Live to Tell: The Stranger You Know
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To start listening, download the Amazon Music app for free or go to amazon.com slash adfreetruecrime. That's amazon.com slash adfreetruecrime to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Case closed. I don't like to go back and think of her at the bottom of the stairs.

I think that day will stay with me forever.

September 8th, 2010 was a normal day at the office. Then there was a 10 o'clock production meeting and Marty wasn't in it. That was extremely unusual. Marty is very dependable and reliable. Marty is a big bunch of dynamite in a little bitty package. She might weigh 97 pounds soaking wet, but she gets stuff done. She is a genuine, good-hearted, outgoing, fun person.

She is a hard worker and she's always trying to make everything better. We work for an apparel company. It's a small manufacturing facility. It's a tight-knit group. The meeting was over and I asked, "Where's Marty?" And somebody said, "We don't know." I sent her a quick text, maybe something had come up. Never replied to the text. I called her a few times. She never phoned me back. That's why I knew that something was wrong because she would not just miss work.

There was a real sense of concern, tears. What do we do? What should we do? About 11:30, I decided to drive by her house. When I arrived there, her car was sitting in the driveway. I walked up, rang the doorbell, no answer. Knocked on the door, no answer. So I went back to my car, on my cell phone, and I called the office and said, "The house seems eerily empty. I think perhaps you should call the police."

The neighborhood is a very quiet residential neighborhood. We don't get many calls in that area. I went up to the front door. I noticed that the door was closed and not locked. I opened up the door and said, "It's the police department. Marty, are you home?" I said that over and over again. I do notice what appears to be a woman's purse sitting on a table in the kitchen or dining area.

Seeing the purse there told me that, you know, I'm married and I have, you know, my wife doesn't go anywhere without her purse. So at that point I was kind of thinking, well, maybe she is here somewhere then. I saw no clues upstairs that would indicate any kind of struggle. And then I started walking down the stairs to the basement.

When I got to about two or three steps from the very bottom, I noticed that there was a person laying on the floor, kind of in a fetal position, covered head to toe in blood. And there was a large amount of blood surrounding this person on the floor. Marty was breathing. It seemed like it was somewhat labored. I knelt down next to her and I asked her over and over again,

"Who did this? Who did this to you, Marty? Who did this to you?" I wanted to get, I guess, what could have been a dying declaration if that was what that was going to be. When I walked in, they had just wheeled her in. I could not tell if it was a man or a woman. Couldn't tell if she was young or old. Couldn't tell what race she was. It was what appeared to be a lifeless form.

with dried blood in this swollen head, my first thing was to assess to see had they brought me a live person or not. What we found was the major veins, skin, muscle of the left neck had been completely cut through. And the major artery actually had a couple of scrapes on it, so it's literally millimeters away from having been cut through. For the next hour and a half,

just meticulously cleaned and put back together all of those injuries. I remain still very concerned about her head. In addition to the cut, she had all these bruises and swelling to her face. And head injury to me is something that I take very seriously. Concussions, which is essentially what she had, can lead to swelling and they can look fine initially and then die 24, sometimes 72 hours later.

Some of the nurses were starting to get very quiet and tears were welling up. And then in the back of my mind I'm going, "Wait a minute, this happened in my neighborhood. Let me get a call in to my wife. Let me find out where my kids are." It starts slowly hitting you in waves the enormity of what really had happened. My grandma picked me up and went to the hospital and they took me straight back to the ICU.

I had no idea how serious it was because I wasn't getting a lot of information. I didn't even know what happened. I saw my mom and I just, I started bawling. I didn't recognize her. Her eyes were swollen shut. Her arms, her legs, her hands were the only thing that I could recognize. I don't know how to describe it other than you just have knots in your stomach and you're in disbelief.

Marty's head was swollen like three times the size of her normal head. It was just unbelievable. You're kind of in shock that this is your daughter laying there. My brother

I just know my brother was very angry because it's our mom, but no one can do that to his mom. That just really got him worked up, the fact that both of us, the fact that somebody could just hurt our mom. You can't just try and take our mom away from us. As a teenager, of course, I'd been sassy with my mom, and we'd gotten in arguments.

Seeing her in that state just made me feel so bad for everything that I had said ever, any little teenager thing. I just wish I could take it all back. I got really close to her and I said, "I will never be mean to you ever again."

