05.A.Descent.Into.Hell.2008 (40 page)

Bishop had predicted that the trial could take up to two weeks, but it was progressing quickly. The main reason: Minton and Bassett asked few questions of the witnesses on cross-exam. Since the defense attorneys admitted Colton fired the fatal shot, they had no need to. The only witnesses the defense attorneys seemed interested in were two: With the DNA expert, they stressed what items had traces linking them to Laura Hall, and with the gun expert, Minton argued that the SW .380 could have accidentally discharged.

As the crowd filed from the courtroom, Jim Bergman drove south toward Eagle Pass, Texas, to pick up Pedro Fernandez. In a last-minute deal, U.S. immigration authorities agreed to allow McFarland to bring the hotel clerk into the country, but he’d be kept under guard in a hotel. McFarland and Bishop had Fernandez for one day. By the following midnight, Bergman had to have Fernandez back at the border, ready to turn over to an INS officer, to be returned to Mexico.

On the witness stand the next morning, Detective David Fugitt testified about what he’d discovered on Colton’s cell phone, including a text message to his mother: “Going to Houston.” In truth Pitonyak and Hall were on their way to Mexico. Photos showed the contents of Pitonyak’s backpack, everything he’d taken with him for the journey, from his collection of high-priced Ralph Lauren clothing to his passport and cell phone.

Listening to the witnesses on the stand, many wondered what Colton Pitonyak had told his parents when he was leaving Austin, especially regarding Bridget’s text message at 9:20 the night after Jennifer died. Colton’s mother told her son, “I’m a nervous wreck not knowing what’s going on…” It seemed that at least Bridget knew something troubling had happened in Austin. Yet the following afternoon, Eddie barked at Sharon and told Jim that Bridget thought “Jennifer was the problem.”

When Gilchrest, the case’s lead detective, took the stand, he brought in what at the time seemed an inconsequential piece of evidence, the Burger King bag he discovered on his final walk through the apartment, a $6.16 value meal without onions. Then, Bishop flashed the booking photo of Colton Pitonyak on the screen, for the detective to identify. The prosecutor wanted jurors to see the defendant as he was at the time of the murder, not the clean-cut, quiet young man in a suit sitting next to his attorneys, but a thug with glazed eyes and unruly hair, a goatee around his mouth, and dark stubble on his cheeks. Roy Minton asked Gilchrest no questions.

If the defense attorneys were restrained throughout the first two and a half days of the trial, their self-control ended when Deputy U.S. Marshal Vincent Bellino took the stand. He and his fellow deputy, Joseph Smith, had damaging statements to put before the jury, words Colton Pitonyak had uttered after his expulsion from Mexico and his arrest. Minton and Bassett insisted that they hadn’t been warned, as the rules required.

“Judge, we weren’t told about this,” Bassett argued. “We were supposed to have been told about any statements.”

“It was in my bucket for more than a year,” Bishop responded, referring to the container of evidence he shared with the defense during discovery.

Both sides argued, the defense attorneys maintaining the statements were inadmissible because they weren’t advised earlier of their existence, and Bishop and McFarland countering that they supplied the defense with the information along with all the other reports and interviews, and it couldn’t be held against them if Minton and Burton missed them in the pile of evidence.

“What irritates the hell out of me is that you gave a specific discovery order to the state to disclose statements,” Bassett objected.

The defense attorneys were angry, and Judge Flowers frowned, saying he could understand their sentiments. Flowers glared at the prosecutor, but said, “I am going to let those statements in.”

After the break, Bellino described Pitonyak’s arrest at the Casablanca Inn in Piedras Negras, Mexico, and what he said on the drive to the Maverick County jail: “If this is a murder charge, I know what this is about.”

What had Pitonyak told Deputy Smith? “I really fucked up.”

Afterward, on the video screen, jurors watched Hall in her green Cadillac driving Colton across the border at Del Rio into Mexico.

It was then that Pedro Fernandez, bulky in his sport coat, glasses perched on his nose, took the stand.

As a rapt audience listened, Fernandez described the two young Americans as looking like vacationing students. From the beginning, the things they said struck Fernandez as odd. They’d wanted to sell the Cadillac, and their plan was to disappear into Mexico’s interior. “I never met somebody who would come to Mexico and wouldn’t want to go back to their hometown of the U.S.,” Fernandez said, with a shrug, still appearing perplexed at the prospect.

