Juneau police have suspended their investigation of a Juneau woman found dead under suspicious circumstances in a downtown hotel six months ago.
Penny Ann Cotten, 48, was found dead in a room at the Breakwater Inn on the evening of Sept. 27, 2017. She had a gunshot wound to the head.
Cotten’s family in Arkansas said they received a death certificate listing the cause of death as suicide by a handgun.
Cotten’s sister, Veronica Crumley, told WMC Action News 5 that she doesn’t believe it.
“There’s no way that she could commit suicide from the gunshot wound,” Crumley said.
Crumley notes that Penny Cotten was shot in the left side of her head. But Penny Cotten was right-handed.
Crumley also said Cotten told a friend the day before her death, “Tomorrow, if something happens and I die, just know I didn’t do it.”
An Alaska Memorial Park and Mortuary official who declined to be identified would not confirm or deny that they issued Cotten’s death certificate, and referred all inquiries to the state’s vital statistics section.
Alaska Department of Health and Social Services officials say death certificates can only be released to non-family members 50 years after a person’s death.
Juneau Police Department have “suspended (their) investigation pending contact with a couple more people,” Deputy Chief David Campbell said Friday.
The case has not been closed.
In an earlier interview, Campbell said they can’t release more details about the incident until they actually close the case.
“It looks like we have nine different case officers that have had some sort of involvement with the investigation of this case,” Campbell said.
Police still classify it as an unattended death.
Campbell said it’s too early to determine whether it was a suicide, an accident or a homicide.
“The definition of an unattended death means that a person passed away and it wasn’t expected,” Campbell said. “A doctor wasn’t expecting the death to happen. It wasn’t in hospice case, it wasn’t in the hospital, something along that lines.”
Campbell said making early assumptions about suicide, for example, could prompt investigators to cut corners.
“We investigate all unattended deaths as though they are a homicide until we prove them to be otherwise,” Campbell said. “The reason why we do that is to make sure we don’t miss things.”
Campbell said police may investigate several unattended deaths each month in Juneau.
“In the 23 years that I’ve been here, I’ve probably been to – conservative estimate – 125 to 150 unattended deaths in this city,” he said.
Cotten’s daughter, Kyra Matthews, said it’s hard to get answers about the case from 3,000 miles away in Arkansas.
Penny Cotten was the wife of Charles Edward Cotten Jr., who was briefly the manager of the Bergmann Hotel before it was condemned in March 2017 for health and safety violations.
The 52-year-old Charles Cotten was arrested in October and charged with distributing methamphetamine.
Crumley said they believe someone associated with Charles Cotten was involved in Penny Cotten’s death.
She told WMC TV they’ve received text and Facebook messages from friends in Alaska.
“She says, ‘Veronica, you know your sister didn’t shoot herself in the head,'” Crumley said.
Charles Cotten is in custody at Lemon Creek Correctional Center awaiting trial starting April 9 on the methamphetamine charges.
City officials lifted the Bergmann’s condemnation order earlier this year after the hotel’s owners completed repairs.
