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

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

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.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm Anne-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. And 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 postmortem, let's listen to an overview of this week's episode. It was February 3rd, 2020, when Seth Peralt, then a police officer for the city of Eatonton, 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 were in bed 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 her old 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 cupped. This wasn't right. Also of concern to Sills was the way this Smith and Wesson.380, which belonged to Seth Perrault, 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. There's something not adding up. District Attorney Wright Barksdale points to the fact that just six days before Amanda Pearl'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 he hid behind a badge and wore a mask 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 Perrault with murder.

But seven months later, the medical examiner in the case issued her report, ruling Amanda Perrault's death a suicide. When you're working with Judy, you get every transcript. You get any piece of evidence that, you know, 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. Like it just speaks so loudly. And it's and it's interesting for me, it was because it was a domestic violence case. I think that's what was really bothering me, you know, like, and the notion that that Amanda was trying to get out and didn't get out in time. Yeah. You know? And I know, and we 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, you know, no matter who you are or what you've done, you know, whatever. We don't blame the victim at all. And we're really, you know, we're fair and balanced because we bend over backwards to be always fair and balanced. But we honor the victims and their families. I know for me, this was sort of classic red flags when it comes to a domestic violence situation. 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 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. It wasn't. Yeah. So let's dig in to 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, how does 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 you have to, 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. Right. And also not tested for the gunpowder residue. Right. 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 but with that. Right. Right. I've been told by a lot of DAs and detectives at this point, 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? Right. But it was his gun. But it was his gun and he was a cop and he had been off duty for a while, right? And he could have showered and there could have been just a little bit left. 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 Seals was suggesting was that Seth somehow got behind her, was able to crouch down behind her. I mean, what he's suggesting as the alternative reality, I guess, is also not very easy to do. No, it's not real easy to wrap your brain around. 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. So like I said, Judy gives you everything that they've acquired about a case. And one of the things that I listened to was the tapes of Seth's interrogation by Sheriff Sills. Okay, so that's where he's sort of explaining why her body was in this strange position. And he initially says, I didn't touch her, I didn't touch her, I didn't touch her. And it felt a lot to me. It felt like someone who was lying.

It felt like someone who was just trying to keep the conversational ball in the air, but not actually answering any of the questions. I want to play a little bit. Maybe I don't know. I probably did touch her. I was probably hugging the s**t out of her. And it was a lot of that, wasn't it, Judy, in the conversation, a lot of kind of jumping around, being unclear, deflecting. Yeah, yeah. Kept wanting to talk about what a great police officer he was and how Amanda thought he was such a great police officer and how important it was to her and to him. And yeah, yeah. I'm a good officer. I'm a good police officer. I'm a good police officer. I'm a good officer.

It really sounds a little bit like he's trying to manipulate the sheriff. And then he uses the word, my wife executed herself. He said that they were in bed and there were arguments. And then all of a sudden she just produced the gun out of thin air and executed herself. I just sat there watching my wife execute herself. In all my years of questioning anybody for suicide, I have never heard anybody use the term executed. During that interview with Sheriff Sills, that was a word that jumped out at him. And he is like, I've never heard anyone speak like that. Yeah, I've never heard that either. In my 13 years at 48 Hours, I have never heard anyone use the word execute. You know, people should know that you really worked hard to get somebody to speak on Seth's behalf. Yes, it was very difficult. Yeah. You spent a lot of time

talking to his mother. And his mother really felt like the sheriff had it out for Seth. Yeah, yeah. The defense seemed to be that Seth was a good guy and that he was the victim of some sort of conspiracy. some sort of conspiracy. You know, the sheriff was out to get the local police chief and Seth got caught in the middle of some battle between the sheriff and the local police chief. And he was sort of like roadkill, you know? Right.

Yeah. Now Sheriff Sills is sort of like a fixture in Putnam County. He's been sheriff for a really, really long time. But this sort of line there is that he grew up in the courthouse because he had actually been adopted by the district attorney of the county. So he had always been around law, law enforcement, the courthouse, and then eventually grew up to become sheriff. That's part of the reason why she felt that, you know, the tentacles of Sheriff Sills could be long and influential in the county. Yeah. I mean, he does have long, influential tentacles in the county, but has he used them for evil? I mean, there's no evidence of that, right? you know, or that he wasn't, you know, I should say that that he was going after a police officer, you know, and and he in in his words, he felt like that put more pressure on him,

right? Because it was one of their own. And they did have to be super careful and make sure that they got it right. Because he was a police officer. So I feel like almost every time that I spoke to you sort of leading up to our shoots, you would say, I just got off the phone with Seth's mom. You really did spend a lot of time talking to her. You had lunch with her on your birthday. Yeah. The life of a 48 hours producer. Yeah.

