NOTES ON A KILLING-Kevin Flynn

of the blue. During it, she told Sandy to drop the restraining order and get back together with Ken. Penn was never seen again. One man stood to gain from Penn's disappearance, Ken Carpenter, but evidence was bleak, no blood, DNA, no body until detectives found notes hidden beneath the leather chair. It turned out to be a playbook for murder. The book we're featuring this evening is Notes on a Killing

with my guest journalist and author, Kevin Flynn. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Kevin Flynn, Dan.

considered a missing person's case. And there's an extended passage in the middle of the book kind of detailing that one day that I spent on the case, just it stumbled across some evidence and you were able to do a little shoe leather journalism and figure out this mysterious address and the deep woods where nefarious things were going on and anyway, it was always for that reason a favorite story of mine. But you know, the thing that got Rebecca interested in the story was the tale of

the victim in this case. Pen Meyer Penn was an extraordinary woman by all accounts, you know, really revered, almost you know, put on a pedestal by the folks in the area. She was a woman who came from great wealth, but did not necessarily live off of her family's largests. She lived very modestly in a house on a little lake in rural New Hampshire. She lived in the town of Goshen, and the lake was nicknamed the Goshen Ocean

by the residents. Penn liked to, as you say, you know, sort of made her money by weaving fabrics and afghans and being a fiber artist, where she would sell her wares at local farmers' markets. She was always with her favorite dog, Fluff. She and Fluff went everywhere together, and that included the alcoholics, anonymous meetings that she attended. Although she was, you know, a free spirit and beloved by her friends, she also had her demons that she was

working on. She was in recovery, and she was the kind of person who liked to help out her her friends, and she really extended herself and as we find out in the book, that is her undoing. Her kindness, her interest in her friends, her willingness to stand up for somebody in need, is how she ended up in the situation she was in.

so she was always outside. She had a green thumb and loved to work in the garden and other people's gardens and local farms in her bare feet and get dirty. She had her own sort of interesting sense of style. She had these big bangles and bracelets that were very distinctive to her. So she still had a flair and she had a lot of personality, and to some extent you might say she was stubborn in this sense that she wasn't one who suffered fools lightly.

miles in the opposite direction. So the county in which all this action takes place, Sullivan County, is a pretty small and rural you know, there is some some working farms, but it's mostly just sort of woods people living in very modest homes, sort of living a country kind of lifestyle in New England. And so Penn, you know, just kind of she comes from an industrial family of industrialists.

She had lots of money, her relatives, her ancestors, came over on the Mayflower, but she didn't live that flashy lifestyle. She certainly, you know, I guess you could say she went native. She fit right in with the folks in New Hampshire and wore you know, very modest close and drove, you know, a Honda CRV and didn't drive a Cadillac. And although she really could have, you know, flaunted her wealth, she just kind of fit in.

They had an amicable relationship. She had three grown kids, a son and two daughters, and she had gotten remarried around I mean thinks around two thousand and one or two thousand and two, and our story takes place in late two thousand and five, and her marriage, her second marriage, was on the rocks. Her husband was drinking too much, and of course she was in recovery, and so she, you know, wanted to get some support for that, for

being the spouse of a problem drinker. And so she went to alan On, which is a very similar program to aas it really is for family members of folks who have an addiction and you know, how were you supposed to deal with that person? And it is here that she met another fellow whose name was Jonathan Puriic.

Jonathan was about the same age as mid fifties. He had been married four times himself, and it took him, you know, the better part of his life to realize that that all of his relationships had fallen apart, and all of his career aspirations had fallen apart because of his drinking. And he finally got sober and you know it took to the program pretty well. And it's at this Allanon meeting that the two of them first meet. He is very taken by Pen, of course, because she's

very charismatic. She when she walks into a room, she doesn't seem like everybody else. She's got this bright personality, this aura around her. So he's immediately attracted. And while they are you know, very close friends, while Penn's marriage

is falling apart, they have a plutonic relationship. And it isn't until after Penn tells Jonathan that she is going to get a divorce that Jonathan asks her out and she says she would like that, but she's going to wait till the divorce is final, and Jonathan was a little put off, but then he realizes this is another part of her character that even though she's not, you know, going to stay in the marriage, she's true to avows

and and that set a lot to him. So they once they once the divorce was final, she and Jonathan were a couple, and their relationship was very intense. They they felt very passionately about each other.

