Judge upholds Sam Parker muder conviction from 2009 Trial

From Staff Reports

The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the murder conviction of Sam Parker, a former LaFayette police officer who made local and national headlines in 2009 after being tried and convicted of his wife Teresa’s murder in 2009, according to opinions released today.

According to the Georgia Supreme Court:

Under today’s ruling, Chief Justice Hugh Thompson writes that the evidence “was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find appellant guilty of the crimes for which he was convicted beyond a reasonable doubt.”

According to the evidence,Samuel Logan Parker, a police officer who was honorably discharged as a U.S. Marine, had been married to Theresa Parker for 16 years. She was his third wife and she also worked for the Lafayette police in Walker County as a 911 dispatcher. Samuel Parker had a history of drinking and violence, and in 2006, Theresa Parker filed for divorce. The couple separated for several months but reconciled at Christmas, according to briefs filed in the case. The following March in 2007, she decided to leave for good. The weekend of March 24, Theresa planned to finalize her move into an apartment she’d rented in Fort Oglethorpe, about a half hour from the couple’s home. The Wednesday before, on March 21, she started moving in some of her belongings. Later that night, at about 10:30 p.m., she called her friend and fellow 911 operator, Rhonda Knox, from her new apartment. According to Knox’s tes- timony, Theresa told her she was going to drive back to her home in Lafayette to get the rest of her belongings late that night when she hoped “Sam” would be asleep. Theresa had previously told Knox she was afraid of him.

At about 2 a.m. on March 22, Sam Parker called Harbin “Ben” Chaffin, who had also worked at the police department. Chaffin testified Parker told him he had “shot Theresa through the head” and he had put her body in a place where they would never find her. At about 6 that morning, Knox was wakened by her cell phone ringing. Caller ID said it was Theresa Parker, but there was no response before someone disconnected the line. Knox then tried both Theresa Parker’s cell and home phones but got no response. Worried about Theresa, Knox called a friend, a deputy with the Walker County Sheriff’s Department, and asked him to go by the Parker residence to check if everything was OK. No one answered when he and another deputy knocked on the door. Using a flashlight, they peered into the garage and saw that Sam Parker’s patrol car was on the left side, but Theresa’s Toyota 4Runner was not there. On March 24, Theresa’s mother became concerned after not hearing from her daughter for several days, and her boyfriend called 911 to report her missing. The next day, when investigators and the GBI searched the home, they found Theresa’s 4Runner back in the garage. DNA from the vehicle later tested positive for her blood and one spot was a combination of her blood and her husband’s.

Sam Parker was indicted for murder in February 2008 and tried in August and September 2009. At the time of his trial, Theresa Parker’s whereabouts remained unknown. Following a pre-trial hearing, the trial judge – over defense attorneys’ objections – agreed to allow the State to present “similar transaction evidence” involving previous incidents in which Sam Parker had allegedly committed or threatened violence. The State sought to present the evidence to show Sam Parker’s “motive, bent of mind, and course of conduct.” Among the incidents presented to the jury: In 1989, he became enraged at his second wife, broke a glass on the floor, then grabbed her by her hair, dragging her through the glass and handcuffing her to their bed. Later that year, after he and his second wife separated, he let himself into her house, accused her of seeing other men, choked her and held a gun to her head, threatening to blow out her brains. He later told her that if she told anyone what he’d done, “he would kill me and I could trust him when he told me that he knew how to do it without getting caught and they would never find my body.” Later, in separate incidents, he threatened to kill both Theresa Parker’s mother and her former sister-in-law, also vowing to each that no one would ever find their bodies. Prosecutors also brought in as evidence a 2002 domestic violence call to which police responded at the home of Sam and Theresa Parker. The responding officer found Sam Parker in an enraged state, accusing his wife of being unfaithful, and Theresa Parker with her head down and a mark on her face and neck that appeared she had been struck. Her clothes and belongings had been thrown outside.

In September 2009, the jury found Sam Parker guilty of the malice murder of Theresa Parker, false statement, and violation of oath by a public officer, and he was sentenced to life in prison. A year later, on Sept. 10, 2010, Theresa Parker’s skeletal remains were found in a remote part of Chattooga County.

In his appeal to the state Supreme Court, Sam Parker argued the trial court made three errors by denying his motion to suppress the evidence deputies obtained through a search of his property without first getting a warrant; by giving a charge to the jury that coerced jurors to convict him; and by allowing in similar transaction evidence when his wife’s body had not even been found and her manner of death was unknown. In today’s opinion, the high court rejects them all.

“In each of the four similar transactions admitted in this case, appellant engaged in violent, threatening, and controlling behavior toward his then wife or other family members,” the opinion says. “Here, the incidents were sufficiently similar and the trial court’s factual findings were not clearly erroneous. We find no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s admission of this evidence.”

“Judgment affirmed. All the Justices concur.”