BRECKENRIDGE — Less than four months after he beat local camper Karl Kohler to death with a baseball bat near a trailhead on Peak 9, Gregory Scott Gavin took a plea deal: second-degree murder in the heat of passion with a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison.

He just had to give a truthful account of the murder.

But when he sat down with detectives a few weeks later, Gavin told the story not of a heated argument with a tragic ending, but of a cold-blooded killing, during which he left the victim beaten and bleeding, but still alive for several hours while deciding what to do before returning to end his life.

Prosecutors said if they had known the details of the crime beforehand, they would have charged Gavin with first-degree murder.

Read the rest of this report, including details from Gavin’s confession, at SummitDaily.com