For a while this Reece guy was a suspect in Laura Smither’s death, I’m not sure if they ever did sort out who did kill her. It’s bad when it could have been any one of several psychos known to be in the area at the time.

I’m glad her family can at least stop wondering if she’s still out there somewhere. The not knowing is over, at least.

Houses on that side of town are probably not going to cost less than a million, so it’s probably cheaper to pay private school tuition.

Probably is, Leander is a pretty affluent suburb as far as I know.

Westlake’s the one I always hear talked up, but then again I’m not a parent or an AISD graduate so I wouldn’t really know.

Jennifer Cave was clearly killed by her scumbag cokehead boyfriend, which is terrible and sad but not all that uncommon. This was a seemingly random act of violence from an unknown perpetrator who, up until his apprehension, theoretically could strike again.

He was caught because a woman a few blocks from the university called in a report of someone setting a trash can on fire. APD picked him up and, having no reason to believe at the time that he’d done anything, took him to a shelter. AFD arrived as well, put out the fire and took custody of the bike he had. When APD…

I really wouldn’t know, honestly. All I do know is the “best” school in the area is in a different district altogether.

Jennifer Cave was killed off-campus, therefore the UT police did not handle the investigation. So yes, this was the first homicide UT police were involved in since Whitman. The university department is independent of APD.

Santa Marie Antoinette is white. She just is.

This would have been early 2000s. Riverside was a place to actively avoid back then, if you could help it.

Pretty much. Waller Creek runs all the way up from the river through downtown and the middle of campus, up to Highland Mall. The trail would have been her most direct route back to the dorms. She could have taken the sidewalk on the other side of the Alumni Center where it’s less wooded and better lit, rather than…

Sadly none of this surprises me. Back when I was still a student the daughter of one of my dad’s friends was nearly killed in student housing on Riverside when some party crashers started fighting with her friends. She stepped in the middle to try to push people apart and got a knife in the chest for her trouble.

That means nothing, honestly.

Yeah, from what I heard her body was found in the creek pretty much right behind the alumni center. I thought it was a pretty trail in the daytime too, and I never had any reason to be around there after dark so it never even occurred to me to see it as dangerous.

There’s always been a lot of petty crime in the campus area, because students are known to have easily movable goods like bikes, phones, laptops, etc. but something this violent was still unheard of on campus. There have always been sketchy areas of town after dark, like around Montopolis or Riverside to the southeast…

Right. The police only released a portion of the security footage they had to try to get an ID from the public, but the reports here have said they had a good hour or so of him on tape just hanging around in the area while other people came and went.

Thanks so much for continuing to cover this story. I’m a third-generation UT grad myself and work three blocks from campus and I know so many people who are still reeling over this because nothing like it has happened in our collective memories. This was actually the first homicide investigation the UT police opened…

Wouldn’t it be great if we could redirect all that religious bigotry the GOP likes to stir up at $cientology instead? They’re basically domestic terrorists. If part of your “belief system” is the systematic harassment of people who get out or harassment of anyone else who says the tiniest thing bad about you, as well…

I guess if all you ever want to do is music it’s not, but if you’re interested in acting too an Oscar on your resumé usually puts you in a better negotiating seat. And Jennifer’s also got a Grammy (as do Kelly and Carrie), which means she’s already halfway to an EGOT.