A Minnesota woman is fatally shot in her bathroom. Who pulled the trigger?
It was a week before Christmas in 2022, when Saint Paul, Minnesota, police officer Ching Vang and his partner Officer Justina Hser set off on their regular patrol of the city.
Natalie Morales | “48 Hours” contributor: The overnight hours, it’s December 16th, 2022. What time do you get that call?
Officer Ching Vang: On that night, the call came in around 2:50.
Officer Ching Vang: … dispatcher stated that a female was shot in the head. … my partner and I, we went lights and sirens heading towards that call.
Natalie Morales: And is it … all units in the vicinity called in at that time?
Officer Ching Vang: Yes. … pretty much, every unit hop on that call to come and assist.
Within minutes Vang, Hser, and several other officers — body cameras rolling — arrived at the location, a residential apartment building. Matthew Ecker, the man who had placed the 911 call, let them in and directed them to an apartment on the second floor.
Vang was the first to enter the apartment.
Officer Ching Vang: I remember walking in, the bathroom was to the right, the very first door.
ALEX PENNIG’S DEATH INVESTIGATION BEGINS
Alex Pennig, 32, was lying face up with a single gunshot wound to her left temple.
Officer Ching Vang: I noticed … a lot of blood around her head.
Vang had immediately spotted the gun laying on Alex’s left shoulder; her hand resting on top. A team of officers looked around the small studio apartment and questioned neighbors. No one had heard anything.
In the hallway, Hser was talking to Ecker.
OFFICER HSER (police bodycam): (to Ecker) You got to keep breathing. You got to keep breathing.
Officer Justina Hser: He was … on the floor by himself. So, I just went and approached him and just started talking to him.
MATTHEW ECKER (police bodycam): Oh God, why’d she do that? (sobbing)
Natalie Morales: Were you concerned about him?
Officer Justina Hser: I was. … because at the time we didn’t know what was going on …
OFFICER HSER (police bodycam): I know it’s shocked. I know it’s hard.
Officer Justina Hser: I just told him to just slow down. Take your time. We’re not in a rush, whenever you’re ready, I’m — I’m ready to listen.
Ecker did eventually calm down and he started talking —
OFFICER HSER (police bodycam): Were you guys arguing or something?
MATTHEW ECKER: No.
— telling officers he lived almost three hours away but drove to Alex after she placed a frantic call to him earlier.
MATTHEW ECKER (police bodycam) So I came here to help her feel safe.
Ecker told police Alex had gotten into a fight with her current boyfriend. His name was Shane Anderson — that things had gotten physical, and she was scared of what he might do. So, Ecker took his gun and brought it with him to Alex’s apartment.
MATTHEW ECKER (police bodycam): …because I was worried that her boyfriend would come …
Natalie Morales: So, he was going there, he said, to protect her?
Officer Justina Hser: Yes.
Ecker arrived at Alex’s around 2 p.m. Anderson wasn’t there.
MATTHEW ECKER (police bodycam): You know we were just hanging out.
That evening, he said, they went out to local bars. When they walked into a place called Camp Bar, Anderson was inside.
MATTHEW ECKER (police bodycam): He came to her, they were arguing, and I came across and I stood in between them and then he punched me.
Anderson hit him, he says, and then was kicked out of the bar.
MATTHEW ECKER (police bodycam): … and then her and I sat there and talked with other people for another 45 minutes. We came back here, and I thought everything was fine. And then she just grabbed the gun.
OFFICER HSER: Did she make any threat, before that —
MATTHEW ECKER: Not —
OFFICER HSER: — that she was going to kill herself?
MATTHEW ECKER: I didn’t —
OFFICER HSER: Or hurt herself?
MATTHEW ECKER: She just grabbed it and put it to her head.
And with the gun in her hand, she backed into the bathroom, he says, and locked the door. Moments later a single shot rang out. Ecker says he quickly broke the door open and saw Alex on the floor. He told the officers he tried using his nursing skills to stop the bleeding by putting pressure on the wound.
MATTHEW ECKER (police bodycam): … I tried to do what I could.