At his home that night, watching the fighting match, Fernandez took a knife away from an agitated Pitonyak and snapped a cell phone photo of his two guests. In the picture McFarland displayed on the screen, Pitonyak and Hall smiled as if they hadn’t a care in the world, in a child’s playpen.

“Why did you take a picture?” Minton asked, appearing irritated, his voice booming through the courtroom.

“Because I was suspicious of them,” Fernandez said.

When Minton pressed, asking how Fernandez had been able to take the photo without Pitonyak and Hall objecting, the hotel manager pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open. “It’s easy, you take out your phone and snap,” he said, demonstrating.

Minton scowled, while Fernandez looked over at Pitonyak. He recognized the hard, cold look on the defendant’s face. It was the same one he’d seen on Pitonyak in his house that night, the one that frightened him so much that he took a circuitous route from his home to prevent Pitonyak and Hall from showing up at his door.

A short time later, at 11:40
A.M.
on the third day of the trial, Fernandez stepped down from the witness stand and Bill Bishop stood before the crowd and announced, “Your honor, the state rests.”

A buzz went through the courtroom after the prosecutors announced the conclusion of their case. While Bergman ushered Fernandez to his county car for the 450-mile round trip to return him to the border, word spread outside the 147th District Court that at 1:30 Laura Hall would appear with her attorney, Tom Weber. On the chance that it might be true, a barrage of cameramen and reporters staked out the entrance. At 1:15, Hall, wearing jeans and a gray sweater, sunglasses on top of her head, walked beside Weber toward the courtroom. She glared at the reporters recording her every move.

“On behalf of my client I am going to assert our Fifth Amendment rights,” Weber said, as he and Hall stood before Judge Flowers with the jury box empty.

“We ask the prosecutors to offer Laura Hall limited immunity so she can testify,” Bassett said.

Bishop had thought long and hard early on about offering Hall some kind of a deal, but he saw no advantage. He had two diametrically opposed statements from her, which meant she’d have no credibility in front of the jury. And he personally didn’t believe that Laura Hall recognized and would tell the truth.

“The state is not going to grant immunity in this matter,” Bishop said.

As quickly as the hubbub over Hall’s arrival began, it ended. Cameras rolled until she made her way into the elevator and the door closed.

From their arrival in Austin the Monday before the first day of testimony, Sharon and Jim stayed at a downtown Radisson hotel. That afternoon, after Bishop rested, Sharon went to their room to change into her tennis shoes, while Jim stood in the open parking garage, smoking and talking to his office on his cell phone. A white Toyota Sequoia drove in, and Jim glanced at the driver and thought it looked like Bridget Pitonyak. He looked down and saw Arkansas license plates.

A little while later, Sharon arrived, and he told her that the Pitonyaks were staying at the same hotel. “Surely, we’re not that unlucky,” Sharon said.

Any doubt, however, soon disappeared; a short time later, Sharon and Vanessa sat on a lobby couch, when Eddie and Bridget walked through, arm in arm.

Twenty-nine

Throughout the week, the UT dorm rooms, classrooms, and Internet sites filled with discussion and commentary on the events taking place inside the Pitonyak courtroom. Students across campus watched the testimony on CourtTV, and then argued about the case. They posted on Hornfans: “The defense is trying to pin as much on Hall as they can,” one wrote. “Someone shot into the severed head? Cocaine’s one helluva drug,” another commented.

On Friday morning, the fourth day of testimony, Lauren and Hailey sat beside their parents. For Lauren, it would be the first time she’d feel as if it were all real, that Jennifer was dead and she wasn’t coming home. Up until then, she’d willed herself not to think about what had happened in unit 88, or how it had changed all their lives. In Oklahoma, she’d told few of her classmates about the case, and before she arrived, Lauren dreaded making the trip for the trial. Yet in the courtroom, the youngest Cave sister realized she didn’t want the trial to end. It was all she had left of Jennifer to hold on to. Off and on, as she listened to testimony, she thought back to her last conversation with Jennifer, remembering how before hanging up they both said, “I love you.”

