True Crime Campfire - Ride or Die: The Murder of Jennifer Cave, Pt 1

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

One of the famous lines from the movie Fight Club’s tortured protagonist is “I felt like destroying something beautiful.” Most of us would never want to do such a thing. We see something beautiful and we want to draw closer to it, encourage it to grow, remember it forever. But for a certain kind of damaged soul—jealous, angry, resentful—it goes another way. They’re drawn to beauty, sure, but in the way a moth is drawn to a flame. When they get too close, they can’t handle it. It burns them. Makes them painfully aware of their own insecurities. They want to be close to it, but they resent it, too. And if they can’t possess the beautiful thing, they need to see it broken. It’s the only thing that will put out that raging fire inside them. Sources:Descent Into Hell by Kathryn CaseyCBS's 48 Hours Mystery, Episode "In Too Deep"https://www.aymag.com/murder-mystery-the-murder-of-jennifer-cave/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

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Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. One of the famous lines from the movie Fight Club's tortured protagonist is, I felt like destroying something beautiful. Most of us would never want to do such a thing. We see something beautiful and we want to draw closer to it, encourage it to grow, remember it forever. But for a certain kind of damaged soul, jealous, angry, resentful, it goes another way. They're drawn to beauty, sure,

but in the way a moth is drawn to a flame. When they get too close, they can't handle it. It burns them, makes them painfully aware of their own insecurities. They want to be close to. it, but they resent it, too. And if they can't possess the beautiful thing, they need to see it broken. It's the only thing that will put out that raging fire inside them. This is Ride or Die, the murder of Jennifer Cave. So, Campers, we're in Austin,

Texas, August 18, 2005. A woman named Sharon Cave was standing anxiously outside the condo belonging to a guy named Colton Botoniac. Colton was a friend of her daughter, Jennifer's, and Sharon was hoping you might know where she was. Jennifer, who was 21 and a student at the University of Texas, hadn't shown up to her first day of work at a law firm a day or so earlier. Sharon knew how excited Jennifer was about starting that new job. To just not show up and not call was so far out of character for her that Sharon felt immediate panic. She tried to call her daughter's cell phone, but no luck. She tried again a few minutes later. Still no luck. That was really weird. Jennifer was never without that phone. Sharon knew her daughter had been planning to hang out with her friend Colton

the night before, so she and her boyfriend Jim called him up. And Colton was, let's call it, less than helpful. At first he said he hadn't seen her. Then he said he had, but only for a little while and he didn't know where she'd gone afterward. And when Sharon pressed him to try and think where Jennifer might be, Colton said, dude, I'm eating pizza with my friend. Don't bother me anymore. Helpful, right? Sharon and Jim had gotten to work calling hospitals, homeless shelters, rehab centers, jails and morgues, but they came up empty-handed. Jennifer E.C. had had problems with drugs in the past, but lately she'd been turning that around. Back in school, great new job. Her future was looking brighter every day. Now, it had been well over 24 hours since Sharon had heard from her,

and that was not normal. Even when she was in the depths of her drug addiction, Jennifer had never stayed out of contact with her mom for long. Sharon had a sick feeling. And part of that sick feeling was a relentless certainty that Jennifer's friend Colton Petoniac knew more than he was telling. She felt it in her bones. In desperation, she called Colton's dad, Eddie. One parent to another, she pleaded with him to encourage Colton to help her find Jennifer. But, like father-like son, Eddie seemed uninterested in helping. He told Sharon to stop contacting him to stay away from his family. Wow, okay.

Way to divert suspicion away from your boy there, Eddie. So at this point, Sharon and Jim had it. They grabbed a few things, picked up Jennifer's sister Vanessa, and piled into the car to make the drive from Corpus Christi to Austin. On the way, they called the police. Could you meet us at this Colton Potonia? apartment, we think our daughter might be in there, she might be in trouble. Sharon had never trusted Colton. He had a miasma of trouble around him, and she tried and tried to convince Jennifer

to avoid the guy. But Jennifer was the type of kid who rooted for the underdog, picked up strays, as they say. Jennifer saw the good in everybody, wanted to save everybody. And she always reassured her mom that Colton really was a good person. Troubled, but good. And now the cops were telling her, sorry, ma'am, but we can't enter this person's apartment without probable cause. When they reached the condo, Jim went to the door and knocked. No response. Sharon and Vanessa were pacing around, just balls of raw nerves. Every fiber of her being was telling Sharon that Jennifer was inside that condo. Call it Mother's Instinct or whatever. She knew it.

But they couldn't get inside. It was maddening. They went and checked into a hotel to drop off their stuff and try to figure out a plan. They decided to wait a little while and then go back to the condo. Maybe Colton would be home by then. When they did go back, they called Jennifer's ex-boyfriend, Scott. Jim said, Scott, can you tell me what kind of car Colton drives? We just want to see if it's parked in the parking lot here. Scott told them, a white Toyota with Arkansas plates.

And then he said, listen, I don't want to freak you out, but Colton is bad news. Really bad news. It's not that Sharon didn't already know that. Like Whitney said, she'd been trying to steer Jennifer away from the guy, but hearing it from Scott just added to the sense of doom in the air. It was almost more than she could take. So once again, they called the Austin police. This time they sent a patrolman.

