On January 23, 2023, Kenneth Saal appeared before the Honorable Pedro Jiminez, J.S.C., to 55 years in NJ state prison for murder and conspiring to commit murder. Saal pled guilty to first-degree Murder, second-degree Burglary, fourth-degree Stalking, first-degree Conspiracy to Commit Murder, and second-degree Conspiracy to Commit Witness Tampering. The two latter charges were in connection to a plot unearthed by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office while the three former charges were in connection to the murder. The defendant pled guilty following a 55-year State Prison plea agreement proposed by Deputy First Assistant Prosecutor Tzvi Dolinger and Assistant Prosecutor Lynne Seborowksi.
On June 10, 2019, Saal murdered 26-year-old Carolyn Byington of Plainsboro after unexpectedly discovering him in her home. The defendant explained that in April of 2019, he waited until the victim was left her apartment for work before copying her house key and then continuing to enter her home on several different occasions leading up to Byington’s death. Saal proceeded to recall recording the victim without her knowledge after placing hidden surveillance cameras in her apartment.
On December 5, 2022, the defendant’s original trial date, Saal planned to hire someone to commit a murder that mirrored Byington’s to make it appear that the murderer had not been caught and that he had been falsely identified. Saal had also conspired an alternative plan to have one of the trial’s witnesses killed. His plan involved staging their murder to appear as a suicide, with a note claiming responsibility for Byington’s murder.