When we got to the hospital, some key things that I noticed was that her clothes appeared to be intact, her bra appeared to be intact, and there was no signs of a sexual assault. Every step of the process, you're looking for some sort of motive. At that time, I was advised her mother had arrived at the hospital, and I went to speak with her to obtain any information we could to assist us with this investigation. They were asking me if I could think of anyone who might

have done this to Marty. Marty's mother tells us that she has an ex-husband by the name of Steve Hill. She advised us that Marty and Steve, they communicate regularly. Her mother also told us she was a workaholic. She very rarely left the house. To her knowledge, she wasn't dating anybody. And if she was not working, she was typically at home.

Marty was still unable to communicate with us. We had very limited information as to who she might have been with, who she may have had recent communication with, and naturally your first thought is possibly the ex-husband might be responsible. The detectives asked me about my parents. I kept asking, like, "Do your parents get along?" I remember being really defensive, like, "My dad would never do this," and "No one that I know would."

We go to Marty's ex-husband's house, Steve Hill, to interview him that night. He was very cooperative, invited us in the house. He gave us the full account of what he had done that day and told us about his history with Marty and that they had had some rough times together, but he loved her and he would never hurt her. He wanted to know who did this just as bad as we did.

And that's where it became very difficult for us. We were stuck with the information of Mr. Hill was not a suspect and very limited after that. Me and my dad had a lot of conversations trying to get to the bottom and think of who would have done it. Someone had broken into my grandma's house a few days before. Maybe it was the same person and maybe someone was after our family.

They had bandages over her cuts in her neck, so we really couldn't see them, but we could see the blood coming from her eyes. It was just kind of tears with blood dripping down her eyes. At that point, we still weren't sure what was going to happen. We knew she was fighting to stay alive. I just remember I started crying and saying, "All I want to do is talk to my mom." Like, the only thing I wanted to do was be able to talk to my mom.

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There was quite a fear really among the office. Could somebody else be a target?

You're looking over your shoulder even at the office and when you're leaving the office and everywhere you go wondering who has done this to Marty and if you know them. Prairie Billy's detectives came to the office. Obviously they're just trying to get a sense of Marty's routine, just looking for any ideas that perhaps would give them a direction in which to turn. Marty's mother told us that there was a company by the name of B&J Construction who had recently done work at her house who she had actually referred to Marty.

She told me that the supervisor of that construction company was named Brian and that he seemed to be a nice guy. I thought Brian was a hard worker and a family man and he did good work. Actually, that is why Marty decided to go ahead and use him because he did some stuccoing inside my house and he did a really good job.

When I initially called Brian, I didn't even know his last name. He called me back and told me that his last name was Pennington. He was 26 years old, lived in Leeton, Missouri, approximately an hour and a half from the Kansas City metro area. We decided that we wanted to just ask him some basic questions.

We arrived at Brian's house a little after 9:00 PM. When we initially pulled up, it was a very dark house that's kind of secluded. When we knocked on the door, we were invited in the house. My partner and I followed Brian into the kitchen. He was very polite, cooperative.

During this conversation, I noticed that Brian had several scratches on the left side of his face.

When I looked at the scratches, they didn't appear to be consistent with what a dog would do. I felt like he was hiding something from me. I asked him if he had attacked Marty. He told me that he had not.

He kept stressing to us that he was having financial difficulties and there was no way he could drive to Kansas City to commit this crime due to the fact he didn't have enough money for gas. I talked to Brian's wife, Jessica, in the living room of the house. Has Brian been here all this week? I asked her if Brian had been home on the morning of the attack. He finished that job last month and he's been here with me for two weeks. Okay, at night.

She said there was no way that he could have done this attack because he had been with her the entire time. I also asked Jessica about the scratches on Brian's face. They're from the dog, I swear.

I did not believe Jessica. She seemed like she was very naive. She was very young. I think she was 20 years old at the time of this. She had two young children, and I thought she would say anything possible to help protect her husband and to have him around.

Brian doesn't have the heart for that. He doesn't. He doesn't. I'm just scared. I've never been in this kind of situation. Besides my kids. I know he did work on that house. That's what I'm scared about.

And then I asked Brian if he happened to have any clothes that had blood on them in his house. He immediately told me that he didn't. I asked him if I could look through his clothing, his dirty clothing, and he told me that I could. I saw a hamper in the corner of the bathroom. When I started pulling clothes out, I found a pair of jeans near the bottom of the hamper. When I pulled the jeans out, I immediately saw they were covered in a red stain.

