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Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Murder or Suicide - The Wild Life and Sad Death of Alex Pennig · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Bodybacks with Joseph Scott Morgan. I've heard it said before
0:20
Speaker 1: that the more brilliant people you get into a room,
0:28
Speaker 1: the more confusing things become. And that's the case sometimes
0:35
Speaker 1: in forensic pathology as well, because everybody, you know, forensic
0:42
Speaker 1: pathologists are no different than any of the rest of
0:44
Speaker 1: us in that they all have their own opinions, which
0:51
Speaker 1: is good, but sometimes things can be kind of murky
0:56
Speaker 1: or confusing. And in our case here that we're going
1:03
Speaker 1: to talk about, there is a bit of confusion about
1:09
Speaker 1: a ruling relative to a death. But one thing is
1:16
Speaker 1: for certain. Alexandra alex Pennig, who's thirty two years old,
1:24
Speaker 1: sustained a gunshot wound to her head, and we do
1:30
Speaker 1: know that she didn't survive it. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan,
1:35
Speaker 1: and this is body bags. They you know sometimes you
1:42
Speaker 1: and I I know this. You're the guru. You're the
1:48
Speaker 1: guru when it comes to all things audio and production
1:53
Speaker 1: and all these sorts of things. And I got to
1:55
Speaker 1: tell you, I'm glad that there's not two of us
1:58
Speaker 1: that are brilliant because you can help me walk through
2:00
Speaker 1: these with problems with little or no concern. I know
2:03
Speaker 1: that the content that we put out is going to
2:08
Speaker 1: sound good most of the time, I think, and it's
2:12
Speaker 1: because you're you're the you're the bright one when it
2:14
Speaker 1: comes to all of that. You can help walk through
2:17
Speaker 1: technical problems. But sometimes, such as in this case today,
2:22
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to make heads or tails of things.
2:25
Speaker 1: And I think that sometimes we just throw our hands
2:27
Speaker 1: up and say, well, I can't call it anything other
2:30
Speaker 1: than what it is, and that is undetermined. And that's
2:34
Speaker 1: what we're left with here.
2:36
Speaker 2: I don't understand how that's possible. What does it really
2:41
Speaker 2: mean when manner of death is undetermined? Now, just so
2:45
Speaker 2: you know, today we're dealing with murder or suicide the
2:50
Speaker 2: death of Alexandra Pinnick. She preferred to go by alex
2:55
Speaker 2: thirty two years old. She has a gunshot to the head.
2:58
Speaker 2: Boyfriend claims he grabbed his gun, ran in the bathroom
3:02
Speaker 2: and shot herself. Police listened to his side of the
3:05
Speaker 2: story and it didn't match the facts as they could
3:09
Speaker 2: see them in the earliest moments of the investigation, and
3:13
Speaker 2: so it was left to the medical examiner to tell
3:17
Speaker 2: them what happened. And the medical examiner and by the way,
3:22
Speaker 2: when you have a prosecution. You know, the defense has
3:24
Speaker 2: their own person to come in and say whatever the
3:27
Speaker 2: defense needs to say.
3:28
Speaker 1: And in this case, oh well, if the defense has
3:31
Speaker 1: enough money for.
3:32
Speaker 2: It, right, Yeah, yeah, you got to be clear about that.
3:35
Speaker 2: Should have been very clear. And in this particular case,
3:39
Speaker 2: both of them, the prosecution, the actual medical examiner and
3:44
Speaker 2: the one hired by the defense, had the same thing.
3:46
Speaker 2: The manner of death is undetermined. What does manner of
3:51
Speaker 2: death mean? Joseph Scott Morgan.
3:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's only five to select from. And when
3:59
Speaker 1: it comes two violent deaths regarding firearms, which is what
4:06
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss, most of the time it's going
4:10
Speaker 1: to fit into one of one of those two categories.
4:12
Speaker 1: It's either going to be homicide or suicide. Accidental is
4:17
Speaker 1: an outlier you. As a matter of fact, most of
4:23
Speaker 1: the time it has been my and in practice it was.
4:29
Speaker 1: If someone told me that it was an accidental shooting,
4:33
Speaker 1: I'll say you, you have to clearly explain this to
4:37
Speaker 1: me how this was an accident before I'm going to
4:40
Speaker 1: bite on that. Because those are a rarity when you
4:45
Speaker 1: compare it to the number of suicides we have in
4:47
Speaker 1: this country, because they outpaced homicides well, oh yeah, yeah.
4:53
Speaker 2: Firearm death suicide outpaces homicide.
4:57
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, wow by boss by quite quite a significant margin. Yeah. Well,
5:04
Speaker 1: a lot of people, you know, possess firearms and they
5:08
Speaker 1: see it as a quick and and powerful solution to
5:13
Speaker 1: whatever is facing them in their lives. Uh. And so yeah,
5:17
Speaker 1: you have that. If you throw up accident, then it
5:23
Speaker 1: leaves me in a position where you're going to have
5:25
Speaker 1: to explain that to me, or the data is going
5:27
Speaker 1: to have to play itself out where the dynamic of
5:30
Speaker 1: that event can be easily explained and we can prove
5:34
Speaker 1: it scientifically. But you know, there's another choice here, and
5:37
Speaker 1: that is undetermined. And I've always I've always had this
5:44
Speaker 1: kind of vision in my mind where when it's written undetermined,
5:51
Speaker 1: I always have this like little cartoon character that pops
5:54
Speaker 1: up in my brain where you got you got them,
5:56
Speaker 1: and they're looking at you and there's just kind of
5:57
Speaker 1: shrugging their shoulders with their hands upturned, looking at you
6:00
Speaker 1: like I don't have an answer to this. I don't know.
6:04
Speaker 1: And in this particular case, that's what we're dealing with.
6:07
Speaker 1: We're dealing with the case involving a gunshot wound to
6:12
Speaker 1: the head. We can definitively say that, but the classification
6:16
Speaker 1: of it has been left undetermined. I do know this.
