Vince Panepinto

Vince Panepinto appears as both a practical presence in the Katrina story and a steadfast, though not omniscient, supporter of his wife, Anna Pou. A pharmacist and recreational pilot, he was associated with helicopter rescues after the floodwaters rose. But he was not at Memorial to see what occurred there. His later defense of Pou therefore rested on personal conviction rather than firsthand knowledge, a distinction that becomes especially clear as the criminal case presses into their marriage and private life.

Identity and Katrina

Panepinto was a recreational pilot as well as a pharmacist. After Katrina’s floodwaters rose, he reportedly made his way north to Hammond, Louisiana, and from there flew helicopters to rescue people. Among Pou’s friends, this account made him something of a legend. It also gave his views on nighttime flying particular weight at a Houston seminar: he said that unlit towers made such flights dangerous. His warning sat alongside Pou’s confident assertion that helicopters did not fly at night, and a presenter’s correction that Coast Guard crews had made some nighttime rescues using night-vision goggles. The exchange shows how Panepinto’s aviation experience informed the discussion, while also placing his and Pou’s recollections beside evidence that complicated her broad account.

His own attempt to get back to Memorial unfolded under very different conditions. After the city began flooding, he tried to walk toward the hospital. On the way, he saw two men he considered menacing and turned around. Without a gun, he felt vulnerable. He did not reach Memorial and did not witness the events there. The limit on his knowledge matters: he could speak to his own decision to retreat and his belief about Pou, but not from personal observation of the hospital’s patient care or the deaths later investigated.

Support at the Houston fundraiser

On May 19, 2007, former colleagues of Pou’s from Texas organized a disaster-preparedness seminar and dinner dance in a windowless basement exhibit room at the Hyatt Regency in Houston. The event also raised money for her legal defense, away from New Orleans, where such a celebration might have seemed inappropriate. Panepinto attended as Pou’s husband and watched as she reunited with former colleagues, while her mother and many of her siblings also traveled to the hotel. The gathering joined professional solidarity, family presence, and fundraising for a case that was still unfolding.

Panepinto did not present himself as privy to the legal strategy. Pou and her lawyer, Rick Simmons, were speaking every day as the case progressed, but Panepinto said that he did not ask for details because they treated attorney-client privilege seriously. That restraint distinguishes his support from participation in the defense itself: he was close to Pou, but he kept a boundary around conversations between her and her lawyer.

At the dinner dance, Pou danced with former colleagues and Simmons. Panepinto watched from the side when she summoned him from the dance floor; he gestured no, and she did not press him. The small exchange offers a quiet contrast with the public purpose of the event. She joined the celebration, while he remained an observer. The account does not explain his choice, but it records a difference in how each occupied the same gathering.

Conviction and uncertainty

Panepinto was convinced that Pou would never kill anyone, although he had not seen what happened at Memorial. He also believed that District Attorney Charles Foti had arrested and accused her of killing elderly patients to impress older voters, a constituency Foti had long courted. These were Panepinto’s judgments, not conclusions based on his presence at the hospital. His certainty about his wife therefore coexisted with a substantial gap in firsthand knowledge and with the unresolved legal process.

That gap did not keep him from supporting her publicly. At a later rally, Pou did not appear; she was performing two complicated operations at a public hospital in Baton Rouge and returned that night when one patient developed a complication. Panepinto attended in her place, standing among the crowd with a video recorder. A statement from Pou, read aloud by her brother, expressed her faith that God would help her. Through the camera, Panepinto became a visible proxy for an absent wife, carrying her presence into a gathering she could not attend because of her work.

Marriage under pressure

The Houston fundraiser also revealed the strain surrounding the couple without resolving it. Friends speculated that the events had taken a toll on the marriage. Panepinto, who had attended the fundraiser and later came to the rally, did not ask Pou about her privileged conversations with Simmons. He said he did not know what the future would hold for him and Pou. His loyalty to her was clear; confidence about their shared future was not.

The book thus presents Panepinto’s support as real but bounded. He had tried to return to Memorial, retreated when he felt unsafe, and remained absent from the hospital’s decisive events. Later, he stood beside Pou in public while acknowledging that he could not know the details of her defense or what their life together would become. His role is not that of a witness who can settle the facts, but of a husband whose belief in Pou persists alongside uncertainty about both the case and the marriage.