00:00:01
48 Hours presents. I don't like to go back and think of her at the bottom of the stairs of the
00:00:14
stairs. Who in Marty's life who would have done this? She was found in a pool of blood. Blood
00:00:20
who has done this to Marty. I had no idea who I could have done it. Could it have been somebody at work?
00:00:26
Whoever did it was still out there out there. She's such a good person. Who would do that to somebody? How could
00:00:31
anyone do this to my daughter? To my daughter, Marty. [Music] I think that day will stay with me
00:00:43
forever. September 8th, 2010 was a normal day at the office. Then there was a 10:00
00:00:51
production meeting and Marty wasn't in it. That was extremely unusual. Marty is very dependable and reliable.
00:01:03
Marty is a big bunch of dynamite in a little bitty package. She might weigh 97 lbs soaking wet, but she gets stuff
00:01:11
done. She is a genuine, good-hearted, outgoing, fun person. She is a hard worker and she's always
00:01:24
trying to make everything better. We work for an apparel company. It's a small manufacturing facility. It's a
00:01:31
tight-knit group. The meeting was over and I asked, "Where's Marty?" And somebody said, "We
00:01:38
don't know." I sent her a quick text. Maybe something had come up. No reply to the text. I called her a few times. She
00:01:45
never phoned me back. That's why I knew that something was wrong because she would not just miss work.
00:01:55
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
00:02:05
house. When I arrived there, her car was sitting in the driveway. I walked up, rang the doorbell, no
00:02:16
answer. Knocked on the door, no answer. So, I went back to my car and my cell phone and I called the office and said,
00:02:23
"The house seems eerily empty. I think perhaps you should call the police." The neighborhood is a very quiet
00:02:35
residential neighborhood. We don't get many calls in that area. [Music] I went up to the front door. I noticed
00:02:44
that the door was closed and not locked. I opened up the door and said, "It's the
00:02:54
police department. Marty, are you home?" I said that over and over again. I do notice what appears to be a woman's
00:03:00
purse uh sitting on a table in the kitchen or dining area. Seeing the purse there told me that, you know, I'm
00:03:09
married and I have, you know, my wife doesn't go anywhere without her purse. So, at that point, I was kind of
00:03:15
thinking, well, maybe she is here somewhere then. I saw no clues upstairs that would
00:03:22
indicate any kind of struggle. And then I started walking down the stairs to the basement.
00:03:33
When I got to about two or three steps from the very bottom, I noticed that there was a person laying on the floor
00:03:40
kind of in a fetal position, covered head to toe in blood. And there was a large amount of blood surrounding this
00:03:47
person on the floor. Marty was breathing. It seemed like it was somewhat labored.
00:04:00
I knelt down next to her and I asked her over and over again, "Who did this? Who
00:04:07
did this to you, Marty? Who did this to you?" I wanted to get I guess what could
00:04:12
have been a dying declaration if if that was what that was going to be. [Music] [Music]
00:04:45
When I walked in, they had just wheeled her in. I could not tell if it was a man
00:04:50
or a woman. Couldn't tell if she was young or old. Couldn't tell what race she was.
00:04:57
It was what appeared to be a lifeless form with dried blood in this swollen head.
00:05:06
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,
00:05:17
muscle of the left neck had been completely cut through and the major artery actually had a couple of scrapes
00:05:25
on it. So, it's literally millimeters away from having been cut through. For the next hour and a half, we just
00:05:37
meticulously cleaned and put back together all of those injuries. I remained still very concerned about
00:05:48
her head. In addition to the cut, she had all these bruises and swelling to her face. And head injury to me is
00:05:56
something that I take very seriously. Concussions, which is essentially what she had, can lead to swelling. and they
00:06:02
can look fine initially and then die 24 sometimes 72 hours later. [Music] Some of the nurses were starting to get
00:06:12
very quiet and tears sort of welling up and then in the back of my mind I'm going, "Wait a minute. This happened in
00:06:20
my neighborhood. Let me get a call into my wife. Let me find out where my kids are."
