Notes

Warning This Section Does Contain Spoilers

The documents in this envelope basically contain the information for the entire case. Penny tells us she has only six months to go. There is only one date on the entire set of documents and that is on the Psych Eval and it has an evaluation date of April 12, 2008. This psych eval was used in the court case and is not to be taken for how long she has been at the Second Chance Program. We are unsure of how long she has been at the Second Chance Program, but according to Penny she is a short timer with only six months to go. Penny, in her letter, tells us her version of the events of the night her husband and son died, but the story she tells differently than how she explained it to the police and the court, for some reason. She tells us now that she heart the first shot when she was painting in her art workshop and came running into the house to find her son dead on the floor in the study. She says that her husband was so distraught at having killed his own son accidentally while cleaning his gun that he started to turn the gun on himself, which she ran to fight him over. She didn't want him to kill himself. She says they struggled over the gun and it went off shooting him in the head and killing him. She then called the police.

In her police and court interview she says she was painting in the art workshop and decided to take a break from her painting and came inside. She found her son dead on the floor and her husband dead at the desk in the study. There was no struggle and she was not present. She then called the police.

During her psych interview with Dr. Kohler he asks her if she had ever sleepwalked, she tells him that she might have one time when she was on a lot of cold medicine, but she didn't remember it. She tells him that once her husband told her that he saw her walking around the house and she seemed out of it, but that was only due to the cold medicine. The doctor notes that she is a sleepwalker and that goes into his diagnoses of schizoaffective disorder. 

Due to her refusing to admit that she killed her husband the doctor says she is delusional and paranoid, leading further to the diagnosis of paranoid schizoaffective disorder. Although she doesn't seem to be effected by this disorder at all.

There are autopsies included with these documents, one for Kenneth Harlan Hartwell, Kenny (Penny's husband) and one for Gregory Hartwell, Greg (Penny's son). According to the autopsy it seems very likely and assumable that Kenny could have easily killed himself with the entry and exit wound pattern. It seems less likely that Penny would be able to kill Kenny, execution style, without any type of fight from Kenny, but there were no defensive wounds on Kenny, only an entry and exit wound from the bullet. The bullet entered the right temporal bone, right above the right temple, and exited the left side of the occipital bone, which is the back lower bone of the skull. The angle is consistent with someone that held their arm up and shot themselves in the temple. In all fairness, if Kenny was seated in a chair at the time of death, then it is feasible that Penny could have shot him in the head. But there is no way, from the track the bullet made, that she could have shot him had he been standing up. He is much taller than her, presumably, and she would not be able to make the bullet go in a downward trajectory while he was standing.

One of the last documents in this envelope is a letter to Penny from her new lawyer, Kingsley Lawrence. He is overly confident that he will get Penn'y case overturned and she will walk away from this an innocent woman. He is very sure of himself and brags on himself quite frequently for only being one letter.