48 Hours - Post Mortem | The Strange Shooting of Alex Pennig

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

CBS News Correspondent Natalie Morales and 48 Hours Producer Betsy Shuller go behind their report on the murder of Alex Pennig. When Alex was discovered dead in her bathroom her friend, Matthew Ecker, called 9-1-1 and claimed she shot herself, but detectives uncovered a different story. The team discusses the bodycam footage of first responders interviewing Ecker just minutes after Alex's death, the conflicting evidence surrounding who fired the gun, and the unusual friendship between Alex and Ecker. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And you can enjoy Audible anytime while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In the upcoming episode of Killer Psyche, we will be diving deep into the unfolding case of accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuerman. Follow Killer Psyche wherever you get your podcast. You can listen to Killer Psyche and more exhibits see true crime shows early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Welcome back to another episode of Postmortem. I'm your host Anne Marie Green and today we're discussing the death of Alex Penig.

She was last seen alive by her former coworker, Matthew Ecker, with whom she also had a one-time affair. Now he called 911 after he said she shot herself with his gun. But investigators would unravel a different story. So with me now to discuss this mysterious case, CBS News correspondent Natalie Morales and 48 hours producer Betsy Schuller. Thank you so much for joining us, guys.

Of course. Thanks for having us. Good to be with you again, Anne-Marie. If you have not listened to the 48 hours episode that we're about to talk about yet, you can find the full audio version just below this episode in your podcast feed. So go take a listen, and then come on back for this conversation. All right, so the title of this episode is The Strange Shooting of Alex Penning.

It's a great title because it was a strange one. And this was one hour where I found myself completely convinced of a different scenario every five seconds. One of the things that I was watching is Matthew Ecker's reaction. He was certainly incredibly distraught. He was breaking down, but I couldn't tell if I thought it was too much or not. You interviewed the first responders. What was their impression of Ecker when they spoke to him? You know, I think that's what was so fascinating is that we had so much of that body cam footage.

First responders were with him for about an hour, and that's what everybody was looking at and analyzing. And it's not just the amount of footage, but it's also that it's minutes right after Alex was shot. I think people enter a situation and look at things and say, okay, does it seem genuine? Does it not seem genuine? And I think first responders analyze all the evidence

in front of them as he was very distraught and grieving and trying to process the trauma in that moment. It was interesting when we questioned them about what they thought. They thought he was not producing real tears and they questioned how he was responding to what they perceive as real grief versus, you know, not grieving. And I think, you know, throughout the course of our reporting, we look back at that footage so much, right, Betsy? And we just analyzed and overanalyzed and we thought of all the different scenarios

and it was it's really hard to decipher how somebody processes grief is what we've come down to. Yeah, yeah for sure. I mean I think our impression of the footage is one thing but the way the people involved with the case sort of saw the footage is a different thing. Detectives noticed Ecker talking to first responders in the hallway. He seemed really emotional, but they didn't see him crying any actual tears. And I think that stood out to them. All of this was what ended up in trial being questioned, his behavior, whether or not he produced real tears.

And also for Alex's family, right, they're looking at this footage and they see a guy who's disingenuous, who's overacting, who looked rehearsed to them. Matthew's family sees their son, their brother breaking down. His mom is a nurse and had worked as a hospice nurse for a while. So she said she had some experience dealing with people going through trauma. And she said that in her experience that people don't always produce tears. And also that sometimes when you're crying for that long, you might not produce tears the whole time. If you're dehydrated, you may not produce tears. In that scenario, Matthew had been drinking for hours with Alex.

So there was a lot of things at play there. For our viewers who just watched this episode, they might remember that we also show someone else responding to grief. We show the moment where Shane Anderson learns that his girlfriend, Alex, had just died, and he doesn't produce tears either. You know, so I found that really interesting. Yeah, and that did stand out to me. You know, early on as the hours unfolding, I started to wonder, well, I don't know, what is the right way to respond to this terrible shocking news? So yeah, like I said, I went back and forth about a million times during the hour.

So speaking of conflicting evidence, first responders found Alex dead in her bathroom with the gun laying on her shoulder, her left hand was sort of resting on top. The detectives later learned that she was right-handed. Did detectives think that this was a slam dunk in terms of evidence that she could not have been the one to shoot herself because why would you use your non-dominant hand?

I mean, I definitely think they thought it was a piece of the puzzle. I'm not sure it was a slam dunk at that point. For us, this one was really hard. I think we go back and forth on what this means. You know, initially you think, oh, well, if she's right handed, how could she use her left hand? One of the editors on this, interestingly enough, is in the military, and she had an interesting perspective. If you picture a pistol, when you go to rack the chamber, you pull back this sliding mechanism to load it. And apparently that's really heavy and not so easy to move if

you don't know what you're doing. So it could make sense that you would make that motion with your dominant hand, which means the gun would be in your non-dominant hand. TG And according to Alex's family, Alex did not have any experience with shooting guns. Mm-hmm. And remember, according to Ecker, this all happened so quickly. He says she ran into the bathroom, locked the door, and then he heard a gunshot. And then when he broke down the door, what he saw was her on the floor.