Sharon and Jim asked if the officer could let them into the condo. I mean, they knew Colton was the last person Jennifer was scheduled to see before she went missing. They were sure she must. be in there? What if Colton Petaniac was holding her against her will? But the officer said he couldn't do it. There just wasn't enough probable cause. Sharon's boyfriend, Jim, said, OK, well, what if we call a locksmith to let us in? The cop said, no, of course, and then he said, I'm leaving now, and so should you. Thanks, officer, you've been a big help. Like, I get why he couldn't just let them break into this place, but really? Like, I'm leaving now and so should you, and

that's it. That's the best you can do for this terrified family who thinks their daughter might be a hostage inside this apartment? Like, come on, man. Right? Surely he could do better than that. Get Colton's ass on the phone and tell him to get home right now and grill him about the last time he saw Jennifer. Or at least ask him if Jennifer's family could take a look around his place. Do something. So the cop shot them down about the locksmith, but once the guy had driven off in the squad car, Jim, who loved Jennifer like a daughter, decided not to be deterred. He went right ahead and called, but when the locksmith got there, it was more bad news. He couldn't get into the lock, he said. It was too high security.

Okay, that's just creepy. Because you know this condo complex probably doesn't put like Fort Knox-style locks on the door, so that means Colton must have had it installed, which wasn't much of a surprise to share. I mean, she knew Colton ostensibly a student at UT dealt drugs on the side. So the locksmith left without doing anything, and Sharon, Jim, and Vanessa paced around and tried to think about what to do. Finally, frustrated and desperate, after six hours of standing around in front of Colton's apartment, Sharon noticed something, a little round hole in the glass of the window by the door. It looked like it had been made by a baby gun or something like that. Sharon rooted around in her purse for a pen and stuck it through the hole, trying to get at the lock, and after a few minutes, she had it.

By now, it was 10 o'clock at night. Sharon started to climb through the window, but Jim stopped her. Let me do this, he said. He didn't say it out loud, but if there was something upsetting in that apartment, he didn't want her to have to see it. As he climbed through the window, Jim called out, Hey, it's Jim, I'm coming in. I'm not going to hurt you.

I'm here to see Jennifer, so please don't shoot me. The apartment was dark and still and full of clutter, and there was a smell. sickly sweet and pungent. Jim was a hunter. He knew that smell, smell of rot. On the wall, Jim could make out a huge poster of the movie Scarface. It said, make way for the bad guy. Outside the condo, as she waited for Jim, Sharon got a call from Jennifer's ex-boyfriend Scott. I have a bad feeling, he told her. Inside the condo, Jim found a light switch. He didn't immediately see anything that looked like Jennifer's or any signs of a struggle. The kitchen was empty.

It looked like it had been cleaned, a huge contrast to the rest of the place. Jim made his way to the bedroom and picked his way through the dirty clothes and junk on the floor. Suddenly, his stomach lurched. The smell was way worse in here. He pawed through the closet. No sign of Jennifer. He looked under the bed. No Jennifer. He kept looking, trying to find the source of that unbelievable smell. and then he came to a small bathroom. He pushed open the door and flicked on the light switch. When we're confronted with something as horrendous as what Jim was looking at now, our brains have a way of trying to protect us from it.

It can take us a few moments to make sense out of the image and realize what it is we're looking at. In the bathtub, amid horror movie-like pools and swaths of blood, was the decapitated body of a young woman. Jim half stumbled, half fell out of the bathroom, and ran, screaming for Sharon to call 911. On his end of a call with Sharon, Jennifer's ex-Scott heard the screaming and knew immediately that Jennifer was dead. Sharon hung up on him. Jennifer's sister Vanessa tried to call the police, but she could only scream into the phone.

Jim took over the call. At one point, the dispatcher told him to go try CPR on the victim. Jim froze, looking over at Sharon and Vanessa. He couldn't stand the thought of letting them over here what he'd seen in that bathtub, so he just said, there's a crime scene in there. I don't want to disturb anything. And he assured the dispatcher that CPR wouldn't do any good. And as he talked with 911,

Jim heard Sharon ask if they were sure it was Jennifer. Maybe it wasn't her. She'd go in and check. Oh, my God, no. So Jim rushed over to stop her, knowing that she'd never be able to get that image out of her head if he didn't. He said, I'll check. And that moment right there for me is the reason.

reason I consider Jim one of the heroes in this case. Just damn. So bless his heart, Jim took a deep breath and stepped back into hell. I can't imagine the courage it took to make his way back to that bathtub again and look at what was lying there. He was careful not to touch anything or get too close to the body, but he made himself look. And right away, he recognized two things that told him it was Jennifer. The shirt she was wearing, which he'd seen on her a hundred times, and her little freckled feet. He also saw that the monster who did this to her had laid a bloody hacksaw across her chest and covered part of her body with a stained bath mat. On the floor next to the tub was a black trash bag. Its shape was ominous. It made Jim's chest feel

tight. He wasn't going to look, of course, but he knew what was inside that bag. It was Jennifer's head. Jim got out of there as fast as he could. It's her, he said to Sharon. I recognized her feet. Oh, God. That line hit Sharon like a wrong note in a song. Why would he have to identify her by her feet? Why not her face? But her mind didn't let her go any further down that rabbit hole just then.