6:19
Speaker 1: I do know that the two people that are involved
6:23
Speaker 1: in this case, the victim and the perpetrator, are both
6:28
Speaker 1: healthcare providers. They're both nurses, and I think that probably
6:34
Speaker 1: from the prosecution standpoint, the circumstantial evidence just didn't. It
6:39
Speaker 1: didn't hold water in this particular case because there's certain
6:42
Speaker 1: things that you as an observer, based upon what you
6:49
Speaker 1: know about people that practice medicine or work in allied health,
6:53
Speaker 1: you expect them to behave under stressful search situations in
6:57
Speaker 1: a very specific manner, and Dave didn't happen in this case.
7:01
Speaker 2: You know, when we get into this actual story, I
7:04
Speaker 2: want you to know the background, because the background follows through.
7:08
Speaker 1: We have.
7:09
Speaker 2: A number of people involved in this relationship. Alexandra, remember
7:14
Speaker 2: Alexandra Penning. Alex Penning is thirty two and she is
7:18
Speaker 2: the victim. She was dating Matthew Ecker. Matthew Ecker is
7:25
Speaker 2: forty five, married with four children. Alex was also dating
7:31
Speaker 2: another man and his name was Shane Anderson. On the
7:39
Speaker 2: night in question, Alexandra had had an argument was Shane
7:46
Speaker 2: earlier in the day about their relationship. Matthew Ecker comes
7:51
Speaker 2: to the apartment and this is all up in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
7:55
Speaker 2: Matthew Ecker lives hours away, but he those two be
8:00
Speaker 2: at the side of Alex while she's frustrated in the
8:03
Speaker 2: relationship with Shane. And Matthew and Alex go out for
8:08
Speaker 2: drinks that evening. When they come into this one place,
8:12
Speaker 2: there is Shane Anderson with another woman. That causes Alex
8:17
Speaker 2: to be very upset Matthew defending his girlfriend. See this
8:26
Speaker 2: is where it gets confusing, okay, but bottom line, Matthew
8:30
Speaker 2: is with Alex, Shane Anderson is with another woman, and
8:34
Speaker 2: Matthew actually confronts Shane, and Shane hits him, probably says,
8:39
Speaker 2: you're married, why are you talking to me? Get out,
8:41
Speaker 2: you know, and hits him. Well, Shane Anderson and the
8:43
Speaker 2: other woman leave. Matthew Ecker and Alex Penny stay at
8:48
Speaker 2: the bar for another forty five minutes, having a couple
8:50
Speaker 2: of drinks. Alex and Matthew go back to Alex's apartment
8:58
Speaker 2: and this is the story that Matthew Ecker tells everybody.
9:04
Speaker 2: They arrive at her apartment, she grabs a gun out
9:07
Speaker 2: of his backpack, and runs to the bathroom and shoots
9:12
Speaker 2: herself in the head. He bashes through the door and
9:17
Speaker 2: calls nine one one tries to stop the bleeding by
9:21
Speaker 2: holding his thumb to the bullet hole. I guess police
9:25
Speaker 2: arrive a few minutes later, and she's already cold, stiff.
9:30
Speaker 2: And I want to ask you about this, Joe, because
9:32
Speaker 2: here's my question, based on Matthew Ecker's story, how soon
9:41
Speaker 2: does a body get cold and stiff? Based on his timeline,
9:51
Speaker 2: he calls nine four minutes after she shoots herself four minutes.
9:58
Speaker 2: Police arrive five minutes later. So based on his timetable,
10:04
Speaker 2: she gets shot at forty five to forty six in
10:07
Speaker 2: the morning. At three oh five four police are there
10:10
Speaker 2: and medics arrive and they declare her dead in the
10:13
Speaker 2: space of nineteen minutes, I think, from shooting to declaring
10:18
Speaker 2: her dead, and she's cold and stiff.
10:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, as it said, the old saying that dog don't hunt, okay,
10:26
Speaker 1: And you know.
10:28
Speaker 2: So you know, Joe, I didn't know that. That's why
10:30
Speaker 2: I'm asking because I think most of us don't know
10:32
Speaker 2: how quickly does a body that is dead.
10:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes it takes a well a lot of
10:40
Speaker 1: it is environmentally dependent. But in a course of let's
10:44
Speaker 1: let's let's be generous here, let's say that it was
10:48
Speaker 1: twenty minutes, if you still wouldn't have these presentations that
10:51
Speaker 1: you're talking about physically with the deceased individual where they're
10:56
Speaker 1: cool to the touch. And that's the best way I
10:59
Speaker 1: can describe it, because you know, we do things like
11:02
Speaker 1: body temperatures at scenes and depend upon the jurisdiction. There's
11:06
Speaker 1: multiple ways that we can get in sometime about how
11:09
Speaker 1: we take body temperatures on the dead. But you don't
11:14
Speaker 1: expect in a twenty minute, a twenty minute time frame
11:18
Speaker 1: for a body to be cold to the touch. And
11:22
Speaker 1: look if he's talking about stiffening or rigidity, and generally
11:29
Speaker 1: that's how we refer to it, and again rigidity of
11:32
Speaker 1: the body. That means how that goes to Roger Mortis.
11:38
Speaker 1: It takes even longer for Roger Mortis to set in.
11:40
Speaker 1: So any investigator that knows what they're doing, they're out
11:44
Speaker 1: on the scene, they're making that initial assessment and they're
11:47
Speaker 1: trying to marry this up with what he is saying scientifically.
11:51
Speaker 1: That's why I said this dog don't hunt, because you're
11:54
Speaker 1: not going to have these manifestations that are occurring now.
