Crown questions why Dean Penney stayed in fake crime group if he was intimidated

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Dean Penney felt intimidated and scared while working with fictitious crime organization, he tells court at trial

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Patten walks to a map in the courtroom that shows the town of St. Anthony and the waters around Penney’s cabin. Penney told the crime boss an exact location of where he dropped Hillier-Penney’s body off of his boat. It was an area off of the Hare Bay Islands.

However, Penney testified in court that the boat was never used, and that it was part of the lie he felt he needed to keep up with the crime boss.

Penney says he never even had a body to dump.

"The story that I told was a made-up, fabricated story. They didn’t believe the truth … so I had to make up a lie."

Penney later told Patten that he never assumed the people in the operation were police. The only time Penney knew the police were police was when he saw Vic with police during his arrest at the Deer Lake Regional Airport.

Patten shifts his line of questioning to Penney’s intelligence and street smarts. Penney has a Grade 8 education, but worked to become a fishing captain and is a jack of all trades in hunting and fishing.

Patten suggests Penney might have used his street smarts to be paranoid during the first interview, suggesting that he might have known something was up.

Penney said that wasn’t the case, but he did consider leaving the interview. He told Patten he was "scared out of his senses."

"I guess I’m just not a very good liar."

Penney insists that he was only with the fake crime organization for the well-paying work. He says he was making up to $1,500 per week with the organization.

Penney had other options, he said, but stuck with the group for that reason — and not because he enjoyed the work.

"One week with them was as good as three weeks … on my own," he said.

Patten brings up that even though Penney says he was scared or intimidated, he kept coming back and associating himself with the group.

Penney says that was only for the money.

"I was very, very broke. I needed the money."

Patten said Penney’s work went beyond that and questions Penney on covert operation advice he told the group. Penney says he saw stuff on TV and told them about that.

Penney said he didn’t want anything bad to happen to the woman, and that it looked like she was in a bad position.

Penney had the opportunity not to go to that meeting, Patten said, but Penney said he wanted to go to back up Vic.

Patten said that showed that Penney enjoyed these kind of scenarios, Penney said he’s not sure how someone could enjoy that.

By the time the second interview occurred, Penney had done several staged jobs with the fictitious organization.

Penney said he did those jobs because he needed to make ends meet. Patten contended that at this point, Penney was much more than just a fisherman.

Penney circled back to how he was worried about what could happen to people who cross the organization, saying he saw violent things the group did.

Penney recalled a specific instance involving a person he believed was sex worker in St. John’s. That was a staged part of the operation, in which the woman was shown with bruises on her face.

Patten recalled the testimonies of Rudy and Vic, another undercover RCMP officer, who said the operation was designed to show Penney that violence could never come to him.

Dean Penney tells undercover officer in video he hit estranged wife with small hammer, disposed of body

The topic shifts to the second crime boss interview, and the intimidation Penney said he felt during it.

Patten reviewed the second video —  the same video the jury watched — and said he didn’t see or feel Penney was under the pressure he spoke about.

When Penney said Rudy was intimidating, Patten pointed to how Rudy, a pseudonym used by the fake crime boss, seemed calm and relaxed. The video shows Rudy with his feet kicked up on a desk, reclining back as he smokes a cigar.

Penney disputed that Rudy was calm, saying the jury watched a blurred video and couldn’t see his face and his true intention.

Penney said he wanted to work to save his relationship with Hillier-Penney. Text messages revealed during the trial suggest she was done with him, and working with a lawyer to decide about next steps.

Patten asks Penney if he was concerned or jealous about if Hillier-Penney was seeing another man. It was explored in text message conversations between the couple. A total of 670 pages of texts between September and November 2016 were pulled from Hillier-Penney’s phone.

Penney sent Hillier-Penney a text on the day of her disappearance about their belongings. The text sent by Penney said he didn’t want her taking “half my stuff.” Penney has said during her testimony that he provided whatever Hillier-Penney wanted, and insists their belongings would have been split 50-50.

This contradicts an account given in court. Family friend Morley Hillier testified that Penney told him Hillier-Penney wasn’t going to get anything he worked for and that she would disappear.

The court heard earlier in the trial that details in Penney’s statements to police changed from the first to the third statement.

With this in mind, Patten asked Penney if this was because he had trouble keeping his stories straight. Penney insisted his story was the truth, but he remembered additional information as the days went on and he relayed what he remembered to police.

“There was no holes; I was just remembering more things,” he said.

Patten asked if he thought he knew there was a window that he could get Hillier-Penney alone in his home on 8 Husky Drive on Nov. 30, 2016. Penney said he wasn’t thinking that.

Watch parts of one of Dean Penney's police interviews — and what he said about the day Jennifer Hillier Penney was last seen alive

Crown attorney Shawn Patten rises to begin Dean Penney’s cross-examination. He starts his questioning by asking Penney about the statements he gave to police in the days following Jennifer Hillier-Penney’s disappearance.

In his statements, Penney said he called his wife in the evening on the day she disappeared. Penney said he was distraught in the days that followed, and he might have been misremembering things at times. He started to remember more as the days went on, he said.

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