OFFICER HSER: OK.
MATTHEW ECKER: And then I washed my hands.
OFFICER HSER: Then you washed your hands?
MATTHEW ECKER: Correct. That’s why I don’t have anything on my hands.
OFFICER HSER: And then you, then you called the police?
MATTHEW ECKER: Yeah.
The news that Alex had fired a gun — taking her own life — was unfathomable to Alex’s parents Mary Jo and Jim Pennig.
Mary Jo Pennig: That just was completely out of character for Alex.
Jim Pennig: She had never shot a gun. … Didn’t like guns … so it didn’t make any sense.
And Alex’s mom Mary Jo Pennig had just texted with her daughter a few hours earlier and she didn’t seem depressed at all.
Mary Jo Pennig: She was doing well … you know and that’s what’s hard.
Detectives Abby DeSanto and Jennifer O’Donnell were called to the scene.
Det. Jennifer O’Donnell: You get a call in the middle of the night, so you know it’s not good.
Inside the apartment there was alcohol and six bottles of prescription medications, including antidepressants and amphetamines, all prescribed to Alex. But if that suggested maybe Alex had been depressed and took her own life, there were other things that didn’t seem to add up in Ecker’s account. The first was the position of Alex’s body, say the investigators.
Det. Jennifer O’Donnell: The door to the bathroom was ajar and you immediately see Alex’s feet on either side of the door.
If Ecker had broken down the bathroom door after hearing the gunshot — as he told officers he had —
Det. Jennifer O’Donnell: We think that if that had been the case … her legs, would’ve been swept behind the door.
And even though Ecker had said he washed his hands before calling 911 —
Det. Abby DeSanto: When responding officers arrived the sink was dry. … and if, he had said, you know, he called the police right away that sink probably would’ve been still wet …
The detectives decided to take a deeper look at Ecker’s story. He had told police his only mission that day was to protect Alex from Shane Anderson, the boyfriend he claimed was violent. And in fact, there were these holes in the closet door — holes Ecker said Shane was responsible for.
Det. Abby DeSanto: — across from the bathroom, kinda like punch marks.
The detectives were now eager to speak with Anderson.
A PUNCH CAUGHT ON TAPE
Hours after Alex Pennig was found dead, police were at her boyfriend Shane Anderson’s front door.
OFFICER (police bodycam): Hey, it’s Saint Paul Police.
OFFICER: Did you hear what happened?
Shane Anderson: It’s the most devastating knock on my door I’ve ever had in my life. … two police officers … they asked me who Alex was and I said, “that’s my girlfriend.”
SHANE ANDERSON (police bodycam): Is she OK?
OFFICER: She’s passed away.
SHANE ANDERSON: No!
SHANE ANDERSON (drops to the floor): … Al — Al — Alex Pennig? You’re kidding me (crying).
Shane Anderson: And, I don’t know, blacked out after that pretty much.
SHANE ANDERSON (police bodycam): Oh my God (crying).
Anderson says he was desperate for answers, and willingly went to the police station to speak with detectives DeSanto and Dan Zebro.
SHANE ANDERSON (police interview): … I want to know what happened to her.
DET. DAN ZEBRO: OK, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. OK, so …
Anderson told the detectives he had been dating Alex for around four months and painted a rosy picture.
Shane Anderson: She was sweet. Like she was fun … everything that you’d want in a woman.
According to Anderson, they spent nearly every day together and loved to lounge around with her two cats.
Shane Anderson: I’m not a cat person. I’m more of a dog person to be honest, but, uh, she kind of made me a cat person.
He told the detectives that although it was early in their relationship, they were planning a future together.
SHANE ANDERSON (police interview): Literally yesterday we were talking about, like, me breaking my lease and moving into her place.
Shane Anderson We both wanted families …
Natalie Morales: So you imagined yourself with her?
Shane Anderson: 100%.
Anderson’s description was in stark contrast to what Ecker had told police. Ecker said Alex told him she was fighting with Anderson and scared of him. But when the detectives asked, Anderson denied it.
