Name change for man charged in Chris Bagley slaying has been delayed

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Cedar Rapids man accused of killing Chris Bagley will have to put his plan to change his name for a budding acting career on hold until after his murder trial, which begins next week.

Drew Blahnik, 33, charged with first-degree murder, filed a petition to change his name to “Johnny Blahnik Church” and was set to go before a judge Friday until his lawyer stepped in last week and asked the court to delay that hearing until after his client’s murder trial. Blahnik had filed the petition on his own, without an attorney.

Leon Spies, his Iowa City lawyer, in the motion, said Blahnik now requests to delay the civil hearing because of time needed to focus on trial preparations, as well as “wishing to avoid any complications arising from a name change” at the trial.

Sixth Judicial District Senior Judge Patrick Grady granted the delay this week and moved the name change hearing to Aug. 13.

There doesn’t seem to be anything in Iowa law restricting someone who has been criminally charged from receiving a name change.

David O’Brien, a Cedar Rapids attorney told The Gazette the only limitation he recalls in Iowa code 674 for an adult to change his/her name is that it can only be done once, unless it involves a divorce and the person can go back to a previous name.

Blahnik, in his petition filed in April, said before his arrest and pending trial he had started taking acting classes which led him to wanting to pursue it as a career.

Within months of his acting classes he “secured an invitation out to Los Angeles for a competition — The International Models and Talent Association.” He also would drive back and forth to Chicago in an attempt to secure an agent.

During these acting pursuits he went by the stage name of “Johnny Church.”

Blahnik, in the petition, said he plans to go back to acting when he’s “released.”

His other reason he gave for wanting to formally change his name is that there is a “link between myself and another individual sharing the same name” that’s causing him “severe post-traumatic stress to the point of hearing my first name acts as a trigger to the past and these events that have occurred which I plan to leave in the past and move forward.”

The individual Blahnik likely is referring to with the same first name is Drew Wagner, who pleaded to voluntary manslaughter and other charges and admitted to starting a fight Dec. 14, 2018, with Bagley for robbing their drug dealer. Wagner said he held Bagley down while Blahnik repeatedly stabbed him.

Blahnik, who plans to claim self-defense or in defense of others at trial, also is charged with abuse of a corpse and obstruction of prosecution in Bagley's death.

Wagner, during his plea, said he and Blahnik buried Bagley, 31, who went missing Dec. 14, 2018, in the yard of a southeast Cedar Rapids home where Wagner was living at the time. Bagley's body was excavated from the ground next to the house March 1, 2019.

If convicted of first-degree murder, Blahnik faces life in prison without parole. His trial is set to begin next Tuesday in Linn County District Court.

Comments: (319) 398-8318; trish.mehaffey@thegazette.com