Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / The Strange Shooting of Alex Pennig

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The Strange Shooting of Alex Pennig · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: You know, usually when we talk about a medical diagnosis,
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there's this expectation of absolute precision.
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Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, like it's infallible.
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Speaker 1: Exactly like you break your arm, the x ray shows
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that jagged white line of the fracture, and the doctor
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just points to the screen and says, well, there it is.
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It's incredibly straightforward.
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Speaker 2: It's a binary system of information. I mean, a bone
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is either broken or it's not. The tumor is there
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or it isn't. And we find a lot of comfort
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in that level of visibility.
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Speaker 1: We really do. We want the world to be easily
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categorized into measurable truths.
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Speaker 2: Right, But then you step into the world of forensic
0:34
science and criminal investigations and suddenly that X ray machine
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is just broken.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's no longer binary at all. You are basically
0:42
looking at shadows and echoes. Right. You're trying to reconstruct
0:46
a violent event when the only person who can definitively
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tell you where it hurts or what happened is no
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longer capable of speaking.
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Speaker 2: Which is you know, the most profound challenge in any
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homicide or suspicious death investigation attempting to translate the silent
1:01
language of a physical environment like.
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Speaker 1: Blood spatter or the debris field of a broken object.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. You have to translate all of that into a
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chronological narrative of human behavior.
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Speaker 1: And that actually brings us directly to the visual paradox
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at the absolute center of today's deep dive. I want
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to ask you, the listener, to put yourself right in
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the middle of this room.
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Speaker 2: It's a really chilling scene to walk into.
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Speaker 1: It really is. So picture this. A thirty two year
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old woman is found dead from a single gunshot wound.
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She's lying face up on the floor of her bathroom,
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and the man who called nine one one, the only
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other person in the apartment, tells the police a very
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frantic but very specific story, the.
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Speaker 2: Story that on its face gives them a clear timeline.
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Speaker 1: Right. He says she locked herself in the bathroom. He
1:47
says she shot herself, and then he says he heard
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the bang through his body against the door, broke it
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entirely off its frame to get inside and just desperately
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try to save her life.
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Speaker 2: I mean, it's a narrative of rescue. It is tragic
1:59
and trauma, but structurally it's a simple A to B
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two C timeline for the investigators.
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Speaker 1: But here is the paradox, the thing that completely shatters
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that timeline. When the police walk into that apartment, they
2:11
look at the body, and they look at the broken door,
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and the young woman's legs are perfectly straddling the doorway, which.
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Speaker 3: Is physically impossible based on his story, exactly one foot
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is on the inside of the bathroom threshold, one foot
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is on the outside, and underneath the back of her head,
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resting directly on the linoleum floor, beneath her.
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Speaker 1: Skull is a broken, jagged piece of metal from the
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bathroom door's internal lock mechanism.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, that little piece of metal changes everything.
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Speaker 1: It really does. So today we are tearing into the
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tragic and deeply perplexing death of a young nurse named
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Alex Pennig. We're going to meticulously analyze the forensic limitations
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of a single fateful night in December twenty twenty two,
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and we'll.
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Speaker 2: Be dissecting the wildly conflicting narratives presented by the two
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very different men in her life.
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Speaker 1: Right and looking at those micro scopic puzzle pieces that
3:01
took a scene initially reported as a heartbreaking suicide and
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turn it into a second degree murder conviction.
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Speaker 2: And just to clarify for everyone, we are drawing this
3:10
analysis entirely from a highly detailed journalistic investigation, direct trial coverage,
3:16
interrogation footage, and the original nine to eleven.
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Speaker 1: Transcripts, all the primary sources exactly.
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Speaker 2: And what makes this deep dive so compelling is that
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it serves as a masterclass in how crime scenes speak
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when victims cannot. It forces us to examine how personal biases,
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you know, intensely complicated romantic entanglements and a staggering lack
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of professional boundaries can completely cloud the truth.
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Speaker 1: So imagine you're a detective walking into a room where
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every single piece of evidence contradicts the only eyewitness. Where
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do you even begin?
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Speaker 2: You have to start at the very first official record, right.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's untack this. Let's drop right into the moment
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the timeline begins. It's December sixteenth, twenty twenty two. It's
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the middle of the night, right around two fifty am,
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about week before Smiths in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
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Speaker 2: Cold dark, middle of the night.
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Speaker 1: Very so a call comes into dispatch from a second
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floor apartment. The caller is a man named Matthew Ecker.
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Now Matthew is not just an average guy off the street.
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He is a highly educated, well respected nurse practitioner.
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Speaker 2: We have to stop right here because this is a
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foundational detail for everything that follows.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, why is his job so important to the initial response?
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Speaker 2: Well, when a nine to one one dispatcher or a
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responding police officer here's that the caller is an advanced
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medical professional. It instantly confers this massive halo of credibility.
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Speaker 1: Oh, I see, they assume he knows what he's doing
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exactly subconsciously.
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Speaker 2: The authorities expect a reliable, clinical recounting of facts. They
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expect someone who knows how to assess trauma, check vitals,
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and preserve a scene without panicking.
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Speaker 1: But Matthew sounds completely unglued on this tape, Like dispatch
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is urgently asking him if she is alive, if she
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is breathing, trying to give him instructions, and Matthew just
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keeps saying no, no. He is entirely frantic.
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Speaker 2: Which to be is a normal human reaction to trauma.
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But it breaks that expectation of clinical calm.
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Speaker 1: Right, So, Saint Paul police officers Ching Bang and his
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partner Deina Sir are out on their regular patrol they
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get the call over the radio, female shot in the head.
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They hit the lights, hit the sirens, and pretty much
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every available unit in the vicinity swarms the location.
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Speaker 2: That's a massive immediate response.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, within minutes, body cameras are rolling as they enter
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the building. Matthew Ecker meets them at the front and
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lets them in.
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Speaker 2: And the contrast between the sheer auditory chaos of a
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nine to one one call and the eerie, metallic stillness
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of a fresh crime scene is always so.
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Speaker 1: Jarring I can't even imagine. So Officer Bang is the
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first one to cross the threshold of Alex's apartment. He
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walks in and the bathroom is the very first store
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on the right, and there is thirty two year old
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Alex Pennig face up, a single gunshot wound to her
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left temple and a massive amount of blood pooling around
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her head.
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Speaker 2: It's just a horrific scene for those officers to walk into.
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Speaker 1: And Matthew is just sitting on the floor bines. Officer
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Sir actually has to go over to him and physically
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coaches breathing, telling him, you know, you got to keep breathing,
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Just keep breathing, because he is visibly in a state
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of shock.
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Speaker 2: But once they get him to somewhat regulate his breathing,
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Matthew starts to lay out his version of the night's events.
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Speaker 1: Right he tells the officers that he actually lives a
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significant distance away, almost three hours, but earlier that day
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Alex had called him frantic. Matthew claims that Alex had
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gotten into a violent physical domestic dispute with her current boyfriend,
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a man named Shane Anderson.
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Speaker 2: Notice how quickly Matthew establishes the psychological framing for the
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officers here.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he hasn't waste any time.
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Speaker 2: Not at all. Within minutes of their arrival, he sets
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up a triangle. He positions Shane Anderson as the primary aggressor,
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the physical threat to Alex's safety, and simultaneously he positions
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himself as the indispensable protector.
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Speaker 1: Wait, let me make sure I'm grasping this. He's claiming
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he drove three hours across the state just because she
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had an argument with her boyfriend.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly what he tells him. He says he was
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so overwhelmingly concerned for her immediate physical safety that he
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dropped whatever he was doing, grabbed his permitted handgun, which
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he claims he routinely carries anyway, and drove to Saint
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Paul to personally intervene.
