48 Hours Mystery: The Secret

"Life still goes at a small pace here in LaFayette, Walker County. You can be to work in just a few minutes…. be home in a few minutes," according to Sheriff Steve Wilson. "We're located right in the heart of the Bible Belt.

"Being able to go on Friday night to watch your children play football or watch your daughter cheerlead as I did, that's what small towns are all about."

"She was the middle sister and I was the youngest," Christina Hall told "48 Hours Mystery" contributing correspondent Tracy Smith of her sister, Theresa Parker. "Theresa loved everybody. She loved family - that was the most important thing to her. …You think of the best sister you could have and she was definitely…"

"She's one of our own. She's a 911 dispatcher," said FBI Special Agent Marc Veazey.
"She's that person on the other end of the radio when you're in need, she's there."

"When I hugged her that night, it was just the strangest thing," Hall recalled. "It was almost like just this feelin' of I was never gonna see her again.

"I just, you know, kept tryin' to call her…I just called her over and over, and over, I was panicked… She is nowhere to be found, you know. And you don't wanna think the worst, but, I mean, you do."

"This case is about a 911 dispatcher and a city police officer …a married couple and one had turned up missing," said Sheriff Wilson.

"It's like a horrible dream I can't wake up from," said Theresa's husband, Sam Parker. "I miss her, I miss her a lot."

"People came out in hundreds to search for her," said Sheriff Wilson. "We covered about 175 square miles of landmass. The community as a whole was very concerned about Theresa Parker missing."

"I am hopeful they'll find her. I hope they find her in good health," said Sam Parker.

"Every mornin', when I open my eyes, I think about her," said Hall. "You know, at night, when I lay my head down, to go to sleep, I think about her. You know, 'Theresa, where could you be?'"

"I don't believe that she would have just vanished off the face of the Earth," said Veazey.

"We knew this was not the typical missing person's case in Walker County," the sheriff said. "This was gonna be bigger than Walker County when it was all said and done."It was the first day of spring, March 21, 2007 - a time of new beginnings for Theresa Parker according to her sister, Christina Hall.

"She was at my house Wednesday night for about an hour. And we talked and she wanted me to go to her new place…"

The 911 dispatcher and her police officer husband, Sam Parker, were divorcing after 13 years of marriage.

"The marriage was playin' itself out, but it wasn't in a bad way," Sam told Tracy Smith.

Theresa was getting ready to move into her own apartment near her sister and nephews.

"She was just so excited to be closer and be able to go help us out with them and spend more time with them," said Hall.

But when the sisters said their goodbyes that Wednesday night, Hall said something was different. "… when I hugged her I just got this - just the emptiest feelin'. And it was really strange."

The sisters didn't talk at all the next day, and Hall figured Theresa was just busy cleaning her new place. But by Friday morning, March 23, that empty feeling in her gut was back.

"I just woke up and felt like I had this black cloud over me… and I'm not usually like that," Hall explained. "I thought, 'I'm gonna talk to Theresa. She always made me feel better.'"

Theresa didn't answer her phone. Hall went to work, still hoping she'd hear from her sister at any moment.

"Every time the phone would ring I'd check the ID to see if it was her," she said. "I thought, 'She'll be callin' anytime since I've left her a message.' Cause it was odd that she didn't call me right back."

Meanwhile, Theresa's friend and co-worker, Rhonda Knox, was also getting worried after a strange early-morning call on Thursday, March 22.

"At 6:00 in the morning my phone rings and it's from Theresa. And I answer it and there's just a few seconds there and then hang up," Knox explained. She knew it was odd for Theresa to call and hang up.

"I thought, 'This isn't Theresa,' you know, so I called back. It rang and then went into voice mail," she said. "I started callin' the house. I started getting worried."

To ease her mind, Knox called police officer and friend Shane Green and asked him as a favor to check out the home Theresa still shared with her soon to be ex-husband, police officer Sam Parker.