Like you said a minute ago, our brains have ways of protecting us. It took a little while for the police to arrive. They went to the wrong address at first. When they did, their initial insight was. was that somebody inside the apartment had overdosed. Jim was so upset that he wasn't making a lot of sense, just kind of babbling about someone dead inside the condo. So this poor officer was totally unprepared for the scene that he walked into a few moments later. A bathroom drenched in blood and a headless body of a young woman. It shook him up badly. As he called in for a warrant to search

the condo, the EMTs tried to tend to the family. Sharon and Vanessa were falling apart. Vanessa kept running up and down the parking lot, just screaming and screaming, my sister is dead. Oh, God. Sharon had to be helped across the street. And at first, because it's the usual protocol in homicide cases, they weren't allowed to be together. Oh, man. Eventually, the officers let them, though. They just had to promise they wouldn't talk about the case, and they were okay with that. Mom and daughter just desperately needed to hold on to one another. At around midnight, and hour after the 911 call came in, detectives Gilchrist, Walker, and Fuget showed up. The search warrant came through not long after, and the officer said about processing

the scene. They noticed that there was clutter everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except the kitchen, which was sparkling clean, freshly mopped floors, and wiped down counters. Interesting. And when they opened the dishwasher, they noticed a surreal sight. A bloody machete on the bottom rack lying across the silverware caddy. It still had hair and flesh attached to it. Holy shit, a machete. That is just not something you see every day, even if you're a homicide detective. So, who the hell was this Colton Petoniac? Well, at first glance, not the kind of guy you'd expect to find at the center of a murder investigation. Colton grew up in a wealthy Arkansas family. He was an honest-to-god altar boy at church, and he went to a private school,

where he was an honor student and won a full scholarship to UT. I actually wanted to go to UT before I decided to play volleyball. It's one of the hardest state schools to get into. I barely qualified with my grades in ACT score. Damn. Colton's old classmates are split about Colton. One former teacher admired his intelligence. Another student said he was brilliant and funny.

But another classmate said he was the victim of Colton's racist bullying, said Colton would rough him up. make fun of his Chinese heritage. Gross. So it seems like he was kind of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type. Yeah. You know what just occurred to me. Maybe the reason Mr. Hyde is always so pissed off

is because everybody insists on calling him Mr. Hyde. He's like, you know, we both went to med school, but you're the only one who gets called doctor. That's some bullshit, man. You know, damn well, I always had to do those cadaver dissections for you because you'd get sick to your stomach. Ugh, screw you. I'm going to go kill your girlfriend.

I think that's it. I think we nailed it. When you put it that way. Dr. Hyde, show him some damn respect and maybe he'll be nicer. All right. So as for Jennifer Cave, she had had kind of a troubled childhood. Her dad was an alcoholic, and he and her mom divorced after years and years of toxic drama. Maybe that was part of why Jen tended to be drawn to troubled people.

She wanted to help everybody. One of the detectives involved in her case told true crime author, Catherine Casey, whose book Descent Into Hell was one of our sources for this episode, that he'd never heard anybody say a bad word about Jennifer. People said she was one of the sweetest people they'd ever met. And she was close with her family, her mom, Sharon, Sharon's boyfriend Jim, who was like a surrogate dad to her, her brother, and her two sisters. Jen was smart and pretty, and she excelled at pretty much anything she put her mind to. But she was always drawn to the party lifestyle, and drugs and alcohol got a strong hold on her early on in life.

For Jen, it was, as it is for so many people, a way to self-medicate against anxiety and insecurity, and it didn't get any better once she started college at Texas State U. Colton Potomiac started at U.T. Austin in the fall of 2001 and got accepted to the Delta Tau Delta Frat, moving into the frat house, which was only for the rich boys. Gross. So that happens to be the fraternity my brother pledged to. Yeah, and I had to tell him about this case, of course, and goes, yeah, that sounds about right. I think my dad was in that frat, too, but, I mean, that was like way back in the 60s, so probably a different vibe now.

And it's, it's not all bad, bad people. Matthew McConaughey was the, in the delts at UT. So it all evens out. Yeah. So Colton's frat brothers, quick. noticed that there was something kind of off about him. Mr. Elite Private School Education had adopted

some gangster mannerisms copying them from rap videos and stuff like that, just all the cringe little, you know, rich white boy. And he was always talking big about how when he was in high school back in Little Rock, he used to go into the bad parts of town to buy Coke.

Ooh, we got a billy bad ass over here, y'all. And, you know, nobody knew whether he was full of shit or not, at first anyway. Oh, my God. Colton reminds me of a couple of my old teammates in college. Like, once we had this tournament in Chicago, my freshman year, and we got to the city, like, kind of in the evening, we were looking for a hotel, and we got lost in like a, I don't know, middle-class neighborhood on the edge of the city. And it was around 8 p.m. And there were a couple of 12-year-old black kids

out on their bikes riding around. And suddenly, the meanest girls on the team, the ones who are all about the rap lifestyle, all about partying, being tough and hard. And I assume these were like upper middle class white girls, right? Absolutely white, yes, no doubt. Started screaming about how we're in the ghetto, we're going to get shot. Oh, my God, gross. 12-year-olds having the audacity to have fun. These girls are so very, very tough.

