The Survivor Story of Hannah Pettey

When you look in the mirror and you see the tracheotomy scar, does it bring back those memories? It does, yes. It does. I just try not to dwell on it, you know. Have you thought about what you'll tell your children in the future? I want to be honest with them because they do have a right to know the truth. I started first feeling like I was getting sick of August 2021. I started getting severe abdominal pain. I was feeling so nauseous all the time. November is when it started getting really, really bad. How worried were you at this point? So on the bad days, I would ask her, you need to go to a doctor. What do you want to do? And she says, no. I'm okay. It'll go away. And most of the time, it did. I mean, I had lost so much weight. Things finally got to the point where I said, hey, you're losing a lot of weight. That's when I started getting concerned. Why did you take it or seek the nurse practitioner, Carrie Griffith? She was yellow. By that time, she was pure yellow. Her mom grabbed my arm and she said, promise me, whatever this is, you'll find it. She was terrified. I was just in such immense pain all the time. It just progressively got worse and worse. And I thought, this little girl has two babies and she is dying, is what I'm thinking. That's what it looks like. She's dying. Yes. We've got to get her help and we've got to get her help fast. I insisted she go to the hospital. And did she go? She did. What was that drive like? Oh, fast. Fast. I just remember just praying and driving. That's all I did was just praying and driving. How long do you wait in that emergency room? Ten hours. And then she said, Mom, something's wrong. And then that's when she broke into the seizure. That was terrible. Just complete jerking and foaming and eyes just never stopped moving back and forth. When you see a picture of Hannah when she was in the hospital, I think everyone had the same thought. What on earth put her in this position? What could have made her body deteriorate? To the point where she's unrecognizable. It's heartbreaking. How close was Hannah to dying? I don't think it's an overstatement to say hours, maybe days. Someone said, we figured out what's wrong with you. It's lead poisoning. You've been lead poisoned. That's the lead. That's just the shaving of the lead. Soft enough to scrape off with a knife and put in a little capsule. Absolutely. I was at that time a suspect. Everybody had to be a suspect. I'm going to ask you a direct question. Did you try to poison your wife? No. The first thing that Hannah said to my friends when she got home was she believed Nicole had concocted this whole thing. One of the other doctors I spoke to said, you have to leave because she is now under protective order. I remember them saying either he's done it, she's done it, or you've done it. But someone is intentionally trying to kill your daughter. packed full of lead. It was almost 100% lead. There was no room in her stomach to hold anything. It was just complete lead. Plus, there was lead just in her bones, just everywhere. Doctors told Nicole there was no way Hannah could have ingested all that lead by accident. It had to be deliberate, and they told her exactly what they thought. They let me know that this is an attempted murder. The hospital reported Hannah's case to the Department of Human Resources, DHR, the state agency that protects vulnerable adults. Hospital administrators immediately put Hannah in a secluded room with someone at the door to keep all visitors out. Nicole says she and Brian were told to leave and were no longer allowed to see Hannah because they were considered possible suspects. I was deciding myself. Because I had to leave her, they sent me away from the hospital. I immediately started thinking, this is Nicole. This has to be Nicole pointing fingers. I didn't really think it would get anywhere because I thought it was, again, just Nicole making waves to make waves. Hannah's mom just caused so many problems, and not so much directly at me, but she was just awful to Hannah. Brian says Hannah told him that Nicole could be critical of her. Why don't you put makeup on? Are you sure you should eat that? Just stuff like that all the time. I would say, why do you want this woman in your life? And all she'd come back to, she's my mom. She's my mom. And that's really the only defense she had for her, was she's my mom. Hannah denies Brian's allegations. She did move away from Nicole and got her own apartment in June 2017, the month she turned 18 years old. She had just graduated from high school. That's when she met Brian, a 29-year-old chiropractor with his own business. He was very, very sweet in the beginning. And, you know, he's very charming, good-looking. And, yeah, I really liked