In the early morning of December 16, 2022, St. Paul, Minnesota, the detectives of Homicide Abby Desanto and Jennifer O’Donnell were called in an apartment building in the city center to investigate a reported suicide. A 32 -year -old woman named Alexandra Penig had been found dead in her bathroom with a single ball injury to the head.
For detectives, what has really happened to Pennig is something that still haunts them to date. And this is the question at the center of “The Strange Shting of Alex Pennig”, reported by the contributor of “48 hours”, Natalie Morales. A reminder of the episode is streaming on Paramount +.
Terre Randall / Mary Jo Pennig 
When the detectives from theanto and O’Donnell arrived in the apartment, they discovered that Pennig was not alone at the time of his death. A man named Matthew Ecker was also there. Ecker and Pennig were both nurses and had met two years earlier when they worked in the same clinic. Ecker told the first stakeholders that the pistol was his, and that Pennig had caught him, locked himself in the bathroom, then pulled the blow. “I thought everything was fine,” he said. “And then she just caught the weapon.” Ecker told the first stakeholders that after hearing the shot, he immediately opened the bathroom door: “I tried to do what I could. And then I washed my hands … That’s why I have nothing 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 drugs, including antidepressants, all prescribed in Pennig. For the detectives, it suggested that Alex could have been depressed, and they wondered if Ecker’s story that she committed suicide was true.
But they also noticed something that seemed to contradict the story of Ecker. He said he had washed his hands in the bathroom sink before calling 911, but Deanto recalled that the first stakeholders told him that the sink was dry. “The sink was dry. If he had said, you know, he called the police right away, this sink would probably have been still wet,” said Deanto, “but it was very dry in there.”
When O’Donnell examined Pennig’s history, she learned from Alex’s parents that Alex had fought in the past with depression and dependence. “I had asked, uh, if she had been suicidal in the past, uh, and Dad said, she had, uh, tried, uh, to overdose before,” said O’Donnell. According to Alex’s father, Jim Pennig, several years ago, Alex had taken a handful of pills “and then told his mother that she was trying to suicide.” After that, Alex’s parents told the detectives that they had sent her to a detoxification treatment, and she finally cleaned. Despite his past difficulties, Alex’s parents told O’Donnell that they had just seen her in Thanksgiving. And his mother, Mary Jo Pennig, had just spoken to him that evening. “She was fine,” she said. For them, the idea that their daughter had died by suicide did not make sense. “Knowing your child, that didn’t match,” said Mary Jo Pennig.
Since Ecker was the last person to see Alex Pennig Vivant, the detectives focused on him. “He is the only one who can tell us what happened. He was the only one to be there,” said O’Donnell. They questioned Ecker on what had happened that night. He said that he and Alex Pennig had gone to several local bars, and when they came home, everything was fine: “We laughed on the way back,” said Ecker. DESANTO asked him if, once they entered the apartment, they had fought. Ecker said no.
Det. Abby Desanto: You did not argue or anything?
Matthew Ecker: No.
Det. Abby Desanto: Is there no fight with both of you?
Matthew Ecker: Not between us.
For hours, Ecker continued to say that Pennig had locked himself in the bathroom, pulled the blow and then opened the door to try to help him: “This pistol left behind a closed door … I did not shoot him.“”
Ramsey County District Court 
But the detectives had their doubts. Then they received a call from the medico-legal unit which always dealt with the scene. And according to O’Donnell, what they found changed everything. “Once Alex was moved, they found below where Alex was lying down was a piece of round metal,“” She said. It was the shape of a ring, and about the size of a quarter. O’Donnell said it was part of the bathroom door lock, and the fact that he was discovered under Pennig was the key. “For us, it meant that the door was open before it was slaughtered.”
The detectives estimated that the discovery of the metal ring had proven that Ecker had lied and had not opened the door after hearing. The detectives suspected that Pennig and Ecker had supported and that she had locked the bathroom door to move away from him. Then Ecker opened the door, the metal part broke and fell on the ground, then he shot Pennig and she landed on it.
Ecker was accused of second degree murder. In February 2024, he was sentenced and sentenced later to 30 years.