11:57
Speaker 1: Things are happening at a cellar level. As soon as
12:01
Speaker 1: we die, we begin to change, all right, and it's
12:05
Speaker 1: because cellular respiration has ceased, you'll begin production of lactic acid,
12:12
Speaker 1: which is actually what creates riger mortis. If I tell
12:17
Speaker 1: my students at Jacksonville State, I teach medical legal death investigation,
12:21
Speaker 1: it's this class that I've taught for years. If you
12:26
Speaker 1: ever not that anybody would, but if you ever want
12:30
Speaker 1: to understand what Ryger mortis would feel like, don't work
12:35
Speaker 1: out for a while. Go to the gym and get
12:40
Speaker 1: a vigorous workout. In the next morning, when you wake
12:42
Speaker 1: up and you're stiff, that's lactic acid that has built
12:48
Speaker 1: up in your body. That's about as close as you'll
12:50
Speaker 1: ever feel to what riger is. And that takes some time, though,
12:55
Speaker 1: and you know that's happening at a cellular level, but
13:00
Speaker 1: it's not happening this quick. There's no way. And that's
13:04
Speaker 1: that's how we that's in investigations, that's how we test,
13:08
Speaker 1: at least on my side of the house, that's how
13:10
Speaker 1: we test an alibi. Okay, if somebody is trying to
13:13
Speaker 1: alibi themselves and say, well, this is what happened, this
13:17
Speaker 1: is a time frame that it happened in, and this
13:21
Speaker 1: is what I experienced at this moment, Tom And then
13:24
Speaker 1: you're looking at what's left behind, all that remains, if
13:28
Speaker 1: you will, we're the dead, and you know good and
13:32
Speaker 1: well that what they're saying is not valid. And that's
13:35
Speaker 1: the case here, Dave.
13:36
Speaker 2: And that's what I was really curious about, Joe when
13:40
Speaker 2: in going over this story, knowing we had it on
13:43
Speaker 2: our table, murder versus suicide. How quickly do the police
13:47
Speaker 2: call you to come in when they have a scene
13:49
Speaker 2: like this pretty quickly?
13:52
Speaker 1: And again it's jurisdictionally dependent. Okay, So but up in
13:57
Speaker 1: if you think about the Twin Cities, if you think
14:01
Speaker 1: about Minneapolis, Saint Paul, I was friends with the chief
14:05
Speaker 1: investigator for Hennepon County for some time, dear lady, who
14:10
Speaker 1: was at the top of her game. She was a
14:12
Speaker 1: former nurse and she was the chief investigator. And that's
14:16
Speaker 1: a top flight office that they have in Hennepon County.
14:19
Speaker 1: Their response would have been, as soon as the police
14:23
Speaker 1: have visualized the scene and they know that this person
14:27
Speaker 1: is in fact deceased, they're going to say start the Emmy,
14:31
Speaker 1: and they're going to say start CID and c IDEA
14:34
Speaker 1: is a criminal investigation division, and start the crime scene unit.
14:37
Speaker 1: So all three of us would essentially head out simultaneously
14:41
Speaker 1: from our different offices. We'd show up pretty quickly, and
14:45
Speaker 1: the sooner that we can get there to do the assessment,
14:48
Speaker 1: the better, because the further you move down that timeline
14:52
Speaker 1: away from when the actual event occurred, you're losing data.
14:56
Speaker 1: And then it's the environment is producing other data that
15:00
Speaker 1: might skew your conclusions. All right, So timeliness is a
15:05
Speaker 1: huge factor in everything that we do. As a matter
15:08
Speaker 1: of fact, I think our our entire existence is kind
15:13
Speaker 1: of based upon we examined for trauma. But one of
15:19
Speaker 1: the underpinnings of what we do is we're trying to
15:22
Speaker 1: analyze time. We're trying to analyze a timeline and trying
15:26
Speaker 1: to understand what is happening within a specific period there
15:31
Speaker 1: and does it merry up with with the narrative that
15:35
Speaker 1: we're being given. Dave, you got my head's women, man.
15:57
Speaker 1: I often say you need a what's that thing called
16:01
Speaker 1: the playbuild like they use for Broadway. You need to
16:03
Speaker 1: play build to keep up with characters and a given.
16:08
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking about Ecker, who is a married man
16:13
Speaker 1: with four young'un's man four four, and he's involved in
16:19
Speaker 1: an ongoing relationship with this young lady who's thirty two.
16:24
Speaker 1: She's I don't know what, roughly twelve years younger than him,
16:27
Speaker 1: which is fine. I mean, that's their thing. They can do,
16:30
Speaker 1: you know. But yet he stated in an interview that
16:34
Speaker 1: he had been involved for some time with her and
16:37
Speaker 1: that they I think for two years, and that they
16:39
Speaker 1: were involved, they had an open relationship. Well, it seems
16:43
Speaker 1: like he's open is the key word here. I mean
16:46
Speaker 1: he's open to a lot of things, and it has
16:51
Speaker 1: not It's not turned out well on either end of
16:55
Speaker 1: the spectrum here for him and certainly for Alex, who's now.
17:01
Speaker 2: I don't know what was going on in the relationship
17:05
Speaker 2: because Alex is dead. What we only have what we
17:09
Speaker 2: have left. Just like his story, we have Matthew Ecker's
17:12
Speaker 2: story of what he says happened, and by the way,
17:15
Speaker 2: according to police, his story changed. We can kind of
17:20
Speaker 2: understand the relationship dynamics and that Alex at thirty two
17:25
Speaker 2: and a nurse involved with an older, married guy. We
17:31
Speaker 2: don't know if Matthew Ecker's wife knew of the relationship before,
17:35
Speaker 2: but we know that she did divorce him when this
17:39
Speaker 2: came out. I don't know Shane Anderson. I didn't want
17:42
Speaker 2: to mention his name, but I had to mention his
17:45
Speaker 2: name because as part of the story, you know, there
17:48
Speaker 2: was something going on here that caused or seems to
17:53
Speaker 2: have caused Alex to be upset. And the part that
18:03
Speaker 2: I have the most questions about is what happened when
18:06
Speaker 2: they got back to the apartment. Because Matthew Ecker's story,
18:09
Speaker 2: and this is why I'm asking you, Joe, about how
18:13
Speaker 2: soon a person does get cold and stiff, because these
18:16
Speaker 2: are professional Matthew Ecker is a professional nurse. He's a
18:21
Speaker 2: nurse practitioner. He works in the emergency room. This is
18:24
Speaker 2: not his first, you know, bullet wound he's ever seen.
