Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Postmortem. I'm 48 Hours correspondent Natalie Morales, stepping in to host today to talk with Anne-Marie Greene about a story she reported on.
Chapter 2: What happened to Hannah Pettey and why is her story significant?
It is about the attempted murder of Hannah Petty, who incredibly survived after being poisoned with lead. Anne-Marie, thanks for joining me. Thank you. It's good to be here.
Chapter 3: Who were the initial suspects in Hannah's poisoning case?
And what an incredible story and a survivor's story as well. But this isn't the first poisoning case that we've unpacked together, right?
Actually, it is not. The last time we spoke about a poisoning case, it was a case that you had worked on, Angela Craig. And we did this actually live on stage at CrimeCon. It was about a Colorado dentist who was accused and then recently convicted of poisoning his wife using milkshakes and milkshakes. actually sort of make an appearance in this case as well.
Yeah, we're going to get into all of that. First, though, a reminder, as always, to our listeners that if you haven't listened to this 48 Hours episode yet, you can always find the full audio just below this episode in your podcast feed. Go take a listen, then come on back and join us for the conversation. All right, it was January 2022.
Hannah Petty, she was a 22-year-old Alabama mother of two, and she was admitted to the hospital following six months of suspicious symptoms. By the time she got there, though, doctors said that she had just hours left to live.
Chapter 4: What evidence emerged regarding Brian's behavior towards Hannah?
Now, investigators believe she had been poisoned, and they quickly zeroed in on two possible suspects, and that would be Hannah's mother, Nicole, and Hannah's husband, Brian.
Now, I have to tell you, Anne-Marie, as I was watching this episode, I kept flip-flopping back and forth between the two, hearing their different stories and trying to figure out, okay, who is actually responsible for poisoning Hannah?
You know what, Natalie, you're kind of not the only one. We had a lot of access in this case. Obviously, we had a victim who survived, so we could talk with her about her experience. But Hannah's mother, Nicole, we spoke to several times. Hannah, we spoke to several times. And then Brian, we were able to talk to. And this is over a span of a couple of years.
And so with each interview, you sort of learn a little bit more. The people that we spoke to, particularly Hannah, you see her evolve and change over the years.
Yeah, we're going to dive into that first interview, the first time you're meeting Hannah. And as you said, it is so rare in a case like this that we actually have a survivor to be able to talk with us.
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Chapter 5: How did Hannah's medical treatment evolve during her recovery?
And when you first met her, what was the interview like? What was your impression of her mindset?
Yeah.
It was two years ago, right? It's 2023. I really did feel like for Hannah, she had just been sort of spit out of this incredible rollercoaster ride. Brian had been charged but had not gone to trial yet. And so she's kind of still stuck in limbo, still trying to figure out what happened to her. For a lot of what she went through, the memories were hazy.
She sort of remembered the early days more than what happened to her in the hospital. She was in a coma for a lot of that time. And in fact, you know, there were a number of times throughout where she sort of was like, did Brian ask about me? You know, what did he say about me? You could tell that there was still a part of her that was still wondering, was there love there? Was this by mistake?
Could he have actually done this? Was everything that I thought, the life that I had built, was that all, you know, a mirage? So you could see that she was still wrestling with it.
Yeah, I mean, it's very understandable that she was conflicted in all of this. But you do see her evolve and sort of grow, as you said. I was just so amazed by her composure. And she truly is a medical miracle. I mean, you see that X-ray of the lead impacted within her colon. It just lit up that X-ray. It was unbelievable to see that.
Yeah. The reason she could not keep anything down and she was losing weight is because she literally had lead filling her digestive system. So she couldn't get the food down.
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Chapter 6: What were the red flags in Hannah's relationship with Brian?
She couldn't get the water down. It would go through and then come right back up. That's how much lead was in her system. The doctors did something that they had never done before. They irrigated her bowels like they had to literally, you know, flush everything. this stuff out of her system. They did it 24-7, like around the clock, until it was all out.
They had never had to do anything like that before. They didn't even know if it would work, which is part of the reason why they put her in this medically induced coma. It's also, as you see in the hour, you know, she had sort of liquid on her brain or in and around her brain, and that stuff had to be taken out. The fact that she has survived is stunning.