DET. DAN ZEBRO (police interview): So, did the argument that you guys had in that morning did it get physical at all?
SHANE ANDERSON: No, no, not at all. God, no.
SHANE ANDERSON: It was about, uh, basically why I haven’t moved in yet and like why that was taking so long.
But what about those punch marks in Alex’s apartment?
SHANE ANDERSON (police interview): That was from a few weeks back, that was me, yes. … I was drunk. I didn’t f****** put my hands on her though.
Shane Anderson: We argued like a married couple. Like, it wasn’t — anything like crazy or like, violent or like weird.
But remember, Ecker told detectives Anderson was arguing with Alex just hours before her death at Camp Bar and Anderson even punched Ecker.
MATTHEW ECKER (police bodycam): … and I came across and I stood in between them and then he punched me.
Anderson didn’t deny hitting Ecker. He says seeing Alex with another man upset him.
SHANE ANDERSON (police interview): Alex showed up with like a guy. … He doesn’t look familiar. I have no idea who the f*** this guy is …
Shane Anderson: I was wondering why this guy is hanging out with my girlfriend. And I decided to throw a punch, which I — is not in my character, but it just felt like the thing to do at the time.
Detectives DeSanto and O’Donnell reviewed security footage from inside Camp Bar.
Det. Abby DeSanto: So, Camp Bar is the last bar Alex and Matthew went to.
Det. Jennifer O’Donnell: So, as Alex and Matt walked in, Shane was sitting right across from the bar.
They took “48 Hours” through the altercation. And we zoomed in for a closer look.
Det. Abby DeSanto: Matt was sitting here (on one side of the bar, near the entrance) when they walked in. And then really oddly, Alex walked around the bar and sat across the bar over there (on the opposite side).
Det. Jennifer O’Donnell: Shane walked over to her first, and then she is talking to Shane and then Matt comes over, and it appears that he is introducing himself cause he, you know, holds out his hand to, um, shake hands with Shane and then there is a confrontation and Shane ended up assaulting Matt.
Natalie Morales: Shane then is asked to leave.
Det. Abby DeSanto: Yes.
Shane Anderson: I had no idea that that was going to be the last time that I ever saw her.
After Anderson left, the footage showed Alex hanging at the bar with Ecker for about another hour drinking and chatting. Detectives were no closer to understanding why, just a little while later, she would — as Ecker told them — take her own life. And the medical examiner ruled that Alex’s manner of death could not be determined. So detectives dug into her past looking for anything that could explain what happened.
Sara Hanson: Well, she’s been every hair color. (laughs)
Gillian Kubitschek: Brunette, and then blonde, and then black hair.
Sara Hanson: A little red in there.
Gillian Kubitschek: Put a little red in there, and it was like she would just be every color.
Gillian Kubitschek and Sara Hanson have known Alex since grade school.
Natalie Morales: Tell me about Alex, as you knew her back then.
Gillian Kubitschek: Spunky a little child full of energy. Always up to something.
Kubitschek played ice hockey with Alex, and together they won a state championship.
Natalie Morales: What was she like?
Gillian Kubitschek: Fire on ice. Luckily, I was always on her team, so I never had to play against her, but she was feisty.
Sara Hanson: She was so fun. … I don’t really remember anything other than happiness really in, especially in the younger years
But detectives learned that as a young adult Alex struggled. Her parents Mary Jo and Jim Pennig said that in college, Alex would get depressed, and she got hooked on prescription pills.
Jim Pennig: It was very difficult.
Jim Pennig recalls one day in 2016.
Jim Pennig: She went up to her room and took a handful of meds and then had told her mom that she was attempting suicide by meds. And then promptly threw it up —
Mary Jo Pennig: She threw it up —
Jim Pennig: — stuck her finger in her throat and threw it up.
Mary Jo Pennig: I felt like it was a cry for help
And they got Alex that help. Inspired by the nurses who helped her recover, in 2019 she got her licensed practical nursing degree and was chosen to speak at graduation.