18:28
Speaker 2: I'm gonna assume no, no, it's not. And the story
18:31
Speaker 2: he tells you just say that dog won't hunt. So
18:35
Speaker 2: let's go over this really quickly. Because when police found Alex,
18:43
Speaker 2: she's laying on the floor of the bathroom. Her legs
18:47
Speaker 2: are straddling the door her the gun is placed on
18:52
Speaker 2: her chest. I say placed for a reason, and her
18:55
Speaker 2: hands are near it. By the way, Alex is right handed,
19:01
Speaker 2: but the shut the bullet wound was on the left
19:04
Speaker 2: side of her head.
19:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, g just w to the left side, all right.
19:07
Speaker 2: Now, while nothing is impossible, you know it does. Have
19:14
Speaker 2: you known of a case where somebody who was right
19:17
Speaker 2: hand dominant to shoot themselves on the left side of
19:20
Speaker 2: the head?
19:20
Speaker 1: No?
19:21
Speaker 2: Do women usually shoot themselves in the head of the heart?
19:24
Speaker 1: Goo?
19:24
Speaker 2: Uh?
19:25
Speaker 1: Yeah that well, let's let's go with the first one first. Uh,
19:29
Speaker 1: the first one first. I like that. So if they
19:35
Speaker 1: do change hands, it is a it's an outlier. It's
19:42
Speaker 1: not something you would come because it's like picking up
19:44
Speaker 1: a pencil. It's like picking up a golf club or
19:46
Speaker 1: picking up a baseball bat, or picking up your knife
19:48
Speaker 1: and fork. You're going to use your dominant hand. Now.
19:53
Speaker 1: I don't know how much experience Alex had had with
19:56
Speaker 1: a weapon, but one of the questions we always ask
19:59
Speaker 1: Dave when we're doing a suicide investigation, which suicide investigations are.
20:04
Speaker 1: First off, I've always felt as though, from me, the
20:07
Speaker 1: suicide investigations are much more difficult than homicide investigations because
20:10
Speaker 1: most of the time you don't have a witness to it,
20:13
Speaker 1: and so you're having to draw these conclusions based upon
20:16
Speaker 1: what science is telling you. But when we begin to
20:21
Speaker 1: interview their their intimates, their peripherals, you know, in their life,
20:24
Speaker 1: will say, well, this is a apparent suicide. Maybe they
20:29
Speaker 1: left a note, who knows. But was there an indication
20:36
Speaker 1: that they were they ambidextrius? Did they could they use
20:40
Speaker 1: both hands or were they left or right hand dominant?
20:43
Speaker 1: And you would expect that if your right hand dominant,
20:48
Speaker 1: that the gunshot wound would be would be on that
20:54
Speaker 1: dependent side, and in this case it wasn't on the
20:57
Speaker 1: left hand side. Now to this question about about do
21:02
Speaker 1: women shoot themselves in the head, if we were having
21:05
Speaker 1: this discussion, let's see, if we were having this discussion
21:11
Speaker 1: in the early eighties, I would say that, you know,
21:17
Speaker 1: you you rarely have ever seen that. But you know, Dave,
21:20
Speaker 1: as my career.
21:21
Speaker 2: Progressed, rarely have ever seen a headshot.
21:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, with with females, And people say that there's data
21:28
Speaker 1: that backs us up. Maybe there is. But as my
21:33
Speaker 1: career progressed, I began to see more and more cases
21:42
Speaker 1: of females that would in their lives much like men
21:47
Speaker 1: did that you know, i'd have mentor oild, gunshot woes,
21:52
Speaker 1: gunshot womanes to the side of the head, you know,
21:55
Speaker 1: those sorts of things. I think that there was this uh,
21:58
Speaker 1: this uh thesis is kind of put forward in our
22:03
Speaker 1: field where it says that, you know, because of appearance,
22:06
Speaker 1: that women were not inclined to shoot themselves in the head.
22:10
Speaker 1: I got to be honest with you, I don't ever
22:12
Speaker 1: remember a self inflicted gunshot wound by a female where
22:19
Speaker 1: they shot themselves in the abdomen. I think I had
22:22
Speaker 1: a couple in the chest, but I'd say that I
22:27
Speaker 1: probably had more headshots self inflicted with women than I
22:32
Speaker 1: did any other location. So I don't I just don't.
22:36
Speaker 1: I don't buy into it that that that that idea.
22:42
Speaker 1: Do men and women take their lives in a variety
22:46
Speaker 1: of different ways, Yeah, they do. I don't know if
22:48
Speaker 1: that's gender dependent or not, but it's it's one of
22:51
Speaker 1: those things that floats around and get asked that question
22:53
Speaker 1: a lot, you know, over the years, I've been asked
22:56
Speaker 1: that question. But that she had a gunshot to the
23:00
Speaker 1: head and they were thinking it might be suicide, at
23:03
Speaker 1: least it wouldn't be surprising. I don't think to anybody
23:06
Speaker 1: that was out there that would be working the scene.
23:09
Speaker 1: But here's the thing that's really shocking about this. Let's
23:12
Speaker 1: go back to what you said about Eckert. Not only
23:16
Speaker 1: is he a nurse practitioner, Dave, he's working. He's working
23:21
Speaker 1: as a nurse practitioner in an emergency room setting, and
23:26
Speaker 1: let's face it, a major metropolitan area. He's gonna see trauma, Dave.
