Theresa Parker, Sam Parker and Ben Chaffin
Sam Parker is on trial this week for the murder of his wife, Theresa Parker, whose body has never been found. A fellow police officer and friend to Sam at the time, Harbin “Ben” Chaffin, was later arrested for four felonies related to this case, one of which was tampering with evidence and another was making false statements to investigators.
Ben has been given immunity, if he testifies against Sam. You can see some footage of the testimony here.
Read moreBen testified this week that Sam called him on March 22, 2007, and confessed to the murder of Theresa. Ben said:
He [Sam] said, uh…something like he’d really done it this time or he was really going to do it this time. [Voice in court: You are not sure which of them?] No, ma’am. [Voice in court: What else did he say?] He said he that had a place that was hard to find her or that they never would find her. And that he’d shot Theresa through the head.
You then hear a voice question Ben, “You didn’t tell them about this so-called murder confession you heard simply because you forgot about it?” Ben replied, “I forgot about it.” According to reports, Ben didn’t remember this during three interviews with the GBI, until he was offered immunity.
Yet strangely, other news reports are saying that Ben said that he “blubbered like a baby”after Sam called him. If news reports are correct that Ben said he “blubbered like a baby” after the call, it is a complete contradiction to the fact that he supposedly “forgot” about the confession later. If something is traumatic to you, enough to cause you to try like a baby, you do not forget about it later. Period.
Ben’s account of the phone conversation on the night of March 22, 2007, raises many red flags for me. First, do you notice how Ben recounts the conversation in third person and doesn’t give us any first person accounts?
Second, when a person doesn’t hear something correctly, as Ben suggests he didn’t, especially when someone is talking about something as monumental as a murder, most people would ask for clarification, if they didn’t hear things, but obviously Ben didn’t. I find this very odd. I have to wonder was he already privy to something going down? Is that why he didn’t ask for clarification? Or is this exact conversation that Ben is telling us completely false? I don’t know.
We could suppose that Ben was afraid of Sam, if he did in fact help his friend in someway do something illegal, or if Sam threatened him, and hence that is why he didn’t dare question Sam. But then we would have expected Ben to make logical sense out of Sam’s first and second statement, if he did decide to share this confession with people–if he truly believed Sam made a confession to him. It would make sense that he would rationalize that he didn’t hear Sam say “he was really going to do it this time” because he would know that he definitely heard Sam say, “I shot Theresa through the head.”
Or I would have expected Ben to say, I wasn’t sure what Sam said at first. It was muffled etc., but Ben does not do any of this. It’s highly unusual.
When people are deceptive, however, they often make a strong statement and then get scared, and their nerves cause them to hedge or soften their statement. It’s what fear does to people when they are in a high stake lie. Is that what Ben does here?
We know for sure that these two spoke in the middle of the night. That seems well documented. Do you think it is plausible that Sam just called and woke up his friend simply to brag about his conquest that night, or do you think there was something more to it? I suspect it is the later, but that is only speculation. I will say that I personally don’t think Ben is leveling with us about what was actually said. Why that is, I can only speculate. Add to that that Ben is facing four felony charges related to this case and a picture starts to emerge that doesn’t look good for Ben.
I do not believe Sam Parker’s story either. You can read my original post on him here.
The mystery deepens…