in the car to take her wherever she wanted. And it's on a February day in two thousand and six where Penn is Joanne is waiting for Penn to come pick her up in the morning because she has a dentist appointment, and Pen does not arrive, and Joanne immediately knows that there's something wrong because if Pen were stuck somewhere, Penn would have called. If Pen were sick, she would

have called. If Penn had gotten into an accident, was stuck in a ditch, she would have gone to somebody's house to call and say that she couldn't make it. So Penn not showing up for jo Anne to take her to that appointment was the first red flag that something was wrong.

her sobriety. But she had gotten into AA in the you know, in the in the area, uh and had been uh, you know, had been sticking with the program and doing well and and socializing with different people in the in the program, and you know, uh, Sandy was I should say, Pen was just friendly with Sandy and you know, kept an eye out for her and happened to notice that Sandy was, you know, getting herself into a pretty bad spot as far as her relationships go.

And so Penn was keeping an eye on her about that.

twelve steps out. Very charismatic in that setting. But Ken was married, and he was married to of course, and it seems another woman from AA.

a relationship with Sandy. Sandy confided some of you know, the complications of her relationship with Ken, which of course Ken wanted to keep a secret. Sand Sandy confided these

with with Penn. Penn's first concern was, you know, she wasn't going to be judgy about whether or not, you know, Sandy should carry on with a married man, but she was very concerned that Ken, who had twenty plus years of sobriety, was dating a new beet because that is one of the foreboden things about the twelve step program is that if you're new to the program and you're dealing with your addiction, a new relationship, a sexual relationship,

is not advisable because you really need, they believe, that first year to sort of find yourself. And in fact, it's called the thirteenth step that people should not AA members should not date other AA members during their first year of recovery. So, you know, Penn and Jonathan, who had been sober for a long time been in the program,

that's you know, that consider that a different situation. But Ken should have known better than to be flirting, and you know, for lack of a better term, praying on Sandy. So you know, Penn was under you know, was under

the same impression that Sandy was. That Ken and Harve had a very you know, a thin relationship, that was they were on the outs, and that a divorce of some kind of separation of some kind was eminent as soon as Ken could figure out, you know, the financials of it and how he could keep her her insurance and other things that could kind of just kind of stretch the relationship out for about ten months, so Penn knew that knew all of this, And it wasn't until

Penn and Jonathan went to a party one evening that Ken was at with his wife, Harve, And when Penn arrived and saw Ken and Harve together as husband and wife, she realized that the story that Ken had been feeding

Sandy all these months was a lie. They were most definitely together, or at the very least Harve had no idea that she was supposed to not be with Ken, and Ken, realizing that he'd been caught cornered Penn at the party, begged her not to say anything to Sandy, and uh, you know, Penn, what.

my girlfriend. And you know, they have been through the program together, they had these life skills and the first thing that Penn says is, you know you have to remember you know, uh, the fifth step uh, and you know the seventh step and this, you know the steps that's that say you have to you know, be be

true and make amends to people. And you know, Ken's response was another AA platitude, which was you have to sweep your own side of the street, which in the program means you can't worry about what other people are doing. You have to focus on yourself. But the way he's saying, he's saying it is mind your own business. So about a week later, you know, Sandy learns the truth that she had been taken advantage of, and she breaks the relationship off with Ken, but it doesn't end there.

he's been involved for a long time. He knows better, and Sandra is certainly not, you know, I mean in terms of she's more vulnerable, she's depressed, she's got more problems, and she's certainly not competition for or pen or anything in terms of looks or his own wife in terms of looks. So is he sort of a playboy? Is he picking out vulnerable women?