23:31
Speaker 1: And I got to tell you, I worked as an
23:34
Speaker 1: ear tech for a number of years in college, and
23:37
Speaker 1: in that environment, if you have gunshot wounds that come in,
23:41
Speaker 1: knife wounds, that sort of thing, you're gonna get blood
23:45
Speaker 1: on you. You're gonna have it on you. I mean,
23:47
Speaker 1: that's the nature of what you do. You can put
23:50
Speaker 1: on gloves, but you'll even get blood up up above
23:53
Speaker 1: your wrist, onto your elbows, those sorts of things. You'll
23:56
Speaker 1: get blood if you're wearing scrubs, which everybody does. That's
24:00
Speaker 1: why you wear scrubs because they used to be almost disposable.
24:06
Speaker 1: You know, you would get bloodstains on you. You could go
24:08
Speaker 1: to closet, get a fresh pair and change out. So
24:12
Speaker 1: you would expect him if he is he allegedly attempted
24:16
Speaker 1: to stem the bleeding by placing his hand or his
24:23
Speaker 1: finger over the defect in her head to stem the bleeding. Dave,
24:28
Speaker 1: if that were the case. If that were the case,
24:30
Speaker 1: he would have blood all over his hands. There's a
24:32
Speaker 1: high probability that she probably clipped cerebral artery in there,
24:38
Speaker 1: so it's going to be pumping blood out. It could
24:40
Speaker 1: spray onto him. There's really no trace evidence of blood
24:45
Speaker 1: on him, so I think that that's really making the
24:47
Speaker 1: cops question what's going on.
24:49
Speaker 2: He actually claims that he washed up now just to
24:56
Speaker 2: Ecker claims that when he opens the bathroom door and
25:02
Speaker 2: sees Alex, she shut herself in the head. He claims
25:05
Speaker 2: he tried to stop the bleeding short of that before
25:09
Speaker 2: he calls nine one one to report what has just
25:12
Speaker 2: taken place. He took the time to wash himself up,
25:15
Speaker 2: and he tells police he did it in the bathroom
25:17
Speaker 2: sink and he washed with soap. He then calls nine
25:22
Speaker 2: one one and he says he called nine one one
25:26
Speaker 2: within four minutes of the shot. So you've got him
25:29
Speaker 2: coming to the bathroom finding his girlfriend on the bathroom
25:32
Speaker 2: floor with a gunshot wounded the head. He then removes
25:35
Speaker 2: the gun. He takes the gun and puts it in
25:37
Speaker 2: a suitcase. Then he comes back in after trying to
25:42
Speaker 2: save her life, washes up using soap and water, and
25:46
Speaker 2: apparently cleans the gun as well, because he then places
25:49
Speaker 2: the gun on her chest and calls nine one one.
25:51
Speaker 2: Police arrived minutes later, and the first thing they notice
25:55
Speaker 2: he has no blood on him and the gun is
25:59
Speaker 2: from remarkably clean. Yeah, despite the nature of this scene,
26:04
Speaker 2: the gun is scrubbed clean. The fact that he uses
26:08
Speaker 2: soap and water on his hands to ostensibly clean up
26:10
Speaker 2: blood like that would be the worry at that point,
26:12
Speaker 2: particular moment.
26:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes no sense.
26:15
Speaker 2: And the bathroom sink is dry. The bathroom sink is dry,
26:18
Speaker 2: but he tells them he just used it to wash
26:21
Speaker 2: his hands. By the way, blood on the floor of
26:23
Speaker 2: the bathroom is drying already.
26:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:27
Speaker 2: I wonder how long it takes at it seen.
26:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes, it takes it takes uh, it takes
26:33
Speaker 1: a while. I'll put it to you that way again.
26:35
Speaker 1: I hate to kind of weasel out of the question,
26:38
Speaker 1: but it's going to be environmentally dependent, and it's going
26:41
Speaker 1: to be dependent upon surface in the bathroom. Are the
26:45
Speaker 1: carpets in there is it a tile. Uh you know what,
26:49
Speaker 1: what's the temperature inside of the room, what's temperature of
26:53
Speaker 1: the floor. That's going to promote this because you know,
26:56
Speaker 1: when you get drying blood, uh, you're you're at that
27:00
Speaker 1: point time. And when I say drying blood, I'm talking
27:02
Speaker 1: about dry blood that's that's beginning to to flake or
27:08
Speaker 1: it has the appearance that it doesn't have. Let's see
27:14
Speaker 1: that the tension of the blood surface itself has diminished
27:19
Speaker 1: to the point where it's almost at the same level
27:22
Speaker 1: as the floor that it's on or the surface that
27:25
Speaker 1: it's on. It it's it's lost all of that and
27:28
Speaker 1: it's beginning to almost look like paint. That takes that
27:34
Speaker 1: takes some amount of time. I'm thinking, I'm thinking beyond
27:38
Speaker 1: an hour, I would I would think, and it's really
27:42
Speaker 1: hard to judge that. But you know, here here's another
27:46
Speaker 1: thing with the weapon. And by the way, this is
27:50
Speaker 1: kind of interesting. He was a licensed firearms carrier. He
27:56
Speaker 1: had to carry permit, and he had kept this weapon.
27:59
Speaker 1: According to him in his book back which you'll see
28:05
Speaker 1: a lot of nurses that are coming in on the
28:07
Speaker 1: hospital that carry book bags. They almost look like students
28:09
Speaker 1: and they you know, they've got extra changes of clothes
28:12
Speaker 1: in there there whatnot, you know, is carried around and there.
28:15
Speaker 1: He carried his weapon in there and she Alex, according
28:19
Speaker 1: to him, went she had an awareness of the weapon
28:21
Speaker 1: that he had one before she went into the bathroom.
28:24
Speaker 1: She went into his bag and retrieved this weapon. She
28:27
Speaker 1: knew it was there and went into the bathroom.