ALEX PENNIG (graduation speech): I have climbed out of the darkness with permanent scars, but a heart of gold, and the promise that as a nurse, I would try my best for people like me to not be alone and help them like those nurses that helped me.
Mary Jo Pennig: Alex did make that choice to get well, and she did.
Natalie Morales: Her life was back on track.
Mary Jo Pennig: Her life was on track.
Detectives also learned all about Alex’s history with Matthew Ecker. She met him in 2020 when she got a job at a walk-in clinic. Her parents say their daughter described Ecker as someone she worked with. But according to Matthew’s parents Blaine Ecker and Terri Randall, there was a lot more than just friendship. Alex and Matthew Ecker, they say, were having an affair back then even though Ecker was married with four kids.
Terri Randall: She knew he was married. She knew he had four children.
Randall says the romance didn’t last. In the summer of 2022 —
Terri Randall: They had ended the physical part of their relationship and were just friends.
Still, she says her son was a source of support for Alex. She says Matthew told her Alex was drinking heavily and as a result lost several jobs.
Terri Randall: .. she wouldn’t show up. She’d go on a binge.
Without a job, Matthew Ecker’s family says Alex struggled to pay her bills. So unbeknownst to her parents, Ecker stepped in. He gave Alex money and helped her pay her rent. Ecker’s sisters Molly Hovland and Amie Keller aren’t surprised their brother wanted to help.
Amie Keller: He cared for her and … he has a big heart, and he didn’t want to just walk away. … He couldn’t walk away.
And just three days before Alex died, Alex sent Ecker these text messages:
“I shut myself out to the world” “I needed a mental health break” and “I am not very hopeful at the moment about life.”
Even with those texts though, and Alex’s past attempt years earlier, detectives still weren’t convinced she took her own life.
Det. Jennifer O’Donnell: Just because you say, I need a mental health day, or it’s not a good day, doesn’t mean you’re suicidal.
Detectives suspected Ecker was lying to them. And here’s why. Remember, the gun was found on Alex’s chest with her left hand on it.
It turns out Alex was right-handed.
- How Does Run Away End? All the Murders and Secrets Explained “Right at the very end, I look down the lens as if to say, ‘What do I do now?’”By Olivia HarrisonJan. 6, 2026
This article contains major character or plot details.
There are so many secrets to sift through at the center of Run Away to get to the truth.
In Harlan Coben’s newest limited series, Simon Greene’s (James Nesbitt) daughter Paige (Ellie de Lange) goes missing, and he’s desperate to find her. But when he finally does, she’s strung out on drugs and accompanied by Aaron Corval (Thomas Flynn), a troubled young man who Simon blames for taking his little girl away. Enraged by what’s happened to his daughter, Simon attacks Aaron, and Paige runs away yet again. Unfortunately for Simon, the altercation is recorded, the video quickly goes viral, and he finds himself in a sticky situation when Aaron is murdered soon after. That’s where creator and executive producer Harlan Coben and head writer and executive producer Danny Brocklehurst’s “shared vision” kicks off, and it only gets more winding from there. “We love twists and turns,” Coben tells Tudum. “In our view, it gets better with each episode.”
While detectives Isaac Fagbenle (Alfred Enoch) and Ruby Todd (Amy Gledhill) set out to find the murderer — with Simon as their main suspect — the father of three and his wife, Ingrid (Minnie Driver), go to Aaron’s apartment, the last place Paige was living, to restart their search. At the scene of the crime, under the cover of night, Simon and Ingrid meet Cornelius Faber (Lucian Msamati), a neighbor who was friends with Paige. He tells her parents that two days before Aaron died, he’d run into Paige as she was heading to see her drug dealer, Rocco (Marcus Fraser). She was in need of a fix, but also had blood on her face, so Cornelius was sure Aaron had beaten her. Since this was the very last time Cornelius had seen Paige, he tells Simon and Ingrid where to find Rocco. When they go to see him, though, things go badly and Ingrid is shot. With his wife now in a coma, Simon continues his mission to track down his daughter.
“They’re rather extraordinary circumstances, and the drama is huge,” says Nesbitt. “My character is taken to a lot of very dark places.”