"So when Shane went to the house, did he call you? What did he say?" Smith asked.

"He was sayin,' 'OK, we've beat on the door.' And I told him, I said, 'Look in the garage. She parks in the garage every time.' And he shined in there and he told me, he said, 'Her car's not here.'"

It's around 6:30 a.m. and Theresa's Toyota Forerunner was no where to be found; Sam Parker's patrol car was in the garage and his pickup truck was parked outside the house in plain sight.

Strangely, Theresa's SUV was back at the house Thursday afternoon, but no one had seen her and she wasn't answering her cell phone.

Everyone was calling her, including husband Sam Parker.

More than 24 hours had come and gone with no word from Theresa. Her sister was frantic.

"There were just no ifs, ands or buts about it," hall said. "I knew something so horrible -and I was just scared to death."

Then, on Friday evening March 23, Hall got a call from brother-in-law Sam Parker. He was on patrol working the night shift.

"I could immediately tell something with him wasn't right. Cause he was talkin' really fast and he kept clearing his throat and that was just out of character for him," Hall said. "And I was like, 'Well, we need to do something. We need to file a missing person's report. You know, this is not Theresa.'"

Hall said Parker told her he'd gone fishing with a buddy that Thursday morning and that when he left the house, Theresa's SUV was in the garage. But if Hall was panicked, Sam Parker seemed anything but.

"He said, 'Well, I'm at work right now, but when I get off of work in the mornin' I'll see what I can do,'" she said.

On Saturday morning, March 24, 2007, Theresa's family calls the police.

"Our detective was assigned the missing person case," Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said. "He told me, he said, 'Sheriff… something's just not right here.'"

Sheriff Wilson knew this case was just too personal for him to investigate. He not only knew Theresa from 911, he'd also gone to the police academy with Sam Parker. So he called in the GBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Special Agent James Harris headed straight for Theresa's new apartment, looking for any clues.

"We found a few odds and ends, some clothes, some shoes, her 911 uniform," he said. "We found where Lowes had stopped in to deliver a washer and a dryer that she had previously purchased. And she wasn't there, so they left one of the flyers on the doorknob."

With no signs of Theresa, neighbors and friends joined together, holding prayer vigils and putting up missing posters.

Agent James Harris was eager to talk with Sam Parker. And on Sunday March 25, four days after Theresa went missing, Sam Parker, the police officer, wasn't the one asking the questions.

"I knew that we had to lock him in on a timeline," Harris explained. "And one of the things that jumped out at me immediately was that he said he was in his truck the whole night."

Three people had already told Agent Harris a different story; they saw Sam Parker's truck parked at Sam and Theresa's house early that Thursday morning.

"And Sam is telling you that he was driving around in his truck?" asked Smith.

"That's correct. So then, that's when red flags started going up and Sam became a suspect in my eyes," Harris said. "I couldn't understand why he would lie about somethin' that small… at least I thought it was small at the time."

Sam Parker believed Theresa had gone off on her own because they were divorcing. He couldn't understand why investigators were looking at him.

Law enforcement was facing a real mystery: What happened? And why couldn't anyone find the police officer's wife? Kenneth Parker looked up to his big brother, Sam, and followed in his footsteps.

"We were the Norman Rockwell vision of brothers growin' up next to a river. We grew up, very close, very close," he told Tracy Smith. "He went in the Marine Corps, I went in the Marine Corps. He went in the police department, law enforcement; I went into law enforcement."

According to Kenneth, being a cop meant everything to Sam. "He was a cop 24 hours a day."

Kenneth said his proud police officer brother was quickly smitten with a young 911 operator.

"He started talkin' about this new dispatcher… she was very attractive and he started talking about how he would like to try to take her out," he explained. "One thing led to another and he started dating her and it took off from there."

"You'd instantly fall in love with her just about when you get to talk to her, because she was just that way," Kenneth continued. "She just made you feel comfortable."