00:06:27
It starts slowly hitting you in waves, the enormity of what really had happened.
00:06:38
My grandma picked me up and went to the hospital and they took me straight back to the ICU.
00:06:47
I had no idea how serious it was because I wasn't getting a lot of information. I
00:06:51
didn't even know what happened. I saw my mom and I just I started balling. I didn't I didn't recognize
00:07:00
her. Her eyes were swollen shut. Her arms, her legs, her hands were the only thing that I could recognize.
00:07:10
I don't know how to describe it other than you just have knots in your stomach and you're in disbelief.
00:07:20
Marty's head was swollen like three times the size of her normal head. It was just unbelievable. You're kind of in
00:07:29
shock that this is your daughter laying there. [Music] My brother, I just know my brother was
00:07:41
very angry because it's his. It's our mom, but no one can do that to his mom. Like that just really got him worked up.
00:07:50
The fact that both of us the fact that somebody could just hurt our mom. Like you can't just try and take our mom away
00:07:55
from us. As a teenager, of course, I'd been sassy with my mom and we'd gotten in
00:08:02
arguments. Seeing her in that state just made me feel so bad for everything that I had
00:08:10
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
00:08:20
will never be mean to you ever again." When we got to the hospital, some key things that I noticed was that her
00:08:29
clothes appeared to be intact, her bra appeared to be intact, and there was no signs of a sexual assault. Every step of
00:08:38
the process, you're looking for some sort of motive. At that time, I was advised her mother
00:08:46
had arrived at the hospital, and I went to speak with her to obtain any information we could to assist us with
00:08:52
this investigation. They were asking me if I could think of anyone who might have done this to Marty.
00:09:01
Marty's mother tells us that she has an ex-husband by the name of Steve Hill. Uh, she advised us that Marty and Steve,
00:09:08
they communicate regularly. Her mother also told us she was a workaholic. She very rarely left the house. To her
00:09:15
knowledge, she wasn't dating anybody. And if she was not working, she was typically at home.
00:09:21
Marty was still unable to communicate with us. We had very limited information as to who she might have been with, who
00:09:28
she may have had recent communication with, and naturally your first thought is possibly the ex-husband might be
00:09:37
responsible. The detectives asked me about my parents. I kept asking like, "Do your
00:09:44
parents get along?" I remember being really defensive, like my dad would never do this, and no one that I know
00:09:51
would. We go to Marty's ex-husband's house, Steve Hill, to interview him that night.
00:10:00
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
00:10:07
about his history with Marty and that they had had some rough times together, but he loved her and he would never hurt
00:10:13
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
00:10:19
stuck with the information of Mr. Hill was not a suspect and very limited after that.
00:10:27
Me and my dad had a lot of conversations trying to get to the bottom and think of
00:10:31
who would have done it. Someone had broken into my grandma's house a few days before. Maybe it was the same
00:10:38
person and maybe someone was after our family. [Music] They had bandages over her cuts in her
00:10:49
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
00:10:58
blood dripping down her eyes. At that point, we still weren't sure what was going to happen. We knew she
00:11:08
was fighting to stay alive. I just remember I started crying and saying, "All I want to do is talk to my
00:11:20
mom." Like, the only thing I wanted to do is be able to talk to my mom. [Music] [Music]
00:11:48
There was quite a fear really among the office. Could somebody else be a target?
00:11:55
you're looking over your shoulder even at the office and when you're leaving the office and everywhere you go
00:11:59
wondering who has done this to Marty and if you know them. Prairie Village detectives came to the
00:12:09
office. Obviously, they're just trying to get a sense of Marty's routine, just looking for any ideas that perhaps would
00:12:17
would give them a direction in which to turn. Marty's mother told us that there was a
00:12:22
company by the name of B&J Construction who had recently done work at her house who she had actually referred to Marty.