him. Sounds like it was almost sort of instant attraction. Yes, it was a head over heels. Everything was just working right. Within weeks of Brian's first date with Hannah, his friend, Walker Snyder, says Brian told him Hannah was the one. I'm like, man, you just met her like a week ago. Or she's 18. She doesn't know what she wants. She doesn't even know what she doesn't want. And he was like, no, we both know what we want. It wasn't long before Hannah told friends she was pregnant. How long were you guys dating before you proposed? We started dating in November. I believe I proposed, after Valentine's Day. So, not too long. Were you nervous? I was. I take marriage very seriously. And so, yeah, I was definitely nervous about it. Hannah was nervous, too. She says she had noticed that Brian could be controlling, but she plunged ahead, at least until her wedding day in May 2018. Hannah's friend, Allison Holmes. Right before we were all about to walk down the aisle, Hannah, expressed to us that she was, you know, very nervous. She had cold feet. We told her 100 times over, you don't have to do it. If this is cold feet, you know, it is what it is. But if this is an uncertainty, walk away. It's not too late to walk away. In the end, Hannah smiled through her ceremony and married Brian. When you walked up to the altar and you looked at him, you had no questions. I mean, I did. I mean, deep down, I did. I was like, I don't really know if I'm making the right decision and everything. The couple moved into Brian's home and started their lives together. How was he as a husband? For the most part, he was really good as a husband. I mean, it was good and bad. We got in a lot of physical fights, so that's a bad thing. But it wasn't all the time, though. You know, like, as I'm listening to you talk, you know, it sounds almost a little bit like you're explaining away the bad stuff. Do you think you did that in the marriage a bit? Uh, yeah, I definitely did, I think. Yeah. Yeah, my mom tells me that, too. Even their son's birth was a minefield of emotion. I was nine months pregnant, and I had started bleeding. And so I went to the hospital, and he came in, and he got so angry at me. And he was yelling at me, and he shouldn't have been out walking, like, in this heat. Like, that was so stupid and irresponsible. He was acting so. Just outrageous that the nurses even told her, like, if you need us to do something, then you say this specific word, and we'll know that we need to step in and intervene in what's going on. Hannah never used that safe word. But as time went on, Brian says the couple came to an understanding. I would say, Hannah, talk to me. I am on your side. I'm your biggest fan, your biggest supporter. But one day, she said. I'm going to trust you, and I want to do this with you, and I want to build this with you. And from then on, it just got better and better. And that's when I started to really fall in love with him. The couple had another child, a daughter, and life was good, they say, until Hannah began to feel sick and went to the hospital emergency room in January 2022. She was left fighting for her life, and doctors were trying to help her, but they told Nicole. They had to know more. They said the only way she gets this much lead in her system. Is to ingest it. Is to ingest it. They said she had to have ingested it. I remember them saying, we don't care if you give her a crack. We just want to know about it. We have to know everything she's taken. And that's when Nicole remembered something that she'd completely overlooked. Hannah told her that Brian had given her special supplements, capsules, each and every. Every night. Doctors kept asking Nicole what Hannah had been eating in the months leading up to her hospital stay. From what they can see, it looks like someone has gave her lead every single day for at least three months. Was Hannah eating something that contained lead? Nicole says she had no idea, because she hardly ever visited her daughter in the months before the seizure. And never if Brian was home. I could only go when he was working, and I would have to leave before he got off work. I never actually ran into him. Yeah, he didn't come home until I left. As doctors pressed her for information, Nicole remembered Hannah telling her about special supplement capsules. Brian placed on her nightstand every night. Nicole says it didn't strike her as unusual, because Brian was a chiropractor. But she told doctors anyway. I told them that I know that they were big on supplements. Nicole says doctors repeatedly asked Brian to bring in the capsules described by Hannah, but he never did. Instead, he gave them this photo of common. over-the-counter supplements. DHR investigators, who were getting information from Hannah's