Complex RCMP ‘Mr. Big’ sting leads to N.L. man’s conviction in woman’s murder

ST. JOHN’S – An elaborate sting operation known as a “Mr. Big” setup ultimately led a jury to convict a Newfoundland man for first-degree murder in the disappearance of his estranged wife, Jennifer Hillier-Penney.

A provincial Supreme Court jury found 52-year-old Dean Penney guilty on Sunday, in a case that has been a source of deep anguish in Newfoundland and Labrador for nearly a decade. Hillier-Penney’s family and community spent years calling for justice, but there were no arrests. 

In the background, one of the most expensive investigations ever launched by the RCMP in Newfoundland and Labrador was playing out, said RCMP Insp. Adam Palmer.

“From Day One, (our officers) wanted to find the truth and they wanted to find Jennifer and what happened to her,” Palmer told reporters Sunday in St. John’s, N.L., just after the jury’s verdict.

“There were some dark days, there were some good days — such as today — but ultimately they continued to move forward.”

Hillier-Penney was last seen on Nov. 30, 2016, in St. Anthony, N.L., a community of about 2,200 people on Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula. She still has not been found.

She was married to Penney for about 18 years, but had recently moved in with her father, according to testimony at Penney’s trial in Corner Brook, N.L.

Penney told the court he had gone out duck hunting and Hillier-Penney had gone to stay at their house with their youngest daughter.
On the day she went missing, he said he returned home to pick up decoys and left again. The next morning, he said he got a call saying she was gone.

The jury did not believe him.

The RCMP said undercover officers spent years befriending Penney and convincing him they were enfolding him into a national criminal organization. The undercover officers were part of a team of about 100 employees of all ranks, some of whom slept on the floor in the St. Anthony detachment as they worked on the case, Palmer said.

Mr. Big setups can be risky. In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada said confessions extracted by Mr. Big operations tended to produce unreliable confessions. Ruling on another case from Newfoundland of a man accused of killing his daughters, the country’s top court laid out careful guidelines for Mr. Big stings, including that the target cannot be coerced into a confession.

Palmer said the RCMP now establish careful guardrails when using these operations.

“That includes getting judicial opinion, speaking with subject matter experts and looking at previous insights where this tool has been used to see what the court outcome was,” he said.

When asked if the force would keep looking for Jennifer, Palmer said it would keep assessing any information that comes in.

“But we have been in touch with Jennifer’s family regarding that,” he said.

The report into the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia concluded earlier this year that gender-based, intimate partner and family violence is an “epidemic” in Canada, and it called for improved funding of agencies devoted to intervention and prevention. The Newfoundland and Labrador government has not officially declared intimate-partner violence an epidemic.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 25, 2026.