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A Descent Into Hell: The True Story of an Altar Boy, a Cheerleader, and a Twisted Texas Murder | 
 enlarge | Author: Kathryn Casey
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy New: $4.09
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Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 4807
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 6.5 x 4.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0061230871
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.15230976431
EAN: 9780061230875
ASIN: 0061230871
Publication Date: July 1, 2008
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Product Description
Bright, attractive, and both from good families, University of Texas college student Colton Pitonyak and vibrant redhead Jennifer Cave had the world at their beckoning. Cave, an ex-cheerleader, had just landed an exciting new job, while a big-money scholarship to UT's prestigious business school lured Pitonyak to Austin. Yet the former altar boy had a dark, unpredictable streak, one that ensnared him in the perilous underworld of drugs and guns. When Jennifer failed to show up for work on August 18, 2005, her mother became frightened. Sharon Cave's search led to Colton's West Campus apartment, where Jennifer's family discovered a scene worthy of the grisliest horror movie. Meanwhile, Colton Pitonyak was nowhere to be found. A Descent Into Hell is the gripping true story of one of the most brutal slayings in UT history—and the wild "Bonnie and Clyde-like" flight from justice of a cold-blooded young killer and his would-be girlfriend, who claimed that her unquestioning allegiance to Pitonyak was "just the way I roll."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
Okay, the title is a little cheesy November 30, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
but this is one of the best true-crime books I have ever read. Almost any standard we could use to typify the genre is at work here, redoubled: the mashalling of hundreds of little facts of college-student life and leisure at the mammoth main branch of the University of Texas (Austin); the precision with which the characters (and their background) are drawn; the feel of each town the characters live in; and the psychological pressures and doubts that even the minor characters face in this complex, but enthralling real-life drama.
Best of all, IMHO the conclusions to be drawn from DESCENT INTO HELL are honestly won, based on factual detail and without attitudinizing on author Kathryn Casey's part. Never did I get the feeling that the shy, late-blooming college student at the center of this book had been "broken" from surviving a divorced household, for example; nor did I feel that the promising business student turned drug-dealer was doomed by virtue of his upper-middle-class upbriging. This is a truly fascinating saga that Casey has wrestled into readable form, and without trading on easy stereotypes. An intelligent book that will make its readers feel more intelligent as well as thoroughly engrossed.
One aspect of this book that has largely escaped attention is the manner in which modern state "megaversities" are administered, if that's the word. San Marcos State Teachers College held only a few hundred students when Lyndon Johnson got his degree in the 1930s; by the turn of this century, at the time the victim in the book studied there briefly, it had changed its name to "Texas State University" and held over 27,000 students. With over fifty thousand students, U. Texas' crown jewel and the setting for most of this book's plot, the Austin campus, offers a bewildering variety of choices for the undergraduate/consumer. Nearby, main avenues are loaded with pricey boutiques and restaurants; on dingy side streets all manner of illicit drugs are available, from pot and $3-per-pill Ecstasy to prescription painkillers, even heroin.
Nowhere did I get the notion that some interested and non-related adult was on hand to suspect the incipient pathology of the book's killer. Not a tenured faculty member, dean's assistant or college counselor figures into the story, probably because so many "best and brightest" State U. campuses have evolved such efficient mechanisms to keep the professoriate away from the undergrads. I'm not saying that if a little bit of in loco parentis had been there, the murderer would have been stopped ahead of time; but I was struck by the number of people whose acquaintances consisted of several "gangs" (including at least one literal gang) of non-overlapping young adults. I can't help thinking it's a pity.
 Dull, poorly written true crime potboiler November 16, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The things wrong with this book:
1. The title. I mean, A Descent into Hell? Really? It sounds like a title that the Lifetime TV movie people rejected as too trite. At least Baby Monitor: The Sound of Fear and Ski Lift to Death (hey, look them up if you don't believe me) had some character.
