Overview
- Donald Pennington was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and concealment of a body on May 13 and has pleaded not guilty while held at a regional jail.
- Angel Whitaker, 37, relocated more than 100 miles in January after an alleged assistant-manager job offer and was last seen on April 17 when she did not return home.
- Pennington’s former partner told investigators she witnessed him choke Whitaker, showed police a photo taken from the victim’s phone, and led them to a site in Bastian, Virginia.
- Investigators say phones linked to Whitaker were soaked in bleach and SIM cards destroyed, and the former partner admitted deleting messages, but searches with cadaver dogs have not found remains.
- The probe spans multiple jurisdictions, the family filed a missing-person report on May 4 and set up a GoFundMe for funeral costs, and prosecutors must build more evidence before trial.