HUSBAND CALLS 911 TO REPORT WIFE HE DISMEMBERED, PUT IN FREEZER IS STILL ALIVE

Police are still trying to understand the events that led up to a tragic and bizarre murder-suicide in Springfield, TN.

Last week, Joseph Parker, 45, called 911 to report that he’d shot his wife in the head with a .38 caliber handgun on their 12th wedding anniversary. The Tennessean reports that Joseph told the emergency dispatcher, “I thought I had killed her, and I put her in the freezer out in the garage. Well, I checked on her tonight and she’s not dead.” He said he gave his wife, Samantha Parker, 44, some water after he discovered she was still alive in the garage.

From there, Joseph asked 911 to send paramedics to the home to save his wife whom he still loved. He refused to answer questions about the specifics of the murder. When EMS workers arrived, they found Samantha’s partially dismembered body in the freezer.

“There was no possibility of her being alive at all,” Russell Gupton, Robertson County Emergency Medical Services assistant director. Gupton described  the Parker’s house as “immaculate, not a speck of dust, spotless.”  “It was real estate clean,” said Gupton.

Joseph Parker was nowhere to be found. When the 911 dispatcher called him back, he said he was “on the interstate headed to Chattanooga … to visit friends,” according to the Springfield Police report.

After a 13-hour pursuit by authorities, Joseph shot himself in the head on a roadside in Kentucky.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to determine when he killed her, exactly,” said Springfield Police Detective Madison Burnett.“I’m not sure at this point whether we’ll be able to determine how long she’d been in the freezer.”