Through those “extraordinary circumstances,” Simon meets Elena Ravenscroft (Ruth Jones), a private investigator who’s also looking for answers in a missing persons case that may just be connected to Aaron’s murder and Paige’s checkered past. The two become what Jones calls “unexpected allies.”
“They share things about their personal lives that overlap, and they’re weirdly able to be a little bit of a comfort to each other,” she explains. As Simon and Elena work together on a mission to uncover deeply buried secrets, another duo — paid assassins known as Ash (Jon Pointing) and Dee Dee (Maeve Courtier-Lilley) — run rampant on their own mission: killing people who may also have something in common with Aaron.
So who murdered Aaron Corval? Is Paige Greene still alive? And where exactly does this mystery take place? Ahead, we answer these questions and more. Plus, Coben, Brocklehurst, Nesbitt, and Jones break down Run Away’s major twists and untangle the series’ many secrets.
Ben Blackall/Netflix
What happens to Elena Ravenscroft?
When Henry’s father, a wealthy businessman named Sebastian Thorpe, hires Elena to track down his missing son, he explains that Henry was adopted. He also shares a flyer for a tattoo parlor that has a cell number scribbled on it that he found among Henry’s things. With some digging on social media and help from her tech expert Lou (Annette Badland), Elena soon discovers that Henry had made plans to meet up with Paige Greene — Simon’s daughter, who is also missing — not long before he disappeared, and identifies that the number on the flyer belongs to a man named Damien Gorsch. When Elena goes to the tattoo parlor to try to determine what connects Henry, Paige, and Damien, she discovers that it is an active crime scene.
As we see in Episode 2, Damien was shot and killed by Ash and Dee Dee, who also murdered a man named Kevin Gano in Episode 1, but Elena hasn’t pieced that together yet. Soon, though, while searching through Damien’s internet history, Elena does discover that he had recently visited a genealogy website, searching for his biological family. It turns out Damien was adopted through the same agency as Henry, and the two met on the site.
After coming across Kevin Gano’s obituary, Elena begins looking into his death because he was also adopted and died under suspicious circumstances. In the meantime, Elena tracks down Alison Mayflower, the person who oversaw both Damien and Henry’s adoptions. When Elena confronts Alison, she confirms that Aaron was adopted as well. Fearing accusations of involvement in these cases, Alison escapes, but Elena blackmails her assistant to get the address of Alison’s girlfriend Stephanie. Through more investigative work, Elena finds out that, at the time of Kevin’s death, he had been looking for his birth family, just like Henry and Damien, and that, according to Damien’s account on the ancestry site, he had several half-siblings, including Henry, Kevin, and someone using the initials AC, whom Elena and Simon conclude must be Aaron Corval.
Elena goes to Stephanie’s home looking for Alison, but nobody’s there, so she leaves her card with a note asking them to contact her. Elena soon receives a call from someone claiming to be Stephanie, and they make a plan to meet up in a parking lot. When she arrives, however, it’s Dee Dee who’s waiting for her. Pretending to be Stephanie, Dee Dee drives Elena to a cabin. Inside, Elena steps onto a tarp, and Ash points a gun at her. While memories of Elena and her late husband Joel flash across the screen, a gunshot sounds — Elena has been murdered by Ash and Dee Dee.
“I did find it quite scary to shoot,” says Jones. “I’m facing Dee Dee, and then I have the realization that Ash is there. It was that turning round, and he’s holding this gun, and he was so totally in it.” Jones thinks that not showing the actual murder makes the moment even more eerie and impactful. “I was very glad that I didn’t have to actually fall on the floor, because I think that might have made it a bit comedic.”
Losing a key character six episodes into an eight-episode series comes as a shock, but fans of Coben and Brocklehurst’s work know it’s a twist the pair like to employ. “It’s not the first time we’ve done this,” Brocklehurst points out. “We have killed off Jennifer Saunders and Eddie Izzard.”
“We love to kill off comedy legends,” says Coben, adding that this twist also ups the emotional stakes. “Danny and I wanted to break your heart a little bit. It’s one of the reasons why you get an actress as lovable as Ruth Jones.”