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Speaker 1: I mean, that seems like a really extreme reaction. If
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someone is in immediate physical danger from a domestic partner,
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the protocol is to call the local police to intervene. Right,
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not to embark on a three hour road trip armed
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with a handgun.
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Speaker 2: It's highly irregular.
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Speaker 1: That doesn't sound like a protector to me. That sounds
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like someone looking to insert himself into a volatile situation.
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Speaker 2: It's definitely a massive red flag. But Matthew continues his narrative.
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He says he arrived at her apartment around two pm.
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Shane the boyfriend, wasn't there, so Matthew says he and
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Alex spent the afternoon together, eventually going out to a
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local place called Camp Bar.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so they go get drinks.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, And while they are at the bar, they happen
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to run into Shane. There's a brief physical altercation between
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the two men. Matthew and Alex leave, come back to
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her apartment, and Matthew thinks the crisis is averted.
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Speaker 1: But then it all goes wrong.
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Speaker 2: Right, according to Matthew, completely out of nowhere, Alex grabs
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his gun, backs into the bathroom, locks the heavy door,
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and shoots herself.
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Speaker 1: And this is where he has to explain the state
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of the bathroom door to the police, because it's completely destroyed.
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Matthew tells the responding officers that he heard the muffled
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crack the gunshot, panicked through his entire body weight against
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the door to break it open, and then used his
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advanced nursing skills to try and apply pressure to the
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catastrophic headwound.
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Speaker 2: Which again is a perfectly logical sequence of events for
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a panic stricken rescue attempt.
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Speaker 1: He even goes out of his way to tell the
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officers entirely unprompted, I tried to do what I could,
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and then I washed my hands, and then I called
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the police.
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Speaker 2: He's proactively building an alibi for his appearance.
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Speaker 1: Exactly he is trying to explain why he, a medical
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professional who supposedly just had his hands deep in a catastrophic,
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actively bleeding head wound, doesn't have a single drop of
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blood on his skin or his clothes.
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Speaker 2: But this is precisely where the illusion of the obvious
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completely disintegrates. Detectives. Abby DiSanto and Jennifer O'Donnell arrive on
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the scene. And these are seasoned, veteran investigators who read
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the physical language of rooms for a living.
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Speaker 1: They don't miss anything.
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Speaker 2: No, and the moment they step into that apartment, the
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physical evidence begins screaming at them that Matthew Ecker's story
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is fundamentally impossible.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's break down the physical geometry of this, starting
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with the door, because I am really trying to visualize this.
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The door to the bathroom is a jar, and as
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we mentioned in the beginning, Alex's feet are on either
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side of the doorway. How does a door plow actually
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work in a situation like this.
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Speaker 2: It comes down to basic biomechanics and kinetic energy. So
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let's look at the structure of a standard interior apartment door.
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When a door is locked from the inside, the dead
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bolt or latch is secured into the strike plate on
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the doorframe right right.
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Speaker 1: It's anchored in there, yes, So.
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Speaker 2: If you want to break that door down from the outside,
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you have to apply enough blunt force, usually a kick
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or heavy shoulder charge, near the locking mechanism, to shatter
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the wooden frame surrounding the stripe plate.
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Speaker 1: Right you're literally splintering the wood to force the lock
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through the frame exactly.
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Speaker 2: Now, consider the trajectory of that door. Once the frame
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gives way. If Matthew threw his body against the door,
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the moment the wood splinters, all of that pent up
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kinetic energy is released inward. The door swings violently into
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the bathroom.
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Speaker 1: Okay, I'm with you.
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Speaker 2: Now. If Alex had locked herself inside, stood near the door,
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and shot herself, she would have collapsed onto the floor.
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Speaker 1: Gravity takes over instantly.
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Speaker 2: She just drops precisely, she drops his dead weight. If
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she is on the floor and Matthew then forces the
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door open with a massive shoulder charge, the bottom edge
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of that rapidly swinging door is going to act exactly
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like a snowplow hitting a snowdrift.
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Speaker 1: Oh wow, I see where this is going.
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Speaker 2: It is going to encounter her unconscious body. Her legs,
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if they were in the path of the swing, would
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be violently swept backward, pinned underneath the door, or just
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shoved awkwardly against the wall.
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Speaker 1: But they weren't.
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Speaker 2: No, they were perfectly straddling the threshold, her left leg
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on one side of the door's resting position, her right
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leg on the other. For her body to be in
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that specific configuration, the door had to be opened before
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she fell.
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Speaker 1: So the physical environment vehemently rejects the timeline Matthew provided.
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Speaker 2: Vehemently.
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Speaker 1: It's like walking into a kitchen where someone swears they
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just baked a cake from scratch, but the oven is
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ice cold. There's no lingering smell of sugar, and there
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isn't a single speck of flour anywhere on the counter.
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The narrative they are frantically selling you simply does not
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exist in the physical dimension you are standing in. That's
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a great analogy, and honestly, it gets even worse for
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Matthew's story when you look at the gun.
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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, Officer Bang noticed his irregularity the very second
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he walk into the bathroom.
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Speaker 1: The handgun is resting high up on Alex's left shoulder,
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facing inward, with her left hand resting gently on top
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of the grip. Well, if you are attempting to stage
12:01
a suicide, I suppose that might seem like a logical
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placement to an amateur. The fatal wound is on the
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left temple, so you naturally put the weapon in the
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left hand right.
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Speaker 2: It reveals a simplistic, almost cinematic understanding of how suicide works.
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It assumes symmetry, but there is.
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Speaker 1: A massive, massive problem. Alex was right handed.
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Speaker 2: This is a monumental, almost incomprehensible error in staging. We
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have to consider human behavior under extreme psychological stress. When
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a person reaches for a tool to perform an action,
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whether it's a pen to write a check, a hammer
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to drive a nail, or a firearm to end their
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own life, the instinctively rely on deeply ingrained muscle memory.
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Speaker 1: It's just autonomic. You don't think about it.
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Speaker 2: You don't use your dominant hand, which is intrinsically linked
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to your dominant eye. And operating a handgun is not
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a passive action. It requires significant fine motor dexterity and
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grip strength.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, have to pull the slide back right.
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Speaker 2: You have to manipulate this safety rack the slide, acquire
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a target angle, and pull the trigger. That typically requires
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five to six pounds of continuous rear word force. The
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idea that a right handed individual in the chaotic adrenaline
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fuel throws of a severe mental health crisis would deliberately
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choose to execute a fatal close contact shot with their
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non dominant weaker hand is incredibly improbable.
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Speaker 1: It just doesn't fit the mechanics of human biology.
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Speaker 2: No, it is an immediate, glaring irregularity that tells investigators
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this scene was manipulated after the fact.
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Speaker 1: And then we have the sink. Remember how Matthew went
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out of his way to tell the officers that he
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washed the blood off his hands before they arrived. Well,
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when detectives DeSanto and O'Donnell checked that bathroom sink, the
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basin was completely bone dry.
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Speaker 2: The dry sink is a devastating silent witness. Think about
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the physics of washing your hands. You turn on the faucet,
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water cascades over your hands, splashing against the porcelain. You
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turn the handle off with wet fingers.
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Speaker 1: And the water just sits there.
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Speaker 2: Yes, water clings to the basin through capillar reaction. Residual
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droplets remain on the chrome faucet, and the drain remains
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damp for a considerable amount of time.
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Speaker 1: Especially in a climate controlled apartment in December. It doesn't
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just evaporate in ten minutes.
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Speaker 2: Exactly if he had vigorously scrubbed a massive amount of
14:15
arterial or venus blood from his hands, just moments before
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dialing nine to one one, the sink would be undeniably wet.