Most of the stain was towards the knees and down towards the bottom portion of the pant leg. You know what this stuff is on the bottom? Grease. Grease? Something, I don't know. Not blood though, right? No. Okay. When I saw the red stains, it was definitely a moment of, we might have something. I tried to remain calm and friendly with Brian and asked him if he would give me consent to take the jeans from his house.

Brian signed a written consent form that I could take jeans, shoes, DNA swabs, and also pictures of the scratches on his face. I guess the best word, we were surprised that we were getting this sort of cooperation with the recovery of these items. I think Brian Pennington thought we would not follow up, we would not do any other investigation, that we would just believe what he said and believe what his wife was telling us. My partner and I drove directly to the crime lab. I think we got there around 11 o'clock at night.

Actually, within 30 minutes of being at the crime lab, we were told that the stains on the jeans tested positive for human blood. We did not know who the blood belonged to. It could have been anybody's blood at that point, and we would have to wait a couple more days to determine who the blood belonged to.

We did not tell anybody about this. We were told that Marty would be able to talk to us eventually. We did not want to interfere with the investigation and have them give Marty ideas. We wanted anything that Marty would say to come directly from Marty and nothing we gave her thoughts or suspicions about. So we were kind of in a holding pattern, waiting to get Marty's side of the story.

And in fact, on that Saturday morning, the morning after leaving Mr. Pennington's house, we were contacted that Marty was talking at the hospital. I don't remember those first days. I don't remember feeling any pain. I do remember feeling like I had too much medicine in me. I didn't feel good. I believe it was the third day when I started speaking. Suddenly, it all kind of flooded back what had happened. There was no questions.

I knew who it was and what he had done. I remember the day that Marty said her first word. My daughter Monica and I were walking in and the doctor said she just spoke. As soon as we got in there, we asked her if she could remember who did this and she said Brian. I had gotten up early. I heard a knock at the door.

Looking out the window, I saw that it was Brian Pennington, the man that I had hired to do some work on the house. I couldn't really understand for sure why he would be there. It was odd that he was there that early. It was odd that he didn't call first. I went to the door, let him in.

And I remember it just being a fairly brief conversation. He mentioned that he remembered something that was in the basement that he thought I should have done. So we started walking to the basement. I was leading. I do remember talking, but I also felt like he was being quiet. Like you would at least say, "Huh? What? Huh? Okay." I was getting an odd feeling as we're going down the stairs.

And then just two steps from the bottom of the stairs, he grabbed my throat. It was very tight and very strong. I kept saying, "What are you doing?" It was just silence. He never said a word. My voice kept getting lower, softer, and suddenly my voice -- I couldn't speak. My voice couldn't come out, and I passed out. -We received a call from the crime lab. The blood found on the jeans was, in fact, Marty Hill's blood.

We knew we had enough for an arrest warrant at that time. On Monday, September 13th, five days after the attack, we go to Brian's house in Leeton, Missouri. We find Brian driving down the road. He was laid back in the front passenger seat. It appeared his wife was driving. He was taken into custody at that time. He showed no signs of being upset. He showed no signs of any anger. There was absolutely no emotion.

When my mom got the call and they told her that they had arrested Brian Pennington, she almost fell over. It was extremely emotional for my mom because she actually referred Brian to Marty. She had actually worked with Brian for two years prior to that, knew his wife, knew his kids, and felt that Brian was a safe person. So hearing that

they actually had enough evidence to arrest him, made it real that it was really him and that he really did this, and this was a person that she knew. I believe that Mr. Pennington is an evil person. One of the theories we have in this investigation is not only did Mr. Pennington strangle Marty initially, it's our belief that he then beat her head into the concrete floor, which caused multiple facial fractures,

And if that was not enough, he then slit her throat three to four times, leaving her to die in her basement that morning. I believe that Mr. Pennington was surprised when we arrived at his door and told him that Marty Hill was still alive. I don't believe Mr. Pennington thought that he would be caught. We always have a little saying that the trauma surgeons save these patients' lives, but we have the opportunity to get them back to living their lives.

The first time I met Marty, she had been in the hospital for about a week. Her brain was stunned and in shock. She could walk, but it wasn't pretty. Her feet were very far apart. She couldn't put her feet together and stand still without falling over. She had some issues with her vision. She had difficulty with her hearing, difficulty with her memory, difficulty with processing things. She would change topics at the speed of light.

The attack was very difficult for both Stephen and Mackenzie, Marty's kids. Stephen is very protective over his mother. He lives in Houston, and he flew up that same evening, and he took it very hard. He actually cleaned the blood off of the floor of Marty's house. He wouldn't let anybody in the house. He didn't want anybody to see her blood all over the house.