in with his charm is a very powerful thing. So that both men and women looked up to Ken, and Ken has the brain of an addict. He was an alcoholic, he had done drugs, he was sober it came to you know, those kinds of substances. But he was still an addict, and he was still acting out. And in

the way that he was acting out was sexually. And he was a he had a predator's mind, and so that he could look around the room and you know, some people might call it bird dogging, but he was sizing up all the women in the room and trying to figure out who might I be able to hit on, who might I be able to you know, score with. And Sandy, who was extremely vulnerable to begin with, new to the program, had her own set of baggage, was

somebody that was easy prey for him. And so that's one of the reasons why, you know, he was able to take such you know, thorough control of Sandy. You know, Sandy thought they were having a real relationship for for many, many months, you know, into some way, I think Ken believed it too, But it isn't until the relationship fell up. Part that Ken couldn't accept the fact that Sandy didn't want to be with him, couldn't accept the fact that

for all of his powers of charm. For all of his ability to control people, he couldn't control Sandy and and Dan. I know you've seen these situations where there's a guy who says, look, if you know, if you don't want me, no one else can have you, and and take all their rage out on the former lover. Well, in this case, because of the way his mind works, Ken didn't see the problem as being as Sandy. He

saw the problem as Penn. Pen was the interloper. Penn was the one who helped Sandy get out of the relationship. Pen is the person that is keeping them apart. And if he could somehow convince Penn to change her mind or to get Pen out of the way, then he could resume his relationship with Sandy. That's how he thought.

get a restraining order. Uh and and so in order to do that, she had to basically take Ken to court, and she needed people to testify on her behalf about you know, some of the behavior uh and Uh. The first person to testify was Penn. Penn came to Sandy's defense in the civil courtroom and basically explained the kind of behavior that, uh, that Ken had uh displayed. You know, there was this sort of this odd little, odd little anecdote that happened around Thanksgiving, where which is about the

time of the breakup. Apparently, you know, Sandy and Ken originally had plans to go to Penn's house for Thanksgiving, and then after the breakup, of course, uh, you know, Sandy went and there was an extra place at the table, so she brought a friend of hers who they were they were school friends, but he was you know, he just joined the program and uh so he was a newbie too, and it wasn't a romantic thing. But they Jonathan and Penn's family, they all had Thanksgiving together. Uh uh.

And when when Ken Carpenter found out that that Sandy still went to Pen's house and that his his his seat at the table was taken by another man arrival, in his mind, he became angry with Penn and you know, blamed Penn for trying to set up Sandy with uh, you know, with another guy. I mean, everybody sort of in aa that that at the end it knew that Ken and Sandy had his relationship, was trying to tell Ken that, you know, you got to back off. And you know, there are all sorts of reasons why you

shouldn't have had this relationship in the first place. One you're married to she's a newbie, so you know, it wasn't a secret that Penn was an advocate for Sandy and and so that made her a target. Yeah.

she's got to feed the dogs. And so if you know, if you can imagine how that scene can play, how loud it is inside the kennel where you have a dozen or so dogs who are hungry, and the first person shows up in the morning who we're going to feed them. So that's a very chaotic time to be

a worker there. And you know this is probably this is about seven point thirty in the morning, and on this one particular morning, as Sandy's trying to feed the dogs, the telephone rings and she picks up the phone and it's Pen. Sandy was a little confused why Pen would be calling. Pen knows not to call that early because she's feeding the dogs and it's very loud, and obviously, you know, on the other end of the phone, she can hear the dogs barking. So Sandy's having a hard

time concentrating. But what Pen tells Sandy when she picks up the phone is that she says, you know, I was wrong. I was wrong about Ken. You need to go to the court and get the restraining or lifted, and you have to get back together with him. And of course, now Sandy like very confused because obviously, you know, Pen had been her biggest advocate. She went to court,

got the restraining order. When Ken eventually broke the restraining order and started and was going to be facing criminal charges, you know, Penn was still there for Sandy as an advocate. So now for Sandy, now for Pen to tell Sandy that she's wrong and that she was mistaken and that she really should get back together with Ken, was very confusing.

Penn went on to say that you know what would be best for her, what best for Sandy to do would be to uh, you know, get back together with with Ken and and then move into Penn's house and to to stay there and take care of the dog and you know, start a life together with Penn, with with Ken there. And last thing she said was that you know, she was going to be going out of town and she might not be back for a while. Sandy, of course, doesn't know what to make this phone call.

