In Too Deep

This story was first broadcast on Jan. 22, 2008.

In the summer of 2005, a young woman named Laura Hall found herself caught up in a gruesome murder case; the body of another woman was in her boyfriend's bathtub, and some time after the killing, the body was horribly mutilated.

As correspondent Maureen Maher reports, police did not focus on Laura as a suspect in the killing, but wondered if she was somehow involved in what happened after the murder.

Was Laura an innocent victim herself - a "good girl" - or someone much more frightening?

Laura says her boyfriend, Colton Pitonyak, let her inside the apartment. She says Colton answered the door kind of "paranoid" and "fearful" and that she saw another woman's purse and keys on the table.

"And I'm kind of like sitting up, 'Colton, where, where, where are, who's hiding… what the deal, what's going on?' I'm kind of starting to freak out. A little bit. And he says 'Come here, come here,'" she recalls.

Colton led Laura to his bathroom. He had begged her to come over, telling her he needed to talk. But it wasn't so much what Colton wanted to say to Laura; it was what he wanted to show her.

"It looked like there was a woman's body in there and I said 'That's a mannequin.' I mean that's how much I did not believe or wanna believe," she says.

At first Colton told Laura that men with guns had broken in and that there had been a fight. But then he changed his story and said he didn't remember what had happened.

Laura says it was obvious Colton had been drinking and that he began to threaten her with a knife. "I remember him goading me out of the bathroom with a knife that had blood on it up to the hilt," she says, "I was like, man, 'Oh my God, you know what happened?'"

But then, surprisingly, Laura says Colton just let her go. Terrified, Laura says she went home, locked the door, and told no one what she had seen.

Asked if it never occurred to her to call police, family or friends, Laura says, "It didn't seem like a good move. I mean, look, he had tried to kill me. I didn't know what was gonna happen if I called the police, ok? There was nothing I could have done to save her life at that point."

The woman in the bathtub was 21-year-old Jennifer Cave, another pretty girl who hung out with Colton. Jennifer lived in Austin and just that week had begun a new job at a law firm.

Her parents lived in Corpus Christi. Her mother Sharon remembers getting a call from her daughter's law firm. "He said 'Well, there's a problem,' and he said, 'We're concerned.' He said, 'Jennifer didn't come to work today.' And I said 'What?'"

Sharon began frantically calling around to find her. "I started calling the numbers on the cell phone bill. That's when I got Colton's phone number," she recalls.

Sharon called Colton, and at first he denied seeing Jennifer.

Sharon knew very little about Colton. Jennifer had told her he was cute, and smart, a business student at the University of Texas. But Colton also had a serious problem with drugs, especially cocaine.

"And I'm like, 'Jennifer, please, just don't, just stay away from that,'" Sharon says. "And she's like, 'Mom, he's my friend and he needs my help.' And I'd be like, 'Jennifer, please stay away from that.'"

But Sharon knew it was in her daughter's nature to try and help. "Part of Jennifer's nature, and part of the pleasing and part of the loving people, is she had a real problem with stray dogs, and I'm not talking the four-legged kind," she says.

Jennifer had her own history with drugs. In recent months though, she had started to pull her life together. She appeared to be on a new path, with new friends and a promising new job at a law firm. But on that hot August night in Austin's party district, Colton reached out to Jennifer one more time.

"Colton called her, he said, 'You know, I really need a friend. Would you please help me. I just want to see you for a little bit. I'll take you to dinner to celebrate your new job,'" Sharon says. "And Jennifer would fall for that line every time, 'I need a friend.'"

The two ended up partying with friends, and around midnight took off by themselves. It was the last time anyone saw Jennifer alive.

It was the next day that Sharon got the call that Jennifer never showed up for work. Hours had now passed since anyone had seen or spoken to her daughter and Sharon was panicked.

When Jennifer's stepfather Jim got home from work, Sharon told him Jennifer was missing.

Jim tried to reach Colton, but he didn't pick up. "It went to voice mail and I said, 'Colton, this is Jim. We're looking for Jennifer. We know you were the last person she was seen with. If you have any idea where she is, you need to call me,'" he remembers.

Eventually, Colton called back. "On her phone. 'Hey dude, I'm eating pizza, don't bother me any more. Quit calling me,'" Jim remembers.

The morning after finding out Jennifer had disappeared, Sharon and Jim hit the highway and raced four hours from Corpus Christi to Austin, and straight to Colton's apartment, the last person to be seen with Jennifer.

As they searched, Jim and Sharon began putting together clues; they found Jennifer's car outside Colton's apartment.

They called police, but when the officer arrived, he told them he didn't have probable cause to break in. So, after the cop left, Jim took matters into his own hands and broke in through a window.

Jim says the place was completely dark. With a flashlight, he says he says the place looked like a wreck, as if there had been a struggle.