Her nickname was "Mother Theresa," and according to younger sister Christina Hall, she was the glue that held their family together.

"She was the type of person, if you needed her, you called her [and] she was there."

Theresa's first marriage had ended in divorce and Sam already had two ex-wives. Despite their past failed relationships, they seemed like a good match.

"When I first met him, I liked him. He had a good funny sense of humor and he seemed to be a gentleman to her," Hall told Smith. "I thought he probably is [the one for her]. You know, he's gonna be the one… she was just crazy about him."

Theresa and Sam Parker married on Sept. 11, 1993. They seemed happy at first, but after a few years, their relationship turned rocky.

"They were fighting one moment, in love with each other the next," said Kenneth. "It was a seesaw and evidently they liked it that way."

But it seemed Theresa finally had enough and decided to pull the plug after 13 years of marriage.

"She's a missing person and I don't know where she is," said Sam Parker.

Part of the problem investigators have in searching for Theresa is the terrain. The woods across from the Parker's home go on for miles and miles in every direction. This is mountain country and it's thick with trees and brush all over the ground. It's a perfect place to hide something and chances are no one will ever find it.

"There's hundreds and hundreds of old wells in this area. And Mr. Parker grew up here," FBI Special Agent Marc Veazey said. "His childhood was spent hunting and fishing in these woods. His adulthood is spent fishing in the ponds all around this area. He knows this like the back of his hand."

Investigators discovered that Sam told people -perhaps jokingly-he could use that knowledge to do some pretty awful things.

"He told everybody in Walker County, but a couple, that he knew how to get rid of a body and no one [would] ever find it," GBI Special Agent James Harris said. "He'd talk about puttin' 'em in ponds and the turtles would eat 'em."

Law enforcement and volunteers searched fingertip to fingertip through the woods; they drained and searched ponds and combed through the local landfill.

Authorities even searched Parker's home five times. They confiscated a collection of old guns and rifles, but investigators didn't believe they were connected to Theresa's disappearance.

"I told 'em, y'all … didn't even search her closet, you didn't look through her personal stuff. You went in and you looked for things and took things of mine and only looked at me," Sam told Smith.

"We provided [dogs] a scent of Mr. Parker's scent off his clothes and also off his patrol car," Veazey said. "They ran as they alerted to his scent, all up this hill, and back down this way as indicating he had been here."

"They're drawing conclusions that she may have been harmed, and she may possibly be dead," Sam said. "Me personally, I'm not going to let that enter my mind until I have to, if in fact, it did, if something has happened."

Harris said there were other people they looked at, "but we went where the evidence led us. And it kept funneling us to Sam Parker."

"Mr. Parker is, in my opinion, very cold and calculating, very meticulous in his actions," Veazey said. "He was very meticulous in the way he was a police officer. His uniform was always perfect. His car was always perfect."

But investigators were finding Sam Parker's story was less than perfect.

"Mr. Parker advised us that the last time he saw or talked to Theresa was approximately 7:30 on Wednesday, March 21 when she was loading up her vehicle and taking things to her new apartment," said Veazey.

But according to the phone records, Sam had called Theresa several times in the early morning hours on the Thursday she disappeared.

"In fact, there were two phone calls and that Mr. Parker was trying to get in touch with her," Veazey said. "He denied making any additional telephone conversations."

"That's bizarre behavior for a seasoned police officer who would know you'd pull the phone records," said Smith.

"I don't know if he forgot about them, or if he was trying to cover that fact up, I'm not sure," Veazey said.

Then the crime-scene specialist examined Theresa's Toyota Forerunner.

Harris said, "He turned 'round to me and said, 'We've got blood back here.' I knew it was on then."

And there was more.

"The back of the Forerunner had been obviously vacuumed. You could see the vacuum marks in the back of it so… someone cleaned it," Veazey said.

"I knew we were lookin' the right way. Meaning Sam Parker," said Harris.

