{"id":245,"date":"2012-01-05T18:00:06","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T00:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=245"},"modified":"2012-01-05T18:00:06","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T00:00:06","slug":"kathryn-casey-a-descent-into-hell-the-true-story-of-an-altar-boy-a-cheerleader-and-a-twisted-texas-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/kathryn-casey-a-descent-into-hell-the-true-story-of-an-altar-boy-a-cheerleader-and-a-twisted-texas-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathryn Casey: A Descent into Hell: the True Story of an Altar Boy, a Cheerleader, and a Twisted Texas Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>There’s something about decapitation that has a primal effect, abhorrent yet inescapably fascinating, possessing an atavistic\u00a0kick. Although removing a fellow human’s head and displaying it as an object is an act, like cannibalism and incest, that most\u00a0of us would prefer not to think about, anthropology testifies that there are certainly contemporary tribes of “head-hunters” or\u00a0even “head-shrinkers,” who still indulge in such behavior, and it’s disingenuous to believe that our ancestors didn’t take\u00a0part in similar ritual activity.<\/p>\n

After all, it wasn’t that long ago that severed heads were displayed on the gates of London as a symbol of royal power,\u00a0and various radical groups still prefer beheading as a method of dispatching their enemies, presumably for its awful, awe\u00a0inspiring qualities. Even the guillotine, which was developed in a rigidly scientific way as the most humane and efficient
\nmethod of execution today stands as a universal symbol for bloody terror.<\/p>\n

Which (perhaps belatedly) brings me to the subject of this essay, the excellent Kathryn Casey true crime book A\u00a0Descent into Hell: the True Story of an Altar Boy, a Cheerleader, and a Twisted Texas Murder<\/em>. Despite Casey’s formidable\u00a0authorial skills, the book would be pretty run of the mill had former altar boy Colton Pitonyak been content to merely shoot\u00a0and kill former cheerleader Jennifer Cave. It’s the “twisted” part that’s the grabber, producing the inevitable frisson that\u00a0makes the book stand out. What contemporary novel can match this passage in which the victim’s step-father makes a discovery\u00a0almost beyond comprehension:<\/p>\n

When Jim looked down at the bathroom floor, he saw a large trash bag. Without looking inside, he knew what\u00a0it held. Someone had cut off Jennifer’s head.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or how about this excerpt, bone chilling in its very ordinariness:<\/p>\n

Jennifer’s head was removed and set on the autopsy table beside her body. She still wore her earrings\u00a0and her makeup, and, except for stab wounds across the side of her face, she looked remarkably like her Texas driver’s\u00a0licence photo.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The inevitable question becomes \u2014 what kind of person would do such a thing? This is where Casey excels, because,\u00a0as I have said before, True Crime, like any branch of literature, is dependent on character<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At first glance Colton’s descent into murder and dismemberment seems inexplicable. His former teachers and jock buddies\u00a0describe him as an absolutely exemplary person, brilliant and athletic, the ideal student and model young gentleman of\u00a0privilege. Casey, however, exposes him as a figure familiar to any High School outsider, the two faced phoney who is able to\u00a0show authority the mask they want to see while morphing into a sadistic bully the moment their attention is diverted. Eddie\u00a0Haskell, anyone?<\/p>\n

Of course his parents and faculty fans don’t want to admit they were hoodwinked and blame Colton’s downfall on that\u00a0contemporary boogie man, drugs, and it’s to Casey’s further credit that she resists this facile explanation. Crystal Meth is\u00a0indeed nasty, nasty stuff, the allure of which has always eluded me, but no drug can bring out something that’s not already\u00a0there. Take the victim Jennifer Cave for instance, the product of a disordered childhood and a broken home, whose attraction\u00a0to drugs is cogently explained:<\/p>\n

More than a decade earlier, Jennifer had been a little girl in love with The Wizard of Oz<\/em>. Perhaps\u00a0the drugs transported her to an Oz of sorts, much as the tornado had Dorothy. With the drugs, her nagging self-doubts were\u00a0calmed, the world was more beautiful, there was nothing to fear, no one to disappoint, no future to fret over, only the\u00a0immediate moment to enjoy.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Still, even as she became a drug user, Jennifer retained her essentially positive nature, even to the extent of wanting\u00a0to redeem a needy, manipulative lost soul like Colton, for whom drugs had merely enhanced his vicious, predatory instincts.\u00a0Even in the depths of addiction, however, he still retained the ability to soft soap authority, essentially skating on drunk\u00a0driving and possession charges.<\/p>\n

There is even a third memorable character in A Descent into Hell<\/em>, one Laura Hall, Colton’s satanic soul sister,\u00a0obliging consort to the alpha male, assistant to the dismemberment and traveling companion on the abortive flight to Mexico.\u00a0Even early in life Laura seemed arrogantly foreign to normal human feelings. Interesting, both Laura and Colton’s parents in\u00a0testifying for leniency in the punishment phase of the trials insist that their children were “gifted athletes,” as if that\u00a0fact was in itself evidence of good character.<\/p>\n

But the question remains WHY<\/em>. In the grip of a methed-up pipe dream informed by Scarface<\/em> and The\u00a0Godfather<\/em> we can speculate that Colton and Laura intended to disguise the identity of the victim. But in today’s CSI\u00a0world, can they really have believed this was possible, especially when that victim was known to be a missing person\u00a0actively sought by her family?<\/p>\n

And then there’s the grim details of the deed, suggesting a warped levity undreamt of by even the deadpan miscreants\u00a0of Goodfellas<\/em>:<\/p>\n

After the bullet to Jennifer’s aorta killed her, someone cut off her head. Then a gun was fired upward,\u00a0into her head through the severed neck.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Along with the dozens of cuts to the body, it now appeared even more certain that someone had defiled Jennifer’s dead\u00a0body for no other reason than amusement.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to see the scene in that apartment, framed in blood splatters and drug\u00a0haze, as a return to some primal, savage condition of humanity, partaking of a taboo mystery not unlike that known by an\u00a0Aztec priest as he drew out a still beating heart. But as abhorrent as that priest’s act was, at least it was informed by a\u00a0dense, mystical cosmology, whereas Colton and Laura only had DVD’s and gangsta rap to guide them in their ultimately\u00a0pathetic efforts. In the end Laura’s own explanation is as good as any:<\/p>\n

“Think of it,” Hall said dreamily. “How many grandmothers can tell their grandchildren that they cut\u00a0up a body.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unless written by Truman Capote or Norman Mailer, True Crime is considered a debased, pulp genre, one that can safely\u00a0be snickered at by every Middlebrow. But I challenge anyone to produce a book that shocks the reader’s complacency, shines a\u00a0harsher light on modern society or raises the question of what it means to be human in a more profound way than A\u00a0Descent into Hell<\/em>. (Jamie)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s something about decapitation that has a primal effect, abhorrent yet inescapably fascinating, possessing an atavistic\u00a0kick. Although removing a fellow human’s head and displaying it as an object is an act, like cannibalism and incest, that most\u00a0of us would prefer not to think about, anthropology testifies that there are certainly contemporary tribes of “head-hunters” or\u00a0even … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-true-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":247,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}