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Background: News footage of Hannah Pettey entering court to testify against her ex-husband, Brian Mann (WHNT). Inset: Brian Mann (Morgan County Sheriff’s Office).
An Alabama man who went on trial for the attempted murder of his wife was found guilty by a jury after she testified against him.
Brian Mann, 36, heard the guilty verdict on Thursday after his trial began earlier this week. Testifying against him was the woman he tried to kill — his estranged wife, Hannah Pettey, 25, who has since recovered from her husband’s attempt to poison her with lead that came from a construction project at his chiropractic business.
Her testimony revealed how Mann took out several life insurance policies on her after she became ill and discouraged her from going to the hospital.
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Local CBS affiliate WHNT reported from the courtroom this week, relaying details from Pettey’s testimony as well as testimony from an insurance agent who worked with the former couple. According to WHNT’s reporting, Pettey testified that Mann signed up for “a lot of insurance policies” for hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
Pettey reportedly said many of those policies were created after she became ill and was hospitalized for what was later determined to be lead poisoning. While she was in the hospital, Pettey said that her husband seemed more concerned with the policies than her health. Since she had to be in good health to be insured, Pettey said that Mann made her wear ankle weights when she was weighed by doctors to cover up for the weight she had lost from her illness.
Between September 2021 and January 2022, Pettey testified that she had lost 40 pounds. She first began experiencing symptoms in August 2021 including severe, even excruciating pain in her back and abdomen, dizziness, and nausea. She said that Mann was giving her what she believed were multivitamins from his office.
While she was sick, Pettey testified that Mann “was probably the nicest he’d been throughout our marriage during those critical months.” She said he would bring her “vitamins and water” since she was not able to keep food down. He also discouraged her from going to the hospital despite her extreme symptoms. Pettey finally made it to the hospital when her mother brought her to her doctor, who believed she may have stomach cancer.
Mann was unaware of that doctor’s visit.
Pettey testified that while she was ill, Mann kept her away from her own family. Once she was hospitalized, her condition deteriorated to the point that she was having “hallucinations.” When it was realized that it was Mann who had poisoned her, Pettey’s family kept him from communicating with her, which made her “distraught.” She stated, “I didn’t understand that at the time.”
Pettey also told her husband’s defense attorney that Mann was “begging” her to stop the investigation into him.
She later said, “Looking back, I was isolated.” On the stand, she said that Mann did not want her to work and deleted her social media accounts after they were married in 2018.
During her testimony, Pettey said that there is still lead in her bones from Mann’s attempt to kill her. The levels were high enough to render her infertile, and she said she still experiences pain in her hands.
When it came to the multiple insurance policies that Mann pursued, agents became suspicious of Mann’s requests to increase amounts on existing policies and purchase several new policies. State Farm agent Chris Humphreys, who assisted Mann with his policies at the agency, testified that if someone applies for too many policies at the same company, that was going to be investigated.
Humphreys also testified that Mann had other life insurance policies on his wife at other insurance companies. He reportedly told the court, “If someone is going to go around and get a whole bunch of policies at different companies, it’s like throwing spaghetti at the wall.”
Mann also tried to convince authorities that he and his children were also being poisoned with lead, to the extent that he told a nurse practitioner about it and had claimed to have done an X-ray on himself. When the nurse practitioner told him he needed to do another X-ray to see if the poisoning had been new or had been an ongoing problem, she reportedly told police that he became “visibly nervous” and wanted to leave.
An X-ray was done on Mann, which revealed a substance in his stomach that had only been there for a short time.
Mann was found guilty of attempted murder on Thursday. A jury deliberated for two hours on Wednesday, took a break, then deliberated another 45 minutes before delivering its verdict.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 27.