He told Sharon to wait on the porch to protect her from what he feared he might find inside. "So I kept going down this hallway, and then there was another door on my left which was closed. And I opened that door. It had the light in there, it appeared to be a bathtub and I was seeing something. So I flipped the light switch on, which was right here, and there she was," he remembers.

Jim had found Jennifer - or what was left of her. Her body had been thrown into the bathtub, her head severed,

After calling 911, police arrived to secure the crime scene and began the search for Colton.

Travis County Prosecutor Bill Bishop says the autopsy showed that Jennifer died of a single gunshot. "There's a single gunshot through the arm, into the heart, but it was post-murder behavior that made it so grotesque," he says.

The autopsy showed that Jennifer's body had been mutilated after the murder, stabbed dozens of times, her head severed, and shot again. "The mutilation was anger," Bishop says. "It wasn't any effort to hide the body or get rid of the body. It was just playing with it, like it was toy."

Bishop also says someone apparently tried to clean up the crime scene. "The kitchen I think was the oddest room to me because it was sparkling clean," he says. "Even looked like the floors had been mopped."

"They found a machete in the dishwasher," Bishop adds.

Investigators also began to learn more about this once clean-cut college kid.

Colton had been a straight-A student from a well-to-do family. But recently he had served 20 days for his arrest arising from charges of cocaine possession. A handgun was found in his car, which turned out to be the murder weapon. A 'Scarface' poster hung on Colton's wall, and he had a stash of mobster movies.

"'Donnie Brasco' and 'Goodfellas' and a series of movies that involve dismemberment," Bishop says. "But I know one of them involves dismemberment with a machete."

Police continued the search for Colton, but what no one realized was that Laura Hall had also disappeared.

A break in the case came four days after Jennifer's murder. It came from Laura Hall's parents. They told police they had received two bizarre e-mails from their daughter, the most chilling reading "Colton's famous" and "I'm never coming home."

Loren and Carol Hall desperately tried to reach their daughter. Finally, they got through to Laura's cell phone. Laura told them she had crossed the border into Mexico, with Colton.

"She told me, 'Dad, Colton's killed someone and they found a body.' I heard this rustling, like someone's grabbing the phone from you, and that's when I said, 'Man, you need to turn yourself in.' And he goes, 'Your daughter had nothing to do with this…you need to get her out of here.' And I'm, 'Yeah, I'm very aware of that. You need to get her out of there.' She looks just like Jennifer Cave, who's gonna be next?" Loren says.

Laura's parents say they feared Colton was going to kill their daughter. Alarmed, Laura's father called police and told them that Colton may have kidnapped his daughter.

"Colton flipped out," Laura says. "He wanted to get out of town. He ended up saying 'Take me to Mexico.' So I did," she says.

Laura says she was afraid for her life, and that's why she drove him to Mexico.

She says she didn't have a plan on what to do next after getting to Mexico, and that she didn't know what Colton was planning. "He was incoherent and in a sense, so was I. We were in no condition," she says.

Colton and Laura fled Austin some 16 hours after the murder. They drove Laura's dark green Cadillac some 200 miles to the Mexican town of Piedras Negras, a quiet border town just on the other side of Eagle Pass, Texas.

They weren't in Mexico for long: after five days, they were nabbed by a Mexican SWAT team and handed over to American authorities.

Back in Austin, Colton was charged with murder. Laura was not arrested, but when police questioned her, she was less than cooperative.

"It was just too soon. I had just gotten away from him. I mean, I wasn't ready to be rational yet," she says.

Asked what she told police, Laura says, "Just that I thought we were on vacation, I don't know anything about it, Colton's a great guy and he didn't do it."

"And that was a lie?" Maher asks.

"Of course," Laura admits.

As investigators learned more, Laura was questioned again. Police did not believe Laura went to Mexico against her will and she was charged with "hindering apprehension" for her role in Colton's escape.

Laura agreed to talk to police, but initially held back. The interrogation lasted nine grueling hours. But in the end, Detective Mark Gilchrist finally got Laura to give up the gruesome details of what she claimed was Colton's plan to dismember Jennifer's body.

"He said he was gonna cut up the body and get rid of it," she told the detective.

Asked if Colton had asked her to help him, Laura told Gilchrist, "No! He told me to get out of there."

"I think they knew that I was innocent and that they wanted testimony. They made that very clear," Laura says.

"They wanted testimony against Colton?" Maher asks.

"Against Colton. Yes," she says.

In January 2007, Colton was brought to trial for Jennifer's murder.

"You'll hear that Ms. Cave died as a result of a gunshot through the arm and the torso of her body. You'll hear that after her death she was dismembered, her hands removed, her head removed," prosecutor Bishop said in opening statements.