She is probably still going to be living with the side effects of this for her entire life. But think about this, Natalie, like every pain or ache she ever feels, she's going to wonder, is this the lead that's still in my system?
That's going to be haunting her forever. It has to be so incredibly painful physically and emotionally, of course, what she went through. Now, in the hour, we do see that Hannah throughout seemed to try to make her marriage work the Despite, though, some pretty big red flags. I mean, did their relationship start off that way, too?
So, you know, she was very young, right? She's a teenager. He's much older. Ten years and ten months, I believe she said.
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Chapter 7: What role did life insurance policies play in the investigation?
And it did not start out that way. She says that he would bring her flowers. He was really sweet. Those first six months. But then slowly she started getting these kind of red flags again. So he was a little controlling. He would ask about, you know, the things that she wore. You know, if the skirt was above the knee, why are you wearing that?
If she was talking to, you know, she said she had been working at a restaurant for a little bit. And if she was talking to somebody there, a man there for a little bit longer, he would make comments. And by the time she's getting married, she is really wondering if she should go ahead with this. And Nicole says to her, You can back out at any time.
you can have this baby, you don't need to be married, because just remember, everyone, she was already pregnant. But also, it was her wedding day. We hear stories all the time about people getting cold feet on their wedding day. It's a nerve-wracking decision. So once again, she put that to the side. But then there was this really concerning incident a couple years into their marriage.
They went on a little vacation to North Carolina, and she tells this incredible story about the couple getting into a car accident. We had her retell it. We actually sat in a car with her. So I want to play some portion of that interview about this accident that didn't make it into the hour.
I was asleep in the passenger seat and I woke up because like, I don't know, I think the smell woke me up because my chest started burning, like my nose started burning.
What were you smelling?
And it smelled like chemicals. I mean, that's the only way to explain it was just like straight up chemicals. I wake up, I lean up and I turn to Brian and he has his shirt covered over his nose. And I was like, what is that smell? And he just shrugged his shoulders like he didn't give me an answer.
He just shrugged his shoulders and just kept staring straight ahead like with his shirt covered over his nose. and then I put my, oh I forgot, my feet were on the dashboard, because that's how I was sleeping in the car. And I put my feet down, and it was like slopping wet on the floorboard. And I told him, I was like, something spilled. And he said, oh okay, or whatever.
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of Brian's trial and the jury's reaction?
A little bit of time goes by, and he said, I laid a jug of milk down in the back. He said, see if that's what spilled.
And so is that what you do, sort of turn around?
Yeah, so I unbuckle, you want me to unbuckle? So I unbuckle, and I turned around like this, and I'm like looking, but it was like dark though. So I'm like looking, and then that's when the car went completely off the side of the road like this, like straight into a ditch and it just kept going and going. And I was just like holding on to the back of the seat.
And I remember like I hit my head on the window really hard. And I think I had a concussion because I started throwing up the next day. And then we flipped, the car sitting this way. And then it immediately catches flames under my feet.
Scary. Yes. She says Brian has no problem getting out of the car, not attempting to help in any way. She does eventually make her way out of the car. But then he tells her to tell police officers that she was the one driving. And she does. And that is what's on the police report now. She says at the time she thought it maybe had something to do with insurance.
So she just sort of went along with what he said. I want to remind everyone we are talking about a very young woman here who's traumatized by this accident. And so she just kind of went along with it.
It's unbelievable. I mean, hearing that story and that, as you said, was not in the hour. I mean, that's a giant red flag. But then there's the other huge red flag for me as a viewer when we learned that Hannah, she told Lieutenant McDiarmid that Brian had taken out a life insurance policy while they were still dating. I mean, I'd never even heard of that before.
I didn't even know that was possible.
Yeah. And, you know, Hannah was aware of the life insurance policy. Her friends said that Brian kind of framed it as like, well, this is something that adults do. You know, and of course, all of Hannah's friends are her age. Right. So he seems like the older, more knowledgeable man. But she does remember him saying she said this to me a couple of times.
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