It's very chaotic with the dogs barking. She says, you know, can I call you back at lunchtime? And she hangs up the phone and Penn is never heard from again after that phone call.

to to call her back because there's this bombshell. Tell us what happens next about later in the day when she tries to contact Sanader tries to contact her friend Penn.

sign up now at Chumbuck casino dot com. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com.

meeting to go to after work. After that, I'm going to go by Penn's house and and see what's up. He thought maybe she was ill or or something like that. So later that evening, Jonathan is, you know, one of the first is there at the house. It smells like paint in the house because there had been some house painters that had come later in the day to do

some work. The dog was still there, Fluff was still in the house, but Pen was not, which was very very concerning to him because though those two were inseparable, you know, Penn would take Fluff with her to the farmer's market and to the grocery store and to AA meetings, and the dog would wait in the car and if it was too cold, she wouldn't go. And so the idea that it's the middle of winter, there's a snowstorm coming, the dog is alone in the house. Pen isn't there.

It dawns on Jonathan that, you know that something terrible has happened. When he plays Penn's phone messages on her answering machine. There are several messages from Sandy who you know, saying, you know, we need to talk about the bombshell that you dropped on me this morning. And so Jonathan calls Sandy. When he finds out what the message was about, what the original phone call was about, this whole thing about go back to Ken, move into the house. Jonathan immediately realizes, no, no,

Penn would never say that. Sandy said, well she did, Jonathan said, no, she would never say that. You don't get it. He was here, Ken was here making her say that. And now she's gone and he took her.

hold of Harve. Harve tells Jonathan that you know right now that she and Ken are going through some issues and Ken is staying someplace else and leave her alone and slams the phone down on him.

And Penn says, go away. Well, Jonathan realizes later that that was a dry run for Ken. It was his his first attempt at killing Penn, but he couldn't do it at that moment. He had to come up with another plan. So he knows. Jonathan in his heart knows that it's Ken, although there's no evidence at the time of that, and the house is spotless, there's no blood, there's no sign of a struggle. Other than Pen, there's really nothing else missing, and you know, that's peculiar to

the police. Of course, they know that Penn likes to, you know, hike in the woods, and you know they're can they can't rule out the fact that she, you know, went out for a hike in the morning and you know, tripped over a log and is uh, you know, in need of medical assistance somewhere, or that she you know, decided to run off and join the circus. You know. They also can't get a hold of her second husband, Richard Rankin, for some reason. They're calling him and he's

nowhere to be found. So they're very concerned about that. And Jonathan, of course, as the boyfriend, just sort of naturally would be a suspect in his lover's disappearance. So to everybody else, there's still a lot of investigation to do. But to Jonathan, he knows in his heart it's Ken Carpenter's responsible for Penn's disappearance.

So there's a So he spends you know, several days, you know, going from couch to couch and hiding, you know, in different homes because he just doesn't know what Ken is up to.

that's them about Penn and he denied any wrongdoing. Obviously, tell us about the first time the police actually speak with Ken Carpenter and what does he have to say.

or at least gonna wonder what the situation is. So these two uniform troopers talk to Ken. Ken is at first, you know, very angry that Jonathan has implicated him in Pen's disappearance, uh and and complains litterally to the troopers about that. But once he gets that out of his system, he is uh, you know, calm and appears to be helpful with the troopers, telling them a little bit about you know, what does he know about Pen? He says he hasn't really seen Pen. They know each other through

AA and other than that, I couldn't say. And while they're they're there, they noticed that there's a smell of smoke that he's been burning brush. Uh And they also notice a you know, a metal barrel, a small thirty gallon metal barrel that had been on the back of a pickup truck sort of dragged through the snow and dumped off to the side. You know, he's obviously doing some work. Ken lets him look around the property, look at the cars he's seen to have you know, really

just sort of gone along and been cooperative. But one of the things that he tells them, because they want to know, well, where were you yesterday, about the time Penn was last seen. He said, I had gone up and I'd gone snowshoeing, and I went snowshoeing, you know, at the local golf course, you know, because the big open area and I'd like to snowshoe there. So after that, the troopers drove over to the golf course and fresh blanket of snow and no snow tracks, snowshoe tracks anywhere.