This heartbreaking murder, a little over midway through the series, keeps the audience on its toes. “We were very careful in how we filmed this and how we wrote this part, where you still think there’s some way she’s going to get away,” Coben continues. “Then, when we slow down, and the music starts, and her feet hit that tarp, and she starts to see her husband, you realize this really is the end.”
Ben Blackall/Netflix
What is Ash and Dee Dee’s mission?
The audience knows Ash and Dee Dee are on a killing spree from the start of the series, but their motivation isn’t revealed until Episode 5. The episode opens with a flashback to three weeks earlier: Dee Dee is living among what appears to be a cult and going by the name Holly. Her religious chanting is interrupted by a fellow member who walks her out of the commune, hands her an envelope, and sends her off to “spread the Shining Truth.” After being promised that her friend will get paid once they complete the tasks, Dee Dee opens the envelope to find photos of Damien Gorsch, Kevin Gano, Henry Thorpe, and Aaron Corval with Paige Greene — their kill list.
We come to find out that Ash and Dee Dee grew up in foster care together, and recently reunited to carry out these murders. Dee Dee is a member of the cult, but Ash is openly suspicious of the group, especially since he hasn’t been told exactly why they want these people dead. When Dee Dee takes Ash back to the compound in Episode 5, another member of the cult, Mother Adiona, slips him a note that says, “Don’t kill them. Don’t trust Dee Dee.” Still, because of the deep bond he formed with Dee Dee through their shared traumatic upbringing, Ash continues on and even takes on the new assignment of killing Elena after Alison reports back to the cult that the PI is catching on to them.
Episode 7 opens with a flashback to Dee Dee leaving the compound three weeks earlier, and then follows Mother Adiona as she runs to warn a man named Nathan that he’s being targeted by Ash and Dee Dee. Back in the present, as the killers bury Elena’s body, they see a text on her phone from Simon and worry about what Elena may have told him before her death. Later on, when Ash eventually confronts Dee Dee about Mother Adiona’s note, Dee Dee reveals that Mother Adiona’s biological son, Nathan, is on their kill list and finally lets Ash in on the reason they’re after these men.
The leader of the Beacon of the Shining Truth cult, named Casper Vartage but known by followers as “The One,” is dying, and his two “divine” sons, known as “The Visitor” and “The Volunteer,” are ready to take over from him. But they’re not the only sons The One had with his impressionable young followers. The others were put up for adoption without their mothers’ knowledge or consent. “It’s written in the symbols that the Shining Haven and all of The One’s possessions will be equally divided amongst all his male heirs,” she explains to Ash. Now that he is nearing the end of his life, the cult leader has tasked them with killing the additional sons so they don’t “ruin the Shining Truth.”
Coben chose to write Run Away around a cult because, he says, “There’s a certain fascination with that kind of brain manipulation, if you will, and that sort of obsession, believing what’s not necessarily so.” Plus, Coben explains, the insular community offered an interesting juxtaposition to the mainstream spheres that Simon’s family occupies in the story: “What could they have to do with a cult that’s way in the outskirts of society?”
As Ash and Dee Dee continue discussing the mission and her belief in this so-called “Shining Truth,” Dee Dee explains that the religion helped her come to terms with their tragic past and that the money they’re getting from carrying out these kills will allow them to live the life they want. “After everything we’ve been through, don’t you think we deserve that?” she asks Ash. Finally understanding what all this is about, he’s ready to move forward with their next assignment — killing Aaron.
At Aaron’s apartment, though, Dee Dee and Ash discover that Aaron is already dead. As they’re leaving, they spot Simon, who is meeting back up with the drug dealers that may have information about Paige, so they go after him. When they’re spotted, a gun fight breaks out, and Ash is shot dead. Devastated and incensed by the loss, Dee Dee pursues Simon up the stairs of the apartment building and shoots him. “After Ash is killed, you’re almost cheering on Dee Dee Terminator-style because you know how much they were connected, even though they were fucking terrible,” says Coben. But, just as she’s about to finish the job, Mother Adiona shows back up and throws her off the ledge of the apartment building. Dee Dee now lies dead on the concrete. 