That's according to Ecker. So I think that's like a split second thing that you have to consider timing time to switch hands. Also, let's say she has her hand on the door and is locking the door. Wouldn't you do that with your dominant hand? I mean, it's hard to say what somebody does with the left and the right, but obviously if you're in the moment and in a frenzy, I think it could be seen differently. Right. Matthew Ecker also didn't give detectives the whole story about the gun at first. It was more than two hours actually into his interview that he admitted to moving it, first putting it in his suitcase, and then he placed it back on Alex's body. That's what he says. Did detectives think,

you know, this was suspicious, that this perhaps showed a bit of guilt? Yeah, that's exactly what they thought. One of the detectives was like, what innocent person would do this? I mean, I think that was a really big moment for them. If you didn't fire the gun, why would you pick it up and move it? So that one didn't look good for him. Yeah. And the explanation that Eckers' attorney gives was, you know, in that moment realized, oh my gosh, that's my gun. And so maybe there was a panic or something and he picked up the gun and went to put it away, but then realized, well, I've got to explain what happened here. I better put it back. So, you know, that's how Bruce Rivers, who is Eckers's attorney, explained that at trial. So you can look at

it, this from two different sides again and be very conflicted as we all are. But as a viewer of true crime, you know, when someone starts changing their story, your spidey sense goes up. That's your tell. Yeah, especially after two hours, because you know, he's been questioned about the positioning of the gun, probably a couple of times, it comes off like he's thinking, I better have a better answer than the one I had an hour ago. Also, the gunshot residue was actually on Alex's left hand. But Ecker didn't have any gunshot residue at all on him.

And keep in mind, he had no blood on him. His entire shirt, outfit, everything was clean. He doesn't have anything to indicate that he was near her body at the time. No, which is really interesting. So Natalie laid out the one side of it. The detectives would say that, you know, that would be because the door would have shielded him, that they believe there was a struggle at the bathroom door. And she was trying to push the door closed and he was trying to reach around. So he would have been shielded from some of that.

You know, I think that's what's so interesting about this case is you try to add up all the pieces and the position of her body in the bathroom was a big one. That was a big tell. Yeah, I think that was one of the first things for the detectives that sort of made them a little suspicious about the scene. Just seeing the position of her legs, they were like, how could she have gotten in this position? When first responders arrived there, her legs were straddled around the door. And that, according to the scenarios that were presented by detectives, they were like, well, that shows that there had to have been some sort of struggle, you know, that she was sort of

caught in the middle of the door when this happened. Whereas Ecker's attorney explains that as he was trying to help her, he went in, broke the door, there was enough room in the bathroom that her legs could have shifted and moved with the door being pushed back and opened. So again, one more thing that makes us very conflicted. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harbored a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that was still a virgin.

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Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Welcome back. Matthew Ecker claims that he went to Alex's apartment that day because she told him that she was scared of her boyfriend, Shane. Shane was never considered a suspect though. You interviewed him in that hour. What was your impression of him? Well, I have to tell you, first of all, he was very reluctant to do the interview with us and he was hesitant.

He was very unsure about what to expect. I think many of his reasons for deciding to do it was he wanted to honor Alex, who he loved very much. But also, he was, I think, still processing a lot of what he had heard. I mean, a lot of what he was first hearing happened to come out of the trial. And the first time he was hearing, for example, that Matthew Ecker and Alex had had a previous romance affair was at that trial. So I think talking to us gave him some sort of sense of closure, but also wanting to be able to process his emotions.

To me, it appears as if he truly loved Alex, but it also seemed like it wasn't the best relationship or I should say it wasn't the best relationship, or I should say it wasn't perfect. He was accused of doing some stuff to Alex that she was scared enough to call this other guy, Ecker. So, he was brought into this through that, he wasn't a suspect, but I think he also wanted the chance to respond to some of that and

tell his side of the story. He says, I mean, Alex was the love of his life and they were planning a future together. In fact, it was right before the holidays when Alex died and he was planning to go with her to meet her parents for the first time. So he was looking forward to that. Yeah. It did seem like he really cared about her. Even all these months later, we could feel it when we were with him. You do certainly get that in the hour.

And I just want to stress to everyone, even though it's clear in the hour, he was never considered a suspect at all. After that altercation at the bar, he was told to get out and go home. And that's what he did. Yeah. There were only two people in that apartment It was Ecker and it was Alex. Yeah speaking of Ecker and Alex pretty unusual

