BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — A Hernando County teenager died after being stabbed in the neck early Christmas morning 2021.
Police records said the victim’s boyfriend was the only other person in the room with her. Florida’s Sixth District Medical Examiner ruled the case a homicide.
Yet, the I-Team has learned detectives never held a formal interview with the boyfriend, and prosecutors declined to file charges.
Eddie Ptarcinski said life was going well for his 18-year-old daughter Ariana on Christmas Eve 2021.
“She got her first job at Hobby Lobby. She was really excited about it. Just got her license four days prior,” Ptarcinski said. “Happy, very happy.”
Ariana was celebrating the holiday with her family and her first boyfriend, Ramon Calderon Durst.
“He seemed like a nice kid,” Eddie Ptarcinski said.
He said Ariana met him through friends after he moved to Florida from New Jersey.
In December 2021, he was living with his grandmother in Ocala and working as an electrician apprentice in Orlando.
“There’s blood everywhere!”
Durst had attended a family gathering with Ariana earlier in the evening on Christmas Eve and was planning to sleep on the family’s couch.
According to reports, Ariana’s 12-year-old sister Isabella was in her room watching a movie.
Eddie had just returned to his bedroom after working in the garage, where his wife Judy had already gone to sleep. Eddie said that around midnight, Durst yelled.
“All of a sudden, I hear ‘Eddie, Eddie!’ Screaming. And he’s got my daughter by the neck, and she just has blood coming out of her mouth and couldn’t speak. I mean, there’s blood everywhere,” Eddie said.
Eddie said Ariana collapsed, and he called 911. The recording of the 911 call obtained by the I-Team captured Eddie’s frantic call for help.
“Oh my God!” Eddie screamed. “My daughter’s bleeding cause her neck is cut. My daughter’s neck is cut!”
There’s another voice recorded in the background of the 911 call, which Eddie identified as Durst’s.
“I f…ed up,” he screams. “She was upset, and she f…ing got a knife, dude!”
“We were inside and heard the screaming,” said Thomas LoBianco.
He lived four houses down at the time and ran to the Ptarcinskis’ residence. LoBianco was one of the first people on the scene, according to the police report.
“This kid came out of the house covered in blood. And Eddie’s yelling at him, saying, ‘You f..ing killed her, you f…ing killed her!’” Thomas said.
Thomas said he saw Durst charge at Eddie.
“The kid says, ‘Well, what the f… does it matter? I’m going to jail anyway,” LoBianco said.
At that point, LoBianco said he punched Durst, breaking his own hand.
“He’s got a rifle to my head”
Eddie said when deputies arrived, they treated him like a criminal.
“They came in with a rifle. ‘Get on the ground! I’m not gonna tell you again!’ Then he’s got the rifle to my head,” Eddie said.
Eddie was taken to the Hernando County Sheriff’s office in handcuffs, processed for evidence, and interviewed by detectives.
“A girl comes from forensics. I said you guys think I did this?” Eddie said. “They said no, no, this is just protocol. “
According to the detective’s report, “I clarified with Edward that he was only assuming Ramon stabbed Ariana, and he agreed, affirming he was just assuming it. Edward then remembered that Ramon had stated, ‘I had the knife.’”
Eddie’s 12-year-old daughter Isabella was questioned by a detective without her parents present. She described what she overheard Durst say in a recorded statement.
“He said he messed up or something. I don’t know what he did, but he said he messed up,” Isabella said after being put under oath by the detective.
“It is what it is”
Eddie’s wife, Judy Ptarcinski, was held in a patrol car for hours.
Police reports described her as “very intoxicated.”
In a patrol car video released as evidence, Judy repeatedly asked the deputy for updates and said she wanted to be with her daughter at the hospital.
“What’s going on with my older daughter?” Judy asked.
“I told you, she’s at the hospital. She had a blood transfusion, and she was stable,” the deputy responded.
At one point, Judy requests to be allowed to use the restroom but is refused.
“I’m gonna end up peeing on the floor. I don’t want to do that. Can you please just open the door and let me pee outside? Can I?” Judy begged.
“I’m not allowed to let you out of the car,” the deputy responded. “I was told it is what it is."
Judy ended up having to relieve herself in the back of the patrol car.
“Why couldn’t she go to a neighbor’s house and go to the bathroom?” said Dr. David Thomas, a former police officer and Florida Gulf Coast University criminology professor. “They could take her someplace, take her out in the bushes. They could be reasonable about it."
