Editor’s note: This story has been updated to show that Anita Byington was last seen with Kevin Harris in her car. A previous version of this story misstated where the two were last seen together.
ELGIN — In August 1991, Anita Byington was 21. She was about to begin her senior year studying elementary education at what was then Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos.
The night of Aug. 10, 1991, she went out with a group to bars on Sixth Street. She was last seen with an acquaintance in her gold Honda Accord.
Early the next morning, her body was found in a grassy area at the Spring Creek Apartments in East Austin. Police theorized she had been beaten and then killed with a concrete rain diverter. She was the second woman in a little more than a month to be killed after leaving an Austin bar.
Two days later, police brought in a young Black man named Allen Andre Causey for questioning. He wasn’t initially a suspect, but, by the end of a several-hours-long interview, Causey had signed a three-page statement confessing to Anita’s murder.