28:29
Speaker 2: And showed it to him. Okay, she grabs it and
28:31
Speaker 2: according to Ecker, she point has the gun in her
28:35
Speaker 2: hand and she is walking backwards, telling him don't come
28:38
Speaker 2: any closer. I'll shoot myself, and backs herself into the bathroom,
28:42
Speaker 2: then shuts the door, and he says, within two seconds
28:44
Speaker 2: of the door shutting, here's the gun. Go off, opens
28:46
Speaker 2: the door and finds her. That's why this timetable is
28:49
Speaker 2: very important to the whole story, because from the moment
28:51
Speaker 2: he calls nine to one one to the minute cops arrive,
28:55
Speaker 2: it's a very short.
28:56
Speaker 1: Window, very very short.
28:58
Speaker 2: There's something else that goes into this too. According to
29:01
Speaker 2: the story Ecker told police, you know, he moves the
29:05
Speaker 2: gun and put he again. He moves the gun, puts
29:10
Speaker 2: it in a bag, then brings it back in places
29:12
Speaker 2: on our chest. He says he tried to save her life,
29:14
Speaker 2: that she was breathing when he first got there. He
29:16
Speaker 2: tries to stop the flow of blood, but they asked him,
29:19
Speaker 2: did you perform CPR? Again, going back to the blood
29:23
Speaker 2: that would be everywhere, and he says, no, I did
29:27
Speaker 2: not do CPR because I didn't know what to do.
29:31
Speaker 2: How does a nurse practitioner working in an emergency room
29:35
Speaker 2: not know how to do CPR?
29:38
Speaker 1: You can't. But and that's that's that's what's so odd
29:41
Speaker 1: about this. In order to work in an emergency room
29:46
Speaker 1: or if you're going to be let's say, if you're
29:48
Speaker 1: going to work in ic ICU or one of these
29:51
Speaker 1: places critical care units like this, you you have to
29:57
Speaker 1: be certified in advanced life and first off, CPR is
30:04
Speaker 1: is that's the bottom line. I mean, these people go
30:08
Speaker 1: through such training. I mean nurses are you know, are
30:12
Speaker 1: the life blood of a hospital. You think about doctors,
30:15
Speaker 1: forget it. It's the nurses that run the show and
30:19
Speaker 1: they control everything that's there, and they are trained and
30:22
Speaker 1: you're not trained. If you can't keep up in that environment,
30:24
Speaker 1: you can find another job somewhere because they got other
30:27
Speaker 1: people that'll take your job really quick. That are proficient
30:29
Speaker 1: at what they do. This guy would have had to
30:33
Speaker 1: have been certified in advanced life support and he would
30:37
Speaker 1: have understood the principles behind CPR. And here's another thing.
30:41
Speaker 1: If he had done compressions on her at the scene,
30:43
Speaker 1: did you know that with a gunshot wound to the head,
30:48
Speaker 1: one of the things that also happens is you'll get
30:50
Speaker 1: this fracturing of the skull. Obviously, because you're creating, you know,
30:53
Speaker 1: you're cavitating the cranial vault, and you've got these fractures
30:57
Speaker 1: that go on the victim as you're doing compressions. You'll
31:01
Speaker 1: actually get blood from the nose, the mouth, not to
31:04
Speaker 1: mention the defect in the head. So yeah, it would
31:07
Speaker 1: be a bloody mess. I wonder if he had an
31:10
Speaker 1: awareness of that as well. I'm not so much concerned
31:15
Speaker 1: about the absence of blood on his hands, Dave. What
31:21
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in, since he's saying that this is
31:25
Speaker 1: in fact a self inflict AGAINSHT woman, was there no
31:29
Speaker 1: blood on her hands? Well, it looks like they've got
31:49
Speaker 1: quite the conundrum here, don't they. You've got a guy
31:53
Speaker 1: that I would imagine, in the face of questioning the
32:00
Speaker 1: local PD he ain't doing so well. And but yet
32:06
Speaker 1: you've got a a young lady and will go ahead
32:09
Speaker 1: and say it plainly because it's it's already out there.
32:11
Speaker 1: She's got she's got some real emotional issues. I mean,
32:14
Speaker 1: she's you know, fought anxiety, depression, all these sorts of things.
32:18
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, Ecker has been providing her
32:23
Speaker 1: with with Benzo's for anxiety, and he's also been providing
32:32
Speaker 1: her with adderall kind of mood stabilizing. And so you, uh,
32:38
Speaker 1: you think about that, she's got all this dynamic going
32:41
Speaker 1: on with her, and you listen, you have to consider
32:44
Speaker 1: that that maybe taking her own life is on the table.
32:49
Speaker 1: As far as an investigator, you have to be able
32:51
Speaker 1: to take all of that in consideration. Uh, that would
32:55
Speaker 1: do that? Would it would behoove you as an investigator
32:58
Speaker 1: to go back and dig into her past. If she's
33:00
Speaker 1: under therapy, if she's receiving therapy, you'd want to question
33:05
Speaker 1: the individual that's providing her therapy. And then you got
33:08
Speaker 1: to talk to her friends. You got to talk to
33:10
Speaker 1: her family members that might you know, she may have
33:12
Speaker 1: confided in that sort of thing. It's not just talking
33:16
Speaker 1: to Ecker or to this other fellow that she's involved
33:20
Speaker 1: in a relationship with. This is on its surface, this
33:24
Speaker 1: seems like a very simple case. But it's like I said,
33:29
Speaker 1: cases like this are very very complex.
33:32
Speaker 2: Well, the physical evidence, taking away the psychology and everything else,
33:36
Speaker 2: just the physical evidence alone, the scene of the crime,
33:39
Speaker 2: the scene of the incident. Yeah, was it murder or suicide?
33:42
Speaker 2: One of the handgun didn't have blood on it. Now,
33:46
Speaker 2: if she takes her own life, she's right handed, but
33:49
Speaker 2: she shoots the gun with her left hand and the
33:51
Speaker 2: left side of her head. But police get there minutes later.