Yeah. We couldn't get her to go on camera. No. What was her concern? You know, I don't know how to answer that question, sir. Yeah. We couldn't get her to go on camera. No. What was her concern? You know, I don't know how to answer that question, actually. I mean, because we did spend so much time on the phone, hours and hours and hours on the phone with this woman and listening to her story and really trying to understand her defense of her son. And I wanted her to come on camera and say that. I wanted her to come on camera and say that.

I wanted her to come on camera and tell us what kind of man he was because she was painting him to be, you know, the good guy. So we have a lot more to talk about. We're going to get into the possible motive for this murder, Seth's daughter, that incredible interview video, and a possible jailhouse confession. We'll be right back. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved

to the California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military and when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing the best idea yet.

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But then on the flip side, you have a guy who just became a police officer. He's got a bit of a reputation for roughing up his wife. Other officers know about it. for roughing up his wife. Other officers know about it. And we actually sort of hear it in a 911 call when an officer is heading over to the house after hearing about a disturbance. I want to play that 911 call. Captain Kenneth Shears, how is your health, please?

Good, thank you. She called me. She had barricaded herself in a back bedroom. It's my husband. He's putting his hands on me. She ended up having to run next door. He locked me out of the house, and I'm just trying to get my things out of the house, please. She's at the neighbor's house right now. Another sheriff's dispatcher was alerted.

And she said her husband is an officer with the Eaton-Tubb Police Department. That second dispatcher said he knew Seth Peralt and said he had a reputation. I ain't supposed to know this, but he's been out of work with his back and apparently he's over there whipping up on her ass. Seth's arrested for domestic assault. Even after that, after the arrest, Amanda refuses a stay- away order. And so Seth is able to come back. And she doesn't survive much longer after that. Right. Right. That call was her first call to the police ever. Right. And just a few days before she was shot. Yeah. Why do you think she let Seth come back? He was totally in control, right? And we've talked about this.

She loved his daughter, right? So they had custody of his daughter. And yeah. Like as I'm remembering it now, she didn't have a job. She didn't have a car. And I even feel like she didn't have a cell phone that she could use regularly. At that point. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. But she went a long time without her own cell phone. Right. Yeah. Like, she really was restricted and felt she had few options, but she did have her sisters. And her sisters felt like there was another reason why she would not insist on Seth being kept away from her. I want to play Alicia's sound.

Because she was scared. She knew he was mad. She knew that it was public, that he had been arrested. He's a police officer. You know, I have to bring him home and make this right. So that's potential motive. The suggestion from the sheriff, from the prosecutor, is that after he was arrested for domestic violence, everything about his world was going, there's a risk of it all unraveling. It was already sort of barely hanging together, this facade of suburban success and peace.

And with the removal of one piece, which would have been his job, everything else could have fallen apart. Yeah. So I think he was panicking. He was going to lose his job and potentially lose custody of his daughter. And he had Amanda write that note. And he wanted her to take it down to the sheriff's department.

And I think he forced her to write the note because that's sort of what it looks like. Right. And that's what the sheriff says and the DA. The language is not, you know, it's just bizarre. It's a bizarre letter. It's a really weird letter. I want to play some of what Sheriff Sills had to say that sort of stuck out to him. He said that she had written something that she intended to bring to me recanting what she had told the deputies, and he told me where it was. This handwritten letter was found in Amanda's nightstand. It reads in part,

I, Amanda Perrault, would like to retract my statement. My husband never put his hands on me ever. I feel horrible for the humiliation I put my husband and my family through. I am willing to take any punishment I may deserve for what I have done. So the odd word is punishment. I mean, who writes that? If you say that, you know, I was wrong, I was dishonest, it's never happened, then that's all you write. You don't say, punish me, please. I don't know. It was bizarre.

To me, that's the biggest piece of evidence that proves motive. Right. Yeah. And I think she might have refused to take it down to the sheriff's department and was planning on leaving him. Yeah. And if she left him, that was it, right? There was no defense in the abuse. The child would have been taken away.

And for Sheriff Sills, because he's got a little bit of intuition, it wasn't just the wording. It was the way it was written. You actually brought a copy of the letter here. I mean, when you look at this, not only is the penmanship perfect, and some people have perfect penmanship. I am not one of those people. It looks like a paper written for like a school class.

The margins are perfect. It just looks like somebody who had sort of written it over and over again until it was perfection. And those are the little things that when you have a lot of experience, when you've seen notes like this before, you know, like the sheriff has, it just stands out. All right. We'll talk a little bit about the trial now. But when you listen to his daughter's interview, oh, my gosh, because I listened to it again. Yeah. And she's describing the fight that they had when officers were called.