00:12:30
She told me that the supervisor of that construction company was named Brian and
00:12:34
that he seemed to be a nice guy. I thought Brian was a hard worker and a family man and he did good work.
00:12:48
Actually, that is why Marty decided to go ahead and use him because he did some stuckcoing inside my house and he did a
00:12:57
really good job. When I initially called Brian, I didn't even know his last name. He called me
00:13:05
back and told me that his last name was Pennington. He was 26 years old, lived in Leon,
00:13:11
Missouri, approximately an hour and a half from the Kansas City metro area. We decided that we wanted to just ask
00:13:19
him some basic questions. [Music] We arrived at Brian's house a little after 9:00 p.m. When we initially pulled
00:13:32
up, it was a very dark house. It's kind of secluded. When we knocked on the door, we were
00:13:38
invited in the house. My partner and I followed Brian into the kitchen. He was very polite, cooperative.
00:13:46
How long did you work in Marty's house? U three or four days. What did you think when you heard that
00:13:53
Maria got attacked? I really didn't know what to think. She's a really really decent lady.
00:13:58
Have you heard what happened to her at all? No. Her mother-in-law was looking on the
00:14:02
news channel earlier and showed pictures of her house and stuff and I really didn't look at that.
00:14:10
During this conversation, I noticed that Brian had several scratches on the left side of his face.
00:14:18
Where are the scratches from on your face? Big dog sitting outside. What kind of dog you have?
00:14:26
When did those happen? Uh, yesterday. She just jumps all over me. And when I went down yesterday to
00:14:32
unhook the chain, she jumped up and caught me in the side of the face. When I looked at the scratches, they
00:14:38
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
00:14:45
he had attacked Marty. He told me that he had not. He kept stressing to us that he was
00:14:51
having financial difficulties and there was no way he could drive to Kansas City
00:14:54
to commit this crime due to the fact he didn't have enough money for gas. I talked to Brian's wife, Jessica, in
00:15:01
the living room of the house. Has Brian been here all this week? I asked her if Brian had been home on
00:15:08
the morning of the attack. He finished that job last month and he's been here with me for two weeks.
00:15:14
Okay. At night. Night and day. And day. Yeah. He ain't going nowhere tonight. I can't sleep at night if he's not here.
00:15:22
She said there was no way that he could have done this attack because he had been with her the entire time. I also
00:15:28
asked Jessica about the scratches on Brian's face. Did you know he got those? They're from a dog. I swear.
00:15:36
I did not believe Jessica. She seemed like she was very naive. She was very young. I think she was 20 years old at
00:15:42
the time of this. She had two young children. And I thought she would say anything possible to help protect her
00:15:49
husband and to have him around. We have no doubt that we're going to find the person that's responsible for
00:15:54
this. Brian doesn't have a heart for that. I I hope so. Believe me, I hope you're
00:16:00
right. Um, I'm just scared. I've never been in this kind of situation. Yeah. And if you're telling me the
00:16:07
truth, you don't have a thing in the world to worry about. Besides my kids, I know he did work on
00:16:11
that house. That's what I'm scared about. And then I asked Brian if he happened to
00:16:17
have any clothes that had blood on him in his house. He immediately told me that he didn't. I asked him if I could
00:16:23
look through his clothing, his dirty clothing, and he told me that I could. I saw a hamper in the corner of the
00:16:30
bathroom. When I started pulling clothes out, I found a pair of jeans near the bottom of
00:16:35
the hamper. When I pulled the jeans out, I immediately saw they were covered in a
00:16:41
red stain. Most of the stain was towards the knees and down towards the bottom portion of
00:16:47
the pant leg. You know what this stuff is on the bottom? Grease. Grease. Some not blood though, right? No. Okay.
00:16:57
When I saw the red stains, it was definitely a moment of we might have something.
00:17:07
I tried to remain calm and friendly with Brian and asked him if he would give me
00:17:12
consent to take the jeans from his house. Brian signed a written consent form that
00:17:18
I could take jeans, shoes, DNA swabs, and also pictures of the scratches on his face. I guess the best word, we were
00:17:25
surprised that we were getting this sort of cooperation with the recovery of these items.