doctors, contacted Lt. Alan McDiarmid of the Hartsell Police Department. They said that I needed to go arrest somebody for attempting to kill their wife. And I'm like, well, hold up. I mean, we can't just go arrest people. What are you talking about? Investigators told McDiarmid that doctors suspected Brian had given Hannah some type of lead. and he was using lead-filled capsules over and over again. You can take a capsule and open it up, empty the contents, and then put the lead in. McDiarmid told Brian about the hospital's allegations. McDiarmid said, "Your wife's been lead poisoned, and they think it was intentional, and they said you're the number one suspect." So I was kind of dumbfounded. I didn't know what to think about that. McDiarmid asked Brian if the police could search his house. and he agreed. So I took him all through the house. I let him search my house. And we went through and tried to figure out what she was eating, pills, makeups, and things like that. McDiarmid says Brian provided a bottle of supplements and a laxative that he said Hannah had taken. Hannah says you made her take supplements. That is not true. Brian blamed all his problems on Nicole. I immediately started thinking, "This is Nicole. This has to be Nicole pointing fingers." Investigators removed the children from Brian's home. They were placed with his parents. He had supervised visitation. Nicole had just done so much over the years, and Hannah had told me so much about her that I just had no doubt Nicole was somehow stirring this all up. Brian said he remembered something Hannah had told him that now seemed to hold more significance. second grade in a story that Hannah confirms she recalled being so sick for so long that she visited the school nurse dozens of times. And she eventually got really bad, and her mother took her to UAB. She says she remembers staying there about a week. Flash forward to 2022. Hannah was back at UAB Hospital. On January 29th, McDiarmid went to see Hannah for himself, but she was in a coma. I had no idea the condition she was in until I went to the hospital and saw her for myself. Doctors showed him Hannah's x-rays. What did you think? Oh, gosh, I was just floored. I mean, her whole insides was lit up from the lead reacting to the x-ray. I mean, it was crazy. McDiarmid asked Brian to come in. And at that point is when he refused. And he refused to further cooperate with the investigation. On February 1st, McDiarmid cleared Nicole, and she was once again allowed to visit Hannah. How were you able to clear Nicole? You know, just through conversations, whether you could tell that she was very concerned about Hannah. She was the person that was caring for Hannah. It sounds to me like you just like Nicole's behavior. She acted the way you expect a concerned mother. You expect a concerned mother to act, and Brian didn't act the way you expected a concerned husband to act. That's correct. Is that evidence? That's not evidence. No. And the problem with this case was there was not a lot of evidence. Within days, McDiarmid received the results of the tests done at Brian and Hannah's home. Everything was negative. Did you ever find any capsules? No. Did you ever find any supplements that were tainted? No. No. No. No. Did you ever find evidence of lead being ground down or scraped or turned into little particles that could go into a capsule? No. So isn't that kind of a big hole in the theory? Well, he sold supplements. McDiarmid says he kept looking for the source of that lead. In mid-February, Hannah began to rally, and McDiarmid brought her home. She went to see her again. I told her in a very nice way why she was in the hospital, and asked her, you know, do you have any idea who may have given you some substance? She said no. Do you have any thoughts of self-harm? I mean, did you put yourself here? And she said no. McDiarmid said Hannah was coherent one minute, and not the next. She said she saw people coming out of the walls. When I first started talking to the medical staff, I mean, they didn't give her any hope. They said if she came out of this, that she would really not have any cognitive functions. They didn't suspect that we would be able to even talk with her. Wow. They basically told us that we needed to do everything that we could, because we didn't need to do anything. We needed to rely on her as a witness, because they didn't think she would ever make it to that point. But Hannah surprised everyone by getting stronger each day with the help of a team of dedicated nurses. They were all kind of close to her age. They knew she had kids, and they would say to her, you've got your babies. You've got your babies. And I remember she just always got a laugh in her. When you mentioned the kids, she was like, I'm going to