Some incidents are so horrifying, they leave you with more questions than answers. This is one of those cases where a husband claimed his frozen, dismembered wife was still blinking.
The Tennessee man who murdered his wife, dismembered her, and stuffed her remains into a freezer left authorities horrified after claiming during a 911 call that she was still alive, days after the killing.
Joseph Parker, a resident of Springfield, made a disturbing call to emergency services, calmly confessing that he had shot his 44-year-old wife, Samantha, and placed her in the garage freezer. Despite this, Parker insisted to the dispatcher, “She’s not dead,” and added that he could still communicate with her.
Disturbing 911 call made by Joseph Parker after shot his wife Samantha in the head and put her body in a freezer.
Joseph claimed that Samantha was still alive when he last checked on her, but when police arrived, she was deceased.
Police promptly issued a warrant charging… pic.twitter.com/Uf2onmmIyv
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“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,” Parker said on the line. “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.”
According to reports from the Irish Star, Parker’s chilling comments didn’t end there. He described the murder in detail, stating, “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.”
He went on to tell the dispatcher that after two days, he checked on her and believed she was still alive. “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 asked about his motivations or state of mind, Parker deflected. “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..”
Parker added another unsettling statement, “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..”
Despite his attempt to show concern, the reality waiting for law enforcement was grim. When police arrived at the scene, they found Samantha Parker’s body inside a small freezer in the garage. Her legs had been severed.
“I made her as comfortable as I could make her,” Parker said during the call. “She’s in bad shape, I really need someone out there to help her.” He added, “I’ve loved her every day I’ve been married to her. We just had a rough stretch here.”
Following a multi-state manhunt, police eventually tracked Parker to Kentucky. But before he could be apprehended, he took his own life inside his vehicle during a pursuit. The murder occurred in 2014 but has recently resurfaced in the public eye after the case was featured on EWU Crime Storytime’s YouTube channel. It garnered nearly 2 million views.
Investigations revealed that Parker had lost his job before the murder and was dealing with the impending foreclosure of their home. The couple’s daughter, Mackenzie, later spoke on the tragedy during a memorial balloon release.
“Today I find myself missing both of them equally. 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 shared.
Speaking of healing and forgiveness, Mackenzie added, “The memories and moments are what you want to hold onto.”
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The story has shaken many viewers, with one person writing, “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 commented, “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 comment read, “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.”
