Nicole Young

Gannett Tennessee

Police are still piecing together the tragic details that led to the discovery of a slain woman inside a freezer at her Springfield home and the roadside suicide of her husband as police closed in on Friday.

Joseph Parker, 45, killed himself in Kentucky after a pursuit with multiple law enforcement agencies about 13 hours after he called 911 to report that he had killed his wife, Samantha Parker, 44, inside their Clydesdale Lane home.

Investigators found Samantha Parker’s partially dismembered body inside a freezer in the garage of the home when they arrived at the scene shortly after 2:30 a.m. Friday.

Joseph Parker was not there.

He told an emergency dispatcher that he had shot his wife in the head with a 38-caliber handgun two days ago, at about 4 a.m. on their 12th wedding anniversary.

“I thought I had killed her, and I put her in the freezer out in the garage,” Joseph Parker said on the 911 tape. “Well, I checked on her tonight and she’s not dead.”

Joseph Parker told the dispatcher to send paramedics to his home and help his wife, whom he still loved, the tape reveals. He said he gave Samantha Parker some water after he discovered she was still alive in the garage at about 1:30 a.m. He did not answer questions about what led up to the shooting.

Samantha Parker was pronounced dead at the scene on Friday, said Russell Gupton, Robertson County Emergency Medical Services assistant director.

“There was no possibility of her being alive at all,” he added.

On Monday, Springfield Police Detective Madison Burnett, the lead investigator on the case, said an autopsy on Samantha Parker was pending and toxicology reports were pending on her husband.

“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to determine when he killed her, exactly,” Burnett said. The detective confirmed that Samantha Parker had been shot in the head, but he said he wasn’t sure where she was killed.

“I’m not sure at this point whether we’ll be able to determine how long she’d been in the freezer,” he added.

Gupton and Burnett described the couple’s home as “very clean.”

“It was immaculate, not a speck of dust, spotless,” Gupton said. “It was real estate clean.”

Police issued a warrant charging Joseph Parker with Samantha Parker’s murder at about noon Friday. He shot himself in his car at about 3:45 p.m. during a traffic stop near mile marker 12 on Interstate 65 in Kentucky. He was being pursued by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Marshals Service in addition to local officials from Tennessee and Kentucky, according to Springfield Police Chief David Thompson.

After the discovery of his wife’s body, dispatchers called Joseph Parker back at about 3:45 a.m. and he told them he was “on the interstate headed to Chattanooga ... to visit friends,” according to the Springfield Police report.