Oh, boy. Gross. You know. Okay, so Colton took to the party lifestyle like a little faux gangster rubber ducky to water. And he was one of those guys who always tries to pick a fight, like just itching to prove how scary he is, you know. But despite his nonstop partying at night and on weekends, he still managed to score A's and B's in his classes and get accepted to business school. So dude was clearly smart. And that seems like a match made in heaven to me, by the way, based on what I know of the corporate world, like this guy in business school, seems just like a match made in heaven.

So eventually Colton moved out of the frat house and into his own place, mostly because his Delpros were starting to get sick of his shit. He got obnoxious and aggressive anytime he was high, like a pissy little Tasmanian devil, and he was always high these days. At first they'd thought of his fake gangster schstick as an act, but now they were starting to think maybe it wasn't so fake after all. For one thing, Colton seemed to be free-falling into drug addiction. But it was more than that. He told his closest buds that he was selling drugs, too, and he bragged that he had suppliers for literally anything that you could possibly want. Ecstasy, Coke, weed, meth, pharmaceuticals, anything. Meth was especially popular among the college crowd in the early

2000s, at least in Austin, apparently. One of Jennifer's friends told author Catherine Casey, quote, it was like the drug of choice. Smart people with good jobs were doing it. It didn't seem like a dirty drug. So many people were doing it that meth felt like drinking a cup of coffee. Dang, where was I for this, by the way? Like, that did not ring true to me at all. Texas must have just been wild in back in those early aughts because I went to some wild parties back in my misspent youth, but I never saw one person doing meth. Like cocaine, yes, but meth just always, like even among the people I knew who did drugs, meth just seemed like one of the big, scary ones. You know, like the kind of thing that you'd only do.

if you'd gone all the way off the rails and decided to stay there a spell. You know, so I don't know, maybe it was just a Texas thing, or maybe it was just after my time. Maybe. I don't know. I mean, I went to college a little bit after this, and it feels like maybe it was just the drug of choice for that group of people. Like, I don't know anyone who did meth in college. Yeah. But anyway, back to our boy Colton.

He got so brazen about his drug dealing that he was. You'd just walk up to total strangers on campus and ask if they needed a dealer. Wow. Smart, man. I know this will shock you to hear, but as Colton got more and more involved in selling drugs, he also got more and more involved in doing them. He loved the movie Scarface, and he idolized Al Pacino's character, Tony Montana. You know, the say hello to my little friend guy.

Yeah. But he'd obviously missed the fact that Tony Montana's fatal flaw was getting high on his own supply. He was making the same mistake. Colton veered back and forth for a while between trying to get his shit together and focus on school and falling off the wagon, back into doing and selling drugs. And then, in the winter of 03, he got arrested for the first time for driving under the influence. Wamp, womp. Didn't seem to make much of an impression on it. though. When he got back to U.T. after his brief stint, brief stint in county, he brought it up

every chance he got. He'd go up to a frat brother like, hey, you ever been to county dog? I love this. His frat brothers were all these preppy little apple cheek trust fund kids who just wanted to get blitzed on the weekends, graduate and go to law school or take over daddy's business or whatever. Like the worst thing that they'd ever gotten was a parking ticket. So their reaction to this was like, huh? But Colton figured his very minor brush with John Q. Law had fully cemented his kingpin status. Exactly. Colton was obsessed with that kingpin image.

He was always talking about gangster movies like Scarface and the Godfather. It's like, dude, you've got a DUI. Calm the fuck down. Settle down there, gosh father. The gosh father. Kind of dangerous, but like, not in a cool way. Colton continued his downward slide once he got back into school. He got kicked out of his frat, at least according to rumor, for threatening a freshman with a knife.

Wow. His behavior was getting progressively more volatile. Sometimes he could be great, a good listener, a mediator, and his group of friends, but more and more, he seemed to be losing his grip. He'd get high, lend you something, then forget he'd loaned it to you in the first place and accuse you of stealing. And more often than not, he'd physically attack you unless there was someone around to hold him back. Finally, UT suspended him. So in the spring of 03, he started going to classes at Austin Community College, and that was when his path crossed with Jennifer Cave.

Jennifer wasn't doing so well. She'd started college. off strong, but after only a few weeks, she stopped going to class. She dropped a startling amount of weight in a really short time. Her mom, Sharon, worried she was using drugs, but Jen insisted she was fine. It wasn't all bad by any stretch. Jen was dating a guy named Mark. She had an apartment. She rescued a black cat off the street. She worked as a hostess at a schmancy steakhouse where she was a great employee, but she'd pretty much abandoned school. For a while, Jennifer vacillated back and forth between wanting to stay in school and wanting to just get a job and be on her own for a while. It caused some friction with her parents, especially since they had their suspicions that she might be

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hobby into a full-time career. Spreaker also has a premium subscription model where your most dedicated list can pay for bonus content or early access, adding another revenue stream to what you're already doing. And the best part, Spreaker grows with you. Whether you're just starting out or running a full-blown podcast network, Spreker's powerful tools scale effortlessly as your show grows. So if you're ready to podcast like a pro and get paid while doing it, check out spreeker.com. That's S-P-R-E-A-K-E-R.com. And then Jen's boyfriend Mark broke up with her and all hell broke loose. It was the beginning of what Sharon would forever after refer to as Jennifer's dark year. The day Mark ended their relationship, Jen showed up late to work, obviously high.

