Post Mortem | The Survivor Story of Hannah Pettey

48 Hours

This episode of '48 Hours' explores the harrowing survivor story of Hannah Pettey, a young Alabama mother who was poisoned with lead by her

Key takeaways

Hannah Pettey survived an extreme case of lead poisoning that filled her digestive system and required unprecedented medical intervention, including round-the-clock bowel irrigation.

Main topics

Lead poisoning as a method of attempted murder
Survivor testimony and psychological recovery

Notable quotes

"I was asleep in the passenger seat... I woke up because like, I don't know. I think this smell woke me up because my chest started burning, my nose started burning."

Conclusion

Hannah Pettey's survival and transformation into a strong, independent teacher exemplify resilience in the face

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) you Speaker 3 (0:10) Welcome to Postmortem. 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 Petty, who incredibly survived after being poisoned with lead. Anne-Marie, thanks for joining me. Thank you. It's good to be here. 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? Speaker 4 (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. Speaker 3 (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 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. 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? Speaker 4 (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. Yeah, we're going to dive Speaker 3 (2:29) 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? Speaker 4 (2:45) 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? 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. Speaker 3 (3:44) 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 Speaker 4 (4:07) 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. 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 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 Speaker 3 (5:15) forever. 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, despite, though, some pretty big red flags. I mean, did their relationship start off that way, too? Speaker 4 (5:34) So, you know, she was very young, right? She's a teenager. He's much older, 10 years and 10 months, I believe she said. And it did not start out