Collins, 32, told the Harrisburg Bureau of Police in a 911 call after allegedly murdering Ashley Sarazen, 38, on August 4, according to PennLive.
“I don’t remember,” Collins allegedly said to the dispatcher. “She fell on the bed and started bleeding.”
Officers responded to the Harrisburg Hilton Hotel on Second Street at 3:10 a.m. after receiving a 911 call and discovered Sarazen dead inside a hotel room, with injuries that rendered her nearly unrecognizable, according to PennLive.
Police said Sarazen was visiting from Pittsburgh and had met Collins earlier in the evening at the Bourbon Street Saloon on Second Street. The bar is about a block away from the Hilton and the Crowne Plaza hotel, where prosecutors claim Collins was staying with a friend.
According to PennLive, the pair was bar-hopping in Harrisburg after traveling from Collins’ home in Kempton, which is about 70 minutes away.
Officers allegedly spoke with Collins after arriving at the scene, and he claimed he had an altercation with Sarazen that resulted in him defending himself. “That [expletive] thing in here,” he allegedly told police while describing Sarazen and the incident. “JFK ain’t lying dead in that room, it’s some fat hooker,” Collins said, according to investigators.
Sarazen appeared to have died from strangulation, according to local ABC affiliate WHTM.
At the start of Collins’ trial on Monday, Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Zawisky told jurors that Sarazen was a “businesswoman” who frequently visited Harrisburg as part of her job working with juvenile criminal offenders, and that she met Collins while drinking, according to PennLive.
Police said she had a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of.30, nearly four times the local legal driving limit, while Collins’ was estimated to be between.175 and.213.
After meeting, the two went up to Sarazen’s hotel room and spent about an hour and ten minutes together before Collins allegedly called his friend and said, “I [expletive] up, she’s dead,” according to prosecutors.
Phone records show him allegedly speaking with the friend for more than 15 minutes before Collins called 911 at 3:06 a.m. to report what had happened.
Zawisky told jurors on Monday that Collins, who stands 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighs about 270 pounds, changed his story several times about what happened.
He allegedly settled on the claim that Sarazen, who stands 5 feet, 1 inch tall and weighs 120 pounds, “ambushed” him after he caught her rummaging through his wallet, telling cops she ripped the hotel’s landline phone out of the wall and attacked him with it, according to Zawisky.
Collins denied having sexual contact with Sarazen, but her autopsy revealed signs of sexual assault and Collins’ DNA on her body, with police discovering a bite mark that he allegedly gave Sarazen on her buttocks, prosecutors said. “You got me walking down this hallway like Cyrus ‘The Virus,'” Zawisky recalled Collins telling an officer after arriving at the Harrisburg police station, referring to actor John Malkovich’s character — a psychopath and rapist — in the 1997 film “Con Air.”
“You see this? “I did this to myself,” Collins allegedly told police about a paper-cut-sized scratch on his forehead that he previously claimed Sarazen caused.
“Nah, I’m just joking,” Collins allegedly said.
While being detained, Collins allegedly told the officer who transported him that he had paid Sarazen to sleep with him that night.
“Ya hire a lady of the night, and she tries to rob you,” he allegedly stated. “She got the short end of that stick.”
Jessica Bush, Collins’ attorney, did not attempt to deny the evidence and comments stacked against him. She argued that he did not kill Sarazen with intent or malice, so his case does not meet the legal standard for convicting him of first-degree murder, as charged.
Bush told jurors that Collins drunkenly overreacted that night after witnessing Sarazen allegedly going through his wallet, and that he was too intoxicated to distinguish between right and wrong. She blamed Sarazen’s death directly on Collins’ alleged drinking binge, which she claimed began around lunchtime, according to PennLive.
Zawisky stated that the allegations were difficult to believe given Sarazen’s condition when discovered by police.
“[Collins’ story] doesn’t even take into account the damage and destruction to her lower body, including her organs,” Zawisky told the jury, citing Sarazen’s severe injuries as a result of Collins’ alleged rape of her. “It was extreme, and it was excessive,” Zawisky said. “She never made it home because of that man.”
Collins allegedly has a history of violent assaults and incidents involving women. PennLive reports that he has previously been charged with drunken outbursts against his cousin, a former neighbor, and a random couple at a bar. The murder trial is expected to last throughout the week, with Collins facing life in prison without the possibility of parole.