33:54
Speaker 2: By the way back to the timetable, the phone call
33:57
Speaker 2: to nine one one was made at two point fifty am,
34:00
Speaker 2: and Matthew Ecker claims that he called nine to one
34:03
Speaker 2: one four minutes after she shot herself. Police arrive and
34:09
Speaker 2: she is declared dead by medical professionals. MS workers are
34:13
Speaker 2: there and she's declared dead at three h four am.
34:16
Speaker 2: So from the time he called, the time he calls,
34:19
Speaker 2: to the time they're there and declared dead is fourteen minutes.
34:21
Speaker 2: Add another four minutes from the time he says she
34:24
Speaker 2: shot herself, and you have eighteen minutes from gunshot to
34:28
Speaker 2: declared dead at the scene of the crime you mentioned,
34:31
Speaker 2: Why are her hands not bloody? What is the test
34:35
Speaker 2: that is done by medical experts to determine whether or
34:37
Speaker 2: not somebody has fired a gun?
34:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a gunshot residue test. It's there are
34:44
Speaker 1: three major components in in in firearms, in the actual
34:54
Speaker 1: process of kind of lighting the fuse on a projectile.
34:59
Speaker 1: All right, So when if you just imagine, if you'll
35:03
Speaker 1: just imagine in your mind that when you initiate the
35:06
Speaker 1: firing sequence with any kind of firearm, when you pull
35:11
Speaker 1: that trigger, okay, and that firing pin or the hammer
35:17
Speaker 1: slams forward onto the base of that live round, you
35:23
Speaker 1: have got a primer cap. And the primer itself is
35:30
Speaker 1: a bit more unstable chemically, that is is it doesn't
35:36
Speaker 1: take much to set it off, which is what you want,
35:38
Speaker 1: because there's like a little cap. If you look at
35:40
Speaker 1: the end of a live round, there's a little cap
35:44
Speaker 1: in the end of it, and it's called a primer
35:46
Speaker 1: cap that's tapped off. And when that's tapped off, it
35:50
Speaker 1: creates an explosion, all right, And that explosion sparks up
35:55
Speaker 1: through what are referred to as flash holes, and within
35:59
Speaker 1: the flat holes, the it ignites what's referred to as
36:04
Speaker 1: the propellant that's contained within the cartridge itself, that's the gunpowder.
36:10
Speaker 1: So when you do when you do a GSR test,
36:16
Speaker 1: you're looking for antimony, barium, and also lead those three components,
36:24
Speaker 1: and primer residue is a bit different than that. So
36:28
Speaker 1: you can get an idea that if it's if it's
36:31
Speaker 1: primer residue that you're looking for, perhaps it it you
36:36
Speaker 1: would expect to find it on a hand, all right,
36:38
Speaker 1: that's where it's. It's kind of got a c clamp
36:41
Speaker 1: on the on the grip of the pistol in this case,
36:45
Speaker 1: and then you'll find the rest the remaining elements there
36:50
Speaker 1: that kind of shower down out of this cloud you know,
36:53
Speaker 1: you see the gun smoke, you know, cloud that comes
36:56
Speaker 1: out and it's kind of showering down. We try to
37:01
Speaker 1: do That's one of the reasons. Like at the scene,
37:03
Speaker 1: and I would imagine in this particular scene, at this
37:07
Speaker 1: particular scene, rather they would have bagged her hands at
37:10
Speaker 1: the scene, that's what we would do, okay. And the
37:13
Speaker 1: reason is is that when you place her body into
37:16
Speaker 1: a body bag, sometimes the bags can sweat and you
37:20
Speaker 1: have to protect those hands because you're going to do
37:23
Speaker 1: a GSR test on the victim at the morgue, and
37:27
Speaker 1: we have series of swabs that we go through and
37:30
Speaker 1: that's sent off to the state crime lab and you
37:32
Speaker 1: can test to see if she's recently fired a weapon.
37:36
Speaker 1: The trick is I wonder. I wonder if the police
37:42
Speaker 1: at that moment in time, based upon how unsteady his
37:47
Speaker 1: story was. I wonder if they said, Okay, we need
37:51
Speaker 1: to do a GSR test on you, and I wonder
37:54
Speaker 1: if he submitted to that, if they actually did one,
37:57
Speaker 1: because right now at this point, we don't know if
38:01
Speaker 1: they did that. There's no indication that that that that
38:04
Speaker 1: has necessarily come up. Not saying it didn't happen, but
38:08
Speaker 1: it's one of the things that you would do in
38:10
Speaker 1: a case like this, particularly where you're questioning the tomeline
38:15
Speaker 1: about how everything went down and it keeps getting marked
38:18
Speaker 1: because you you stated Dave that he changed his story
38:21
Speaker 1: a couple of times, and for me, that's that's a
38:24
Speaker 1: huge red flag. Well because if you're so, yeah, go
38:27
Speaker 1: ahead the.
38:28
Speaker 2: Soap and water, he claims because they noticed a man.
38:30
Speaker 2: You said you tried to save her life, but there's
38:32
Speaker 2: no blood on you and the gun is incredibly clean.
38:36
Speaker 2: Uh he is the can you wash away like the
38:40
Speaker 2: GRS test the gun residue? Did I say that? Right? GRS?
38:43
Speaker 2: It's GSR, but YESR anyway, but they're going to test
38:47
Speaker 2: it if you wash your hands with soap and water,
38:50
Speaker 2: can you wash away that residue so that you do
38:53
Speaker 2: a test on me? And it's like, I'm sorry, man,
38:55
Speaker 2: it's just soap and water. I had to clean up
38:56
Speaker 2: the blood. It's my gun. I touched the gun. I mean,
38:59
Speaker 2: is there a way that he now can explain any
39:01
Speaker 2: kind of residue on his hands? But I use something
39:04
Speaker 2: water just clean them.