Ben Blackall/Netflix
Is Paige Greene alive?
The heart of this story is a father desperately searching for his runaway daughter, but with a string of murders connected by a dangerous cult, there’s a looming question of whether the missing girl is even still alive. Early in the finale, that question is finally answered. Paige reappears for the first time since Simon spotted her in the park at the start of the season, which led to that disastrous altercation with Aaron. She’s at her mother’s hospital bedside, looking a lot better than she did the last time Simon saw her.
As she tells her relieved father, Paige has been in rehab and is now almost a month clean from drug use. When she found Aaron’s dead body, she feared that the police would think she had killed him, so she ran. As Simon uncovered over the course of the series, Paige had been sexually assaulted at university. Not long after, she began spending time with Aaron and turned to drugs. Fearing his disappointment, Paige didn’t tell Simon any of this, but she did confide in Ingrid, who then set her daughter up at the rehab center she had been treated at when she was younger — something else Simon was completely unaware of.
In Run Away, Coben and Brocklehurst bring us into many different worlds. There’s the privileged environment of finance jobs and private schools that the Greene family inhabits, the dingy apartments and dodgy crowd that hangs around the Marinduque Estate where Aaron, Paige, and Cornelius live, and of course, the creepy Shining Haven commune. But something unites all of them. “Addiction is one of those things that makes all those worlds overlap,” says Coben. “It affects everybody — every economic and every social class.” That’s why the author wanted to tackle the topic of addiction, and it’s what guided Brocklehurst as he adapted the novel. “I was very, very keen that we made this one really emotionally truthful to parents and to that feeling that this can happen to anybody,” he explains. “I think that what Jimmy’s done really well is bring that sense to life.”
Knowing that addiction can touch anyone helped Nesbitt channel honest emotions in his portrayal of Simon, especially in his scenes with Paige. “To locate the real depths of despair or helplessness or guilt or paralysis, it is handy at times to be able to tap into the reality of my life as a parent of two girls,” says Nesbitt. “It’s easy for me to imagine just how awful that would be.”
Ben Blackall/Netflix
Where does Run Away take place?
To create all the different worlds that converge in this one emotional story, the team behind Run Away filmed on location across Northwest England, including in Greater Manchester and Liverpool.
Coben says he was first inspired to write the story while sitting in New York City’s Central Park with a street performer strumming nearby. “I was thinking, ‘What if Simon Greene is sitting right on this bench where I am now?’ He is sort of half listening to the busker, and when he looks up, he sees it’s his daughter. And when he approaches her, everything goes wrong,” Coben shares. “I love those What Ifs.” Executive producers Nicola Shindler and Richard Fee call that opening scene in the park the “emotional hook” of the story, and it’s what made Run Away one of their favorite novels from Coben. So, of course, finding the right location was important.
Eventually, the team landed on Sefton Park, in Liverpool. “In the book, it’s Central Park, so we had a lot to live up to,” Fee says. “But Sefton Park feels very iconic for that big hook scene.” It also turned out to be Driver’s favorite filming location. “For me, the most gorgeous discovery was Liverpool and Sefton Park. I had never been [there] before,” she says. “The architecture and the layout of the city is so fantastically beautiful with this huge park in the middle. We shot in this Georgian square, which is meant to be the exterior of the house that looks exactly like a big Georgian square in London.”
Another critical location that was challenging to get just right was that of the Beacon of the Shining Truth. “The house for the cult was quite hard to find because that is something that is so particular,” says Fee. “It has got to have a big impact onscreen. It has got to feel very visually distinctive, but there is a danger that it could feel too heightened or too unbelievable, so it was trying to find that balance. What we found is terrific and works very well.” According to Shindler, Cornelius’s home at the Marinduque estate also needed to strike a balance between “interesting” and “dark.” The spot that was selected helped imbue those scenes with a gritty reality. “When you are on location in such places as the Marinduque estate, it is a reminder that people are living hard lives out there,” Msamati shares.
