Star Tribune
30-year sentence for man who fatally shot girlfriend in her St. Paul home, then said it was suicide
A western Minnesota man received a 30-year term Wednesday for fatally shooting his girlfriend in her apartment in St. Paul’s Lowertown neighborhood, then telling police her death was a suicide.
Matthew P. Ecker, 45, was sentenced in Ramsey County District Court after jurors convicted him of second-degree intentional murder in connection with the death of Alexandra L. Pennig, 32, on Dec. 16, 2022.
With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Ecker is expected to serve nearly 20 years in prison and the balance on supervised release.
According to the criminal complaint:
Officers responded to the 200 block of E. 5th Street shortly before 3 a.m. after Ecker called saying Pennig had shot herself in the head four minutes earlier. He told police that he and Pennig had been in an open relationship for two years, and he later told investigators they met at a Fergus Falls clinic where they both worked.
Upon arrival at the apartment, officers found Pennig lying in the bathroom, not breathing, with a gunshot wound to her head. Her hand was on Ecker’s gun, which was on her chest. Officers noted she had little to no grip on the weapon.
Ecker initially told officers that Pennig grabbed his gun after the two got into an argument and that she secluded herself in the bathroom before he heard a gunshot.
The complaint stated that Ecker then changed his story — first telling police that Pennig pointed the gun at her head in front of him, then that she ran into the bathroom with the gun and closed the door on him.
Ecker was brought to police headquarters and agreed to speak to investigators, the complaint said. Ecker repeated to investigators that Pennig took his gun, held it to her head, then locked herself in the bathroom. He said he heard a “pop,” then forced the door open and found Pennig on on the floor with the gun beside her.
He said he placed the gun on Pennig’s chest, washed his hands and called 911 from Pennig’s phone.
Star Tribune
Trump wanted generals like Hitler’s and said Nazi leader ‘did some good things,’ John Kelly claims
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff is warning that the Republican presidential nominee meets the definition of a fascist and that while in office, Trump suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ”did some good things.”
The comments from John Kelly, the retired Marine general who worked for Trump in the White House from 2017 to 2019, came in interviews with both The New York Times and The Atlantic. They build on a a growing series of warnings from former top Trump officials as the election enters its final weeks.
Kelly has long been critical of Trump and previously accused him of calling veterans killed in combat ”suckers” and ”losers.” Still, his new warnings came just two weeks before Election Day, as Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers ”enemies from within.”
”He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too,”’ Kelly recalled to The Times. Kelly said he would usually quash the conversation by saying ”nothing (Hitler) did, you could argue, was good,” but that Trump would occasionally bring up the topic again.
In his interview with The Atlantic, Kelly recalled that when Trump raised the idea of needing ”German generals,” Kelly would ask if he meant ”Bismarck’s generals,” referring to Otto von Bismarck, the former chancellor of the German Reich who oversaw the unification of Germany. ”Surely you can’t mean Hitler’s generals,” Kelly recalled asking Trump. To which the former president responded, ”Yeah, yeah, Hitler’s generals.”
Trump’s campaign denied these stories on Tuesday, with Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, arguing Kelly has ”beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated.”
Polls show the race is tight in a string of swing states, and both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are crisscrossing the country making their final pitches to the sliver of undecided voters.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate who served 24 years in various units and jobs in the Army National Guard, quickly used the interviews to assail Trump on Tuesday night.
Star Tribune
Officials await word on whose remains were found in camper that burned in Aitkin County
Officials are awaiting word on whose remains were found in a camper that burned overnight this week in northern Minnesota.
The Aitkin County Sheriff’s Office said it was alerted about 8:15 a.m. Monday by a caller about the camper having caught fire roughly 10 miles north of McGregor at a residence in Shamrock Township.
Law enforcement showed up and found the remains inside, the sheriff’s office said. They have since been sent to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office for identification.
The State Fire Marshal is heading the investigation into what led to the fire.
You hear a lot of women saying they’d rather be alone in the woods with a bear, not a man, because they considered the man to be more dangerous.
I always chose the man, because my interactions with men have generally been positive, and a man wandering through the woods seemed likely to be a hunter or a naturalist or just someone out enjoying nature. Someone reasonable. Someone more likely to harbor a save-the-maiden fantasy than a desire to harm. Bears, on the other hand, if they have it in their head to attack, there is little you could do but try to survive.
A recent visit to Ely’s North American Bear Center changed my mind. Not that I think less of men, but that I think more of bears. Black bears, at least.
The Bear Center provides refuge to three black bears, at least one of whom would have been otherwise euthanized. There’s Lucky, abandoned or orphaned as a cub, who was begging for food near Madison, Wis., and who came within an hour of being put down before a rescuer whisked him off to Ely. There’s Tasha, fat, sleek, and gorgeous, discovered in 2015 in Kentucky trying to nurse on her dead mother, who was believed to have been hit by a vehicle. And Holly, separated from her mother during an Arkansas fire, and who had slipped off to hibernate before our visit.
The bears were fascinating, delicately lipping up cranberries and shelling out nuts with their back teeth during our visit. We learned that their sense of smell is seven times stronger than that of a bloodhound, and that they can smell through an organ on the roof of their mouths.
In fact, sometimes they’ll stand erect and open their mouths – which looks threatening, but it’s really just to get a better sense of their surroundings, said Spencer Peter, assistant director and biologist at the center.
Hollywood trains them to stand like that for movies, he said. “But they’ll dub in the sound.”
