In the early morning hours of Dec. 16, 2022, St. Paul, Minnesota, homicide detectives Abby DeSanto and Jennifer O’Donnell were called to a downtown apartment building to investigate a reported suicide. A 32-year-old woman named Alexandra Pennig had been found dead in her bathroom with a single gunshot wound to the head.
For the detectives, what really happened to Pennig is something that still haunts them to this day. And it’s the question at the center of “The Strange Shooting of Alex Pennig,” reported by “48 Hours” contributor Natalie Morales. An encore of the episode is streaming on Paramount+.
Terri Randall/Mary Jo Pennig 
When detectives DeSanto and O’Donnell arrived at the apartment, they found out Pennig had not been alone at the time of her death. A man named Matthew Ecker was also there. Ecker and Pennig were both nurses and had met two years earlier when they worked at the same clinic. Ecker told first responders the gun was his, and that Pennig had grabbed it, locked herself in the bathroom, and then fired the shot. “I thought everything was fine,” he said. “And then she just grabbed the gun.” Ecker told first responders that after he heard the shot he immediately broke open the bathroom door: “I tried to do what 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 would do this.
In Pennig’s apartment, there was alcohol and six bottles of prescription medication, including antidepressants, all prescribed to Pennig. For the detectives, it suggested Alex might have been depressed, and they wondered if Ecker’s story that she took her own life was true.
But they also noticed something that seemed to contradict Ecker’s story. He had said he washed his hands in the bathroom sink before calling 911, but DeSanto recalled the 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 probably would’ve been still wet,” DeSanto explained, “but it was very dry in there.”
When O’Donnell looked into Pennig’s background, she learned from Alex’s parents that Alex had struggled in the past with depression and addiction. “I had asked, um, if she had been suicidal in the past, um, and dad said, she had, um, tried, uh, to overdose before,” said O’Donnell. According to Alex’s father, Jim Pennig, several years prior, Alex had taken a handful of pills “and then had told her mom that she was…
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