So they know that Ken has a problem with his alibi, and so now they are honed in on him.

lot of juice behind that kind of thought. The only other person that sort of seemed to fit the bill, the only other person that you know, he would seem to have an axe to grind against Penn is a Penn's second husband, her recently divorced husband, Richard Rankin. And police are very concerned because, like I said, he's not home, so they don't know where Penn is, and they don't know where Richard is, and you know, they're concerned that he's got her someplace or that he's killed her, and

and is you know, on the lamb. It is until you know, a couple of days later that Richard contacts the police. He had been in Florida, he had gone there for the winter, and he had just heard the news that Penn was missing. And you know, he was able to show with his credit card receipts and whatnot that he'd been in Florida all along. So with that guy crossed off the suspect list, the only person left was Kenneth Carpenter.

and not at the golf course. He could have remembered earlier a lot of what he had done that day, but then he remembered that he had gotten in his car and driven into the next state of Massachusetts, and spent some time and then drove back, and he had sort of a you know, a very kind of thin telling of his day the day that that Pen disappeared. So the detective Sean Scahan, you know, conducted this interview and continued to listen to the tape of the interview

to try to, you know, find holes in it. And then the next day there was an anonymou telephone call placed to the police department, and Detective Skyhand happened to be there and picked up the phone, and he immediately recognized this voice as Ken Carpenter because he had been listening to the voice for you know, hours. And the anonymous caller said that you don't have to worry about Pen. She's fine. I dropped her off at the airport and you know, implying that that's why she's missing. She's gone

out of town. On the caller wouldn't say who he was, but he did say Penn left something at the payphone at the general store and then hung up. So police were very puzzled at this. The general store was right next to the police station. They ran down and sure enough, underneath the payphone vestibule was a plastic bag which was taped underneath the payphone with orange duct tape. When they took the tape off, they took the bag got they found inside a little envelope. Inside the envelope was a key.

The key was to a safety safe deposit box to a local bank. So the investigators went to the bank, used the key on penn safe deposit box and found her passport inside, so they knew Penn did not go to run off to the islands. Her passport was there. And then of course they're extremely curious, as you know, why would a cop I wass you mean, why would somebody,

you know leave this key around. In the meantime, they're they're tapping the phone of uh, you're not tapping, but they have permission from Sandy to record telephone calls between her and Ken, and Ken keep saying stuff like I spoke to God and we're gonna find out in three days why you know, Penn disappeared. And they can tell on the telephone calls if that Ken is using Pen's disappearance as a way to get back with Sandy, you know, trying to can Sandy that they should get together and

go look for Penn. All of this stuff sort of leads the cops to believe that that Ken is, you know, somewhat behind the problem here Pen's disappearance. So they get a warrant and they go out to Ken's home in the woods. He lives in a little cabin deep in the woods. It's a February evening and there's an old fashioned Nor'easter coming through. It's a blizzard. They can't get down the road to the cabin. They need a snowplow to come out, especially for them. The state troopers pull

up at the cabin. It's empty. They go around looking for pen. They crawl in a back window. They don't find any sign of pen get any sign of a struggle, any sign of blood. But outside is that fire pit that was there the first time they visited, and the fire is still kind of smoldering. And when invest gators looked into the embers of the fire pit, they were able to find something that looked like a piece of bone. And so they realized then that they had found where ped Meyer wound up.

And I wanted to ask, Once this police had Ken Carpenter in their sights, they must have looked to his wife for whatever information she might have about her husband, possible alibi, or anything else about as a character that might help them in the prosecution in that regard, What did she have to say? This suddenly very very surprised and angered woman, no doubt. What did she have to say? And it was she in any aid whatsoever to police.

herself to God and to get Ken back. So she stayed by Ken's side through the restraining order process, and then after even after he's arrested for Penn's homicide, she sticks with him and she visits him, and she makes a lot of telephone calls to him in the jail, telephone calls that are recorded. Ken is trying to tell, you know, Harv to like, don't say something stupid, don't ask me a dumb question because it's being recorded. And

and Harv, you know, wanted to believe Ken. Uh I wanted to believe Ken, that that.

