How a small fragment of a bathroom door lock helped solve a nurse’s murder

In the early morning hours of December 16, 2022, in St. Paul, Minnesota, homicide detectives Abby DeSanto and Jennifer O’Donnell were called to a downtown apartment building to investigate a report of a suicide. A 32-year-old woman named Alexander Pennig was found dead in her bathroom with a single gunshot wound to the head.

For the detectives, what really happened to Pennig haunts them to this day. And this question is in the center “The Strange Shooting of Alex Pennig”, “48 Hours” correspondent Natalie Morales reported. The episode is currently streaming on Paramount+.

When Detectives DeSanto and O’Donnell arrived at the apartment, they discovered that Pennig was not alone at the time of her death. A man named Matthew Ecker was there too. Ecker and Pennig were nurses and met two years ago when they worked at the same clinic. Ecker told first responders that the gun was his and that Pennig had grabbed it, locked herself in the bathroom and then fired. “I thought everything was fine,” he said. “And then she just grabbed the gun.” Ecker told first responders that he immediately broke down the bathroom door when he heard the gunshot: “I tried to do everything I could. And then I washed my hands… That’s why I don’t have anything on my hands.” Ecker said he then called 911. But it was too late. He said he didn’t know why Pennig did it.

Pennig’s apartment contained alcohol and six bottles of prescription medication, including anti-depressants, all prescribed to Pennig. For detectives, this suggested that Alex may have been depressed, and they questioned whether Ecker’s story that she had taken her own life was true.

But they also noticed something that seemed to contradict Ecker’s story. He said he washed his hands in the bathroom sink before calling 911, but DeSanto recalled that first responders told her the sink was dry. “The sink was dry. If he had said, you know he called the police right away, that sink would probably still be wet,” DeSanto explained, “but it was very dry.”

When O’Donnell researched Pennig’s past, she learned from Alex’s parents that Alex had struggled with depression and addiction in the past. “I asked, um, had she been suicidal in the past, um, and dad said she’d, um, tried to, uh, overdose before,” O’Donnell said. According to Alex’s father, Jim Pennig, a few years ago, Alex took a handful of pills “and then told her mom that she was trying to kill herself.” After that, Alex’s parents told detectives they sent her to rehab and she eventually recovered. Despite her past struggles, Alex’s parents told O’Donnell that they had just seen her at Thanksgiving. And her mom, Mary Jo Pennig, had just talked to her that night. “She was fine,” she said. For them, the thought that their daughter had committed suicide did not make sense. “Knowing your child, it wasn’t appropriate,” Mary Jo Pennig said.

Since Ecker was the last person to see Alex Pennig alive, detectives focused on him. “He’s the only one who can tell us what happened. He was the only one there,” O’Donnell said. They questioned Ecker about what happened that night. He said he and Alex Pennig went to a few local bars and when they got back to her place, everything was fine: “We laughed on the way home,” Ecker said. DeSanto asked him if they had argued when they entered the apartment. Ecker said no.

For hours, Ecker went on to say that Pennig locked herself in the bathroom, shot herself and then broke down the door to try to help her: “That gun went off behind a closed door… I didn’t shoot her.“

But the detectives had their doubts. Then they got a call from the forensics unit, which was still processing the scene. And according to O’Donnell, what they found changed everything. “When Alex was moved, they found a round piece of metal under where Alex was lying,“ she said. It was ring-shaped and about the size of a quarter. O’Donnell said it was part of the lock on the bathroom door, and the fact that it was found under Pennig was key. “It meant to us that the door was forced open before she was shot.”

Detectives believed that the discovery of the metal ring proved that Ecker lied and did not break down the door after hearing the gunshot. Detectives suspected that Pennig and Ecker had argued and that she had closed the bathroom door to get away from him. Ecker then broke down the door, the metal part broke off and fell to the ground, then he shot Pennig and she landed on top of him.

Ecker was charged with second-degree murder. He was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in February 2024. He is appealing his sentence.

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