00:17:30
I think Brian Pennington thought we would not follow up, we would not do any other investigation, that we would just
00:17:35
believe what he said and believe what his wife was telling us. My partner and I drove directly to the
00:17:43
crime lab. I think we got there around 11:00 at night. Actually, within 30 minutes of being at
00:17:50
the crime lab, we were told that the stains on the genes tested positive for human blood. We did not know who the
00:17:57
blood belonged to. It could have been anybody's blood at that point, and we would have to wait a couple more days to
00:18:02
determine who the blood belonged to. We did not tell anybody about this. We were told that Marty would be able to
00:18:09
talk to us eventually. We did not want to interfere with the investigation and have them give Marty ideas. We wanted
00:18:16
anything that Marty would say to come directly from Marty and nothing we gave her thoughts or suspicions about. So we
00:18:22
were kind of in a holding pattern waiting to get Marty's side of the story. And in fact on that Saturday
00:18:28
morning, the morning after leaving Mr. Pennington's house, we were contacted that Marty was talking at the hospital.
00:18:37
[Music] Why would Brian Pennington give up damaging evidence so easily? Chat now on
00:18:49
Facebook and Twitter. [Music] I don't remember those first days. I don't remember feeling any pain.
00:19:14
I do remember feeling like I had too much medicine in me. I didn't feel good. [Music]
00:19:25
I believe it was the third day when I started speaking. Suddenly, it all kind of flooded back
00:19:32
what had happened. There was no questions. I knew who it was and what he had done.
00:19:44
[Music] I remember the day that Marty said her first word. My daughter Monica and I were walking in
00:19:58
and the doctor said she just spoke. As soon as we got in there, we asked her if she could remember who did this.
00:20:11
and she said, "Brian, [Music] I had gotten up early. I heard a knock at the door. Looking out
00:20:24
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
00:20:32
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
00:20:38
call first. I went to the door, let him in, and I remember it just being a fairly brief
00:20:47
conversation. He mentioned that he remembered something that was in the basement that he thought I should have
00:20:54
done. So, we started walking to the basement. I was leading. Um, I I do remember talking, but I also
00:21:03
felt like he was being quiet. like you would at least say, "Huh? What?" "Huh?" "Okay."
00:21:10
I was getting an odd feeling as we're going down the stairs. And then just two steps from the bottom
00:21:16
of the stairs, he grabbed my throat. It was very tight and very strong. I kept saying, "What are you doing?" It
00:21:27
was just silence. He never said a word. My voice kept getting lower, softer, and
00:21:34
suddenly my voice I couldn't speak. My voice couldn't come out and I passed out.
00:21:48
[Music] We received a call from the crime lab. The blood found on the jeans was in fact
00:21:58
Marty Hills blood. We knew we had enough for an arrest warrant at that time. On Monday, September 13th, 5 days after
00:22:07
the attack, we go to Brian's house in Leon, Missouri. We find Brian driving down the road. He
00:22:17
was laid back in the front passenger seat. It appeared his wife was driving. He was taken into custody at that time.
00:22:25
He showed no signs of being upset. He showed no signs of any anger. There was absolutely no emotion.
00:22:34
When my mom got the call and and they told her that they had arrested Brian Pennington, she almost fell over.
00:22:43
It was extremely emotional for my mom because she actually referred Brian to Marty. She had actually worked with
00:22:50
Brian for 2 years prior to that. knew his wife, knew his kids, and felt that Brian was a safe person. So, hearing
00:22:58
that they actually had enough evidence to arrest him made it real that it was really him and that he really did this
00:23:06
and this was a person that she knew. I believe that Mr. Pennington is a an evil person. One of the theories we have
00:23:15
in this investigation is not only did Mr. Pennington strangle Marty initially. It's our belief that he then beat her
00:23:23
head into the concrete floor which caused multiple facial fractures. And if that was not enough, he then slit her
00:23:32
throat three to four times, leaving her to die in her basement that morning. I believe that Mr. Paintington
00:23:41
was surprised when we arrived at his door and told him that Marty Hill was still alive.
