Closing arguments underway in 1st-degree murder trial of Dean Penney

Penney detailed wife’s murder, but testified he made it up under pressure

Dean Penney took to the witness box for a second day on Friday, discussing how he felt while working with undercover RCMP officers playing characters in a fictional crime organization. As the CBC’s Colleen Connors reports, Penney said he was intimidated and scared, but ultimately needed the money and potential job that could have come with it.

The last witness of the trial was Dean Penney himself, telling his side of the story to the court.

Over the course of his testimony, Penney said he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Jennifer Hillier-Penney. He felt fear while working with a fictitious crime organization – set up by the RCMP and employed by undercover officers as part of a so-called Mr. Big sting operation – and said fear led him to fabricate a story about his involvement in her death.

Throughout multiple hours of interviews between Penney and the undercover officer playing the crime organization’s leader, Penney gave vivid and graphic details about how he killed and disposed of his wife. He told the crime boss he pushed Hillier-Penney down a set of stairs, hit her with a mallet-like hammer and disposed of her body in the waters off Northern Newfoundland.

However, in his testimony on the stand Penney said the entire story was a fabrication. He said he told the crime boss what he wanted to hear — as opposed to the truth — and  he felt he had to keep lying in order to protect himself from perceived threats from the group.

Defence lawyers Mark Gruchy and Jeff Brace have contended the confessions were false, while Crown attorneys Kate Ashton and Shawn Patten have tried to make the case that Penney killed his wife in a planned and deliberate manner.