get better. I'm going to get out here and get better, you know. Nicole says Hannah did get better and stronger. Strong enough that Hannah's neurologist told her the whole story. She grabbed my hand, and she just kind of started giving me a heart-to-heart about why they have strong reasons to believe that it was Brian. And what's the conversation like after that between you and Hannah? It was horrible. That was horrible. I'm sorry. Of everything that she went through. The heartbreak. The heartbreak was terrible. She just would sit there and cry. On March 3rd, after nearly two months, Hannah was well enough to leave the hospital. She went to her mom's house, reunited with her children. And filed for divorce. But friends like Kyle Golden were worried. We did know that Hannah was still in contact with Brian. And that did upset us. It was scary. Yeah. Knowing that she could potentially go back to this guy that we believe tried to kill her. ♪ music playing ♪ In the days after Hannah got out of the hospital, Hannah says she felt vulnerable and confused. I was on so many different medicines, so many different psych medicines the doctors had me on. Despite the risks, Hannah had made up her mind to sit down with Brian face-to-face. face. Just one week after being discharged, she met him at their former home. I just had to figure it out for myself instead of everyone telling me this is what happened. And so you sit down with him and did you ask him outright? Did you do this? Did you try to poison me? No, I was so emotional. I mean, I didn't stop crying that night. I remember I cried all through the night. I wanted him to say like, there's no way that I could have, you know, like, what are like, are you crazy? Like, this is crazy. And I was expecting him to go out and say that to everybody. I don't care if he even made a Facebook post about it or just anything. Hannah says Brian never told her what she needed to hear. But then, incredibly, she changed her mind about the divorce. I called my attorney. I was like, I don't want to go through with the divorce. Like, I don't think he did it. I said, there must be something else. Hannah told you not to sign the divorce papers? Yes. Because why? Because she knew her mother had made up this whole thing. And it was just another crazy Nicole episode. When Hannah's family doctor heard what was going on, Nicole says he wanted to have Hannah involuntarily committed because he feared Brian would kill her. And Hannah's next move caused him to kill her. And he said, I don't want to go through with the divorce. I said, even more consternation. She asked McDiarmid to drop the investigation. I said, he's a family man. I said, he loves me. He loves the kids. It just doesn't make sense. McDiarmid knew without Hannah's help, the criminal case against Brian would likely collapse. But he understood what Hannah was feeling. It's typical of domestic violence to forgive your abuser. McDiarmid asked Hannah to sign a specific form that he prepared. And she said, well, what do I have to sign this for? And I said, well, if or Brian were to kill you in the future and somebody from your family comes and says that we didn't do our due diligence in the investigation, then I can show them that you didn't want to pursue it. So if you want to go ahead and sign that, then we'll close it up. And she said, no, I'm not going to sign that. She said, I want you to keep going. Ultimately, she decided to proceed with the divorce and cooperate with the criminal investigation. What do you learn from Hannah? More than anything, insurance policies. Hannah told McDiarmid that Brian had taken out life insurance policies on her while they were still dating. McDiarmid learned that when Hannah was in the hospital fighting for her life, Brian tried to take out even more policies. If they were approved, Brian would have collected more than five million dollars upon Hannah's death. And that gave you what? Well, it gives you motive money. Money is a motive. Money is a huge motive. At that point, McDiarmid felt he collected enough evidence to move ahead. And so did prosecutor Garrick Vickery. We knew Hannah had been poisoned, that it was intentional and that it was ingested. You don't have any capsules with lead. You have a theory, you have a suspect and you have what you believe is a motive. Why were you confident that this was enough to put? In front of a grand jury. Nothing else made sense. In this case, the evidence was clear that lead was getting into her system. So then you rewind the tape, you back up and you see how that lead could have gotten into her system. And Brian Mann was the only person who had access to Hannah. The grand jury agreed. And in September 2022, Brian was arrested and pleaded not guilty to attempted murder. He was freed