I grew up a lot through the whole thing. I spent my 16th birthday in the hospital and I remember her giving me a card and her handwriting on the card was something that really, like, really made it real for me. Her handwriting just didn't look like her handwriting. It was almost like she had to start over, like being a kid again and build up to where she is now. Marty's daughter Mackenzie played a huge role in Marty's recovery.

I feel that Mackenzie's biggest role was Marty could feel like a mother. I have a responsibility, I have things that I need to get done for my daughter. What comes after you start feeling better physically is the unseen trauma, the emotion of realizing what happened to you.

After she'd left the hospital and gone home to my mom's, it became more about the emotional trauma that had to start healing.

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At that point, I was still just processing it. How someone that seems perfectly fine, perfectly normal could be that, could be that violent. Brian Pennington had been arrested for attempted first-degree murder. My goal was to put Mr. Pennington in prison for as long as our legal system would allow.

The most important thing that we had was the DNA evidence on Mr. Pennington's jeans. We also had facial scratches on his cheeks that he advised were from a pit bull. They were strong evidence for us, but defense attorneys can always find ways to try to cause reasonable doubt.

The frustrating part about this investigation is that we absolutely have no motive that we are aware of. There was no theft that occurred from Marty's house. She had money laying out. Her purse was laying out. He did not take it. There was no sexual assault. There was no history that they had spoken since the work had been conducted at her house in late August.

While preparing to go to court, we did more background investigation on Brian. I checked our computer database and noticed that Mr. Pennington had a prior police record. I believe he had over 60 contacts with law enforcement officers. He was involved in several domestic violence incidents where injuries occurred to wives, to girlfriends. Battering women was nothing new to him. Jessica Pennington was a key witness to this case.

She provided her husband an alibi at the time of the initial interview by the detectives. She told the detectives that her husband was home during the entire timeframe of the attack. That was going to be hard to get around in front of a jury. The night before the preliminary hearing, Marty was very nervous about seeing Brian Pennington.

She was also very nervous about what she was going to say, what the attorneys, what questions they were going to ask. The pressure was tremendous because in our opinion, Brian was and is a very dangerous individual. And if we failed at the preliminary hearing, he would be released. He would be free. I was very concerned about Marty's physical health.

When I first met her, she was struggling just to walk and sit down in a chair. And one of my concerns was even as aggressive of a prosecution that we were going to have, I didn't want to cause her more emotional harm or physical harm. The other concern was her memory.

We knew that if she could identify Mr. Pennington as her attacker in the courtroom, that we could get a conviction. The problem was, with all of the injuries to her, we didn't know if she would be able to do that. We were in the courtroom, and they brought Brian in, and they seated him to the far right of our family. It was very emotional and unbelievable.

It just made you want to cry. So it was very hard to see him. Brian Pennington had no one on his side of the courtroom, not even his mother. He always stared straight at the wall, and he never looked around until Marty walked in the door. The only time he moved his head from straight forward was when she walked in the room, and I saw his eyes go like this, almost like he saw a ghost.

I will always remember that. I could see it and feel it that he couldn't believe she was walking down that aisle, going to go up and speak. When Marty first walked into the courtroom, she was very slow. She was a little bit hunched over, and I was concerned if she was going to be able to make it through this. I've always told her just to focus on me. You and I are going to have a conversation, block everybody else out. It's going to be you and me. We can do this.

I remember while I was speaking that I could, out of the corner of my eyes, kind of see him glancing at me. It was still hard to process because I'm seeing this person that had come to work for me and I thought he was fine. He showed no emotion. I felt he was very detached from the situation and it didn't bother him that he had almost killed a woman.

The defendants that detach and show no emotion are the ones that frighten us the most. It's still too hard to understand someone that you felt like you knew was capable of something like that. I held my breath until she identified Brian as the person that attacked her because I was very concerned with the traumatic brain injury, with everything she'd been through if she was going to be able to do that, and she did it.

I felt that it was important that I got up there and could do what they needed me to do. I smiled at her. I wanted her to know she did a great job. One of the other keys to the case was Jessica Pennington. I thought that she would be a very hostile witness and would testify in his behalf, say he was home that entire time frame. We were able to get her alone with the detectives and tell her how important it was to tell the truth.

I think the key factor with Jessica was learning how severely beaten Marty was and how close Marty came to dying. And I think Jessica, the human side of her, understood that and realized it was more important to tell the truth than to protect Brian. And Jessica Pennington broke down and at that time admitted to us that she had lied and that in fact her husband, Mr. Pennington, was not at home with her during the time of the attack.