00:23:47
I don't believe Mr. Pennington thought that he would be caught. We always have a little saying that the
00:23:56
trauma surgeons save these patients lives, but we have the opportunity to get them back to living their lives.
00:24:07
The first time I met Marty, she had been in the hospital for about a week. Her brain was stunned and in shock. She
00:24:16
could walk, but it wasn't pretty. Her feet were very far apart. She couldn't put her feet together and stand still
00:24:23
without falling over. She had some issues with her vision. She had difficulty with her hearing. Um,
00:24:31
difficulty with her memory, difficulty with processing things. Um, she would change topics at the speed of light.
00:24:41
The attack was very difficult for both Steven and Mackenzie. Marty's kids. Steven is very protective over his
00:24:48
mother. He lives in Houston and he flew up that same evening and he he took it very hard. He actually cleaned the blood
00:24:58
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
00:25:06
over the house. I grew up a lot through the whole thing. I spent my 16th birthday in the hospital
00:25:16
and I remember her giving me a card and her handwriting on the card was something that really like really made
00:25:23
it real for me. Her handwriting just didn't look like her handwriting. It was almost like she had to start over like
00:25:31
being a kid again and build up to where she is now. Marty's daughter McKenzie played a huge
00:25:39
role in Marty's recovery. I feel that McKenzie's biggest role was Marty could feel like a mother. I have a
00:25:52
responsibility. I have things that I need to get done for my daughter. What comes after you start feeling
00:26:01
better physically is the unseen trauma, the emotion of realizing what happened to you. So after she had left the
00:26:13
hospital and gone home to my mom's, it became more about the emotional trauma that had to start healing.
00:26:25
At that point, I was still just processing it. how someone that seems perfectly fine, perfectly normal, could
00:26:36
be that could could be that violent. Brian Pennington had been arrested for attempted first-degree murder.
00:26:47
My goal was to put Mr. Pennington in prison for as long as our legal system would allow.
00:26:54
The most important thing that we had was the DNA evidence on Mr. Pennington's genes. We also had facial scratches on
00:27:02
his cheeks that he advised were from a pitbull. They were strong evidence for us, but defense attorneys can always
00:27:10
find ways to try to cause reasonable doubts. The frustrating part about this investigation is that we absolutely have
00:27:20
no motive that we are aware of. There was no theft that occurred from Marty's house. She had money laying out.
00:27:25
Her purse was laying out. He did not take it. There was no sexual assault. There was no history that they had
00:27:31
spoken since the work had been conducted at her house in late August. While preparing to go to court, we did
00:27:40
more background investigation on Brian. I checked our computer database and noticed that Mr. Pennington had a prior
00:27:47
police record. I believe he had over 60 contacts with law enforcement officers. He was
00:27:54
involved in several domestic violence incidents where injuries occurred to wives to girlfriends.
00:28:01
Battering women was nothing new to him. Jessica Pennington was a key witness to this case. She provided her husband an
00:28:11
alibi at the time of the initial interview by the detectives. She told the detectives that her husband was home
00:28:20
during the entire time frame of the attack. That was going to be hard to get around in front of a jury.
