JUROR: David Bogdanov seemed very smug, like he
felt like he had this handled.
He didn't appear, at least from my perspective,
like, that he felt guilty or that he was sad.
I looked into his eyes.
I don't think he ever looked at us.
MAN: He admitted that he didn't tell
Nikki to get out of the vehicle and she walked away unharmed.
He claimed that they became sexual.
And during the sexual encounter, he learned
that Nikki had male genitalia.
And he then stopped the encounter.
I-- push her back.
And I just start freaking out and saying,
you didn't tell me you're a dude.
And that she and he then began in a struggle.
David says at this point, Nikki goes for his gun
that he kept up in the front of his vehicle.
And so David tells the courtroom that he
felt his life was at risk.
This is a completely new revelation.
And all I can think is, oh, my god, I'm
going to get shot right now.
David then says he grabbed the nearest thing he could,
which was a phone charging cord in the front of his vehicle.
He said the only way to restrain Nikki,
he claims, was by holding the cord up against her shoulders.
I grabbed the cable and put it around her and pulled her back
like that and pulled her from going--
keep going forward to the gun.
WOMAN: When pressed about this fact, well,
how did the cord go up around her neck and tie in a knot,
David's only excuse was the cord slipped up around her neck
on accident in the scuffle.
Investigators and the prosecutors
knew that wasn't true because the cord
wasn't just around her neck.
It was tied in a knot around her neck.
During the trial, I heard David lie about Nikki and not
have any remorse, you know.
That was pretty devastating.
I don't know what I was expecting.
I just was expecting him to be a little bit sorry.
And he wasn't.
I think that the violence is all precipitated by him finding
out that she's transgender.
And so to me, it feels very much like a trans panic defense
with a self-defense spin.
The gay or trans panic defense is difficult
because you basically have to have a mental health
expert who's going to be testifying for the defense,
who's going to say that the defendant,
upon learning that the victim was either gay or transgender,
this caused them such a mental state
that they were either not aware of what they were actually
doing or that they were not able to discern
between right and wrong.
It's an incredibly high bar to reach.
When David did his first police interview in October,
when he sat down and denied knowing what happened to Nikki,
he said something that was very pivotal in the investigation
and something that really stuck out to investigators as
far as a motive.
He used the words "shocked" and "disgusted."
To investigators, that really stood out
that this could have been motivated by hatred
for the fact that Nikki was transgender,
ultimately a hate crime.
So I was taught that it is a sin, and it's not OK.
I was angry.
I was hurt.
Most devastating, I don't normally project hatred,
but I had hatred for him.
When he took the stand, it was very obvious
that he did not have remorse.
And the only tears he cried were talking
about how it felt to have had sex with someone with a penis.
WOMAN: He's not emotional about the fact
that he killed a teenager.
He's emotional because he's embarrassed for what his family
might think of what happened.
First thing I think is I do call police.
And then I think that they're not going to believe me.
You know, I've been up all night, not sober.
A dead person is in the backseat.
At that point, I thought, I need to get rid of the body.
And so he tried to get rid of as much evidence
as he could and fled the area.
He just turned out to be a monster, just a monster
who had hatred inside of him.
And he killed my baby.