Man found guilty of murdering woman in Bollinger County

A jury convicted Kyle Byington of first-degree murder and abandonment of a corpse, then sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole Thursday, Dec. 14, at the Cape Girardeau County Courthouse in Jackson.

The jury added four years plus a fine of up to $10,000 to be assessed by the judge for the corpse abandonment charge.

Byington killed Jennifer Porzeinski in late January 2021 in Bollinger County, not far from Patton, Missouri. He then buried her body in a 19-inch hole it took him five hours to dig in the middle of a thicket at the back of property his mother owned. Porzeinski’s body was found by investigators in April 2021 after securing a search warrant.

Byington had testified a day earlier that he had killed Porzeinski and buried her, but he denied he intended to kill her. That set up a decision Thursday by Judge Scott Lipke whether the jury would be instructed to consider voluntary or involuntary manslaughter charges. Lipke denied those options, leaving the jury to consider whether to convict on first-degree or second-degree murder charges.

The point of contention, which ultimately would determine whether Byington would have a chance to be released from prison some day, came down to how the jury would interpret the evidence as it applies to the word “deliberation” in Missouri’s definition of first-

degree murder.

Byington and his attorneys tried to convince the jury that a first-degree charge was inappropriate, because he did not plan the murder, but rather snapped and strangled Porzeinski during an argument.

But the prosecution reiterated a point it made throughout the course of the three-day trial: that Byington pulled on a pink dog leash around Porzeinski’s neck for approximately 90 seconds, all the time knowing he was intending to kill her. The prosecution argued not only did he have time to stop, but he also had an opportunity to try to revive her and did not. Multiple witnesses in the first two days of the trial testified that it takes approximately 30 seconds to render a person unconscious when choking them. It takes about 90 seconds to eliminate the chance of self-

resuscitation. This testimony was building toward closing arguments to convince the jury he “caused the death of another person after deliberation upon the matter”.

Missouri Attorney General special prosecutor Syd Tippie held his phone up with a timer for 90 seconds for the jury to show the amount of time it took for Byington to kill Porzeinski. For 90 seconds, the only sound that could be heard in the courtroom was the quiet humming of the court’s HVAC system.

During the sentencing stage, Porzeinski’s daughter, Ana Snyder, gave personal testimony. Her hand shook as she raised it to give her oath to tell the truth. Snyder testified that her mother was her best friend and knew all her secrets. They’d had some problems in the past, but had become close again around the time Porzeinski went missing. Snyder, 21, said she was one of eight siblings and spoke on behalf of her brothers and sisters.

Snyder, the oldest of the siblings, said through tears that she gave birth to a stillborn baby after her mother’s death. She said instead of having her mother to comfort her, she had to rely on a good friend and nurses at the hospital. She said she has nightmares, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and has had other mental health problems resulting from her mother’s murder.

“No amount of time he serves in prison will bring back my mother,” she said.

Porzeinski’s father, Jim Porzeinski, testified that Christmastime is hard for him and the family, because Jennifer loved the holiday season. He said he skipped some of the court testimony because he didn’t want the images of his daughter’s decaying body to be the images he remembers about her. He said he remembers bonding with her when she was younger, when she would accompany him on plane rides when his work took him out of town.

After the trial was over, Jim Porzeinski said in an interview he was satisfied with the outcome.

“Everything came out OK,” he said. “I wish it wouldn’t have taken this long. But we finally got some sort of justice out of all of this.”

While satisfied with justice, Jim Porzeinski said he doesn’t think he knows the whole truth about what happened to his daughter and why.

Byington said Jennifer Porzeinski attacked him in bed late one night at the end of January. He said he pushed her off the bed and onto the floor, where her lips were split, injuries found during the autopsy. He said he left the house to walk to his mother’s house to get a pack of cigarettes, and when he came back, Porzeinski met him outside and began yelling at him. He said she went to take a shower, and when she got out the altercation continued.

He claimed she was insulting his mother and daughter. He claimed Porzeinski picked up the dog leash, wrapped it around her neck and told him to kill her. And he said he “snapped” and strangled her, asking her, “Is this what you want?”

Byington said she did not struggle, but said he did not think he killed her. He said he went into another room for a period of time, saw her lying on the floor and checked her pulse. Instead of calling emergency personnel, he stored her body in a tool shed, where her blood pooled onto the floor, samples of which were taken as evidence.

First-degree murder in Missouri can result in a death penalty sentence, but that was not an option given to jurors in this case. The death penalty requires meeting threshold factors. The state did not seek the death penalty.