As Lauren considered the loss of her sister, Hailey looked across at Bridget and Eddie and wondered what they were thinking. What would it be like to have a son who’d committed such a horrific crime? The Pitonyaks sat alone, just the two of them, appearing to have the weight of the world on their shoulders, and Hailey found herself feeling sorry for them. That sympathy brought on yet another wave of guilt. For more than a year, she’d battled regret that she hadn’t stayed closer to Jennifer, and now it felt disloyal to have any sympathy for the parents of her killer.

Outside the sun shone in a bright blue, nearly cloudless sky, while inside the courtroom, Colton, in a brown suit, a blue shirt, and a precisely knotted tie, sat placidly beside his lawyers. By five minutes to nine, every seat in the courtroom filled. At the bench, Judge Flowers talked in a low tone to Bishop, Minton, and Bassett. Something had happened the evening before, after they’d left the courtroom, and they were discussing how best to handle it. When Judge Flowers was ready, Bassett stood and called his first witness, an odd choice it would seem: the lead investigator on the case.

On the witness stand for the second time, Detective Mark Gilchrest explained that he’d discovered something inside Jennifer’s small, orange, barrel-shaped purse after testifying the day before.

“And what is it?”

Using the projector, Bassett displayed a tattered card for the “Thong Club,” a discount card from a lingerie store. What Gilchrest hadn’t noticed at first was writing on the back. In pencil, someone had written Laura Hall’s name. Why this could be important, no one explained. The two young women were both friends of Pitonyak’s, so it didn’t seem particularly odd. Seated behind the prosecutors’ table, Bill Bishop wasn’t concerned; instead he decided to take advantage of having Gilchrest back on the stand. “When you went back to apartment eighty-eight with Detective Walker did you look for a third bullet?” Bishop asked.

“Yes, we did…because there were [two bullets recovered but] three shell casings found in the apartment,” Gilchrest said.

“Did you ever find the third bullet?”

“No.”

That there were three bullets was important to Bishop, something he wanted the jurors to remember. Yet he moved quickly on, hoping not to give it so much attention that he alerted Minton and Bassett. Instead, Bishop changed the subject, asking Gilchrest a question that explained Hall’s absence from the courtroom. “Is Laura Hall charged with an offense arising out of this set of circumstances?” Bishop asked.

“Yes,” Gilchrest said, looking at the jurors. “Hindering apprehension.”

Laura’s friend, Ryan Martindill, was on the prosecutors’ witness list, but since the defense admitted Pitonyak fired the fatal bullet, Bishop and McFarland hadn’t called him to testify. There were, however, points the defense attorneys thought Martindill could make for them, and he was their second witness to take the stand.

“You told me this morning that it was obvious to you that Laura was in love with Colton, and you said, ‘I sometimes can’t differentiate between love and obsession,’” Bassett said. “Is that correct?”

“Yes,” Martindill testified. Bassett wanted to put into evidence more proof of that obsession: Martindill’s account of the night Hall had “Colton” tattooed onto her ankle. Charging it was irrelevant, Bishop protested. After argument from both sides, Judge Flowers ruled in favor of the prosecutor.

In Austin, Roy Minton had a long and illustrious reputation. “One of the best,” says a lawyer he’d sparred with over the years. “A gentleman and a great attorney.”

Stephanie McFarland and Bill Bishop knew enough about their elder opposing counsel to understand that when Minton called Edward Hueske, a gray-haired gun expert from Denton, Texas, to the stand, that the attorney would put on a display of ballistic expertise. Two days earlier, Minton had grilled the prosecutor’s gun expert until the man finally agreed with him that a bullet could be in the chamber of the Smith and Wesson .380 after the magazine was pulled out, and that could lead to accidentally firing the gun. With his own expert, the defense attorney wouldn’t have to push as hard to get the same result.

In front of the jury, Hueske and Minton displayed the weapon, pulling out the gun’s narrow black magazine, and explaining that the gun could be thought empty, although a bullet remained lodged in the barrel.

“Where is the safety on this gun?” Minton asked.

“There’s no safety,” Hueske said.

The gun, a type that police officers often carried a decade earlier, he explained, “was suitable for rapid fire in a tactical situation.” Hueske labeled the .380 a cheap and poorly designed gun. Minton instructed him to demonstrate how the gun was loaded and emptied. Although the magazine was removed, the gun could still be dangerous.