I learned from Jessica that Brian had attacked her on numerous occasions, assaulted and threatened her. In the end, Jessica became one of our best witnesses against Brian. At the end of the preliminary hearing, the judge ruled there was enough evidence to take the case to trial.

It didn't appear that Brian had a lot of fight left when it came to the case. And it was made clear to us through his defense counsel that he wanted to work out a deal. The issue with the deal was how long would he serve in the Kansas State prison system.

We could go through the jury trial and get 38 years, or we could work out a plea and get less than that. A key factor in the evaluation was Marty. We knew that she still had physical issues, mental issues, and I believe that Marty wanted to work out a deal. There was a day when she called me and said, "It's hard enough for 12 people to decide where to go to lunch."

let alone decide how to convict someone. It took several months, but we finally agreed on 28 and a half years because that was going to end it for Marty. She wouldn't have to testify. And also I thought it was important for her children to have closure on this too. The sentencing, we expected it to be brief and short and to the point and for him to be convicted and sentenced.

I walked into the sentencing hearing. I looked at Brian Pennington. I looked at the defense counsel, and I knew something was wrong. Okay, it's time to commit.

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At the sentencing hearing, Brian and his defense counsel were not speaking with one another. Brian looked angry, so I knew that there was an issue. We were told that Brian wanted to withdraw his plea. He wanted to go to trial.

It was my perception that Brian had six weeks since the plea date to think about serving 28 years in prison. Keep in mind, he had not been alive for 28 years, so I don't think he could get his head around the fact that he would serve more time in prison than he had been on this earth. My initial thought was I had told Marty it was going to be over today, and that may not happen. The courtroom was filled with tension.

Many of Marty's family members were very upset. Everyone who had traveled from miles and miles and spent a lot of money on plane tickets was like, "Oh my gosh, you know, he's gonna change his plea right here." It was decided that we would go in court and that Brian would tell the judge the reasons why he wanted to withdraw his plea.

Brian simply told him it was the pressure and that it was too much time. The judge tells him that those are not sufficient reasons to withdraw his plea. We then moved on to the victim's statements and their family members.

I was almost excited to be able to talk to him. I will never understand why you did this to my mom. You put my entire family through something that no family should ever have to go through. And you put me through something that a 15-year-old especially should never have to go through. I looked at him straight in the face the entire time I was talking. I got to tell him how strong our family was. And even though he pretended like he wasn't listening, he wouldn't look at me, I knew that he heard what I was saying.

I finally felt powerful towards him. The most powerful part to me was when Marty stood up and faced the man that tried to kill her. She said to Brian, "I was nothing but nice to you," and asking him, "Why did you do this to me?" And he just sat there, no response. The judge asked Brian if he had anything to say before he gave him his sentence. The attorneys came back and said that he had nothing to say.

That he has the right to say nothing is very hard. It feels like he should at least owe us an explanation. Hopefully one day he'll communicate why he did it. I think it would help us all understand that it wasn't just a random event, that there was some motive behind it, some reason why it happened. The judge followed the plea agreement and sentenced Brian to 28 and a half years in the Kansas prison system.

I felt like we had a big team working together that made things right. Great detectives, great attorney, great family support, great friends. I'm so proud of my mom. I need to become more like her and the person that she is. I need to have her work ethic and her personality and just to be a likable person so that if anything like that happened to me that I would be able to make it through it like she did. I'm so thankful for the people at my mom's work.

that stepped up. It wasn't just like someone is missing from work. It was that one of their friends hadn't shown up and they were wondering why. I think that the coworkers were definitely like my mom's angels. I don't think any of us consider ourselves heroes in this. Marty's the hero. She could have decided this thing can beat me and it's made her an amazing person.

I think the kickboxing, it initially started as just something to push myself a little further working out. I knew that that was going to be a key role in getting back to my regular life. I do have scars. I have all across my neck still. I tend to probably pull my hair forward and cover it up. I still have tingling down the left side. My face feels like a mannequin from here on.

and my ear is very tight. So it's always a reminder for sure. I think she's still dealing with the emotional part of it, that it's never going to be something that we can just put in the past, even though it's over with and he's in jail and everything, that it's still... I think about the attack and the event a lot. How is someone 26 and how do they get to a level that they could be that vicious and

and be capable of doing those things. If I could ask Pennington anything, it would be why or what were you doing? And yes, just why.

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