39:06
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, and just because you have just because
39:09
Speaker 1: you have these results. First off, GSR tests are not
39:14
Speaker 1: full for if people think that they are, they're not.
39:18
Speaker 1: They're not.
39:19
Speaker 2: And so that's why they're not putting a whole lot
39:21
Speaker 2: of heat on that. All right, Yeah, yeah, that explains
39:23
Speaker 2: that I wondered, Joe, I didn't know.
39:25
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say that GSR is in the
39:28
Speaker 1: same realm as like a polygraph. Okay, it's not like that,
39:31
Speaker 1: but you're not necessarily you know, they did one study
39:36
Speaker 1: years ago with people that worked in what was it,
39:38
Speaker 1: They worked in munitions factories, and they would randomly test
39:42
Speaker 1: people with GSR in those environments and they would come
39:46
Speaker 1: back with negative results. And these people have been handling munitions,
39:49
Speaker 1: you know, for days and days, and I always found
39:53
Speaker 1: that that kind of interesting. They put a lot of
39:55
Speaker 1: weight on these tests. But you know, I don't I
40:00
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think that GSR is required in this case
40:05
Speaker 1: because he's he's kind of betraying, you know, the original narrative.
40:13
Speaker 1: Here's he keeps deviating from the story. And that's a
40:17
Speaker 1: circumstantial in circumstantial evidence. But still he's the only witness
40:22
Speaker 1: to all of this. He was an ear witness to
40:26
Speaker 1: you know, any kind of statements. He certainly saw what
40:28
Speaker 1: happened that evening, and I guess you know, you begin
40:31
Speaker 1: to think about, well, what would be his motivation to
40:35
Speaker 1: do this to her? Why? Why would he take her life?
40:39
Speaker 1: And you think about maybe it all came to a
40:42
Speaker 1: head that night in the bar where he gets into
40:44
Speaker 1: this tete a tet with this other man in her life.
40:50
Speaker 1: He's he's married, he's got four kids. Maybe he had
40:52
Speaker 1: this moment in time where he's like, what am I doing?
40:55
Speaker 1: And the only way that he can see to solve
40:57
Speaker 1: this is perhaps taking her life. I don't know the
41:01
Speaker 1: weapon itself, though when you look at it, there's also
41:05
Speaker 1: you know, they were talking about how clean it was
41:08
Speaker 1: many times, not every case, but many times. With self
41:11
Speaker 1: inflicted gunshot wounds day you'll see evidence of what's referred
41:17
Speaker 1: to as blowback on weapons, where you'll have blood that
41:21
Speaker 1: will come back onto the surface of the weapon, and
41:24
Speaker 1: if it's a close contact gunshot wound, which I really
41:27
Speaker 1: want to get into here, you would have I've worked
41:34
Speaker 1: cases where I've had skin, hair, brain matter in the
41:39
Speaker 1: muzzle of the weapon where it blows back down the barrel.
41:43
Speaker 1: You'll actually have that occur because you know that barrel
41:47
Speaker 1: space is empty after that projectile. It happens in a flash,
41:51
Speaker 1: but after that projectile exits the barrel, it cavitates into
41:57
Speaker 1: the skull, and you've got this energy that's forcing backwards
42:02
Speaker 1: towards the point of origin of this thing, and you'll
42:05
Speaker 1: get this kind of distribution on the surface weapon. They're
42:08
Speaker 1: not seeing that here, So I think that that's the
42:12
Speaker 1: position that this puts the forensic pathologists, and I say
42:16
Speaker 1: pathologist because we're plural. We've got two of them. Dave
42:19
Speaker 1: we're talking about to uh too highly learned or learned.
42:24
Speaker 1: I guess they say uh learned learned people here they
42:29
Speaker 1: are board certified forensic pathologists, and they both arrived at
42:32
Speaker 1: the same conclusion. They can't say that this is either
42:37
Speaker 1: a homicide a suicide. They can't say it's accidental. So
42:42
Speaker 1: their default position here is it turns out to be
42:45
Speaker 1: undetermined in this particular case. I find that quite fascinating.
42:52
Speaker 2: But it does end up going to court. Matthew Ecker
42:56
Speaker 2: is charged, and it goes back to the reason I
42:58
Speaker 2: was hitting the timeline so hard is because you really
43:02
Speaker 2: are dealing with eighteen minutes from starting to finish on
43:05
Speaker 2: her death. And his story did change. It didn't make sense.
43:11
Speaker 2: He's a nurse practitioner working in an emergency room, didn't
43:14
Speaker 2: perform CPR or do anything he knows to do. And
43:18
Speaker 2: he was clean. The scene was clean, blood was drying.
43:21
Speaker 2: There's nothing in the sink indicating anybody had washed anything
43:24
Speaker 2: in the sink in the bathroom like he claimed. The
43:26
Speaker 2: evidence didn't bear out his story, so he took it
43:29
Speaker 2: to court. He was charged with her murder. It has
43:34
Speaker 2: been adjudicated.
43:35
Speaker 1: Joe, what's our conclusion here? Dave is he now cool
43:40
Speaker 1: in his heels in state penitentiary.
43:42
Speaker 2: Matthew Philip Becker, forty five years old. His wife did
43:46
Speaker 2: divorce him, by the way. The father of four convicted
43:52
Speaker 2: of the sole count of second degree intentional murder not
43:56
Speaker 2: premeditated for shooting thirty two year old Xandra Lee Pennig
44:01
Speaker 2: in the head December sixteenth, twenty twenty two.
44:05
Speaker 1: I've got to tell you, at the end of the day,
44:07
Speaker 1: you think about you think about all of the effort
44:10
Speaker 1: that went into living the lives that these people lived.
44:14
Speaker 1: The desire to help people in healthcare, the desire to
44:20
Speaker 1: get all of the education that's required, those hoops that
44:23
Speaker 1: you have to jump through, and to throw it all away.
44:28
Speaker 1: I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Bodybacks