Jennifer Cave, 21, was murdered on August 17, 2005, in Austin, Texas. She had recently started a job as a legal assistant and was celebrating with Colton Aaron Pitonyak on Sixth Street in Downtown Austin before the celebration moved to Pitonyak’s apartment at the Orange Tree Condominiums in West Campus. Pitonyak shot Cave; the bullet passed through her arm into her chest and killed her almost instantly. After her death her body was partially dismembered and she suffered multiple stab wounds.

Pitonyak, a University of Texas finance major, fled to Mexico with fellow student and former girlfriend Laura Ashley Hall. They were apprehended by Mexican authorities four days later and returned to Austin. Pitonyak was tried for murder, said the shooting was accidental and that he had been in an alcohol-and-drug-induced stupor, but a jury convicted him and sentenced him to 55 years. Hall was convicted of tampering with evidence and helping Pitonyak flee and received 10 years.

The crime prompted the passage of the Jennifer Cave Act, which makes desecration of a human corpse a second-degree felony in Texas. Does anyone have verifiable information about what led to this killing or remembers details from the case that could shed light on the motive?