Who killed Aaron Corval?
After raiding Shining Haven and learning of Ash and Dee Dee’s involvement, Detective Fagbenle understandably concludes that they were responsible for Aaron’s death. But after Simon and Paige reunite, we learn who actually killed him. As she explains to her father, Paige’s current stay at rehab, which she returns to after visiting her mother in the hospital, wasn’t her first. Her initial attempt to get clean at the facility was unsuccessful because Aaron tracked her down, snuck in, and shot her up with drugs while she slept. The next day, she left with him. Though Aaron had avenged Paige by attacking her rapist back at university, he was obviously deeply troubled. After he and Paige connected with his half-brother Henry through the genealogy site, Aaron got jealous and assaulted Paige. She once again sought help from Ingrid, who told her to return to rehab. Before she did, however, Paige went back to Aaron’s apartment the following day. There, she discovered his dead body and eventually realized her mom had killed him. Before Paige heads back into rehab, she and Simon agree to never tell Ingrid they know the truth. “She did that to protect me, and I have to live with that,” Paige says to her father.
After Ingrid comes out of her coma and is released from the hospital, however, Simon confronts his wife about Aaron’s murder. With no regrets, she explains that she arranged an alibi with her co-worker Jay, who said he would cover for her if anyone asked any questions. But, after killing Aaron, Ingrid was seen leaving his apartment by one of the drug dealers, Luther. Knowing that Ingrid had murdered Aaron, who worked for Rocco, he feared that she was after them as well, which is why he shot her when Cornelius sent her and Simon to them and claimed self-defense.
Though incredibly shocking, the reveal that Ingrid killed Aaron isn’t the series’ final — or juiciest — twist. After Ingrid shares the story of why and how she murdered Aaron, she tells Simon, “No more secrets,” but it turns out, she’s still keeping one, and it’s a doozy. Back at home, Simon sits down for a chat with Paige, who is now home from rehab and doing well. He says he never understood what she saw in Aaron and that he had noticed, when he visited their apartment, there were two single mattresses, meaning Paige and Aaron likely weren’t sleeping together. He also shares that he had spoken to the person who raped Paige, and he said that as Aaron was beating him up, he kept saying over and over, “No one hurts my sister.”
As Simon previously discovered while looking for his daughter, Paige had joined a “Family Tree Club” back when she was still at school. Now he’s pieced together that Paige also met Aaron through a genealogy website, and found out that they, too, were half-siblings. Unlike The One’s other sons, Henry, Damien, and Kevin, though, Aaron and Paige share a mother. Paige confesses that Ingrid told her that she was part of this cult. Like the many other young mothers who had been members, she got pregnant by The One, had the baby, and then was falsely told the baby was stillborn. Eventually, she escaped, and that’s when she went to rehab. “I’d driven my mum to kill someone,” Paige says to her dad. “But she didn’t just kill someone, did she?” Simon asks. “She killed her own son.” Again, Paige begs him to never confront her mother about the whole truth, and as the family sits down to eat dinner together, it seems like he has agreed. But, as the series’ final shot closes in on Simon’s face, he stares directly at the camera before it quickly cuts to black.
“Right at the very end, I look down the lens as if to say, ‘What do I do now?’” Nesbitt says.
The actor isn’t sure how his character will answer the question, but insists that’s not what really matters. “The important thing is that Paige is okay. I think Paige and Simon can [move on]. I’m not sure about Simon and Ingrid,” he continues. “I like that ambiguity because it isn’t all a happy ending. How could it be?”
Brocklehurst also likes the uncertainty as to what happens next. “It treats the audience with an intellectual respect to have their own opinion,” he says. His personal opinion, by the way, is that in their final shared look across the dinner table, Simon and Paige understand that they now hold a heavy secret that can never be shared.
Coben agrees, “That’s going to haunt them the rest of their lives, both of them.” But, as is illustrated by all the characters throughout the series, even with our secrets, life goes on. “You can live with secrets, because we all do. None of us fully knows the interior of another person.”