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The complete lack of moisture fundamentally invalidates his stated alibi
14:26
for why he was clean.
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Speaker 1: So these detectives are standing in this cramped apartment processing
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just an avalanche of contradictions. They are looking at a
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right handed woman holding a gun in her left hand,
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a body position that completely defies the physics of a
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forced entry door, and a dry sink that proves the
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sole eyewitness is lying about his movements.
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Speaker 2: It's overwhelming.
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Speaker 1: The physical evidence is entirely at odds with the story
14:49
of a tragic suicide. But to understand why this nurse
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practitioner from three hours away is standing in a blood
14:55
soaked bathroom at two am, we have to pull back, right.
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We can't just look at the blod and the broken wood.
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Speaker 2: You have to look at the psychology.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we have to look at how we got there,
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which means untangling the incredibly complicated, messy web of human
15:08
relationships surrounding Alex Pannick.
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Speaker 2: Because a crime scene never exists in a vacuum, it
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is the explosive, tragic culmination of long simmering interpersonal dynamics.
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In this case, investigators are presented with two completely divergent,
15:22
entirely incompatible realities about who Alex was and what she
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was experiencing in the days leading up to her death.
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Speaker 1: We really have to contrast the two men in her
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life because remember, Matthew's entire foundational justification for being in
15:37
that apartment was his claim that Alex was terrified of
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her current boyfriend Shane Anderson.
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Speaker 2: Right, the supposed domestic abuser. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: Matthew even pointed out punch marks on a closet door
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across from the bathroom to the police, essentially saying, look
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at this damage. This skuy Shane is violent. He did this.
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She was trapped and she needed me, So Saint Paul
15:58
police have to follow that lead. They go knocking on
16:01
Shane Anderson's door in the dead.
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Speaker 2: Of night, and this is where the human toll of
16:04
the investigation really comes into focus.
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Speaker 1: It's awful, It is absolutely heartbreaking. The officers ask Shane
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if he knows Alex. He says, yes, of course, it's
16:12
my girlfriend. They ask if she's okay, and they have
16:15
to stand there and tell him she just passed away.
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Shane tells the detectives later that he basically blacked out
16:19
from the sheer shock of it. His knees literally buckled.
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Speaker 2: You have a devastating emotional trauma, and Shane, desperate for
16:27
any kind of explanation, any shred of sense in the chaos,
16:30
willingly goes straight down to the police station to speak
16:32
with detectives De Santo and Dan Zebra.
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Speaker 1: He just wants to know what happened to the woman
16:37
he loves.
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Speaker 2: Yes, but the picture Shane paints of his relationship with
16:41
Alex is one hundred percent at odds with the terrorized
16:46
victim narrative that Matthew Ecker sold to.
16:48
Speaker 1: The police, totally different. Shane says they had been dating
16:51
for about four months. He describes her as sweet, fun,
16:55
basically everything you would want in a partner. He says
16:57
they were practically inseparable, spinning on the almost every single
17:00
day together.
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Speaker 2: Even tells a story about her cats.
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Speaker 1: Right Yeah. He tells this sweet anecdote about how he
17:06
is a diehard dog person, but Alex had these two
17:09
cats and she was slowly but surely turning him into
17:12
a cat person.
17:13
Speaker 2: He is describing a relationship that is firmly in its
17:16
honeymoon phase. It's domestic, it's comfortable, and it is entirely
17:21
forward looking exactly.
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Speaker 1: He tells the detectives that literally the day before she died,
17:25
they were having serious conversations about him breaking his current
17:28
apartment lease early so they can move in together. They
17:31
were talking about their future, wanting families, building a life.
17:34
Speaker 2: So when the detectives confront Shane with Matthew's allegations that
17:39
Alex was terrified of him, that he was a physical threat,
17:42
that they had a violent altercation earlier that day, Shane
17:46
is completely bewildered. He vehemently, genuinely denies it.
17:49
Speaker 1: I mean, he does admit they had an argument, but
17:52
he frames it as a totally normal, mundane couple's argument.
17:57
He says, she was just frustrated asking why it was
17:59
taking him so long to move his stuff in. He
18:01
swears it absolutely did not get physical.
18:04
Speaker 2: And what about the closet door.
18:05
Speaker 1: That's what's really interesting. When the detectives bring up those
18:08
punch marks on the closet door, the ones Mappy pointed
18:11
out as proof of Shane's violence, Shane doesn't lie or
18:14
try to deflect. He owns it immediately. Wow, Yeah, he says, yes,
18:18
that was me, but it happened weeks ago. I was drunk,
18:20
we got into a stupid argument, and I punched the
18:22
hall of corridor. But he is adamant that he never
18:26
laid a finger on Alex and that they just argued
18:28
like normal people navigating a new relationship.
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Speaker 2: This is a classic challenge for investigators navigating intensely emotional
18:36
domestic triangles. What's fascinating here is that you have two men,
18:40
both of whom have deep, profound emotional ties to the victim,
18:44
and both of whom possess massive, almost blinding biases.
18:48
Speaker 1: Right they both want to be the good guy in
18:50
the story exactly.
18:52
Speaker 2: The detectives have to somehow filter out the male ego,
18:55
the intense jealousy, the protective instincts, and the grief to
18:58
find the factual base.
19:00
Speaker 1: It seems almost impossible. How do detectives weigh these character
19:03
references when both men have obvious biases. Because on one hand,
19:07
Shane obviously wants to paint a rosy, idealized picture of
19:10
their future. Maybe he is downplaying the severity of their
19:13
arguments because he feels intense to River's guilt, or maybe
19:16
he genuinely viewed them as minor bumps in the road.
19:19
Speaker 2: And on the other hand, you have Matthew.
19:20
Speaker 1: Right, Matthew has a deeply vested interest in painting himself
19:24
as the indispensable savior. He wants to be the hero
19:27
of the narrative, the only man who truly understood and
19:29
protected her.
19:30
Speaker 2: To understand the origin of Matthew's savior complex, we really
19:33
have to look closely at his historical relationship with Alex.
19:37
They didn't just meet him passing at a coffee shop, right.
19:40
They met in twenty twenty when Alex was hired at
19:42
a walk in medical clinic. According to explicit statements from
19:46
Matthew's own parents, they engage in a prolonged romantic and
19:50
physical affair. And this is a critical context. Matthew Ecker
19:55
was married with four children at the time.
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Speaker 1: Which changes the dynamic completely. I mean he is risky
20:00
his marriage, his family, and his professional reputation to be with.
20:03
Speaker 2: Her exactly now. Matthew's mother stated that by the summer
20:07
of twenty twenty two, the physical romantic aspect of their
20:10
relationship had supposedly ended and they had transitioned into being
20:14
just platonic friends.
20:15
Speaker 1: Just friends.
20:15
Speaker 2: Sure, but Matthew remained deeply, almost obsessively, entangled in her
20:19
daily life. His family claims that Alice was struggling significantly
20:24
during this period. They allied she was drinking heavily, losing jobs,
20:27
and drowning in unpaid bills. So Matthew, operating completely in secret,
20:32
hiding this from his wife and from Alice's parents, was
20:35
funneling her money. Wow, he was paying her rent.
20:38
Speaker 1: It's like she was running her life on two completely
20:41
separate operating systems. To Shane, she presents the polished forward
20:46
facing interface right like they are happy, They are planning
20:50
a future. They are playing with the cats.
20:52
Speaker 2: Yep, the perfect new girlfriend.
20:53
Speaker 1: But Matthew has full access to the back end coding.
20:56
He sees the messy financial dependencies, the struggles, and the
20:59
dust inspiration that is keeping the system from crashing.
