Alexandra Pennig loved and trusted Matthew Ecker — but he “ultimately scared her,” Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Ambrosia Mosby-Velasco said Wednesday in a downtown St. Paul courtroom.
While Pennig knew to run from Ecker in the early morning hours of Dec. 16, 2022, she “just didn’t know that running into that bathroom would ultimately end her life,” Mosby-Velasco said.
Alexandra Pennig (Courtesy of Pennig’s family)
In February, jurors found Ecker guilty of the sole count of second-degree intentional murder, not premeditated, for fatally shooting the 32-year-old Pennig in the head at her downtown St. Paul apartment — and that her death was not a suicide as he had claimed all along.
Ecker, of Fergus Falls, Minn., learned his own fate on Wednesday, when Judge DeAnne Hilgers gave the former emergency room nurse practitioner 30 years in prison — a term that was nearly five years longer than the presumptive sentence under state guidelines.
“Mr. Ecker, the letters from your family and friends speak of a side of you that was not presented at trial,” Hilgers told the 45-year-old before handing down the sentence. She said they described a loving father of four young children and of a man who gave “compassionate health care to his patients and his loved ones.”
But the side of Ecker that came out at trial, she said, was of a “man who willingly brought a handgun into Alex’s home. The man who concealed the handgun after the shooting. The man who then coldly calculated to pose Alex after her death to appear to be the person who had been holding the gun.”
Matthew Phillip Ecker (Courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Ecker was married at the time of the killing. He told investigators he had been seeing Pennig for about two years after meeting her at a Fergus Falls medical clinic where they both had worked. He said that Pennig knew about his wife and his children, and that Pennig was OK with it. It came out at trial that the relationship was concealed from his wife, who has since divorced him.
Ecker’s attorney, Bruce Rivers, asked Hilgers to give him a sentence of just under 22 years in prison. Rivers reminded the judge that Ecker is a father with “zero criminal history, not even a parking ticket.”
Up until being found guilty, Ecker had been out of jail on a half-million-dollar bond since late 2022.
If the large number of Pennig’s family and friends were looking for remorse from Ecker on Wednesday, they didn’t get it. He did not address the court.
Meanwhile, Rivers reminded the court that Ecker maintained his innocence from the beginning “and he does so to this day.”
The shooting
Ecker called 911 at 2:50 a.m. from the Lofts at Farmers Market apartment at 260 E. Fifth St. and reported that Pennig had shot herself in the head with his handgun. He told dispatch that he called four minutes after she pulled the trigger. He said that he had a permit to carry a firearm.
Officers found Pennig lying on her back in the bathroom with a gunshot wound to the left side of her head. She was not breathing and soon was pronounced dead. Her left hand was on top of a handgun, which was lying on her chest.
In the hallway outside the Lowertown apartment, Ecker told police that Pennig had taken his gun from his backpack, then ran and locked herself in the bathroom, where she shot herself. Ecker said he was on the apartment couch, ran to the bathroom and broke the door down with his shoulder to get inside, according to the criminal complaint.
At trial, the prosecution relied heavily on Ecker’s inconsistent statements he made to police immediately at the scene and later during interviews. Several investigators “started noticing inconsistencies that turned this from a suicide response to a homicide investigation,” Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Gordon Knobloch said.
Ecker initially told officers he performed CPR. He later admitted to investigators that he did not perform CPR, the complaint says.
Ecker told investigators he took the gun and put it in his suitcase because he got scared of getting in trouble because it was his gun. He said that after going back to the bathroom and looking at Pennig, he grabbed the gun and put it on her chest. Officers found the pistol “remarkably clean,” Knobloch said.
Under questioning at police headquarters, Ecker told investigators that Pennig called him Dec. 15 on his way to work in an emergency room in Roseau, Minn., and asked him to come see her, saying that she was being physically abused by her other boyfriend.
Ecker said he called his work and said he wasn’t making it and then drove to St. Paul, arriving at Pennig’s apartment around 2 p.m. They went to three bars. At the second bar, Pennig learned that her other boyfriend was at the Camp Bar on Robert Street.
Ecker said they decided to go to the bar, where the other boyfriend, who was with a woman, eventually approached them and punched him in the face. They stayed for another 45 minutes or so before returning to her apartment.
Meanwhile, Ecker’s attorney said at trial that Pennig fought mental health and addiction issues. He said that Ecker cared for Pennig and even loved her.
An analysis of Ecker’s phone showed that he had been refilling Pennig’s prescription drugs, including Adderall and diazepam, and helping her pay her rent.
‘She had a heart of gold’
Several of Pennig’s family members and friends gave statements in court Wednesday, describing her as a woman who would do anything for anyone and who had worked hard to become a registered nurse.
“She had a heart of gold, an adventurous spirit, a deep, deep love for her family and friends and all living creatures,” childhood friend Sara Hanson said.
As they became adults, Hanson said, she and Pennig bonded through their journey in recovery and sobriety.
“There’s no greater joy than being witness to a close friend, gaining her strength and power back and changing her life,” she said.
Pennig was full of life, which she approached with a “determined and observant lens,” said her older sister Brady Pennig. “Alex often cared more about others than she did for herself.”
She said Ecker “inappropriately and recklessly” prescribed her sister controlled substances and provided her alcohol and money, “and in doing so manipulated and controlled her. He held an invisible noose around her neck, and on December 16th, 2022, he ended her life.”
Five pictures of Alexandra Pennig were displayed on a large screen as her parents, Jim and Mary Jo Pennig, stood beside each other and addressed the court.
“Needless to say, the last 15 months have been the hardest months of our lives,” Jim Pennig said. “Our hearts have been broken beyond repair, and the future trajectory of our lives has been changed forever. We have a hole in our hearts, and as we look into each other’s eyes, we see sadness where once a zeal for life was.”
Her personality and “contagious smile and laugh will never be heard again,” he said.
“This is the person that was taken from us by Matthew Ecker, who made an oath, by the way, to provide care and protect the sanctuary of life,” he said. “He took her life violently with no regard for humanity. He robbed us of our daughter, our baby, and our future with Alex.”
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