They fired her on the spot. The breakup seemed to trigger something in Jennifer, as breakups often do, and she went on a days-long speed binge. Sharon wanted to send her to rehab, but Jennifer resisted. Look, it's hard to admit you're an addict. It's the first step to recovery, but it's damn hard to do, and Jen just wasn't there yet. You can't force somebody to get help is the thing.

They have to want it, and they have to be ready. And Jennifer was not. And unfortunately, it was right around this time that she met Colton Potoniac. He'd just flunked several classes and was in the midst of a riproaring drug bender of his own. They met at a party, and for Colton, at least, it was love at first sight. They struck up a fast friendship. Jen and Colton both loved the Austin Nightlife, and they shared a love of music, too. They'd go to clubs together, go dancing, go to live shows,

and despite the fact that neither of them had made a success of it at university, they were both smart, and they both had that sort of tortured soul thing going on. Jennifer liked that Colton seemed to really listen to her, unlike a lot of guys she'd known. Jen's mom noticed her bringing her new buddy up more and more. when they talk on the phone. Once, when Rehab came up again, Jennifer said, well, Colton went through one of those programs, Mom. It didn't work.

He just came out worse than before. Yikes. Great influence already, right? Yeah. Now, for Jen, Colton was a new friend. Nothing more. She wasn't into him romantically at all. But Colton had rapidly become obsessed with her.

All his friends knew it. And he worked hard to try and woo her. He'd take her out, whiner and diner, and he gave her all the drugs she could want. For free. Sometimes she'd be at his place for days at a time. She'd bring friends along sometimes so she wouldn't be alone with him. You know, didn't want him to start thinking he'd made it past the friend zone or whatever you call it. And Colton would give them all the drugs they wanted, but they had to stay and use with him. His payment was Jen's time. Jennifer's friends mostly liked Colton at first, thought he and Jen seemed good

together. They knew she didn't want to date him, but they seemed to be developing a close friendship. There were red flags, though. For one thing, Colton was possessive of Jen. When they went out together, he was always touching her. And if she left or went somewhere without him, he'd get mad. Ooh, there's nothing worse than angry frat boy Fomo. Yeah, exactly. So he'd pout or throw a tantrum like some kind of disturbing, Scarface, obsessed little five-year-old. But because Jen was the type to see the best in it, he was a little bit of, he's a little bit of everybody, she mostly brushed this childish bullshit aside. I mean, he was on his best behavior around her at first. And Jen was, bless her heart, a generous giver of second

chances, and third chances, and fourth. And as I'm sure you can imagine, this was not doing Jen's drug addiction any favors. Her poison of choice by now was meth, and Colton would take her to an honest-to-god drug den to party sometimes. The place, a hangout for hardcore addicts, scared her. Colton probably liked that, creepy little wannabe gangster, but, you know, freaked her out. Sometimes her friend Nicole came along. They used together, quit for a while together, relapsed together. And one night after going to a party at a meth house, Jen said to Nicole, do we look like that? Is that who we are? It freaked them both out to think that might be the case, but the meth had a hold on them that was hard to break. There were stretches of time when their

whole lives revolved around getting high. Rough stuff. It was like a merry-go-round, but like the kind that goes so fast it makes you sick. And all you want to do is jump off, but you're scared if you do, you'll break every bone in your body. So you just kind of hang on and keep going around. Colton wasn't doing great either. I know you're just shocked to hear that. As many speed addicts do, he was getting increasingly paranoid, peeking out through the blinds in his apartment, fretting about being watched, he started sleeping with a gun next to his bed. He hung around with more and more drug dealers and fewer and fewer of his college friends. Colton was losing a lot of weight and he was always pale and sweaty. He was becoming more unpredictable and more violent. One night he invited

a guy who owed him a few hundred bucks for Coke to come over and hang out. He invited the guy to do a line of Coke off the coffee table, and when the dude leaned over to snort it, Colton slammed his face into the table and broke his nose. Well, it's one way to ask for your money, I guess. Seems like Colton was really starting to commit to letting Scarface be the wind beneath his wings. He probably had one of those rubber bracelets, you know, the WWJD, but instead it said WWSD on it.

Yeah. Yeah. And what's freaky about this incident is that, like, after the guy, like, left the apartment to clean himself up, Colton followed him out and was like, dude, you got to pay me. Like, just like, oh, this is how it had to be, dude. Like, what? Jesus, Murphy. Yeah.