21:02
Speaker 2: That is an excellent analogy. Compartmentalization is an incredibly common
21:07
coping mechanism, particularly for individuals dealing with addiction, financial ruin,
21:12
or severe mental health struggles.
21:13
Speaker 1: You just hide the bad stuff.
21:15
Speaker 2: You deeply desire a fresh start, so you hide your
21:18
chaos from the new partner you are falling in love with.
21:21
You don't want Shane to see the eviction notices. Instead,
21:24
you lean heavily on the older, established former lover who
21:27
is already accustomed to bailing you out and expects nothing
21:30
but gratitude in return.
21:31
Speaker 1: But doing that creates this incredibly volatile, dangerous dynamic where
21:36
no single person has the full accurate picture of your reality.
21:40
Shane doesn't know she's secretly relying on her ex for survival,
21:44
and Matthew likely doesn't realize just how serious she is
21:47
getting with Shane.
21:48
Speaker 2: And in the tragic absence of the victim's own voice,
21:50
to clarify this web, the detectives are forced to rely
21:53
on external objective timestamps. They have to find the exact
21:58
moments where these two conflict narratives physically intersect in the
22:02
real world outside.
22:03
Speaker 1: The apartment, which is exactly what they find because the
22:06
conflicting stories of Shan Anderson and Matthew Ecker actually boiled
22:09
over into a physical confrontation just hours before Alex's death,
22:13
and this gives the detectives a rock solid, undeniable timeline
22:17
to work from.
22:17
Speaker 2: The location is a local establishment called camp Bar. The
22:21
detectives went there, pulled the security footage, and the video
22:24
is incredibly revealing regarding the true dynamic between these three people.
22:27
Speaker 1: Let's set the scene for this. It's the evening of
22:30
December fifteenth. She is already hanging out at camp bar,
22:33
sitting across the room. The front door opens and in
22:36
walks Alex. But she's not alone. She is walking in
22:40
side by side with Matthew Ecker.
22:42
Speaker 2: Just to imagine Shane's reaction, right.
22:44
Speaker 1: Think about this from Shane's perspective. He has testified he
22:47
had absolutely no idea who the sky was. So his girlfriend,
22:51
the woman he is actively planning to sign a lease with,
22:54
just strolled into his local bar with a strange, older,
22:57
good looking man.
22:59
Speaker 2: The security footage which captures the entire sequence, Alex walks
23:02
around the bar and takes a seat. Shane, clearly agitated,
23:06
approaches her first. They engage in a tense conversation. Then
23:10
Matthew decides.
23:11
Speaker 1: To walk over, probably to play the protector again exactly.
23:14
Speaker 2: The video clearly shows Matthew extending his hand seemingly attempting
23:17
to formally introduce himself and shake Shane's.
23:20
Speaker 1: Hand, and Shane, by his own admission to the police,
23:23
completely loses his temper. He is consumed by sudden jealousy
23:27
he is deeply confused by the compartmentalization crashing down around him,
23:32
and he reacts with physical violence. He throws a punch
23:35
and hits Matthew Ecker right there in the middle of
23:37
the bar.
23:38
Speaker 2: A terrible, terrible decision.
23:39
Speaker 1: Shane admits this openly to the detectives, though he says
23:42
it was entirely out of character for him. But in
23:44
that split second, he just saw red and through the punch.
23:47
Speaker 2: Which is a catastrophic decision, not just from a legal
23:51
standpoint regarding assault, but because that single punch inadvertently hands
23:55
Matthew Ecker a massive, undeniable kernel of truth.
23:59
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, Matthew can use it.
24:00
Speaker 2: Yes, Matthew can now take that one instance of violence
24:03
and wrap all of his much larger, darker lies around it.
24:06
Shane hiss Matthew. Bar security immediately intervenes and kicks Shane
24:10
out of the establishment. Shane goes home to cool off,
24:13
having absolutely no idea that this chaotic, angry, jealous moment
24:16
in a dive bar is the very last time you'll
24:19
ever see Alex Penning alive.
24:20
Speaker 1: It just gives you chills to think about. He walks
24:22
out into the cold, and that's it that's the end
24:24
of their future. So Shane is gone, Matthew and Alex
24:29
decide to stay at the bar. According to the timeline,
24:32
they drink and chat for about another forty five minutes.
24:35
Then they finally leave and head back to Alex's apartment building.
24:38
Speaker 2: And this is where the investigation hits a fascinating juncture.
24:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, they find a goal mine of silent visual evidence,
24:45
but they slam headfirst into a massive digital roadblock.
24:49
Speaker 2: Let's address the digital vacuum first, because its absence is
24:52
a defining feature of this entire investigation. In modern forensic work,
24:56
a smartphone is essentially a human.
24:58
Speaker 1: Black box holds everything.
25:01
Speaker 2: It contains the unfiltered, unvarnished truth of our daily lives,
25:04
our geographic locations, our financial transactions, our intimate communications, and
25:09
our immediate state of mind.
25:10
Speaker 1: But the detectives couldn't access it. Alex's phone was locked,
25:13
secured with a passcode, and no one knew it and
25:16
Shane Shane told the police a bizarre detail. He said
25:19
he had actually lost his phone the night before all
25:21
of this happened.
25:22
Speaker 4: Which is just terribly inconvenient type right, right, So they
25:26
couldn't even search his device to corroborate his timeline or
25:29
see if he and Alex had been furiously texting each
25:31
other after he got kicked out of the bar.
25:34
Speaker 2: This creates an agonizing investigative void. The detectives know intuitively
25:39
that there had to be digital communication happening. Matthew's family
25:43
later theorized that as Alex and Matthew were driving back
25:46
to her apartment, Alex was likely glued to her screen
25:49
furiously texting Shane, arguing with him about the humiliating scene
25:53
he just caused at.
25:54
Speaker 1: The bar, which would make sense.
25:56
Speaker 2: It would, but without access to either phone, it remains pure,
26:00
legally inadmissible speculation.
26:02
Speaker 1: But what absolutely isn't speculation is the security camera mounted
26:05
in the lobby of Alex's apartment building. The detectives pull
26:08
the footage from roughly two point zero zero AM, and
26:12
here's where it gets really interesting. This video is astonishing.
26:15
It's like watching a silent movie where you were forced
26:17
to guess the dialogue, but the actors are giving you
26:19
incredibly obvious, exaggerated physical cues about their emotional state.
26:24
Speaker 2: Body language is often an involuntary confession. It reveals what
26:28
the mouth refuses to say, so the detectives sit down
26:31
and watch the tape. Matthew and Alex walk into the
26:34
lobby together. They walk out of the frame toward the
26:37
elevator bay, ostensibly heading up to her second floor apartment,
26:41
but then they come back right A short while later,
26:43
they come back down in the elevator and walk out
26:45
the front door together. Matthew later claims to detect is
26:49
that this is just a quick trip out to his
26:51
car to grab his headphones.
26:52
Speaker 1: It's what happens when they walk back inside the lobby
26:55
that changes the entire complexion of the night. Alex walks
26:58
through the front door first, and she is stomping. I mean,
27:01
her family and friends watch this video during the investigation
27:04
and they instantly recognized it. They said, oh, yeah, that
27:07
is the Alex stamp.
27:08
Speaker 2: She is furious.
27:09
Speaker 1: She is visibly radiatingly furious. She is staring intently down
27:14
on her phone. She violently rips open the interior security
27:17
door to the lobby, and she deliberately does not hold
27:19
it open for Matthew. She just lets the heavy door
27:21
swing backward right into his face.
27:23
Speaker 2: Letting a door slam in someone's face when you know
27:26
they are directly behind you is a universal unambiguous gesture
27:30
of dismissal and deep anger.