00:28:28
[Music] 48 hours presents will continue. The night before the preliminary hearing, Marty was very nervous about
00:28:59
seeing Brian Pennington. She was also very nervous about what she was going to say, what the attorneys,
00:29:06
what questions they were going to ask. The pressure was tremendous because in our opinion, Brian was and is a very
00:29:16
dangerous individual and if we failed at the preliminary hearing, he would be released. He would
00:29:25
be free. I was very concerned about Marty's physical health. When I first met her,
00:29:34
she was struggling just to walk and sit down in a chair. And one of my concerns was even as aggressive of a prosecution
00:29:42
that we were going to have, I didn't want to cause her more emotional harm or physical harm. The other concern was her
00:29:50
memory. We knew that if she could identify Mr. Pennington as her attacker in the
00:29:59
courtroom that we could get a conviction. The problem was with all of the injuries to her, we didn't know if
00:30:06
she would be able to do that. We were in the courtroom and they brought Brian in and they seated him to
00:30:17
the far right of our family. It It was very emotional and unbelievable. It just made you want to cry.
00:30:34
It was very hard to see him. Brian Pennington had no one on his side of the courtroom.
00:30:45
Not even his mother. Okay. He always stared straight at the wall and he never looked around until Marty
00:30:55
walked in the door. The only time he moved his head from straight forward was when she walked in
00:31:02
the room and I saw his eyes go like this. Almost like he saw a ghost. I will always remember that.
00:31:11
I could see it and feel it that he couldn't believe she was walking down that aisle going to go up and speak.
00:31:20
When Marty first walked into the courtroom, she was very slow. She was a little bit hunched over and I was
00:31:26
concerned if she was going to be able to make it through this. [Music] I've always told her just to focus on
00:31:33
me. You and I are going to have a conversation. Block everybody else out. It's it's going to be you and me. We can
00:31:40
do this. I remember while I was speaking I that I could out of the corner of my eyes kind of see him glancing at me.
00:31:46
Something about the basement. It was still hard to process because I'm seeing this person that had come to work
00:31:54
for me and I thought he was fine. He showed no emotion. I felt he was very detached from the
00:32:03
situation and it didn't bother him that he had almost killed a woman. The defendants that detach and show no
00:32:15
emotion are the ones that frighten us the most. It's still too hard to understand someone that you felt like
00:32:21
you knew was capable of something like that. I held my breath until she identified
00:32:31
Brian as the person that attacked her because I was very concerned with the traumatic brain injury with everything
00:32:39
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
00:32:45
there and could do what they needed me to do. I smiled at her. I wanted her to know
00:32:51
she did a great job. One of the other keys to the case was Jessica Pennington. I thought that she would be a very
00:33:02
hostile witness and would testify in his behalf, say he was home that entire time
00:33:08
frame. we were able to get her alone with the detectives and tell her how important it was to tell the truth.
00:33:17
I think the key factor with Jessica was learning how severely beaten Marty was and how close Marty came to dying. And I
00:33:26
think Jessica, the human side of her, understood that and realized it was more important to tell the truth than to
00:33:33
protect Brian. and Jessica Pennington broke down and at that time admitted to us that she
00:33:42
had lied and that in fact her husband, Mr. Pennington, was not at home with her during the time of the attack.
00:33:48
I learned from Jessica that Brian had attacked her on numerous occasions, assaulted and threatened her.
00:33:55
In the end, Jessica became one of our best witnesses against Brian. At the end of the preliminary hearing,
00:34:06
the judge ruled there was enough evidence to take the case to trial. It didn't appear that Brian had a lot of
00:34:14
fight left when it came to the case. And it was made clear to us through his defense council that he wanted to work
00:34:22
out a deal. The issue with the deal was how long would he serve in the Kansas State prison system.
00:34:30
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
00:34:40
the evaluation was Marty. We knew that she still had physical issues, mental issues, and I believe that Marty wanted
00:34:49
to work out a deal. There was a day when she called me and said, "It's hard enough for 12 people to
00:34:55
decide where to go to lunch, let alone decide what how to convict someone." It took several months, but we finally
00:35:07
agreed on 28 and 1/2 years because that was going to end it for Marty. She wouldn't have to testify. And
00:35:18
also I thought it was important for her children to have closure on this too. The sentencing, we expected it to be
00:35:31
brief and short and to the point and for him to be convicted and sentenced. I walked into the sentencing hearing.