They were cussing at each other. Mrs. Amanda was cussinging too, but she didn't touch Daddy at all. Daddy was like touching her nose like this, like get out of my house right now. The jury was shown most of the interview. She was on the floor like this when we were trying to get her stuff. Then all of a sudden Daddy just started grabbing her arms, and Daddy just pushed her over the laundry table and then opened the door and pushed her out the door. While her father spent the night in jail, she said Amanda begged her not to tell anyone what happened

or there could be deadly consequences. Amanda tells her that night, if your daddy loses custody of you, he's going to shoot me dead. Your daddy would come shoot me dead. Can you imagine? You know, he's throwing her out of the house, and this poor little child is describing it in the way that she would have described a game that was being played in the schoolyard. You know, so-and-so went after so-and-so and then so-and-so went after so-and-so. Your heart is breaking for her because this is not normal.

And she, I don't know if she knows it. Right. And then there was sort of some other video that was shown in the court from Amanda's cell phone that kind of it's kind of the only glimpse that we have of what might have been going on behind the scenes. Right. Let's play some of that. I want to have a good weekend. You burn that up when you try to put that phone in my face. What phone in your face?

Oh, right there. Oh, your videotape. Yeah, because you're being an a**hole and I'm going to show you tomorrow. You didn't videotape all this a** when you hit me and smashed me. Hit you? Yeah. You a**hole choked me a**hole time. So I've heard, I can't remember who said it, but someone said Amanda could give as good as she could get, right?

And I don't know about that. I don't think that was equal. But she was a fighter. She would fight back. Victims can also at times have the power. Sure. You want them to have the power. To try was a fighter. She would fight back. Victims can also at times have the power to try to defend them, to try to fight back, to try and create boundaries. Right. Right. But at times they are overpowered. And what we saw was a power dynamic here that even when she fought back, she was always in the weaker position. A power struggle. And she was always in the weaker position. A power struggle and she was always in the weaker position.

Yeah, totally. What was your take on this jailhouse confession? I know that they kind of like included it, but I didn't think they actually needed it. I didn't think they needed it either. And I'm not, I'll never really be fully sure why they brought it in. And when we asked the DA about it, he said, well, you know, it was just another piece of the puzzle. And, you know, part of that confession was, according to him, Seth saying that his biggest concern was the clothing, that they would see

that he had changed his clothes. And I didn't really understand that because there was no blood on that clothing anyway, right? So what's the big deal? And I really thought the defense attorney who did an interview with us, I thought that his explanation was pretty solid. Like they had been out that morning. He went home. He took a shower, changed his clothes, and got into bed, you know? Let's talk about the defense attorney. Yeah, please. So 48 hours, tried and tried and tried to get someone to talk on Seth's behalf.

His mother had at times promised to come. I really thought she was going to. She had all this sort of stuff, right? So in the end, we got this defense attorney. Justin Kenny. Justin Kenny. Right. Who I thought was great.

He was terrific. What people need to know about Justin Kenny and the defense in general is he was not Seth's primary attorney. Right. He wasn't the lead attorney. He wasn't the lead attorney. Can you sort of tell us how his defense evolved? So Seth initially had a very well-known, well-heeled defense attorney who they were paying a lot of money for. And he passed away like a month before trial. And then Justin Kenney comes in at the last minute and has like, you know, just a few weeks or a few days or a month or so to read into the case, which isn't really a lot. And then he gets stuck doing closing arguments. And the night before, he wrote the whole thing out himself, like really sort of last minute crunch time.

So I really appreciated that he was willing to talk to us about the case. And I got to tell you, I mean, he really believes that Seth should not be behind bars. He was very passionate. I thought he did a very good job given the evidence and what he had to work with. But he really does believe that Seth is innocent. So kind of the most kind of challenging part of this story for me was speaking to Amanda's sisters. Yeah. And it was challenging because they were incredibly emotional.

There were a lot of tears. And I just felt the weight of doing right by them. Yeah. Doing right by Amanda and making sure that they got their story out. We just want to create awareness around domestic abuse and for people to don't sit back and just let it happen, no matter what the victim is telling you. They were glad that they had spoken for their sister, right?

Yeah. Because that was what it was all about. Like someone has to be the voice of Amanda and tell us her side of the story and who she was and what they saw in that relationship. When viewers watch our show, they either see themselves or families see their daughters or cousins or sisters in Amanda. And they see the red flags and they think, oh, are there any of those red flags in this relationship? And should I be a little more vocal about that? Fight for them, you know, help them, help them any way you can. There's so many things I wish I could go back now and do different. I wish I could go back and save her.

You're going to save somebody with this. I hope so. Be sure to join us next Tuesday for another Postmortem. And if you're liking the show, please rate and review 48 Hours on Apple Podcasts and follow 48 Hours wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free on Amazon Music, the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch.

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