The trial meant Jennifer's family would have to live the entire nightmare all over again. "One day I had a daughter, who I was laughing and talking to and the next day there was complete silence. And that's pretty much how it is. One day I had a daughter who I loved and laughed, and the next day it was just quiet," her mother Sharon says.

Bishop felt the evidence against Colton was "very strong."

"We knew him to be the only person in her company that evening once they left Sixth Street," Bishop said in court. "The location obviously of her body being in his apartment… He went to a hardware store… and bought cleaning supplies such as ammonia and Febreze… masks, gloves, and a hacksaw… The clerk… asked him what he needed a hacksaw for, and he said he was frying a turkey and he needed a hacksaw to cut it up because it was frozen."

When he took the stand, Colton said he had absolutely no memory of what happened the night Jennifer was shot, claiming he was strung out on drugs and alcohol. Prosecutors are at a loss to explain the motive, and Jennifer can't tell us.

Asked how he got back to his apartment, Colton said, "I assume Jennifer took me." He also said he had no recollection of the circumstances surrounding Jennifer's death.

Based on what he had seen at the crime scene, Jennifer's step-father was convinced there had been a struggle that night, but Colton would not or could not explain what he and Jennifer had argued over, or more importantly, why he shot her.

"There's no way it would have been on purpose," Colton testified. "No way" he said because he cared too much for Jennifer.

But Colton's mental fog apparently began to lift a few hours after the shooting, coincidentally, right around the time Laura showed up at his door.

Asked what he did, he said, "I can't remember exactly what I told her, but I showed her Jennifer's body."

"And what did she say?" the attorney asked.

"She just said, 'What are we gonna do?,'" Colton claimed.

And for the first time, Colton started shifting the blame. Except for the murder itself, Colton blamed Laura for almost everything. Colton said he did not cut Jennifer's body with the knife, that "there's no way" he would have done what was done.

"Of course he remembers all that, then incriminates me, and nothing about his own actions," Laura comments.

In court, Colton says he did not cut up Jennifer's body, but Laura says he's lying and that she had nothing to do with the dismemberment.

But the jury never heard Laura's side of the story. On the advice of her lawyer, Laura never took the stand at Colton's trial. She says she regrets not testifying. "I had no idea that he was going to do what he did," she says.

If Colton was trying to shift blame to Laura to spare himself, it didn't work: jurors found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to 55 years.

Now the question is what will happen to Laura Hall?

For two years now, Laura has been trying to keep her head above the murky waters of suspicion. The question is who is the real Laura Hall?

Is she an innocent victim, or someone much more frightening?

"I guess, to use my word, I would say you have to be, you have to have, a good case of evil," prosecutor Bill Bishop says.

Bishop has come up with at least two witnesses who say Laura told them she was involved in the mutilation of Jennifer's body.

Laura will now stand trial for that, as well as helping Colton escape.

Asked if he's 100 percent convinced that Laura was part of the dismemberment and mutilation, Bishop says, "I believe she was."

A motive? "I think she also had some motivation of jealousy," Bishop theorizes. "That Colton had called Jennifer Cave as opposed to her the night before."

But the defense says Laura is being framed. Joe James Sawyer, Laura's attorney, says Colton lied about her involvement to try to win a lesser sentence for himself.

Sawyer believes Laura is just another one of Colton's victims. "She's a young girl who fell afoul of Colton Pitonyak," he says. "She was as unfortunate in that as Jennifer Cave."

"You think Laura is as much of a victim as Jennifer?" Maher asks.

"Make no mistake, as far as he was concerned, they were interchangeable pieces. It is only blind luck, I think, that he called Jennifer first, and killed her and then called Laura. If you look at those two young women, what you see are the same characteristics in each of them that Pitonyak used to manipulate them," Sawyer argues.

"He preferred a certain type of young woman. One who was compliant, easily manipulated and who adored him," he says.

"I loved him. I loved him a lot," Laura admits. "Men have always had a strong effect on me. It's been a weakness."

And Sawyer says that weakness left Laura locked in Colton's psychological grip, both terrified of him, and in love with him.

"You come into an apartment, you think you're seeing some guy you're crazy about. You've probably come for romance and you wind up finding a dead body. Did he manipulate her? Oh absolutely, that's what he does. Did he tell her that he needed her? Absolutely," Sawyer says.

Asked if he thinks Laura is gullible or culpable, Sawyer says, "Gullible, yes, believing, yes, trusting yes."

According to Sawyer, Laura had a history with Colton: he would abuse her, but she would always come back to him.

Laura says Colton did hit her, and says that at that point, on some level, she did want to get out of the relationship. "It's just really difficult to, to say what its like to be going through that. Like when you know, 'Wow, this person is hitting me. This can't be good.' Yet you still feel, like 'I mean he used to be this good person and that, you know, maybe somehow I can draw that guy back out again,'" she says.