And, okay, campers, we do not have time to go into all the details on this incident. Read Catherine Casey's book, if you want to see exactly how it went down. But one time, I swear, I am not, we are not making this up. Colton got himself arrested by calling the cops on himself. Swear to God, he was in one of his paranoid spirals. And he got himself all worked up about scary gangsters coming to kill him or steal his drugs or break his kneecaps. or whatever because he like heard somebody walking past his apartment window

so he made this weird whispery 911 call and when the cops got there he basically just invited them in to see his nice and varied collection of illegal drugs

specifically Ambien and Xanax that he did not have a prescription for sitting just right out in plain view Jesus take the wheel. You know, I'm pretty sure the godfather wouldn't have did that. Nope, but our boy the gosh father sure would. Our boy Walter Shite.

Not so much Scarface as Pizza Face. Not so much a good fella as a meh fella. So they charged him with possession of controlled substance, a felony carrying up to two years in jail. Colton made his own bail so he didn't have to tell Mommy and Daddy who, by the way, we're still giving him money on the regular. Just like Scarface's mom. So now he had a new criminal charge to fight, just what his mental state needed. Yeah.

As much as he cherished his gangster image, the thought of going to actual big boy prison didn't appeal to him much. Like, he'd enjoy telling people he went to prison, but not so much the going to prison part. He started talking a lot about guns, and which ones did the deadliest most gruesome damage. Jennifer, meanwhile, was floundering. She couldn't seem to keep a steady job, and her parents felt sure it was the drugs. They tried to help, but Jen would just make excuses and storm off crying. Finally, her roommate kicked her out for partying too much, and she moved into Colton's place. Oh, no.

Yeah, not great. She stayed there for a little over a month, and then left abruptly. She didn't tell anybody why exactly. She just said, I didn't feel safe there. And after that, she started distancing herself from Colton a little. There's that little voice campers. Jen was starting to sense that she might be in danger from this dude. One time, Jennifer and her friend Justin were hanging out when Colton just showed up, unannounced, and told her he had to talk to her.

Justin could tell Jen was scared, and she told him to leave. But Colton turned on the puppy dog act. please, Jen, I just want to talk. Justin can stay in the room. He said, Jennifer, I love you. We belong together. For Colton, this was the big scene in the romantic movie where the love interest

realizes that what she's been searching for has been right there in front of her all along and throws herself into his arms. For Jennifer, it was just excruciatingly awkward. She said, I just don't feel like that about you. Colton was getting increasingly angry as they talked, and Jennifer stuck to her guns about not wanting to date him.

Finally, she decided to put all our cards on the table and tell him the truth. She said, you scare me, Colton. I can't be with somebody who scares me. Now, how would most people respond if the person they loved said, you scare me? I'd imagine most people would want to go out of their way to avoid, you know, being scary in that moment. But not our boy Colton. Oh, no.

He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, you're scared I might have a knife? And pulled out a flippin' knife. Oh, sure, sure. That's a nice, calm, reasoned response. Yeah, I mean, what else was he supposed to do, right? So, of course, Jen was scared shitless, and she took off running, and this pathetic little in-cell shit bag chased her. Jen made it into a closet and slammed the door behind her, and Justin, bless his brave heart,

tackled Colton until he put the knife away and left. And Justin later said they never thought Colton was actually planning to hurt Jen, just scare her, which just, okay. Yeah, if somebody pulled a knife out on a friend of mine, I can guarantee you that their intent would be the last thing on my mind. Well, yeah. His intent of scaring her doesn't make it better, by the way. You don't pull a fucking knife out on anybody, especially someone you claim to love. Yeah, and, you know, for a lot of us, this would have been the last straw.

Like, no more Colton, cut him off like a gangrenous toe, and move on with your life. But Jennifer never stayed mad at the people she loved, and for all his faults, she loved. she loved Colton. We've had to hand wave a lot of stuff just for the sake of time, but they did actually have a very close friendship for a while, and it wasn't all about partying. Like, Colton was a Jekyll and Hyde, like we said earlier. By all accounts, when he wasn't marinating himself in drugs,

he could be a really good friend, like a good listener, good conversationalist. Problem was, he was marinating in drugs now. And obsession, and Scarface fantasies, and it was not a good combination. But Jen always rooted for the underdog. even when she was in trouble herself she wanted to help people who were hurting so after a while

she gave in sat down with Colton and told him she forgave him but if they were going to keep seeing each other he had to understand they were just friends this story is like a horror movie you're screaming at the character does not go into the chainsaw shed

yep oh God bless her heart in November of that same year Colton went to his she-she rehab his parents hoped it would really help him get his shit together, but for Colton, it was just a ploy to get off lighter for the drug charges he was up against. He wasn't interested in getting clean. He just told his counselors what they wanted to hear, which somebody as smart as Colton is really good at doing. And when he got out, he went right back to the drugs and drinking. One friend told Catherine Casey his schedule

and his consumption would have exhausted most mortal beings. Ah, this kid. It's like he had some kind of ancient grudge against his own liver or something. I will destroy you. It's your own body, chill. Unfortunately for Jennifer, she took Colton's second try at rehab as a reason not to check in herself. Over the holidays, her mom Sharon had to come to Jesus talk with her and tried to get her to see that she needed help. According to Catherine Casey's book, Sharon took her into the bathroom and stood her in front of the mirror. She said, look at yourself, Jennifer. Really take a good look. This is what the world sees. This is who you are. You're pretty and you're smart. You're kind and good inside.

