In a chilling confession, a man who gunned down his sleeping wife before dismembering her body to store in the freezer told authorities the gruesome remains of her face were “still blinking”.
Joseph Parker eerily admitted over a 911 call that he had brutally attacked his 44 year old wife, Samantha, at their home in Springfield, Tennessee. Despite his savage assault, he bizarrely maintained “she’s not dead”, believing he could still interact with the woman he savagely mutilated.
During the haunting 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.”
Parker’s composed narration of the night’s horror unfolded to the dispatcher on the line, reports the Irish Star.
With unsettling calm, he recounted: “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 queried 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 further 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..”
To the call operator he confessed: “I made her as comfortable as I could make her,” and then lamented “she’s in bad shape, I really need someone out there to help her.”
He continued, saying: “I’ve loved her every day I’ve been married to her. We just had a rough stretch here.”
However, upon their arrival, police were confronted with a gruesome scene, discovering Samantha deceased in a compact freezer with portions of her legs severed.
Police launched a manhunt and located Parker in Kentucky, but he ended his life in his vehicle following a chase in 2014. It came to light that Parker had been dismissed from work and the property was facing repossession.
During a balloon tribute to remember the grim event, the couple’s child Mackenzie expressed: “Today I find myself missing both of them equally.”
Mackenzie said she chose to focus on the positive aspects of her experience rather than anger. “The memories and moments are what you want to hold onto”, she said.
She described that the couple in question showed her what a good marriage should be like.
The case drew renewed attention after a YouTube video by EWU Crime Storytime garnered nearly two million views. This sparked a wave of comments from viewers online.
One viewer drew a parallel with a famous short story, saying: “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 viewer shared how the case had a lasting impact, saying: “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.”
A third viewer said: “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.”