00:35:42
I looked at Brian Pennington. I looked at the defense council. [Music] And I knew something was wrong.
00:36:12
[Music] At the sentencing hearing, Brian and his defense council were not speaking with
00:36:18
one another. Brian looked angry, so I knew that there was an issue. We were told that Brian wanted to withdraw his
00:36:28
plea. He wanted to go to trial. It was my perception that Brian had 6 weeks since the plea date to think about
00:36:39
serving 28 years in prison. Keep in mind he had not been alive for 28 years. So I
00:36:46
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
00:36:51
earth. My initial thought was I had told Marty it was going to be over today and
00:36:57
that may not happen. The courtroom was filled with tension. Many of Marty's family members were very
00:37:07
upset. Everyone who had traveled from miles and miles and spent a lot of money on plane tickets was like, "Oh my gosh,
00:37:14
you know, he's going to change his plea right here." It was decided that we would go in court
00:37:21
and that Brian would tell the judge the reasons why he wanted to withdraw his plea.
00:37:28
Brian simply told him it was the pressure and that it was too much time. The judge tells him that those are not
00:37:35
sufficient reasons to withdraw his plea. We then moved on to the victim's statements and their family members.
00:37:45
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
00:37:52
family through something that no family should ever have to go through. And you put me through something that a
00:37:57
15-year-old especially should never have to go through. I looked at him straight
00:38:01
in the face the entire time I was talking. I got to tell him how strong our family
00:38:08
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
00:38:14
saying. [Music] I finally felt powerful towards him. The most powerful part to me was when
00:38:23
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
00:38:33
him, "Why did you do this to me?" And he just sat there, no response. The judge asked Brian if he had anything
00:38:42
to say before he gave him his sentence. The attorneys came back and said he that
00:38:46
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
00:38:56
explanation. Hopefully one day he'll communicate why he did it. I think it would help us all
00:39:02
understand that it wasn't just a random event, that there was some motive behind
00:39:07
it, some reason why it happened. The judge followed the plea agreement and sentenced Brian to 28 and a half
00:39:17
years in the Kansas prison system. I felt like we had a big team working together that made things right.
00:39:31
Great detectives, great attorney, great family support, great friends. I'm so proud of my mom. I need to become
00:39:43
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
00:39:51
person so that if anything like that happened to me that I would be able to make it through it like she did.
00:39:58
[Music] I'm so thankful for the people at my mom's work that stepped up. It wasn't just like someone is missing
00:40:10
from work. it was that one of their friends hadn't shown up and they were wondering why. I think that the
00:40:17
co-workers were definitely like my mom's angels. I don't think any of us consider
00:40:23
ourselves heroes in this. It's Marty's the hero. She could have decided this thing can beat me and it it's made her
00:40:33
an amazing person. [Music] I think the kick kickboxing it initially started as just something to push myself
00:40:48
a little further working out. I knew that that was going to be a key role in getting back to my regular life.
00:40:59
I do have scars. I have all across my neck still. I tend to probably pull my hair forward and cover it up.
00:41:07
I still have tingling down the left side. My face feels like a mannequin from here on and my ears very tight. So,
00:41:15
it's always a reminder for sure. I think she's still dealing with the emotional part of it that it's never
00:41:24
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
00:41:31
that it's still there. I think about the attack and the event a lot. How is someone 26 and how do they get to
00:41:47
a level that they could be that vicious and and be capable of doing those things?
00:42:00
If I could ask Pennington anything, it would be why or what? What were you doing? I And
00:42:09
yes, just why [Music] Do you have an opinion about this story? Chat now on Facebook and Twitter.
00:42:37
[Music] [Music] [Music] Finch be there always. Mr. East, my friend and I help people in trouble.
00:43:18
It is going to be okay. Thank you for giving me my life back. Taking very good care of me.
00:43:30
The world is better off with both of us in it. A person of interest. Tuesday 10:9 central only CBS on television,
00:43:38
online, on the go, and now on iPad. CBS News. [Music]