“(H)e did not want to incriminate himself."
The I-Team asked Dr. Thomas, a nationally recognized policing expert, to review a 373-page report the Ptarcinskis received from the State’s Attorney’s Office.
We requested the same report from the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, but our request was denied on the grounds that the stabbing was still an open investigation.
The report said Durst was never read his Miranda rights and that “he was not questioned about what happened” because “he did not want to incriminate himself.”
“Suspects are arrested every day that refuse to give a statement. You don’t need a statement to lay out the facts,” Thomas said.
He continued, “Now it’s time to start digging and start looking at that relationship and get a much clearer picture of what that relationship was all about."
The report said text messages from Ariana and Durst’s phones showed “an up and down relationship” with “arguing and fighting,” including on the night she died.
“I deserve everything”
The I-Team also obtained an hour-long video of Durst in the back of a patrol car awaiting transport to the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office.
“My life’s over right now,” Durst said.
“What do you mean?” asked the deputy in charge of transporting him.
“You know what I mean. You see the situation,” Durst said. “You see what I’m covered in?" referring to his blood-soaked shirt.
“Look at me. I deserve everything. The hatred of the world brought down upon me,” Durst said. “I’m so sorry for what I did.”
But hours after the stabbing, Durst gets good news.
“Alright, listen, we’re gonna get you out of here. We looked into the case a little bit further, and we’re not charging you with anything,” a detective tells him in a video recording shot early Christmas morning inside an interview room at the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office. “We’re not gonna charge you with anything right now. “
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"I think you start knocking on those doors and answering those questions"
"The police officers were saying that it was self-inflicted,” Eddie Ptarcinski said.
Inside Ariana’s room, deputies found a notebook containing a drawing from 15 months earlier depicting “a female with her throat cut and blood coming out of her mouth and neck area,” according to a report.
Eddie said Ariana was an artist who liked horror movies and often drew graphic images, but she was not suicidal.
When asked how much emphasis he would put on that, Thomas replied, “I would consider it, and then when the ME rules it a homicide, I think you’ve got to go back and reexamine that. “
The District 6 Medical Examiner’s report said the manner of death for Ariana was a “homicide” that occurred when she was “stabbed by other(s).”
“He’s got an attorney. Mum’s the word. And he can sit with his mouth shut,” Thomas said.
According to the police report, detectives received a letter, calls, and multiple emails from Durst’s lawyer saying Durst wouldn’t agree to make a statement.
“But I think you start knocking on those doors and answering those questions with the other people,” Thomas said.
Thomas said investigators should also have reconstructed the crime scene to see if it was possible to tell how the stabbing happened.
But the report doesn’t indicate that ever happened.
"They were trolling social media"
As Eddie and Judy began a social media campaign to try to get answers months after Ariana’s death, they said they faced push-back from investigators and prosecutors.
Of the 373-page report, 173 pages consist of social media posts, emails sent by Eddie, and copies of news accounts of the investigation.
“They were trolling social media to see what the public thought about it rather than talking to the people who were there that night,” said Thomas LoBianco.
“If anybody said anything bad about the department, they just circled it, and that was it. That’s pretty much what their investigation is,” Eddie said.
“They’re trying to see what the public’s assessment is of their work. I don’t know why they would put it in the file,” said Dr. David Thomas.
"(A)cts of negligence cannot be made criminal"
In August 2023, the State Attorney’s Office decided not to charge Durst, saying in a letter, “on-scene investigation determined there was no probable cause to arrest Ramon Calderon Durst.”
The letter went on to say, “The filing decision is not based on the lack of quality of the investigation or the lack of investigative effort by the sheriff’s office” and “although the medical examiner’s office listed Ariana’s death as a homicide, Florida courts have historically held the acts of negligence cannot be made criminal regardless of the loss of human life without Mens Rea.”
That’s defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the intention or knowledge of wrongdoing that constitutes part of a crime.”
But Dr. Thomas said that doesn’t prevent a suspect from being charged with any crime.
“We have charges for manslaughter which actually deal with that,” he said.
“We don’t know exactly what happened in that room, but all we know is our daughter’s not here, and there’s no charges against this kid whatsoever,” Eddie said.
No charges have been filed against Ramon Calderon Durst or anyone else in this case.
The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office, the State’s Attorney’s Office, and Durst’s attorney all declined interviews.
Attempts to reach Durst were unsuccessful.
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