Benjamin Mark Pennington, a 24-year-old White/Caucasian man, was a senior at Shepherd University when his life was abruptly taken on September 2, 2006. Benjamin and his older brother, Logan Patrick Pennington, were both attending the university in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and were roommates. Their father, Douglas W. Pennington, traveled more than two hours from the family’s home in Scherr, West Virginia, to visit his sons on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. What initially appeared to be a family visit ended in a murder-suicide that left Benjamin, Logan, and their father dead.
The campus was unusually quiet that afternoon because many students had left for the holiday weekend. Shortly before 2 p.m., Douglas arrived near Thacher Hall, a residence hall on the west side of campus. Benjamin had reportedly been with Tiffany Ardisson, his longtime girlfriend, only moments earlier.
According to information later contained in the police investigation, Benjamin left after receiving a telephone call from Logan, who asked him to come down to the parking lot to say goodbye to their father. Ardisson later told investigators that she was uneasy when Benjamin left and feared that something bad might happen because Douglas had been behaving differently in the days leading up to the visit.
At approximately 2 p.m., witnesses saw Douglas standing with his sons in the parking area. Without any publicly reported argument immediately preceding the violence, Douglas drew a. 38-caliber revolver and opened fire on his sons. Benjamin and Logan were each shot multiple times. Witness accounts collected during the investigation indicated that one of the brothers attempted to flee as the gunfire erupted. After shooting both of his sons, Douglas turned the revolver on himself and fired a fatal shot into his chest. Early investigators stressed that they had no indication that the three men had been arguing immediately before the shooting.
Emergency personnel rushed all three men to separate hospitals. Benjamin was transported to City Hospital in Martinsburg, where he was pronounced dead from his gunshot injuries. Logan was taken to Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Ranson, while Douglas was transported to Washington County Hospital in Hagerstown, Maryland. Both were also pronounced dead. Shepherd University officials quickly announced that there was no continuing danger to the campus, while counselors were made available to students, including those who had witnessed the violence or its immediate aftermath.
At first, investigators could offer little explanation for why a father who had traveled to see his sons would suddenly kill them. State police initially described the motive only as some type of family issue and said they were trying to determine whether Douglas had arrived on campus already intending to commit the killings. The investigation continued for months, however, and a police report completed the following January provided a far more disturbing picture of what had been happening before the shooting.
According to the later police investigation, Douglas had purchased the. 38-caliber revolver from Knobley Farms Liberty Store in New Creek on August 31, just two days before the murders. Investigators discovered writings in a notebook at his home and additional notes inside the vehicle he drove to Shepherd University. Those writings revealed that Douglas had developed an intense and apparently unfounded fear that something terrible was going to happen to his family, particularly Benjamin. He wrote about believing Benjamin might somehow be taken away, tortured, or killed and expressed the belief that he needed to act before that imagined harm occurred. Police ultimately regarded these writings and information obtained from family members as important evidence explaining the murder-suicide.
Family members told investigators that Douglas had been struggling with serious mental-health problems and had been receiving treatment through Western Maryland Health Systems in Cumberland, Maryland. They said relatives had unsuccessfully attempted to have him hospitalized. The police investigation also found that he had missed two appointments with his treating physician. In the days immediately preceding the killings, witnesses reportedly noticed changes in Douglas's behavior and said he had begun visiting his sons at Shepherd more frequently. The notes he left behind spoke repeatedly of guilt, pain, fear of losing his family, and his belief that killing his sons would somehow prevent them from experiencing suffering he imagined was approaching.
The evidence therefore pointed investigators directly to Douglas W. Pennington as Benjamin's killer. There was no unidentified gunman or additional suspect sought in connection with the shooting. Because Douglas died by suicide immediately after killing Benjamin and Logan, there could be no arrest, criminal prosecution, trial, or conviction. The case was instead resolved through the physical evidence, eyewitness accounts, the revolver, interviews with relatives and others close to the family, and Douglas's own writings. What initially had been reported as an unexplained campus murder-suicide was ultimately described by investigators as a tragedy arising from Douglas's deteriorating mental state and his delusional fears concerning his family.
For Shepherd University, the killings transformed an otherwise quiet holiday weekend into a scene of shock and grief. Students learned that two of their fellow seniors had been killed by their own father just outside a residence hall, and those who had been nearby were left confronting what they had witnessed. Benjamin's death was particularly painful for those closest to him because he had been going about an ordinary afternoon on campus shortly before being summoned to the parking lot. Within minutes, the family visit had become a fatal act of violence from which there was no warning sufficient to save either brother.