27:33
Speaker 1: We have all done that silent angry walk with a
27:36
partner right where you are absolutely seething with rage, but
27:40
you are in a semi public space like a lobby
27:43
or walking down a sidewalk, so you aren't screaming at
27:46
the top of your.
27:47
Speaker 2: Lungs, but your whole body.
27:48
Speaker 1: Is screaming exactly. Your entire physical posture is just screaming,
27:52
do not speak to me. You let the door hit them,
27:54
You walk three aggressive paces ahead, you refuse to make
27:58
eye contact.
27:58
Speaker 2: And Matthew's reaction in the video is equally telling. He
28:02
falls behind her, catches the door, she lets slam, and
28:05
he just sort of aggressively shrugs his shoulders in this exasperated,
28:09
like what is your problem kind.
28:10
Speaker 1: Of way, typical argument body language.
28:12
Speaker 2: The detectives watch this footage and they know without a
28:15
shadow of a doubt that these two people are engaged
28:18
in a significant, highly tense argument.
28:20
Speaker 1: But here's the kicker. When the detectives are interviewing Matthew
28:24
in the interrogation room, they casually ask him, Hey, how
28:27
are things between you two? When you got back to
28:29
the apartment and Matthew looks them in the eye and
28:31
just lies. He says, we were laughing on the way home.
28:34
Everything was fine, we had a great time. We were
28:36
arguing or anything.
28:37
Speaker 2: It is a critical, arrogant miscalculation by the suspect. He
28:42
doesn't realize the lobby is wired for video. He tries
28:46
to sell the detectives a sanitized narrative of a peaceful,
28:49
protective evening that tragically and inexplicably ends in a sudden suicide.
28:55
Speaker 1: But the tape doesn't lie.
28:56
Speaker 2: But the lobby video proves objectively that the environment just
29:00
moments before her death was hostile, tense, and angry, and
29:03
that silent, furious stump through the lobby is the absolute
29:06
last time Alex Penny is seen alive on this.
29:08
Speaker 1: Earth, because twenty minutes later, just twenty microscopic minutes after
29:13
she let that door slam in his face, Matthew is
29:16
dialing nine to one one in a panic, and Alex
29:19
is dead on the bathroom floor. And when detectives begin
29:22
to confront Matthew with the glaring inconsistencies of those twenty minutes,
29:26
his carefully constructed story of the heroic protector begins to
29:29
completely fracture.
29:30
Speaker 2: Which brings us to the interrogation. An interrogation room is
29:34
designed to be a psychological pressure cooker.
29:36
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely.
29:37
Speaker 2: Detectives DeSanto and Zebra have Matthew boxed in a small
29:41
room for over two hours. They are utilizing a methodical approach,
29:45
gently but firmly backing him into a corner using his
29:49
own verifiable lies.
29:50
Speaker 1: They bring up the dry sink, don't they they do?
29:52
Speaker 2: They ask him, point blank, you specifically stated you wash
29:55
your hands. We check the sink. The sink is completely dry.
29:58
There is no moisture in the trap, no drops on
30:00
the faucet. How is that physically possible?
30:03
Speaker 1: And you can read the transcript. Matthew starts stumbling hard.
30:05
He just keeps repeating, Oh, I washed my hands in
30:07
the sink, I did, I know I did, And the
30:09
detective calmly replies, there is no water, There is no
30:13
blood on the handle.
30:15
Speaker 2: They let him realize he's caught.
30:16
Speaker 1: Yeah. They explicitly tell him that the physical evidence in
30:19
the apartment is not adding up to his story. They
30:22
leave him alone in the room to stew in that anxiety,
30:25
and when they finally come back in, Matthew realizes the
30:28
walls are closing in, and he decides he needs to
30:31
drastically change his story.
30:33
Speaker 2: This is a massive, often fatal turning point for a suspect.
30:37
When a suspect alters their core narrative during an interrogation,
30:41
it is almost always a desperate attempt to incorporate newly
30:44
revealed forensic evidence into a framework that still technically maintains
30:48
their innocence, but.
30:50
Speaker 1: He usually backfires.
30:51
Speaker 2: It almost always creates a far more convoluted, entirely unbelievable lie.
30:56
Speaker 1: Matthew confesses to something utterly bizarre here. He looks at
30:59
the detectives and says, Okay, the change that I have
31:01
is this. I did take the gun after it went off.
31:04
I picked it up off the floor and I put
31:05
it in my suitcase.
31:06
Speaker 2: Just an astounding admission.
31:08
Speaker 1: The detectives are absolutely stunned. They ask him why on
31:11
earth he would do that. He claims he was just
31:12
scared and panicking. Then he says he looked back at Alex,
31:16
changed his mind, took the gun back out of a suitcase,
31:19
walked over to her body, and placed it back on
31:22
her chest, specifically putting her left hand over the grip.
31:25
Speaker 2: This admission requires us to ask an incredibly important question
31:29
about human behavior under trauma. Why would an experienced medical
31:33
professional whose explicitly stated goal was to save this woman's
31:36
life prioritize hiding a firearm in a piece of luggage
31:40
over immediately applying continuous two handed pressure to a catastrophic
31:45
arterial bleed.
31:46
Speaker 1: It makes absolutely zero sense for a nurse to do
31:49
that right.
31:50
Speaker 2: Panic can certainly cause irrational behavior, we see it all
31:52
the time, but panic does not typically manifest as the meticulous,
31:56
multi step staging of a crime scene. Taking a weapon
31:59
away and consciously deciding to return it and position a
32:02
dead woman's hand on top of it to mimic a
32:04
self inflicted wound. That is not panic. That is cold
32:07
calculated deception.
32:09
Speaker 1: And the forensic testing makes his new story look even
32:12
worse because Matthew admits on tape that he handled the
32:15
gun after she died. He admits he gripped it, moved
32:18
it to the suitcase, and moved it back. But when
32:20
the forensic team swabs that firearm for touch DNA, while
32:24
Matthew's DNA is not on it, not a single trace cell.
32:27
Speaker 2: Which heavily implies intense deliberate cleaning. If he had simply
32:32
picked up the weapon in a moment of panic and
32:34
moved it his touch. DNA skin cells, sweat oils would
32:38
almost certainly be present, especially on the deeply textured grips
32:42
of a modern handgun.
32:43
Speaker 1: It's basically a sponge for DNA.
32:45
Speaker 2: It really is the absolute absence of his DNA on
32:48
a weapon he openly admits to handling strongly suggests he
32:52
took the time to wipe it down completely.
32:53
Speaker 1: But while he was busy wiping down the gun, he
32:55
forgot to wipe down the most damning piece of physical
32:57
evidence in the entire apartment. We have to go back
33:00
to the bathroom and talk about the lock. This is
33:02
where the case officially transitions from a highly suspicious step
33:06
to a second degree murder charge.
33:08
Speaker 2: The forensic micro clue. It is the absolute crux of
33:11
the prosecution's entire physical case.
33:13
Speaker 1: So Detective O'Donnell gets a call from the crime scene
33:16
unit while she's at the station. After the medical examiner
33:20
arrived and physically moved Alex's body from the bathroom floor
33:23
to transport her to the morgue, they found something hidden
33:27
underneath her head. It was a small round metal piece.
33:30
Speaker 2: The smoking gun, essentially.
33:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, the crime scene texts analyze it and they realize
33:35
it is an internal component of the bathroom doors locking mechanism.
33:39
Speaker 2: We need to meticulously break down the spatial physics and
33:43
the chronological timeline dictated by this single piece of metal.
33:47
If the lock mechanism broke due to blunt force and
33:50
a jagged piece of it flew across the room and
33:52
landed on the linoleum floor, and then Alex's head came
33:55
to rest directly on top of that specific piece of metal,
33:59
what does that objectively mean.
