48 Hours - Post Mortem | The Death of an Officer's Wife

From the outside, Amanda Perrault and her husband Seth, a police officer, seemed like a picture-perfect family. They had a beautiful home in Georgia and were raising a young daughter together. But behind closed doors, Amanda alleged she saw a different, and abusive, side of Seth. What happens when a toxic relationship turns deadly, especially at the hands of someone who is supposed to serve and protect? Correspondent Anne-Marie Green and Producer Judy Rybak discuss crossing the thin blue line, a questionable note left behind at the crime scene, the shocking report from the medical examiner ruling Amanda’s death a suicide and if this would be enough to find Seth innocent at trial.

Duration: 27m
Broadcast on: 07 Nov 2023
Audio Format: other

Get post-mortem ad-free when you subscribe to 48 Hours Plus on Apple Podcasts. Start your uninterrupted listening today for just $2.99 a month. I'm Ann Marie Green, and welcome to post-mortem. And whether you're new to 48 Hours or a longtime fan, we're answering your biggest questions from our episode, The Death of an Officer's Wife. This is a special one to me, because I was the correspondent on this case. I'm joined now by producer Judy Ryback, who reported and produced on this episode, so welcome Judy. Thank you. It is really good to be here for my first-ever podcast. So before we get to our post-mortem, let's listen to an overview of this week's episode. It was February 3, 2020, when Seth Parold, then a police officer for the City of Eaton, Georgia, reported his 44-year-old wife, Amanda, had shot and killed herself. Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills was in charge of the investigation. He said that they wouldn't be out, and they were arguing, and then all of a sudden, she just produced the gun out of thin air and executed herself. But Sills says, from the start, he wasn't buying Parold's story, for one thing the crime scene didn't look like a suicide to the sheriff. Her body is flat on the back, her legs are almost together, and her arms are tucked against her side, with her hands cut. This wasn't right. Also of concern to Sills was the way this Smith & Wesson 380, which belonged to Seth Parold, was found lying next to Amanda's body, with its magazine ejected. The magazine, it was near her right side, and the pistol itself was way down here below her left foot. District Attorney Wright Barksdale points to the fact that just six days before Amanda Parold's death, she had called 911 and had her husband arrested on charges of simple battery and family violence. The next day, he made bond. I think you get behind a badge and more masks every day. Nice house, law enforcement, but behind that door to that house, he was pretty abusive. Based in part on the crime scene and allegations of abuse, Barksdale charged 44-year-old Parold with murder. But seven months later, the medical examiner in the case issued her report, ruling Amanda Parold's death a suicide. When you're working with Judy, you get every transcript. You get any piece of evidence that the investigators are willing to give. Every phone call you've had with everyone we're about to interview, you're really detailed. And so when you said to me, you were struggling with this hour. Why did you find putting this together so challenging? I think for me, honestly, it's not the case itself, because for me, the evidence is so clear. It just speaks so loudly. And it's interesting. For me, it was because it was a domestic violence case. I think that's what was really bothering me. And the notion that Amanda was trying to get out and didn't get out in time. Yeah. And I know, and we just sort of talked about this, that yes, it was a toxic relationship. Yes, neither of these people were perfect. But you were really cognizant of putting together the hour in a way that we would not be blaming Amanda for what happened to her. Yeah. Well, that's what we do at 48 hours. We're very, very sensitive to victims because nobody deserves to be murdered. No matter who you are or what you've done, whatever, we don't blame the victim at all. And we're really, we're fair and balanced because we could bend over backwards to be always fair and balanced, but we honor the victims and their families. Yeah. I know for me, this was sort of classic red flags when it comes to a domestic violence situation, a very toxic relationship, alienation. And, you know, increasingly, she had become dependent on Seth. But I really do feel like there was some manipulation. Oh, yeah. I feel like there was a lot of manipulation from the start. And remember, she was always dependent on him, right? From the very start, he had her move in with him and reportedly wouldn't let her get a job. Yeah. So she was completely dependent on him. Yeah. The idea of being married to a police officer, like everything on the surface of this looked so perfect. You have a young family, police officer, a beautiful house, a boat in the driveway. I mean, it was all an illusion of this kind of perfect suburbia living, you know what I mean? Yeah, it wasn't. Yeah. So let's dig into the case. And the key question when it comes to this case is who pulled the trigger, right? Was it a suicide? Was it a murder? And I'm going to throw something else in, too. Was it an accidental suicide? Because that's something that Seth's lawyers sort of raised, that maybe she had shot herself by accident because, you know, she was inebriated. They had been drinking a lot. So can you talk a little bit about the medical examiner's ruling? Because that was the moment, right, that I heard gasps when I was sitting and watching the hour where people were like, "How did the medical examiner rule this, a suicide when everything about the case seems so odd?" Right. Not only how, but the timing of it, right? Like they were still in the middle of investigating the case. And suddenly this report comes out and everybody was stunned. I mean, everybody was stunned. Often when you have a gunshot directly to the temple, Emmys tend to rule suicide. Because who else is going to get that close to you? And, you know, you have to kind of stand still to be shot this way, right? So I think their theory is it's not a struggle. There's no struggle. There is a gunshot right to the temple. And I can't believe she looked at the crime scene photos and saw a suicide. I don't see how. And she didn't budge on the stand. And you've done a lot of 48 hours. So one of the things that you were telling me was that, you know, often medical examiners do disagree with investigators, but not like this. It's usually the other way around. An investigator might say, "I think it's a suicide." And the medical examiner says, "No, you should take a second look." So this was a little odd. Very odd to me. The other thing that shocked people too was the same thing that shocked the sheriff, the position of Amanda's body. I don't know about you when you talk to some of your friends, but I know my friends, that was the other thing that they kept on talking about, where her hands were positioned, where the gun was positioned, the way the gun broke apart. Like, had she end up like that, you know, like straight out like a mummy with her hands cupped by her side. In fact, let's play a little of what Sheriff Sills has to say. The magazine, it was near her right side. And the pistol itself was way down here below her left foot. And there was a bullet in the gun, so remember he explained to us that if the magazine falls out, how is there a bullet? The magazine has to eject another bullet into the gun, and then it falls out. It doesn't happen that way. The gun was not tested for fingerprints, and also not tested for the gunpowder residue, which, you know, you go, "What are you talking about?" The gunpowder residue would let you know if she committed suicide, because it'd be all over her hands. It would be all over her hands. But there's a big spot with that. I've been told by a lot of DAs and detectives at this point that they don't really rely on it, because, again, because when you shoot off a gun, GSR gunshot residue goes all over the place. And yeah, so it might not have proven anything, whether she was holding the gun or not. The gun was so close to her that anyone else would have gotten. Right. What is interesting is that they found a bit of it on his hand, right? But it was his gun. But it was his gun, and he was a cop, but he had been off duty for a while, right? And he could have showered, and there could have been just a little bit left. Yeah. Oh, the other thing is, you know, there's no blood. So how do you shoot yourself and not get blood on your hand and the sleeve of your shirt? It just doesn't make sense. So yeah, when Sheriff Sills sort of acts this out, it seems impossible. And certainly the way Amanda's body was, you know, you wouldn't sort of shoot yourself and then wind up in that position. But on the flip side, what Sheriff Sills was suggesting was that Seth somehow got behind her, was able to crouch down behind her. I mean, what he's suggesting is the alternative reality, I guess, is also not very easy to do. No, it's not real easy to wrap your brain around, right? There was no room for him to crouch down. I mean, I just don't really get it. We could play homicide detective for hours.

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