Dean Penney came home from a hunting trip on the night his estranged wife vanished from his house in St. Anthony, but he failed to disclose that to the RCMP in his first recorded statement.
Penney sat at his dining room table with Const. Camille Bryan on Dec. 1, 2016, and told her he had no idea where Jennifer Hillier-Penney could be.
Bryan took Hillier-Penney’s purse off the table and seized it as evidence. All of her belongings were still inside. Her phone was on the countertop. Her keys were still in the ignition of her car in the driveway. Her shoes were at the door.
“It was a shock to me,” Penney told Bryan in an audio statement played for the court on Monday. “It was a shock to everybody. I don’t know what else to say besides that.”
Dean Penney had been on a hunting trip at his cabin in nearby Northwest Arm. Hillier-Penney came back to the house they once shared as a family so she could babysit the couple’s 15-year-old daughter, Deana, for the week.
What Penney failed to tell the RCMP officer sitting across from him is that their daughter saw him in the garage the previous night, after her mother was last seen but before she was reported missing.
Deana Penney testified in her father’s first-degree murder trial Monday morning in Supreme Court in Corner Brook as the prosecution’s second witness. Penney has pleaded not guilty.
He smiled from ear to ear as his daughter described their relationship at the time of her mother’s disappearance, saying she was “always a dad’s girl.”
She told the court she last heard from her mother around 8 p.m. on Nov. 30, 2016, when her mother called to offer her a ride home from a friend’s house. She told her she didn’t want to leave yet, so Hillier-Penney went home.
Deana said she called her mom a little over an hour later, but got no answer. She assumed her mother had fallen asleep.
Deana said she noticed her mother’s phone in the kitchen when she got home. She also saw that her bedroom door was closed. She thought nothing of it.
“What was the condition of the house when you got home?” asked Crown prosecutor Kate Ashton.
“Normal. Untouched,” Deana responded.
The Crown wasted no time Monday by calling several witnesses to testify at the start of the second week of Dean Penney’s murder trial in Corner Brook. RCMP officers and family members took the stand, describing what happened during the first days after Jennifer Hillier-Penney was reported missing in December 2016. As the CBC’s Colleen Connors reports, the testimonies revealed different versions of what occurred.
She told the court she got a phone call from her father around 11 p.m., asking if she was still awake. He said he needed to come grab some hunting decoys from the garage, and didn’t want to scare her.
Deana said she popped her head into the garage a few minutes later to say goodnight to her dad. She said she saw him pick up broken decoys from the floor of the garage and put them into a bag, which he slung over his shoulder before leaving the garage.
She told the jury she woke to a persistent noise at 6:45 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2016.
It was her mother’s phone alarm. Deana said she banged on the bedroom door, but there was no answer. She opened the door and saw there was nobody inside.
That’s when she noticed all her mom’s belongings were still inside the house.
“Everything was set down like she had just arrived home,” Deana said. “It was like she just placed it there and left it.”
She called her grandmother, Ruby Penney, who came over within 20 minutes.
Deana said her grandmother called her father, who came home from the cabin right away.
Penney gives more detail in second statement
The jury spent Monday afternoon watching Penney’s second statement to police — a video recording taken at the RCMP headquarters in St. Anthony on Dec. 3, 2016.
Staff Sgt. Daniel Murrin began the interview by telling Penney he was in the suspect pool.
“Yes, I understand that,” Penney responded. “I’ve got nothing to hide. I wants to find her as bad as anybody else.”
Penney expressed concern that her disappearance would leave him with a financial burden, since she was still helping with some of the bills. The couple had split up in September.
Murrin said it was a real possibility that Hillier-Penney had been murdered or taken her own life. Penney placed his head in his hands and shook it back and forth, saying “no, no, no.”
“I’ll love her ’til the day I die. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”– Dean Penney in RCMP interview
Murrin had Penney take him through the sequence of events leading up to her disappearance.
This time around, Penney said he did call his estranged wife the night she disappeared to give her instructions about the dehumidifier. He said he asked her to have Deana call him when she got home from her friend’s house.
It was the same call described in different details by Hillier-Penney’s sister, Yvonne Decker, on the first day of the trial. Decker said that Penney seemed upset, and was questioning when Hillier-Penney would be returning home.
Penney also told Murrin he went home the night of her disappearance.
“I came up, took the bag of decoys, put them in the van and then that was it,” Penney said.
Murrin began asking questions about Penney’s cabin and his 11-foot boat. Penney invited them to conduct a search.
“I told the other officers … if they have any suspicion or anything, go and check the cabin,” he said.
He broke down crying at one point, describing a prank phone call he’d received the night before. Someone called to say Hillier-Penney’s body was found behind the stadium, he said, and he believed it was from the police.
Penney struggled to sit at times throughout the 90-minute interview, saying he’d spent the past 15 or 16 years with chronic nerve pain in his back.
Murrin asked him about Hillier-Penney’s life insurance, and he said the couple’s two daughters were listed as her beneficiaries.
He took no issue with Murrin saying he was considered a suspect, and said the family was racking their brains going through all possible scenarios.
“I’ll love her ’til the day I die. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”
The trial continues with Murrin still on the witness box Tuesday morning.
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