34:00
Speaker 1: It means the door had to break before she fell
34:03
to the floor. There is no other physical possibility.
34:05
Speaker 2: Precisely, it establishes an absolute, unbreakable sequence of events. The
34:10
defense attorneys cannot argue with the laws of gravity and
34:13
spatial occupation, two objects cannot occupy the same spaces. If
34:18
her skull is lying on top of the debris generated
34:21
by the broken door, the door was fractured and the
34:23
debris scattered before she collapsed.
34:25
Speaker 1: Which means Matthew's foundational story that she shot herself, collapsed
34:30
to the floor and then he heroically broke the door
34:32
down to get to her is a physical impossibility.
34:35
Speaker 2: It's completely dismantled by that one piece of metal.
34:37
Speaker 1: So the prosecution looks at this lock piece, the straddling legs,
34:40
the left handed grip, the wiped gun, and their theory
34:42
becomes crystal clear. They argue that Alex, absolutely furious from
34:46
whatever argument started in the lobby, runs into the bathroom
34:49
and throws the dead bowl to get away.
34:51
Speaker 2: From Matthea, and Matthew reacts with rage.
34:53
Speaker 1: Right Matthew and rage that she is locking him out,
34:57
throws is considerable weight against the door, completly smashing the
35:01
frame and the lock. The metal piece flies under where
35:04
she is standing. He forces his way in, confronts her,
35:07
and he shoots her. She instantly collapses, her head landing
35:10
squarely on the broken lock piece, and her legs naturally
35:13
straddling the now open doorway.
35:16
Speaker 2: It is a devastatingly logical reconstruction of the scene that
35:19
incorporates every single piece of physical evidence. But the defense
35:24
attorney in this case, a man named Bruce Rivers, is
35:26
a veteran. He is not going to just roll over
35:29
and accept the state's narrative.
35:30
Speaker 1: No defense attorneys rarely do.
35:32
Speaker 2: He mounts a vigorous, highly technical counter argument based not
35:36
on what was found, but on the absence of another
35:38
critical type of forensic evidence, which is high velocity blood spatter.
35:42
Speaker 1: Right Rivers stands in front of the jury and points
35:45
out a basic fact of ballistic trauma. A gunshot wound
35:48
to the human head at close range produces a massive
35:51
explosive amount of high velocity blood spatter and tissue transfer.
35:55
Speaker 2: It's a very missy event, very and.
35:57
Speaker 1: Yet when police arrived, there was not a single microscopic
36:01
speck of blood on Matthew Ecker's shirt, his pants, his hands,
36:04
or his face. The defense loudly argues, if this man
36:08
shot her from point blank range in a tiny, enclosed bathroom,
36:12
he would be absolutely covered in biological material. How do
36:16
you explain a clean shooter?
36:18
Speaker 2: The defense also leans heavily on the presence of gunshot residue,
36:22
commonly known as GSR. When a firearm is discharged, a
36:26
superheated cloud of vaporized primer, unburned powder, and heavy metals
36:30
expands rapidly outward from the muzzle and the ejection part.
36:33
Speaker 1: It basically coats everything nearby.
36:35
Speaker 2: It inevitably settles on the hands and clothing of the shooter.
36:38
Forensics thoroughly tested both individuals. They found positive GSR on
36:42
Alex's left hand. They found absolutely zero GSR on Matthew Ecker.
36:46
Speaker 1: Hold On, I'm struggling to picture how the prosecution counters this.
36:49
If he's holding the gun and pulling the trigger, his
36:51
hand is entirely exposed to that gas cloud. How does
36:54
a prosecution explain a man shooting a woman in a
36:57
tiny bathroom walking away completely clean of both blood, meat,
37:00
and gun shot residue. I mean, you can't shield your
37:03
hand if your hand is holding the weapon.
37:04
Speaker 2: It's a complex dynamic. But the prosecution theorizes that the
37:08
heavy wooden door itself acted as a physical ballistic shield.
37:11
The door remembered the timeline he is breaking the door inward.
37:17
The prosecution's theory is that as the door splintered and
37:20
cracked open, he aggressively reached around the leading edge of
37:23
the door with his arm holding the firearm and pulled
37:26
the trigger. The solid wood of the door, positioned directly
37:29
between his torso and Alex's head, absorbed the massive blowback
37:33
of blood and tissue spatter.
37:34
Speaker 1: Okay, that explains his shirt, but what about his hand
37:37
and the GSR.
37:38
Speaker 2: The expanding gas cloud of GSR is chaotic, but it
37:41
can be deflected by physical barriers. If you fired from
37:45
just around the edge of the door, the door frame
37:47
itself could have deflected the primary plume.
37:50
Speaker 1: That makes sense, I suppose.
37:51
Speaker 2: Furthermore, the prosecution aggressively points back to the dry sink
37:54
and the wiped gun. If he had the presence of
37:56
mind to meticulously wipe the firearm entirely clean of his touch,
37:59
dem he certainly had the time and presence of mind
38:02
to thoroughly wash his hands and face, removing any microscopic
38:05
GSR or blood mist.
38:07
Speaker 1: And then completely dry the sink using a towel that
38:11
he either hid or packed away before the police finally arrived.
38:15
Speaker 2: Exactly the dry sink they found hours later doesn't mean
38:18
he didn't wash up immediately after the fatal shot. It
38:21
just means he cleaned up the evidence of washing up.
38:23
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. But what does the defense say
38:26
about the lock piece under her head? Because that seems
38:29
impossible to explain away.
38:31
Speaker 2: The defense offers a theory of chaotic coincidence. They claimed
38:35
that when Matthew broke the door down after she tragically
38:38
shot herself, the door swung violently inward, shattering the lock
38:43
and that specific metal piece just happened to skip rapidly
38:47
across the linoleum floor.
38:48
Speaker 1: Just skipped right to where her head would be.
38:50
Speaker 2: Then, when Matthew rushed in and supposedly lifted her heavy
38:54
bleeding head to try and render medical aid, he unknowingly
38:58
pushed the metal piece underneath her skull before setting her
39:01
back down.
39:01
Speaker 1: Wow, I mean it requires a lot of highly specific
39:04
coincidences to believe that it does.
39:07
Speaker 2: It is a convoluted alternative theory. Well, you have to
39:10
remember the legal standard in a court of law. The
39:13
defense doesn't have to prove their theory is the absolute truth.
39:17
They only have to prove that it is a plausible alternative.
39:20
Speaker 1: And plausible alternatives are the very bedrock of reasonable doubt, precisely,
39:24
And the defense doesn't just rely on arguing about the
39:26
physics of metal and blood. They pivot, and they lean
39:29
heavily into a deeply uncomfortable, highly emotional strategy. They put
39:34
Alex's own mental health on trial, because for Matthew to
39:38
be innocent, the defense urgently needs to prove that Alex
39:41
was entirely capable and medically primed to take her own
39:44
life that night.
39:45
Speaker 2: And this is where the tragedy deepens because, unfortunately, Alex
39:48
did have a documented historical struggle with severe depressions.
39:51
Speaker 1: She had attempted before.
39:53
Speaker 2: Yes back in twenty sixteen, she had attempted suicide by
39:57
swallowing a handful of pills, though thankfully she meets regretted
40:00
the decision and forced herself to throw them up. That
40:03
terrifying dark period in her life is actually what inspired
40:07
her entire career path. She became a nurse specifically because
40:11
she wanted to help pull other people out of the darkness,
40:14
just like the medical staff who had helped her recover.
40:16
Speaker 1: Her mother testified that she completely turned her life around
40:19
after that incident. She found purpose. But the toxicology report
40:23
from the medical examiner from the night of her death
40:25
paints a very different, very grim picture of her immediate
40:29
state of mind.
