Joseph Parker shot his wife Samantha in the head while she slept, then dismembered her body and stuffed her remains into a freezer – when police asked why he saw her face was still moving
A man who fatally shot his wife while she slept and gruesomely dismembered her corpse to store in the freezer chillingly told officers her mutilated face was “still blinking”.
Joseph Parker coldly admitted to a 911 operator that he attacked his spouse, 44 year old Samantha, at their home in Springfield, Tennessee, yet strangely claimed “she’s not dead”, despite bizarrely asserting he could communicate with the slashed remains of the woman.
During the spine-chilling call, he said: “This is no crank call, I need somebody to get out there and help her out. I’ve cleared the premises, I got away you know? I’m not gonna be there.
“But I promise you this is a legit call and I need somebody to get out there and help her cause I love… I still love her, it’s just hard, hard to believe that after that you know? But I need you to get somebody out there to help her.”
Following his eerie statement, Parker continued his tranquil recounting of the saga to the emergency services operator, reports the Irish Star.
He said: “I shot my wife in the temple of her head. I thought I’d killed her and I put her in the freezer, out in the garage. I checked on her tonight and she’s not dead. Uhh, she’s umm… got a big hole in the temple of her head and… to get her body moved around in there I think I broke her wrist. You know, she was frozen from being in the, in the thing. She’s been in the thing for 48 hours now.”
When questioned about his reasons, he said: “It’s a long story, don’t want to get into it just wanna get into getting somebody out there to help her… you’ll see her once you get in the garage and she’s a mess. She can’t talk. I could get her to blink. Blink once means yes, blink twice means no..”
The 45 year old added: “I’ve thought she’d been dead two days and when I checked on her she was still alive. She’s been frozen for two days. She’s frozen solid, it’s amazing she’s still alive. She’s got a big, a big hole in the temple of her head. I shot her with a 38 caliber hand gun..”
He informed the call handler: “I made her as comfortable as I could make her,” but also mentioned “she’s in bad shape, I really need someone out there to help her.”
He then said: “I’ve loved her every day I’ve been married to her. We just had a rough stretch here.”
However, when the police arrived, they discovered a gruesome scene with Samantha found deceased in a small freezer with parts of her legs removed.
During the ensuing manhunt, authorities located Parker in Kentucky, but he ended his life inside his vehicle following a chase in 2014. It was later revealed that Parker had been fired from his job and the house was facing repossession.
At a balloon release held to remember the tragic event, the couple’s daughter Mackenzie said: “Today I find myself missing both of them equally.”
Mackenzie expressed a surprising lack of anger, saying, “A lot of people ask me why I’m not angry. They showed me what I would like to have in a marriage someday.” She emphasised the importance of forgiveness: “The memories and moments are what you want to hold onto.”
As the disturbing case took centre stage again through EWU Crime Storytime on YouTube, reaching nearly two million viewers, it sparked an avalanche of reactions online.
An individual said: “It’s giving Tell-Tale Heart. She was of course never alive nor blinking. It was just a manifestation of his guilt and madness.”
Another shared their lasting impression of the case: “This one has always stuck with me. He truly had me believing she was still alive, when there was absolutely no way she was. It’s haunting.”
Furthermore, someone else commented on the unsettling nature of the perpetrator’s demeanour: “The flatness in his voice is scary. He’s really snapped and completely lost touch with reality. He probably really did believe he saw her blinking. It’s amazing and scary what your brain can do, we trust it so much.”