You have so much potential. And as much as she wanted to believe that, Jen just couldn't quite get there. Her friend Katrina has since said that she always saw a kind of emptiness inside Jen. Underneath her kindness and sweet spirit, she was battling some nasty inner demons. Her mom told her, you've got to pull your life together. Only you can do it, and it's going to get harder if you don't do it now. But because rehab hadn't worked for Colton, Jen didn't think it would work for her. She was back to hanging out with him on the regular.

She told her friend Katrina, Colton's okay if he's not high. I just make sure I'm not alone with him. Oh, girl. She said she was trying hard to fix him, but it didn't seem to be working. Bless her heart. So here was a kid who was in the midst of an uphill battle to fix her own life, and she's trying to fix Colton's dumbass, too.

and no matter how many people told her, look, babe, you can't fix anybody but you, Jen just kept trying. Man, if there is one thing we need to make sure we teach our kids, it's this. You cannot save people, and you're not going to get a medal for trying either. You're just going to get beat up, emotionally, whatever. If somebody's going off the rails, don't let them take you with them. Doesn't mean you can't love them and be there for them within reason, but you cannot swoop in and make them okay. So don't set yourself on fire to keep somebody else. And that is the hardest lesson to accept for yourself is because you want the people you love

to be okay, but can't. In December 2004, Colton had a court date. A hearing about that Xanax and Ambien the cops had found in his apartment months earlier. And in true Colton fashion, Homeboy just didn't show up. Guess why? I'm going to go out in a limb and suggest it. was because he was passed out cold on the couch in his apartment. Ding, ding, ding, ding.

So his parents who, you know, did show up told the lawyer to haul ass over there and drag him there if he had to. So this poor attorney had to climb into Colton's drug den apartment window and smack him awake so he could bring him to court. And I have to wonder if that's like a class that they go over. in law school. A client is a dumb asshole that didn't show up, and now you have to perform some lightly illegal acts to get them, 101. So everything wasn't exactly coming up, Colton. The judge set a date for trial in June. Until then, our boy would have to sweat. For Jennifer, though, things were looking up. She had a new guy, Scott Engle. Scott was a sweetheart. A single dad with a four-year-old daughter who immediately adored Jennifer.

He was a good man. The first guy his friends wanted to call if they needed help or a shoulder to cry on. And he treated Jen with love and respect. Didn't even chase her into closets with knives or anything. They fell for each other hard and fast, and Jennifer was over the moon about it. She moved in with him really quickly. Not the best idea, generally speaking, but in Jennifer's case, he was a great influence. She still didn't have a job at this point, so she kind of just played house,

became a stay-at-home babysitter slash stepmom for Scott's daughter Madison. Scott knew Jen had a drug problem. He'd had one himself in the past, but when his daughter was born, he got clean and stayed that way. He told Jen he wanted to support her recovery, and he knew it was hard, but he couldn't have drugs around Madison, period. So if she was going to live with them, she'd have to quit. and where Jen had always struggled to give up meth in the past, now that she had Scott, she found it almost easy to quit. She gained weight, she looked healthy, the dark circles disappeared from under her eyes,

and she was happy for the first time in a while. And by the dawn of 2005, she'd stopped hanging out with Colton and Potoniac altogether. The dark year was done. Colton was obviously not too happy about Jennifer and Scott, but he couldn't stand to be without some kind of female companionship. And soon a volunteer stepped into the ring. The young woman named Laura Ashley Hall, which I realize sounds like a design showroom

for that kind of furniture that looks like a rose garden threw up all over it. But Laura Hall bore no resemblance to the flowery fabric she shared a name with. She was pretty, for sure. But if you looked closely enough, you'd notice those flinty calculating eyes. Cool as a fridge full of cucumbers. Laura grew up in Texas, the daughter of a well-to-do family, just like Colton. She called her mom and dad by their first names, which I'm sure she thought made her impossibly cool. Her parents thought it was cute.

My mom would have ripped me five new assholes if I'd have tried them. When she was growing up, they gave her the whole second floor of their house as her own personal apartment. As you can probably tell, Laura's parents didn't like telling her no. In high school, she was kind of goth. She walked around carrying those Anne Rice books. I mean, same and same, by the way, so no shade intended. She wasn't what you'd call an outcast. She hung out with a small clique of other smart kids, but she wasn't popular either.

Yeah, same, same, same. If you read while walking in the halls, we are kindred spirits. I used to walk home from the bus while reading, and don't at me. I'm so lucky I was never abducted. I almost stepped right on a rat snake one time when I was reading. Like, right on it. I ended up stepping over it instead, and the only reason why I even knew is because this full-grown-ass man who was out in his front yard screamed like a toddler and ran and was like, Oh my gosh, I almost stepped on a snake.