40:30
Speaker 2: It's really concerning to look at.
40:31
Speaker 1: At the exact time of her death, Alex had a
40:34
blood alcohol concentration that was nearly three times the legal
40:37
driving limit, and on top of that massive amount of
40:40
central nervous system depression from the alcohol, she had four
40:44
different highly potent prescription medications circulating in her bloodstream.
40:49
Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture. The toxicology
40:51
report is quite frankly a pharmacologist's nightmare. She tested positive
40:56
for prozac, a standard SSRI antidepressant, Valium, a powerful benzodiazepine depressant,
41:03
amphetamines specifically the stimulant adderall, and trazodone, a heavy sedative
41:08
often prescribed off label for severe insomnia.
41:11
Speaker 1: That's a massive cocktail of drugs.
41:13
Speaker 2: It is the pharmacokinetics of mixing a massive toxic quantity
41:17
of alcohol with a chaotic cocktail of heavy eppers en
41:19
downers creates severe, entirely unpredictable neurochemical instability in the human brain.
41:25
It fundamentally and aggressively alters a person's baseline impulse control,
41:29
their emotional regulation, and their cognitive processing abilities.
41:33
Speaker 1: And here is the absolute bombshell of the entire investigation,
41:36
the thing that literally makes your jaw drop. The detectives
41:39
are processing the apartment and they find all these prescription
41:41
pill bottles in her bathroom cabinet. They look closely at
41:44
the pharmacy labels, and every single one of those heavy medications,
41:47
the Prozac, the valuum, the adderall, the trazodone was officially
41:51
prescribed to Alex by Matthew Ecker.
41:53
Speaker 2: This is a staggering, breathtaking violation of professional boundaries. Matthew
41:58
Ecker is a state licens nurse practitioner. He possesses the
42:02
legal authority a DEA number to write prescriptions for controlled substances,
42:07
but not for his friends. Exactly. That immense authority is
42:10
strictly legally intended for the care of officially documented patients
42:14
within a highly regulated clinical setting. Alex was not his
42:18
clinical patient. She was his former romantic partner and his
42:21
current financial dependent.
42:23
Speaker 1: It is just wildly dangerously unethical. While the investigators note
42:27
that it wasn't strictly criminally illegal for him to write
42:29
the script like there was no specific law against prescribing
42:32
to a friend in that jurisdiction at that time, providing
42:35
a potent, highly addictive cocktail of uppers and downers to
42:38
a former lover who has a known, well documented history
42:41
of substance abuse and a prior pill based suicide attempt.
42:45
It is a catastrophic failure of his fundamental oath to
42:48
do no harm.
42:49
Speaker 2: It creates a profoundly toxic inescapable power dynamic think about
42:54
the reality of her life. In those final weeks she
42:57
is relying on him not just for her monthly rent
42:59
money to avoid eviction, but she is relying on his
43:02
prescription pad for her daily chemical stability.
43:05
Speaker 1: He controls everything she needs to function.
43:07
Speaker 2: He literally becomes the singular gatekeeper to her coping mechanisms,
43:12
and the defense team uses this exact dynamic to their
43:15
absolute advantage. During the trial. They point to a series
43:19
of highly disturbing text messages Alex sent to Matthew just
43:22
three days before she died.
43:23
Speaker 1: The texts are incredibly hard to read. She texts him
43:26
saying she desperately needs a mental health break. She explicitly
43:29
writes I'm not very hopeful at the moment about life,
43:32
and intersperse with this obvious despair, she is relentlessly badgering
43:36
him for medication refills. She says, I need you to
43:39
send in my immediate release adderall script right now. Make
43:42
sure I have refills for my tresodone in metaprol too, please.
43:45
I have like three bottles of prozacs, so I'm good
43:46
with that.
43:47
Speaker 2: The defense attorney stands up in court and argues that
43:50
these texts are essentially a digital suicide note. They argue
43:54
that she was severely clinically depressed about her collapsing finances,
43:58
her unstable job situation, in her chaotic romantic life, and
44:03
that the toxicology report proved she had finally spiraled completely
44:06
out of control on the night in question.
44:08
Speaker 1: But Alex's parents are sitting in that courtroom and they
44:11
are just furious at this characterization. They argue, look, just
44:15
because a millennial says they need a mental health day
44:17
from work doesn't mean they are actively suicidal in planning
44:20
to shoot themselves.
44:21
Speaker 2: It's a very fair point that phrases used casually all
44:24
the time.
44:25
Speaker 1: Right, and they make a really piercing point. As a
44:28
highly trained medical professional, if Matthew genuinely medically believed she
44:33
was a danger to herself based on those texts, he
44:35
had a legal and ethical obligation to refuse to prescribe
44:39
the pills, cut her off, and mandate she see an
44:42
actual independent psychiatrist instead.
44:44
Speaker 2: He just enabled her addiction exactly.
44:47
Speaker 1: The prosecution takes that anger and shapes it into their
44:49
legal counter argument. They argue that the text messages don't
44:53
prove she wanted to die. They simply prove she was
44:55
having an incredibly bad week and was heavily physically reliant
44:59
on Matthew for a chemical crutch.
45:02
Speaker 2: They argue that Matthew exploited her vulnerability.
45:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, that he fuelled her severe neurochemical instability with a
45:08
steady stream of prescriptions, and then, in a sudden moment
45:12
of explosive rage, fueled by the confrontation at the bar,
45:15
murdered her and immediately tried to use her documented mental
45:18
health history as a built in, ready made alibi.
45:22
Speaker 2: It's an incredibly dark, cynical framing of a medical professional,
45:26
and the most frustrating part for the prosecution is that
45:28
the science couldn't give them a definitive answer. The medical
45:32
examiners who physically autopsied the body, both the state's official
45:36
medical examiner and a highly paid independent examiner hired by
45:39
the defense, ultimately threw their hands up in defeat.
45:43
Speaker 1: They couldn't say for sure.
45:44
Speaker 2: They officially ruled the legal manner of death as undetermined.
45:47
Speaker 1: Which is a crucial forensic limitation we need to understand
45:51
in cases of close contact gunshot wounds to the head.
45:55
If the physical staging is done quickly and the physical
45:58
signs of struggle are absent, the sure pathology of the
46:01
wound itself cannot differentiate between a finger pulling a trigger
46:05
and a finger being forced to pull a trigger, or
46:07
a trigger being pulled by someone standing inches away.
46:10
Speaker 2: The medical experts were deadlocked based purely on the tissue.
46:13
Speaker 1: Damage, which means the hard science can take us absolutely
46:16
no further. The physical trace evidence is split between the
46:19
locked door and the lack of blood. The medical experts
46:22
are officially deadlocked, and so the immense burden of uncovering
46:26
the truth is handed over to the most unpredictable human
46:29
element of the entire justice system.
46:31
Speaker 2: Twelve ordinary people sitting in a jury box.
46:33
Speaker 1: Exactly in February of twenty twenty four, Matthew Ecker goes
46:37
on trial for second degree murder, and the defense attorney,
46:40
Bruce Rivers, essentially looks at the jury and says, if
46:42
two highly trained, board certified medical examiners cannot figure out
46:46
if this was a homicide, how on earth can you?
46:48
Speaker 2: That's a very powerful argument to a jury.
46:51
Speaker 1: It is. He reminds them that the prosecution bears the
46:54
sole burden to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
46:57
He says, the glaring lack of blood spatter on my client,
47:01
the positive gunshot residue on the victim's hand, her suicidal
47:04
text messages, the toxic levels of depressants in her blood,
47:08
and the legally undetermined autopsy. That collection of facts is
47:12
the very definition, the very essence of reasonable doubt.
