Do you know who murdered Teal Pittington in 1984? In the summer of 1984, a sense of unease settled over Santa Fe, New Mexico, a period later dubbed the "decade of fear" due to a string of disappearances and murders of young women. Amid this climate of anxiety, the life of 18-year-old Caucasian/White female Teal Pittington was tragically cut short, leaving behind a cold case that continues to baffle investigators decades later.
Teal, a cosmetology student and waitress, was last seen alive on the evening of August 15, 1984, in the parking lot of a variety store on Cerrillos Road. She had made plans to meet a friend later that night but never arrived, a detail that was reportedly out of character for her.
For nine long months, Teal's whereabouts remained a painful mystery. Then, in the spring of the following year, her severely decomposed remains were discovered in a desolate culvert about a mile south of the New Mexico Girls Ranch in Lamy. The grim discovery confirmed the worst fears of her loved ones and the community. An autopsy revealed a brutal end to her young life: she had been raped and strangled to death with her own bra. Due to the condition of her remains, she had to be identified through her dental records.
The investigation into Teal's murder quickly focused on two primary persons of interest, though no arrests have ever been made in connection with her death. One of the suspects was her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Marion Owen Jent, with whom she was living at the time of her disappearance. Suspicion fell on Jent after he was seen driving Teal's car in the days following her vanishing. He later abandoned the vehicle at a shopping center. When questioned by police, Jent claimed that Teal had gone to New Orleans and had lent him her car, a story that investigators were unable to verify. Despite these suspicious circumstances, Jent passed a polygraph test and was not charged. He has since passed away, taking any potential secrets to his grave.
The other main suspect in Teal's murder was David Morton, a man with a chilling history of violence against women. At the time of Teal's disappearance, Morton was living in Santa Fe and had already committed the murder of at least one other woman in the area. In 2004, Morton confessed to the murders of two other Santa Fe women, one of whom he had also strangled. While being questioned about Teal's case, Morton claimed a friend of his, who had also dated Teal, might have information. However, this lead did not result in any breakthroughs. The investigation into Teal Pittington's death remains open, a cold case that serves as a haunting reminder of a dark chapter in Santa Fe's history. A critical piece of evidence, the bra used in the strangulation, has since gone missing from the case files, further complicating any efforts to apply modern DNA testing to finally bring her killer to justice.