"In your opinion your client is guilty of nothing other than stupidity?" Maher asks defense attorney Sawyer.

"… and being in love with someone," he says.

But Laura's behavior on the day of the murder was so bizarre, it defies explanation.

Remember how Laura said Colton had shown her the body and then abruptly let her go? There's actually a little more to that story: investigators now believe that Laura went back to Colton's apartment later that day.

Laura admits that Colton called her, and again, she couldn't refuse him. Asked why she returned to the apartment, Laura says, "I don't know."

"She had every opportunity in the world to call the police, send them to Colton's apartment and certainly she would have been safe from Colton for a long time had she done that," prosecutor Bishop says.

Prosecutors intend to prove that not only was Laura present during the dismembering of the body, but that she also took part in it.

Laura's defense is simple: she says didn't do it. She did not dismember Jennifer's body and she did not plot Colton's escape.

Bishop says the idea that Laura was forced to do anything by Colton will not stand up in court. He says a photograph, the only one from the couple's life on the run in Mexico, paints a true picture of the real Laura Hall.

"This was at the hotel manager's house when they went to go watch Ultimate Fighting and that's his child's playpen that they're playing in, playing with dolls and a sombrero," Bishop explains. "She does not appear to be there against her will."

"I think that people are gonna look at this and they're going to see how articulate you are, and they're going to say, 'Ok either this girl is really stupid…or she's a sociopath.' With all due respect, which one is it?" Maher asks.

"I'm definitely not a sociopath," Laura says. "I've been destroyed in the media. I mean the image of me is just, it's this monster that doesn't exist."

It now up to the jury to decide whether Laura is a good girl, or a killer's helper.

With Colton serving 55 years, Laura now has to go before a judge and jury, who will decide once and for all whether she was or wasn't involved.

"I think Laura's more guilty of the mutilation than Colton," says Jennifer's mother Sharon. "I think Colton was the laborer. I think Laura was the planner."

"I think just from a physical standpoint, Colton Pitonyak probably did the bulk of the work. Just because physically it would be very difficult to do. But I also don't believe one person could have done some of the things that were done," Bishop says.

In the weeks leading up to her trial, Laura spent most of her time in seclusion.

At trial, this time with no cameras allowed, prosecutor Bill Bishop outlines Laura's ever-changing account of events. "She gave a series of statements to the police… She had previously made a statement that she had no idea what happened, she'd never seen the body. Her statement then became she'd seen the body but didn't know what had happened," Bishop said. "And it eventually grew into, 'I was a victim, I was kidnapped, I had nothing to do with it.'"

In addition to the witnesses who claim Laura told them about her involvement in the mutilation, Bishop says Laura's DNA was also found at the scene. "Her DNA was on the gun, the murder weapon itself, that was found in Colton's car," Bishop said.

Laura has never been accused of murdering Jennifer, but remember, Jennifer was shot through the head after death. In addition to the gun, Laura's DNA was also found elsewhere in Colton's apartment.

"It was on a flip flop in the bathroom… There was a shop towel out in the living room of the apartment that had both her DNA and Colton Pitonyak's DNA," Bishop says.

Asked if that was enough physical evidence to tie her to the dismemberment, Bishop says, "When put with her statements to co-workers and things such as that, absolutely."

But Laura was in Colton's apartment dozens of times before the murder and she says the DNA, even the DNA on the gun, means nothing.

She says Colton had that gun for weeks and that she had picked it up and can imagine that she had touched the trigger at that time.

The defense had wanted the jury to see the tape of Laura's police interrogation, where for nine emotional hours she firmly maintained she had nothing to do with the dismemberment. But the judge refused to allow it, calling it inadmissible hearsay. The ruling, in effect, tossed attorney Joe James Sawyer's defense out the window.

"The net result is I have to advise my client, even though we planned on you testifying, 'You can't do it,'" he explains.

So, just as in Colton's trial, Laura never takes the stand. Sawyer can only hope the jury sees it his way. "There's no question the most volatile component in this case is that people are going to be repulsed by what happened to Jennifer Cave... The great challenge is to say to them, 'Feel any way you want. Remember the difference between feeling and proof.'"

On the second day of deliberations, the verdict comes in: guilty.

But Laura is sentenced to just five years; the Caves were outraged.

Asked what she thinks should happen to Laura, Jennifer's mother Sharon says, "I wish Laura was in jail for 55 years… Laura is the person who is gonna be a repeat offender, and the thing that I am most fearful about is that she will chose my family to yet again hurt."

"She is not going to get the opportunity to live the really fantastic life that she deserved. And she did deserve it. And so it's up to our other kids and it's up to their friends to live that life for her," Jennifer's mom Sharon adds.

Sharon and Jim Cave successfully fought for tougher penalties for mutilating a body. The new Texas law is called "The Jennifer Cave Act."