Warning: This story contains explicit language and a description of graphic violence.

On Nov. 30, 2023, Dean Penney told an undercover RCMP officer about how he pushed his wife down a set of stairs.

A week later, during a second recorded interview on Dec. 8, Penney spoke of the need to finish the job.

“I did hit her a couple times to make sure that she wouldn’t be waking up or anything like that. I didn’t want that kind of shit happening to me,” Penney said in a video recording that was played in Supreme Court in Corner Brook on Tuesday.

“I did hit her with a f–king, just one of those little mallet hammers that was sitting there on the floor.”

The officer playing the crime boss can only be referred to by a pseudonym, Rudy.

Penney has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of his estranged wife, Jennifer Hillier-Penney, and has pleaded not guilty. She was last seen Nov. 30, 2016. Her body has never been recovered.

In opening statements earlier this month, Penney’s lawyer said the pressures Penney was under made his confession unreliable.

“Is what Mr. Penney said to the crime boss, the fictitious crime boss, true? Our position will be at the end that it was not,” defence lawyer Mark Gruchy said on April 1.

Penney adds new details following first interview

Last week, the jury saw the first interview between Penney and the fictitious crime boss. Penney told Rudy that a fight had broken out between the estranged couple. In that video, played in court Friday, Penney said he pushed Hillier-Penney down a set of stairs into their garage.

Hillier-Penney was bleeding from her head and ears and didn’t have a pulse when he went into the garage, he recounted on the video.

But on Tuesday, the court heard more details, including how Penney and Rudy reenacted the incident, where Rudy played Hillier-Penney lying on the ground.

“The smack was here on her head, and she had a smack here from where, I guess, she came down the steps. And I just took the mallet hammer and hit her a couple times like that to make sure,” Penney said.

“Maybe two, three times … Hard enough that I knew. Because the third time, there was like a big splatter.”

That declaration led to audible sobbing in the courtroom from members of Hillier-Penney’s family, who have been present every day of the trial. On Tuesday, some of Hillier-Penney’s cousins attended for the first time.

Jurors could also be seen wiping away tears. Penney kept his head low, following along with the video via a transcript.

In the video shown in court on Tuesday, Penney said he wrapped Hillier-Penney’s head and face in plastic wrap and placed her into two garbage bags.

He closed the bags with duct tape, then rolled Hillier-Penney into a canvas Seadoo cover before placing her into his green duck decoy bag.

After the garage was cleaned, and Penney had a conversation with his daughter, Deana, Penney said he pulled his vehicle up to the garage, took Hillier-Penney’s body, and later drove to his cabin around 45 minutes away.

He then gave Rudy new details about how he hid Hillier-Penney’s body in the ocean.

Penney had originally said that he had left the wharf by his cabin, sailed into the Hare Bay Islands area and threw all of the evidence overboard.

In the second interview, Penney said he drove in the dark. And while people were in the area, he told Rudy he wasn’t seen.

“They wouldn’t have seen any lights flashing or anything, cause I went out there in the dark. The vehicle was shut off, the lights were off … rolled on down as quiet and discreet as possible,” Penney said.

“I was going out as far as I could, for the deepest water I could, and I swear I let everything go …I just threw everything. The little f–king hammer, everything. It’s all gone.”

In the same video, Penney spoke of how boards installed on the boat to hold duck decoys doubled as a ramp.

“All I had to do was just roll her out,” he said. “Pushed everything in at the same time … I got lucky.”

Penney said he placed additional weight at several points around the bag, including around Hillier-Penney’s ankles and feet, to ensure her body sank.

Penney later showed Rudy the general area of where he said he dumped Hillier-Penney’s body using mapping software on Rudy’s computer. Rudy also pulled a weather report from the night, showing Penney faced wind gusts of over 35 km/h during his ride.

Fake yacht captain job

It was Penney’s two decades of experience on the water that formed a key part of the Mr. Big operation set up around the St. Anthony, N.L., man.

The first recorded interview served as a job interview for Penney to become the next captain of Rudy’s yacht. But before he could do that, Rudy said, they needed to talk about how they could “fix” the problem Penney was facing.

Throughout both recorded interviews, Penney made Rudy aware of how important the job was to him. Penney was facing compounding financial pressures, and said he was aware of the public’s perception of him.

At multiple points throughout the video, Penney said he was panicked on the night of Nov. 30, 2016, and that he made a stupid mistake.

“I’ll be paying for it for the rest of me life, no matter if I’m in or out of it. But I got to live with it now, no matter what happens. I’m just trying to make a living and look after my family that I got left, that’s all,” Penney said.

Penney got the opportunity to interview for the captain’s position because the previous captain, who was actually another undercover officer who was referred to as Ryan, had fallen ill. It was a staged scenario in the operation.

Rudy told Penney the plan was for Ryan to be the one to ultimately take the fall for Hillier-Penney’s death, but gaps in the story from the first interview required a second one. Rudy said Penney’s story had to become Ryan’s.

Penney and Rudy then met for the interview on Dec. 8, 2023, in Edmonton to finalize the details of Penney’s captain contract and fill in the gaps.

“You told me to be honest. I’m being honest,” Penney told Rudy.

Crown prosecutor Shawn Patton finished his questioning of Rudy on Tuesday afternoon.

Gruchy chose to end proceedings for the day in order to begin his cross-examination of Rudy fresh on Wednesday morning.

SOURCE: CBC