A Descent Into Hell: The True Story of an Altar Boy, a Cheerleader, and a Twisted Texas Murder by Kathryn Casey

Author:Kathryn Casey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub, pdf
Tags: Murder - Investigation - Texas - Austin, Jennifer, Murder, Social Science, Colton, True Crime, Cave, Fiction, Case studies, Pitonyak, General, Austin, Murder - Texas - Austin, Texas, Criminology
ISBN: 9780061230875
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2008-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

Detective Gilchrest arrived at the Orange Tree condominiums at ten that morning with the signed search warrant, and the team of APD personnel who’d been there much of the night into the morning finally began processing the evidence in Pitonyak’s apartment.

Along with patrolmen who maintained the perimeter, three crime scene officers were on the scene, eager to get busy. To prevent disturbing evidence, the body would be left in place, in the bathtub with the brown rug over it, until the forensic team finished processing the scene. There was no need to hurry. The paramedic in charge had called in the information to nearby Breckenridge Hospital at 10:30 the night before, where a physician pronounced the Jane Doe dead. Despite Jim’s assumptions, the police weren’t yet ready to officially identify the deceased.

Everyone on the scene knew what to expect. They’d all been briefed on what waited for them in the bathroom.

Detective Walker, who’d coordinate the processing of evidence, was still on the scene, and he gave crime scene supervisor Kimberly Frierson permission to enter Orange Tree unit 88. As the first order of business, Frierson videotaped the entire scene, documenting where everything was before work began. While Frierson videotaped, Walker accompanied officers downstairs to the parking garage to inspect Colton Pitonyak’s car. Along with the apartment, Gilchrest had written the warrant to include Pitonyak’s white Toyota and Jennifer’s black Saturn. Walker issued orders for both cars to be towed to 906 McFall, the APD forensic workshop, for processing.

Once Frierson finished the first videotape, Walker entered the apartment for the first time with Vince Gonzalez. It would be their job to identify and photograph evidence where it lay, before collection began. Gonzalez started by shooting photos of each room, then parts of the rooms, finally zeroing in on particular items. Evidence lay everywhere they looked, all around them. In the living room, Walker pointed out two spent bullet cartridges near the couch. Only in the kitchen did it appear someone had attempted to cover up what had taken place. The floors were clean, the countertops wiped down. Yet, here, too, they found disturbing evidence. When they opened the dishwasher, a machete lay across the bottom rack. Blood and hair still coated its thick blade.

One item Gonzalez decided on his own to photograph, a phone number written on the wall with the name J. Ribbit above it. It was Jennifer’s cell phone number, written under a reference to the sound made by her family nickname, Frog.

What wasn’t going on inside or outside unit 88 that morning was a lot of talking. Often, to keep murder scenes from weighing on them, detectives and officers banter back and forth as they work, a way of lightening the load. This day, the scene fell oddly quiet. “You could tell that everyone was upset,” says one who was there. “No one felt untouched.”

As he scouted the apartment, Walker placed small, hard plastic tents with numbers, the type restaurants sometimes use to mark tables, beside evidence he wanted photographed and collected.

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