on a half-hour and a half-million-dollar bond, but was required to report to jail every weekend. Can I see the ankle monitor? What's it like having to wear that? I mean, it's definitely annoying. Police still had nothing connecting Brian to any form of lead. But then they got an unexpected call. Turns out this man, Danny Hill, thought he knew exactly what he was doing. Exactly where the lead came from. It all began when Brian asked Danny, a contractor, to line his x-ray room at his chiropractic office with, you guessed it, lead. Danny had recognized Brian from a newspaper article about his arrest and got in touch with McDiarmid. You do an x-ray room, the walls have to be lined with lead for the protection of the people outside the room. We did it with rolls of soft lead that we just covered the walls with and then put drywall over the top of that. We asked Danny to obtain a sample of the same type of lead he installed in Brian's office. The lead was heavy, but surprisingly soft and malleable. Danny showed us how easy it is to scrape the sheet of lead into tiny shavings, just like pencil shavings, and how easy it is to put those shavings into. an empty pill capsule. It's soft. After Danny was done with the x-ray room, he asked Brian if he should dispose of the remaining lead. And he said, "I'll take care of it." Danny Hill's information sent cops directly to Brian's office. Prior to Danny's revelations, the Hartsell Police Department did not have probable cause. Now they did. And we got a search warrant. We went in and we took a section of that out. The lead that we recovered from the office was very thin. It would be thin enough that it could be shaved or whatever. Tell me about how important that phone call was from the contractor. It was vitally important. It's always necessary to put your murder weapon into the hands of a defendant. But Brian insists the state's case is weak. And so he got himself a strong advocate. Bodybuilder and defense lawyer, Chad Morgan. There's no reason that any of their evidence should be able to get into a courtroom. Going into the trial in June 2025, Brian had been forbidden any visitation with his children for more than two years. He says it was just unfair. I should have never been separated from my kids. I'm going to be back in their lives. I've just. I've been waiting for my chance. How does it feel to know that someone tried to kill you? At night, I get really creeped out thinking about that someone poisoned me for a long, long time. The state started its case today against a Morgan County chiropractor. Charged with attempting to kill his wife, The state started its case today against a Morgan County chiropractor. Charged with attempting to kill his wife, Charged with attempting to kill his wife, Charged with attempting to kill his wife, Mann maintains his innocence. In June 2025, defendant Brian Mann walks into a Decatur, Alabama courthouse, facing a possible life sentence. No cameras are permitted inside the courtroom during the trial. What was your working theory as to what happened in this case with this crime? It really begins months before Hannah ever appears at UAB Hospital. Lead prosecutor, Garrick Vickery. In terms of a theory, it mostly was that he made a decision to slowly poison her, to gain this life insurance, to rid himself of a sweet, sweet person. Brian's defense attorney, Chad Morgan, tells the jury that police never found any lead-filled capsules in Brian's home. Home, office, or anywhere else. They searched the entire house, top to bottom. Never found one piece of lead. One of the issues we had was that Brian Mann had months and months to execute his plan, and then to get rid of the evidence. But the state does have Hannah, and prosecutors make her the first witness. Did you look at Brian when you walked into the courtroom? I did. Was that the man that you had fallen in love with? No, I mean, I saw someone totally different. Hannah tells the jury how Brian supplied her with vitamin capsules each night, even when her pain was so intense she could barely swallow. I remember being in bed one night. And I was in so much pain, and I was so nauseous. And Brian was like, "I put your vitamins on your nightstand." And he was like, "You need to take them." And I was like, "I just can't tonight. I do not think I can keep anything else down." And he was like freaking out about it. Like, he was like, "You've got to take it." How easy would it have been to put lead in those capsules? Tremendously easy. Anyone that's sharpened a pencil could see how easy it is to get lead shavings. And once you have that, and you have two hands, two hands to separate a pill and put it back together, you've got all the instruments you need to try to murder your spouse. Brian's attorney alleges Hannah's