uh spring has you know, winter's gone? Spring is there? Said to go out into you know, the tree line of the property. And she went found this hollow stump and found some matter, some debris that was inside it. It was more bones and Penn's distinctive jewelry. So Harp thought about it, and she did call the police, and

she was helpful to the police. And there are the times when she wouldn't be where she She was, you know, kind of resentful of the police and didn't want to cooperate and would still do things that that Ken asked her to do, like five if they she found some notebooks with some of his writing in it, so she burned that so the police wouldn't get it. But then another time she found some letters that Ken that were hidden away in the attict, and she turned those over

to the to the police. And you know, on these recorded telephone calls, Penn, who's sort of struggling with what the truth is, really acts as the best cross examiner of Ken Carpenter because she's angry, she wants to know what's going on. One of the things that Ken uses to keep control over over Heart is to try to convince her that he's innocent and that the reason he's being so secretive is because he's protecting her. There is a third person, the real killer is a guy by

the name of Phil. And this Phil is someone that Ken had never seen before. But Phil said he I know your problem and I know how to take care of it, and that when he that's uh. That that that Ken left Penn alone with Phil, and when Ken came back, Pen was gone and Phil said, keep that fire going. Harve believed that she wanted to believe. Every time she met somebody named Phil, she freaked out, thinking this might be that Phil. But after a while, you know,

she started to question whether or not Phil existed. And you know, Ken's description of Phil kept changing. You know, he would be first, he was the same height and clean shaven, and then he had a beard, and then he was bald, and then he wasn't And and Harve was, you know, the one who is the hardest on him, really trying to get him to, you know, out of the truth. At one point she says, if this is your alibi, you gotta you know, you got to keep it straight. So Harv, you know, like you said, Harv

ran hot and cold. But ultimately she was she was helpful to the investigation if for no other reason she acted like any other wife would and not take any bologne from her husband. And and would you know, get to the bottom of it.

the affair to resume. And one of the things that Ken did was as a fan of CSI and the other police procedurals, he thought he knew how cops did things, and he knew about evidence, and that he could do, you know, what he needed to do to get away with the murder, and he was trying to get His goal was to get Penn to convince Sandy to get back together with him, and so in order to do that,

he needed to with words in her mouth. And four weeks before Pen's disappearance, Ken basically planned it out rough drafts and based in scripts and scripts for what Pen should say, and which is why that phone call. The language, the content was so distinctive. It was completely unlike Pen,

but everything like Ken. Carpenter and investigators when they were combing Ken Carpenter's house there was a red leather chair and they happened to take the cushion off and they found a little blue notebook and as they went through all the different pages they saw Ken Carpenter had spent weeks planning the death of Pen. Meyer and it was complete with, you know, with a script for her to follow that she probably followed with a gun to her head.

to be coming back around again. The other two books were written by myself and Rebecca Lavoy. One of those was called Our Little Secret, which is about a man named Danny Paquette, who was working in his backyard and was killed by a stray bullet on the first day of hunting season, and some of the cops thought it

was a hunting accident. But twenty years later they arrested a guy who had been at the time of the shooting seventeen years old and who had never met Ken carp excuse me, never met Danny Pockett, and everybody in town knew that this guy had pulled the trigger, and he had done it because Danny Poncette was a child in the lester And so for twenty five years people in the town knew who did it, but kept the secret because they thought he had it coming. The other

book we've written is called Legally Dead. It's about an attorney who goes through a very rough divorce. He tries to drive his ex wife crazy so that he can get the kids and stop having to pay her any money. He tries to drive her to commit suicide. He terrorizes her, he hires thugs to harass her, to slash her tires. When none of that works, he puts a pipe bomb in her mailbox to try to scare her, and then

eventually one day she just disappears. And investigators don't know where she's gone, but there's a conspiracy around how she disappeared in a real rogues gallery of people who you know were involved. So all the books take place in New England and they all have a rich cast of characters.

write the first draft. I'll sort of map out the arc of the story and put in the facts, you know, kind of p with the bones down, and Rebecca comes by, puts all the muscle on it, brushes up on the pros. So that's the way we work. Sometimes it's like, you know, well, you know that person, that character, you know you should do those interviews, you should write about her because you know for some reason. But mostly that's the that's the uh, the way that the assignments get doled out.