47:16
Speaker 2: And what's really crucial for us to grasp here is
47:18
that the defense doesn't have to prove that Alex definitively
47:21
absolutely killed herself. They don't have to prove it was
47:24
a suicide. They only have to prove that suicide is
47:26
a reasonable possibility. If the jury believes suicide is even
47:29
medically possible, they are legally obligated under the law to
47:33
acquit Matthew Ecker.
47:34
Speaker 1: And the prosecution has a remarkably tough hill to climb
47:37
because they have to provide the jury with a compelling
47:39
motive for why a successful nurse practitioner would throw his
47:43
life away to shoot a woman he was financially supporting,
47:46
and the prosecution admits their motive is largely.
47:48
Speaker 2: Speculative, which is always risky.
47:50
Speaker 1: It is they're working theories that the secret affair was
47:53
finally coming back to haunt Matthew. They suggest to the
47:57
jury that Alex, angry about the bar fight, was threatening
48:00
to call Matthew's wife and expose everything, the long term affair,
48:04
the secret rent money, the illegal flow of prescription drugs,
48:07
and that Matthew killed her to keep her quiet and
48:10
protect his family and his lucrative medical career.
48:13
Speaker 2: The defense completely scoffs at this. Naturally, they say, there
48:17
isn't a single scintilla of physical evidence, no angry text
48:21
message recovered from the cloud, no eye witness to prove
48:24
Alex ever uttered a single threat to tell his wife.
48:27
Speaker 1: But the prosecution counters with the cold, hard physical narrative
48:31
of the room. They continually remind the jury of the
48:34
dry sink and the wiped gun. They remind them of
48:36
the biological absurdity of a right handed woman shooting herself
48:40
with a heavy trigger pull in her left hand, the
48:42
staging errors right, and most importantly, they hammer home the
48:45
inescapable spatial physics of the metalock piece resting directly underneath
48:49
her skull.
48:50
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean? We have to ask ourselves,
48:53
how do twelve random people weigh the absence of forensic
48:56
evidence against the presence of behavioral inconsistencies.
49:00
Speaker 1: It's a heavy burden. Do you believe the lack of
49:03
high velocity blood spatter definitively proves his innocence, or do
49:07
you believe that a man who pauses to hide a
49:09
gun in a suitcase instead of rendering medical aid is
49:12
demonstrating the consciousness of guilt.
49:15
Speaker 2: The jury deliberated for nine agonizing hours, nine hours of
49:19
debating door frames, toxicology reports, and human panic, and finally
49:23
they came back into the courtroom they found Matthew Ecker
49:26
guilty of second degree murder.
49:28
Speaker 1: It is a profound, incredibly weighty statement by the jury.
49:31
They ultimately looked past the lack of biological transfer on
49:34
his clothing, and they focused entirely on the behavioral inconsistencies
49:38
in his interrogation and the undeniable spatial physics of the
49:41
crime scene.
49:42
Speaker 2: They believe that the stage gun, the shifting alibi, and
49:45
the broken lock under her head were overwhelmingly stronger evidence
49:49
than the absence of blood on a shirt.
49:50
Speaker 1: The reaction the courtroom was a stark study in contrasts.
49:54
When the guilty verdict was finally read aloud, Alix's family
49:57
let out this massive collective breath weeping, feeling like justice
50:01
was finally truly served for their.
50:03
Speaker 2: Daughter and Matthew's family.
50:05
Speaker 1: They were completely devastated. On the other side of the aisle,
50:09
his sister described the verdict to reporters as an absolute tragedy,
50:12
a literal knife to the heart of their family. And
50:15
Matthew himself, he just sat there at the defense table,
50:18
completely stoic, not a single tear. Alex's friend Sarah gave
50:23
a powerful victim impact statement, staring directly at him, desperately
50:27
trying to see any kind of emotion, any flicker of remorse,
50:29
and she said there was just nothing. It was entirely empty, which.
50:33
Speaker 2: Brings us to the ultimate inescapable tragedy of these complex cases.
50:37
The judge's gavel comes down, a definitive legal verdict is reached,
50:41
but the destructive ripples of that single chaotic night in
50:44
December continue to violently destroy lives on both sides of
50:47
the courtroom aisle.
50:48
Speaker 1: On April third, twenty twenty four, the judge officially handed
50:52
down the sentence. Matthew Ecker was remanded to the custody
50:56
of the Department of Corrections for three hundred and sixty
50:58
months thirty long years in state prison.
51:02
Speaker 2: That is a significant sentence.
51:04
Speaker 1: His family fiercely, unapologetically maintains his innocence, to this day.
51:09
They state publicly that they will never stop fighting the
51:11
appeals process for him, but the collateral damage to his
51:15
life is absolute. His wife divorced him and she now
51:18
has full soul custody of their four children. Matthew's parents
51:23
have stated they have not been allowed any contact with
51:25
their grandchildren since the initial arrest. It's just a completely
51:28
shattered family tree.
51:29
Speaker 2: And on the other side of that tragedy, Alex's family
51:32
and friends are left to navigate a quiet, empty world
51:35
without her in it. They hold monthly gatherings just to
51:38
sit around, talk, cry, and tell stories about her nursing
51:41
days to try and keep her memory alive. Shane Anderson,
51:44
the boyfriend who just wanted to sign a lease and
51:46
build a life with her, has stated he is still
51:48
profoundly heartbroken, struggling every single day with the senseless loss
51:52
of the woman he loved.
51:53
Speaker 1: They did find one really beautiful, tactile way to honor
51:56
her spirit. Though Alex absolutely loved animals, she was always
52:00
taking in strays and broken things. After she died, a
52:04
random baby rooster wandered onto her parents' rural property. Instead
52:08
of chasing it away, they took it in built a massive,
52:11
sprawling chicken coop, and now they joyfully house twelve chickens
52:15
in this stray rooster, in what they have officially named
52:18
Alex's coop. It's a small, sweet solace in the face
52:21
of unimaginable grief.
52:23
Speaker 2: It is a profound way of nurturing new life in
52:25
the immediate aftermath of so much human destruction.
52:28
Speaker 1: It is, but I want to leave you the listener,
52:31
with a final lingering thought to chew on long after
52:34
this deep dive ends. This entire, massive case a man's
52:37
freedom for the next thirty years and a young woman's
52:40
legacy swung entirely on microscopic physical clues, a dry porcelain sink,
52:45
a wiped to metal grip, a tiny jagged piece of
52:48
metal from a cheap door lock.
52:50
Speaker 2: The physical environment told the story.
52:52
Speaker 1: But think deeply about the modern digital era we actually
52:55
live in. If investigators had just been able to guess
52:58
the six digit passcode to unlock Alex's phone, or if
53:02
Shane hadn't lost his phone at the bar that night,
53:05
would there have even been a trial? Would the digital
53:08
evidence have proven the motive instantly.
53:10
Speaker 2: It's a chilling, deeply unsettling realization about how fragile our
53:14
personal histories are.
53:16
Speaker 1: It forces you to think about how much of our
53:18
absolute truth, our true state of mind, our secret financial fears,
53:22
and our final desperate intentions are locked away behind a
53:26
simple piece of glass in our pockets, and when sudden
53:29
tragedy strikes, that vital truth is completely permanently lost to
53:33
the people left behind who are just desperately, blindly trying
53:36
to make sense of the dark.
53:37
Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us as we navigated the deeply
53:39
cractured evidence of this case. It's a stark, powerful reminder
53:43
that while forensic science can tell us precisely how a
53:46
wooden door broke, it takes a much deeper, far more
53:49
difficult investigation into the human heart to understand why.
53:52
Speaker 1: Until next time, keep questioning the obvious. Thanks for taking
53:55
the deep dive with us.