2. The subtitle. "An Altar Boy" and "a Cheerleader"? Need I say more?
3. The pacing. This is a story about a murder, people. Let's at least bring the pacing up to the level of an episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. If the narrative had been any slower, I would have had to don my gorilla suit and read the book while marching back and forth across the room to Sousa marches just to keep myself mildly entertained.
4. The editing. I actually started marking the diction and grammatical errors just because it was a lot more interesting than trying to keep my mind on the book. Examples: "disinterested" instead of "uninterested"; getting one's car "out of hock" to mean getting it out of an impound lot ("hock" means you sold it to a pawnbroker, duh). And I've rarely encountered a tin ear for dialog like the one on display here. A representative sample:
"Finally, she grabbed the arm of a young man in a uniform, shouting, 'Is my sister all right?' [At least it doesn't say "alright" -- I'll give the author that.]
'Your sister's dead,' he said, pulling away.
When the man walked by again, Vanessa, sobbing, yelled, 'You don't know how this feels.'
'I do,' he said, more kindly. 'My sister jumped off a mountain in Greece last summer. All I can tell you is it will get better.'"
Uh. HUH. And:
"Vanessa's entire body ached. She'd never felt so alone."
Whoa, ace narrative technique there, Hoss! Maybe soon you can graduate to having one of the subjects of the book drop a family portrait so that the glass in the frame shatters.
5. The blurb by Ann Rule saying, "Kathryn Casey is one of the best true crime writers today." This statement is wrong on so many levels that I won't even bother to deconstruct it, but I will say that either the state of true crime writing is worse than I thought or there's some serious logrolling going on here.
Oh, I know, I know. This is what I get for reading true crime. You're probably right. Now excuse my while I go flip though In Cold Blood to get the taste of this thing out of my mouth.
Engrossing, well written true crime book October 25, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Casey's "A Descent Into Hell" is a truly fascinating read. She focuses on the main characters and their motivations. By the end of the book, you understand just how Colton, a brilliant young man who had earned a scholarship to college, who grew up in a wealthy and loving family, could descend, step by step, into such a hell of drug and alcohol abuse that he ended up committing murder.
Colton had such promise when he entered college. He was a National Merit finalist and the teachers at his Catholic prep school expected to hear of many future successes. Instead he sank like a stone beneath an ocean of meth, cocaine, and alcohol.
Meth was as common as backpacks in college. Jennifer, a pretty young woman who was also taking college classes, remarked that "she felt as if she were being chased by a devil...The need for drugs stalked her and wouldn't let her go" (p 70).
As for Colton, his Ralph Lauren clothes were tossed aside for the baggy clothes preferred by gangs and he began to listen to rap music and carry a threatening, large knife. He sold drugs to other college students, but even so, he spent more on drugs for himself, consuming "up to $300 a day in meth" (p 107).
An outstanding read, one of the best of the true crime genre.
 non fiction true crime October 21, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This true account of a shocking crime is well written and is different than many true crime books. It gives insight into the dangers of teenagers being away from home for the first time and raises many questions about the glamourization of crime by Hollywood.
Great True Crime Writing October 8, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
My true crime reading habit started years ago with classics such as In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, and Helter Selter, by Vincent Bugliosi. Much as I would like to quit the habit, books such as A Descent into Hell keep me turning the pages. I offest the subject matter with spiritual memoir reading and angel oracle decks.
Be forewarned, this case is graphic and horrible but Casey has a way of dealing with the bad stuff without sensationalizing.This story could be about anyone's family. The families of both victim and perpetrator (young adults in their 20's) are so mainstream, we recognize them immediately. Parents have talented kids who try out,but get lost in, the party/drugs/alcohol lifestyle. If not motivated to get back on track, awful things can happen. This is an important study in the psychology of being too caring (almost Stockholm syndrome)and of not following one's intuition. My heart goes out to the Cave family. When you lose a daughter, we lose a daughter.
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