Post Mortem | The Survivor Story of Hannah Pettey

Natalie Morales (0:10)

Welcome to Post Mortem, I'm 48 Hours correspondent Natalie Morales, stepping in to host today to talk with Anne-Marie Green about a story she reported on. It is about the attempted murder of Hannah Pettey, who incredibly survived after being poisoned with lead. Anne-Marie, thanks for joining me.

Anne-Marie Green (0:29)

Thank you, it's good to be here.

Natalie Morales (0:31)

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?

Anne-Marie Green (0:39)

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.

Natalie Morales (1:02)

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 Pettey, 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. 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?

Anne-Marie Green (2:00)

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.

Natalie Morales (2:29)

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. And when you first met her, what was the interview like? What was your impression of her mindset?

Anne-Marie Green (2:46)

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 roller coaster 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?

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.

Natalie Morales (3:45)

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 was, it just lit up that x-ray. It was unbelievable to see that.

Anne-Marie Green (4:08)

Yeah. The reason she could not keep anything down when she was losing weight is because she literally had lead filling her digestive system. So she couldn't get the food down. 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.