#97 - Laura Hall *

This one’s still a bit of a mystery …

Jennifer Cave was a 21-year-old college dropout, working as a waitress in Austin. She had, though, just landed a much more fulfilling job as a legal assistant, and was out celebrating with friends.

The victim

One of those friends was Colton Pitonyak, a finance major & scholarship student at the University of Texas. It doesn’t appear the two were in a relationship. They may have simply been friends, though there were also hints that Cave was Pitonyak’s dealer. Indeed, the two were both druggies, with Pitonyak having been previously busted for drugs and spending some time in rehab. Anyhoo, the two wrapped up the night by returning to Pitonyak’s apartment. 

When Cave didn’t report to her new job the next day, though, she was listed as missing. This caused her parents to come to Austin, where they would then play detective. Hearing that she had been with Pitonyak, they next discovered her car at his apartment. 

Informing the police, but getting nowhere, Cave’s stepfather decided to break into Pitonyak’s place. There, he found his stepdaughter’s dismembered corpse in the bathtub. 

Now, how she got that way is the big mystery. It appeared that Pitonyak had shot Cave in the arm, with the bullet ultimately making its way through her chest and into her heart. He was so wasted, though, that he doesn’t remember pulling the trigger.

As for the dismemberment, though it could have been Pitonyak, it could also have been a girl he was seeing at the time, Laura Hall. The 25-year-old was a student at UT, and appeared to be obsessed with him.

Before the police could apprehend them, though, Pitonyak and Hall fled in Hall’s car to Mexico. There, a Mexican SWAT team, tipped off by some crimestoppers show, found the pair. They subsequently sent Pitonyak back to the US for trial and Hall back home on her own recognizance.

Pitonyak would be tried and convicted of murder, getting a 55-year sentence. Hall would be sentenced to 5 years for tampering with evidence (i.e., taking part in the dismemberment) & abetting Pitonyak’s escape. She got out in 2018.

What exactly may have happened in Pitonyak’s apartment, though, may never be totally known.

The two have been featured on Killer Couples.

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