Dead in the bath!
Jennifer, right, with her sister, Lauren, and
Saturday 29th March 2008
Call it mother's intuition, but I just knew something was wrong.
'She's usually called by now,' I said to my fiancé, Jim Sedwick, 55, as I paced round the kitchen. A year earlier, in August 2004, my daughter, Jennifer, 21, had moved 190 miles away to university in Austin, Texas, to study business.
If I'd been worried that our mother-daughter bond would weaken once she left home, I'd been proved wrong. Jennifer and I called each other four or five times a day. If I saw something funny on telly, I'd pick up the phone. If she found a bargain in the shops, she'd call me. It was silly really, but anything that happened, big or small, we'd share it with each other. But now, it was lunchtime, and she hadn't phoned like she'd promised to when I spoke to her the previous day.
'She sounded so happy,' I said to Jim, as I recalled our chat.
Jennifer had dropped out of university, and she'd just started a new job as a legal secretary.
'I love the job,' she'd said. 'I think I'd like to be a lawyer.'
I could picture her, beaming down the phone, her blue eyes shining as she shared her news.
'I'm so proud of you,' I'd told her.
'I'll call you tomorrow lunchtime,' she'd said, before hanging up.
But she hadn't.
Maybe she's busy? I thought, trying not to panic. But now, it was 3.30pm, and I was worried. I'd been calling her mobile, but there was no answer. So I tried phoning her friend, Michael Rodriguez.
'I haven't spoken to her since last night,' Michael said. 'When I called, she was having dinner with Colton.'
Colton Pitonyak, 22, was Jennifer's friend.
'Are you sure you should hang around with him?' I'd once asked.
Jennifer had told me that he was into drugs.
'He's my friend and he needs help,' she'd replied. 'I'm not going to desert him when he needs me the most.'
That was my daughter. So caring. By checking her mobile phone bill online, I managed to get Colton's number
'Hi, it's Jennifer's mum,' I said.
'I haven't spoken to her since last night, and I just wondered if you were with her.'
'Jennifer?' he replied. 'I haven't seen her for ages.'
Alarm bells started ringing. Why was he lying?
'I thought you saw her last night,' I said.
'Oh, er, j-just for a few minutes,' he stammered, before hanging up.
'Something's seriously wrong,' I said to Jim.
By 4.30pm, we started calling everyone in Austin we could think of — hospitals, to see if Jennifer had been admitted, car pounds, to see if they had her car…Every time I was told they hadn't any record of a Jennifer Cave, I was both relieved and dismayed. Then, we had one more call to make. The police.
'We can't do anything until she's been gone for 24 hours,' an officer told us. 'She's a grown woman.'
True. But she was still my little girl. I wasn't about to do nothing. So after a sleepless night, I made a decision.
'We're going to Austin,' I told Jim.
I called my eldest daughter, Vanessa, 28, who agreed to drive from her home in Dallas and meet us there. The police had told me where Colton lived, so, leaving our home in Corpus Christi, Texas, that's where we headed first.
After a three-hour drive, we pulled up outside a block of flats.
'There's Jennifer's car!'
I cried, pointing to a black Saturn parked outside Colton's flat. 'I knew he was lying!'
But the flat was locked, and in darkness, so we checked into a local hotel and called the police.
'You have to break the door down,' I insisted.
But they still said they didn't have enough evidence to arrest or even question Colton. Jim called a locksmith, but he couldn't help either.
'We're going to have to break in,' I said. 'There's no other way.'
Back at Colton's flat, I noticed a small hole in the front window. I grabbed a pen from my handbag and started chipping away at it. Soon, it was big enough to slip the arm of a pair of sunglasses through, and I managed to open the lock. Jim climbed through the window.
'Hello,' he called. 'Anyone there?'
I pressed my face to the glass and watched as he walked down the corridor and into a room. My heart thumped as I waited, not even sure what we were looking for, or hoping to find.
Within a minute, the door flew open, and Jim was standing there. The colour had drained from his face, and he was gasping for breath. I tried to push past him, but he pulled me back.
'You can't go in there,' he said, shaking his head. 'Call the police.'
'Is Jennifer in there?' I cried, trying to get past. 'Is she hurt?'
'Wait for the police,' he said, his whole body trembling.
He was in such a state that I had to try to calm him down until the police turned up, minutes later. Like Jim, within seconds of racing inside, they ran back out.
'We have a body,' I heard one of the officers say.
I gasped for breath and felt my legs go weak. 'Is she dead?' I asked.
Jim looked at me and nodded. Then I lost it.
'Someone's killed my daughter!' I screamed. 'My daughter's dead!'
More police arrived, and Jim, Vanessa and I had to go to the station to be questioned.
In between hysterical sobs, I told them about the detective work I'd done, tracking Jennifer down.
'It must be something to do with that Colton,' I insisted.
Soon, three hours had passed, and at 5am, we went back to the hotel, where we called relatives and friends to break the news. But even as I told them Jennifer was dead, it just didn't seem real.
'Was it definitely Jennifer you saw?' I said to Jim that night.
He nodded. 'I recognised the freckles on her feet,' he whispered.
But he couldn't bring himself to tell me what he'd seen.
Colton was arrested four days after we found Jennifer. He'd fled to Mexico with a friend, Laura Hall, 22, who'd also been arrested.
The only way to cope was to try not to think about how he'd killed her. But as we planned Jennifer's funeral, there was something Jim had to tell me.
'We won't be able to have an open coffin,' he said.
'Why?' I asked, desperate for one last look at Jennifer.
'They did a lot of bad things to her,' he whispered.
'W-what do you mean?' I stammered.
I listened in horror, as Jim told me what he'd seen when he'd got to the bathroom of Colton's flat.
'She'd been shot, stabbed in the chest, and dumped in the bath,' he told me, tears in his eyes.
I gasped.
'They removed her head and hands,' Jim added quietly. 'They were in bags by the bath.'
'Those sick…' I was sobbing so hard, I couldn't speak.
The following Tuesday, as I said goodbye to Jennifer at All Saints Episcopal church, Corpus Christi, I didn't dare think about what they'd done to her.
I have to remember her as she was, I vowed. But I missed her terribly. If the phone rang, I'd half expect it to be her. It was two long, miserable years before Colton's case came to the 147th District Court, in Austin, in January 2007. He pleaded not guilty to murder, claiming the shooting was an accident, and he couldn't remember killing her because he was on drugs.
He also said it was Laura who had dismembered Jennifer, after the police found a machete and a hacksaw in the dishwasher.
'Will I have to see pictures of Jennifer after what they did to her?' I asked our lawyer, terrified.
'You can leave the court,' he said.
I felt sick as I listened to Colton defending what he'd done. But the jury saw through him. He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 55 years in prison. I collapsed with relief. But our ordeal wasn't over. In September, we were back at court to see Laura Hall face charges of tampering with physical evidence. She'd used a hacksaw to cut off Jennifer's head and hands, and they called that tampering?
A month on, Laura was found guilty, but she was only given a paltry five-year sentence.
'What she did was just as bad as Colton's crime,' I said, furious.
But, according to Texas law, tampering with a body wasn't even a crime.
Then I realised there was something I could do. I started campaigning to make mutilating a body a second-degree felony.
And, in July 2007, the Jennifer Cave Act was passed. Since then, we've also successfully campaigned for counselling for jury members who have to sit through disturbing trials like that of Jennifer's killer. I miss my daughter every minute of every day. I'll never forget her, and thanks to these laws, now no one else will either.
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