own mother, Nicole, could have been the one poisoning Hannah. I'm suggesting they're looking in the wrong place. He claims Nicole gave Hannah milkshakes that could have been laced with lead. Tell me why her mom was coming to her house every day for almost a year giving her a milkshake. Did you look into her mother? The thought was considered. You don't want to rule anyone out before. Hannah's mother is now the district attorney, Kelly Cimino. And Nicole just didn't have that kind of access to her daughter. Did your mom bring you milkshakes? No, not that I recall. I don't even like milkshakes. I really don't even like milkshakes. I don't drink milkshakes. Hannah tells the jury how the pain affected her. Her body, in a sense, the crime scene, and her brain scans, blood work, and X-rays are discussed in open court. Something she's been holding back, until she takes the stand. It is kind of emotional to talk about the fact that I can't have children anymore. On the day she was discharged, Hannah was smiling, but inside, she was heartbroken. Doctors had just told her she could no longer have children. She was only 22 years old. When it's Nicole's turn to take the stand, she thinks she knows what's coming from Brian's defense attorney. I knew that he was going to try to say that, possibly, say that I had did this. And I wasn't really concerned about that, because I didn't do it. Cimino explains why prosecutors believe Brian used lead-filled capsules, like this one, instead of mixing the lead into her food. She would have tasted it. And so that's where the theory of the capsule comes in, because it's the only way that she would have willingly put it in her mouth and swallowed it and not noticed anything different. After a day and a half and seven witnesses, the state rests its case. And then so does the defense. Chad Morgan calls no witnesses. I was shocked that they've had three years to put this together, and then it comes out that he has no defense at all. Brian's lawyer says he did his job. And maintains that the lack of evidence in the state's case is the best evidence of all. There was a lot of assumptions about this is lead and that's lead, but there was not one person that testified to anything that they actually saw him do, touch, or even begin to believe that she ingested something he gave her. The jury gets the case on a Wednesday afternoon. And the next day returns a verdict, guilty. There was a series of cases. There was about a second of shock. I don't think he was expecting that. Juror Jeff Soley. That guy's a monster. Why do you say that? The arrogance it takes to essentially watch somebody waste away, and then not only watch during the poisoning, but also watch during the downfall, I think that takes a very special person. It took me a few seconds for it to sink in that it was a guilty verdict. I just immediately started filling the tears well up because it was just this buildup. And I just had to step out. This is a great win for all domestic violence victims, especially those that are scared to come forward. McDiarmid is now chief of the Hartzell Police Department. And after a lot of reflection, Hannah allows herself to consider a hard truth. Do you think he ever loved you? No. I truly don't think that he did. I just don't think any of it was real. It's got to be hard to say. Yeah. Because it was real for you. Yes, it was very real for me. Now it's very real for Brian, who was sentenced to life in prison in August 2025. And Hannah, who was once feared to be so brain damaged that she would never be able to testify? She graduated from college with a teaching degree. And what does Hannah's new life look like? You know, I'm a teacher, so I'm starting at a new school this year. So I'm just going to focus on being the best teacher that I can be and being the best mother I can be. Life got even sweeter for Hannah when she and the teacher met. the children moved back into their old home, the one they used to share with Brian. I've repainted. I redecorated everything, cleaned it up really good. I got all my stuff moved in there and just pictures of us three all in there. So now it feels like ours. If you or someone you know is a victim of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline, www.thehotline.org at 1-800-799-7233. Lioness, the hit original series from Taylor Sheridan, is now streaming on Paramount+. I'm scared, Joe. Scared how it became that world. The world didn't become this. It's always been this way. Starring Zoe Saldana. Keep running! Michael Kelly. You tried to touch us here. It's a two-way street, buddy. With Morgan Freeman. They're all out from this. It's limitless. And Nicole Kidman. This isn't the end of a fight. This is the start of one. Lioness, new season now streaming only on Paramount+.