And I looked down and I was like, dude, it's a rat snake, chill, you know, but he was just petrified, poor guy. I got to finish this chapter before I get home and I have to do my chores. Like, come on. I was just glad I didn't step on the poor little dude. I know. So one former friend told Catherine Casey that a lot of people didn't. understand why she was friends with Laura. She said Laura's not a people person. She was rude without realizing it. Not many people liked her. She also said Laura was one of those people with zero

filter on their mouth. If a thought popped into Laura's head, she'd chair it. It seemed like she couldn't stand to be alone. If she was home by herself, she'd have to call somebody to talk to. And when it came to men, whew, boy. Laura was a ride or die, by which I mean every ounce of intellect and logic she possessed, just crumbled into dust in the presence of a boy she liked. What he liked, she liked. What he wanted, she wanted. Ride or die? Gross. Mm-hmm. After high school, Laura enrolled at UT. She wanted to go to law school after undergrad. She rolled into Austin in her green Cadillac concourse and started toward her goal. She didn't win friends and influence people any better at university than she had in high school, though. One of her

neighbors said she seemed to be playing a character, rebellious chick slash loner. Another said she could be friendly one day and cold as ice the next. Moody. All right. I resent how much Laura's characteristics could be attributed to me. Like just on paper, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Because, like, I've never, like, gone on my way to be nice to my neighbors. But now I am, I say hi to all of them. They know my name because I'm, I. refuse. I will not be like Laura. Yeah, well, I don't blame you because she's fucking awful, as we're about to see. And oh my God, y'all, this neighbor also said, quote, we rarely saw anyone but guys who wore long trench coats visiting her. She didn't seem to have any girlfriends. Now, y'all know what this means, don't you? Yes. She's one of those. I'm only friends with guys because girls have

too much drama types. In other words, hey men, pick me. Pick me. Pick me. Pick me. Pick me. Yep. I'm not like the other girls. I wear black and read Anne Rice. I don't drink Cosmos. I drink whiskey. Neat. Settle down, child. You know, you're going to sprain something reaching that hard for male approval, right? And this is a little odd. Sometimes Laura's neighbors would hear her just screaming. For no apparent reason, just a good old screaming session like you do. One time, one of these neighbors who, I'm sure, must have been super curious about her by then, what with the screaming and all, found one of Laura's old high school yearbooks in the dumpster and took a look, as I would have as well. Laura had written little notes on the pictures of some of her classmates, stuff like, pardon our language, these are quotes, shithead, lesbian, slut, charming. Oh, and on some of the dudes, like pictures, she wrote, cool, fun,

Fine. Like, you win, Laura. Fuck off. So Laura met Colton through his friend Justin. She had a tendency to kind of glom on to people she liked, like, show up at their place and just hang around, determined not to take the hint if the people who lived there wanted her to leave. Oh, my God, I hate those people.

So she started moping around Justin's place. Justin thought she was a massive weirdo, probably had serious emotional problems, but he was too nice to kick her to the curb. and it was at his place that she met our man the gosh father. Colton showed up doing his usual bad boy routine, bragging about drugs and guns and whatnot. And Laura was just immediately Gaga. She asked Justin for Colton's number,

and in a moment of good judgment, Justin tried to steer her away from him. He said, nah, Colton's got a girlfriend. He didn't. Justin just had an instinctive feeling, that putting Colton Pitoniac and Laura Hall together would be a bad idea. Yeah, kind of like mixing ammonia and bleach. Yeah, but it didn't stop Laura.

She went after Colton full bore, and soon they were sleeping together. After getting rejected by Jennifer, maybe Colton was getting off on the fact that Laura was so into him. According to Justin, she pretty much worshipped the ground he walked on from day She bought his kingpin bullshit, hook, line, and sinker. She thought it was exciting, and in return for all this adoration, Colton, quote, treated her like a muddy little dog. Oh, Lord. What a champ.

Laura hadn't been a drug user before she met Colton, but now she was getting high all the time. And she made it clear that she'd do anything Colton asked her to do. It didn't take long for Jennifer to pop onto Laura's radar, and her hackle. came up immediately. She didn't know Jen, but she hated her. One of Laura's friends said she'd bring Jennifer up from time to time. Once she said that Jen had stolen drugs from Colton, and Laura was just going to steal them back for him.

Total bullshit, obviously, but yikes. Colton set up a Facebook account in the spring of 2005 with the screen name, I Love Dash, Money and Hose. Jesus. He listed his interests as, drinking, women, and making money. Aim high. So, of course, Laura got a Facebook account, too.

On her profile, she quoted horror author Peter Straub. You're part music and part blood, part thinker, and part killer. And if you can find all of that within you and control it, then you deserve to be set apart. We like ourselves, don't we, Laura? Mm-hmm. Around this time, Colton finally managed to coax Jennifer back into contact with him. before long they were hanging out again and Jen was using drugs again

not nearly as much as she had before she met Scott but she wasn't totally clean anymore the demons were still there and anytime Colton called her with a crisis she'd run right to his side it really worried the people who loved her and as she and Scott moved out of the rosy honeymoon phase of their relationship Jennifer was beginning

to feel a little unsettled too a little less steady She told her friend she felt like something evil was lurking in the shadows waiting to pounce on her. She said, I have to be one step ahead. I have to run. As for Laura Hall, she took to her new Facebook page and mused, I should really be a more horrific person. It's in the works.

Okay, campers, we're going to hurt you a little bit this week, I'm afraid, because this story is just too big to fit into one episode. So we're going to leave it here for part one. Next week we'll tell you more about Colton and Sad Sack Laura Hall and we'll get to the actual murder in the aftermath. It's going to be a wild one. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire.

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