Relationship that day he made a three hour drive from his home to help Alex get out of what he says is You know a bad situation with her current boyfriend when I heard it in the hour, I go, wait a minute, there's no one else that's closer to you? I mean, in three hours, an argument flares up and then it's over. It just seemed a little off. Was the affair truly over? According to his family, the affair had ended and they were just friends. Seemed like a bit of an interesting friendship because he was giving her money. As we see in the trial and court records showed, he was financially helping support Alex paying her rent and pay some of her expenses, about $28,000 that he ended up giving Alex or loaning Alex. He was also, according to the text messages that we see

between the two of them, prescribing her with drugs. Ecker is a licensed nurse practitioner, so with that he is able to prescribe medications. Alex of course was not his patient. And while detectives and even Ecker's own family, who are also nurses, all agree it is unethical, they all point out it is not illegal. Ecker really did seem to care about Alex. And so the big question, of course, is what could the motive have been here? Yes. I mean, certainly when you talk about motive, I mean, what could have been the motive for

murdering Alex? I think that's probably the most mysterious part of this case and something that is still not very clear. I mean, one thing that detectives thought it could be was that perhaps maybe Alex was threatening to go public and to tell his wife even about their affair. But then there's that question of why would she do that to the guy who was providing for her at that time? What about the phone? What about the text messages? It was clear in the lobby of the

apartment building that she was looking at her phone. Yeah. You know, we saw that surveillance footage and that's the last time you see Alex alive. It looked like she was texting with somebody, but we don't really know if there were text messages or not because police were never able to get into her phone. Detectives did tell us that multiple forensic examiners did try to get into Alex's phone, but they were unsuccessful. The defense also tried as well. It would have been really revealing to be able to see some of her text messages. You know, we have the messages between her and Eker from Eker's phone. We go through some of those in the hour and I think they're very telling. But we don't know who else she may

have been messaging and what she may have been saying to them. Some people wonder if she was messaging with Shane. This fight at Camp Bar had just happened, but Shane had lost his phone, so they weren't able to get the messages from his side either. So yeah, there's a lot that we don't know that maybe could have come out if they would have been able to get in the phone. When I talked to Shane, I asked him, like, did you ever, I mean, if you sign onto a computer, you can see your messages or, you know, if you, you know, can you check Facebook messages? And he said there was nothing. Yeah, he told us he was not messaging with Alex at all.

Ultimately, Ecker is found guilty. He's sentenced to 30 years. It's a hefty sentence. Is he appealing his conviction? Yes, he is appealing his conviction. His family was not happy with how the trial was presented and how it went on. What was it that they were unhappy about? So there were a couple of things, obviously the outcome. Their son, their brother is in prison for 30 years, but they would have liked to hear Ecker on the stand. They would have liked him to tell his story. His defense attorney, Bruce Rivers, said that through all the footage in the hallway, in

the interrogation room, that he did get to tell his story. So Rivers told us that he didn't feel like it was necessary for Ecker to testify. You know, I think the family also felt that his, you know, his character wasn't brought into it the way he helps people, his past, some more sides of his personality like that. I think they really hoped that that would have been a part of it. I sort of wondered about that because I thought the way they describe him, there are some things at odds with that. You know, he runs to the aid of this young woman, but it's still sort of questionable.

I think that's why ultimately his attorney decided, you know, is the risk worth taking, putting the defendant on the stand. I think that's always the analysis you do. Here's a guy who has a wife with four children and knowingly he cheated on her, granted an affair does not make a murderer. As we've talked about so many times in our 48-hour shows, we know that's not the case. Right. I was kind of curious about how Alex's family felt

about how she had been depicted. Her parents knew she had some struggles. She had some things in her past and they really didn't shy away from it. They certainly didn't shy away from it in our interview. And I respected that. I mean, it's who she was. And they're wonderful people, the Pennings, and still dealing with so much grief and losing Alex.

Alex was a beautiful person and they wanted to make sure that her memory was honored. Eckers family, totally convinced that he's innocent. Alex's family and friends totally convinced that he's innocent, Alex's family and friends totally convinced that he's guilty. You have to present this hour. How challenging was it to strike a balance? I think it's always a challenge, but also always a part of our job.

Part of what we do as journalists is to present both sides. That doesn't change the fact that a jury found him guilty, but I think that is a part of our responsibility that we take really seriously. Yeah. And we walk away from this one seeing two families that are destroyed. One lost their daughter, who they adored and had been through so much with her. And the other family is grieving the son sentenced to 30 years in prison. I think you see both sides here of two families that are grieving a loss. And I think that's what our reporting shows is it's never easy to tell these stories, but we do our jobs and present all the evidence.

And ultimately, you know, it's what the jury came back with and we'll have to see what happens next. Yeah. Well, thank you guys for another really fascinating episode. I'm sure viewers are still debating about how they feel about the outcome of this case. Natalie, Betsy, just want to thank you. Of course. Thank you.

Thank you. Natalie, you have a brand want to thank you. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. Natalie, you have a brand new podcast that's dropping. I'm hosting a new six-episode podcast. It's called 48 Hours NCIS. It takes listeners inside the case of Erin Corwin. This is a tough one. She was a 19-year-old Marine wife found dead in an abandoned mine shaft in Joshua Tree National Park.

We go behind the scenes with the real life NCIS agents as they worked through the case and their tireless efforts to try to locate the body, then finally, ultimately reaching the conclusion of that case and the verdict. So be sure to pull up your podcast app where you're listening, type in 48 hours NCIS and tap follow to check out our new episode. New episodes come out by the way every Tuesday, so you don't want to miss it. So you know what else comes out on Tuesdays postmortem. And if you like this series postmortem, please rate and review 48 hours

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