The crime lab tests confirmed Theresa's blood and Sam's DNA were in the back of her SUV. Investigators now had what they needed to make an arrest.

"We placed him in handcuffs and the only thing he said was - he asked me if I'd turn off his coffee pot for him. So I did," said Veazey.

Nearly one year after 911 dispatcher Theresa Parker disappeared, her police officer husband, Sam Parker, was charged with his wife's murder.

When asked if he killed Theresa, Sam told Smith, "No." When she asked what he thought happened to her, he replied, "I do not know."

"Nobody knows that she was killed. There's no physical evidence, there's no forensic evidence, there's nothing to show that she was killed," said David Dunn, Sam Parker's defense attorney.

Dunn has a whole other theory to explain Theresa Parker's disappearance. The week before 41-year-old Theresa Parker disappeared, she took a trip to the Smoky Mountains - three days in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Theresa made a reservation at her favorite cabin, the "Honey Bee Hide-a-Way."

"She called me her first morning there and was like, "I'm having coffee outside. It's just beautiful," her sister, Christina Hall recalled.

It was supposed to be a quick getaway before her move and the divorce.

"You know, she told me 'I wanna be by myself and think about things, clear my mind.' She'd been so stressed," Hall said.

When asked if her sister was alone, Hall said, "She was alone, yes."

Sam Parker, 51, knew his wife was going to Gatlinburg and had even given her money for shopping. But there was something about her trip that troubled him, so he decided to do a little investigating on his own.

"He was, you know, a husband just like any other husband, tryin' to find out who went off for a coupla days with his wife," said defense attorney David Dunn.

Sam Parker called the lodge and convinced the clerk to send him Theresa's registration.

"She registered for a room using the name Barker. Whether someone, you know, actually went with her or visited her there while she was there, we don't know that," said Dunn.

According to Prosecutor Leigh Patterson, Sam "was very angry about the Gatlinburg trip, because he was convinced that she had cheated on him."

Sam's suspicions about Theresa and another man grew when he found something else puzzling on her room reservation.

"She listed two adults. We know from the statement that Shane Green made that he was at least invited to accompany her. We know that much," Dunn said.

Remember, Shane Green was the police officer who discovered Theresa's SUV missing the morning the prosecution believes she was murdered.

"You don't think that this could've been just a work relationship?" Smith asked Kenneth Parker.

"No, I don't - not between those two," he replied.

Patterson disagreed with the defense theory that there were two people staying at that lodge.

"No there were not. Our information is there was nobody there to see her and if the defense wants to say that Shane Green was there with her, the phone - the cell phone towers - show that his cell phone activity was not in Gatlinburg," she said.

Green said he was not in Gatlinburg and was never romantically involved with Theresa.

Patterson said she believes Sam's jealousy is unfounded.

"He was a very controlling, manipulative person and I think Theresa was tired of being controlled and manipulated," she said.

According to prosecutors, Theresa Parker did have one big secret.

The 911 dispatcher, who had helped so many people in crisis, was dealing with a very personal crisis of her own: an angry and abusive husband.

"I think she hid it very well. And I think she hid it from everybody," said Hall.

When asked if Sam had a drinking problem, his brother, Kenneth, said, "No, he could drink real well (laughs). Yes he could drink. He drank way too much."

Kenneth said Sam was "funny" when he drank, describing him as "a happy drunk."

Theresa's sister said there was nothing funny about her brother-in-law when he had too much alcohol.

"He became a violent, mean drunk," she said. "He would keep a water bottle in the refrigerator durin' family -you know- dinners or whatever. And he would sneak over there and drink out of this bottle. And it was straight vodka. I'd seen him in action, you know, so scary."

When asked about the allegations that he had issues with drinking, Sam said, "I think it's just, you know something that got blown out of proportion."

"So you did drink, but it didn't affect your job. Is that fair to say?" asked Smith.

"That's very fair to say, yes," he replied.

Hall said Sam's behavior could change from nice to nasty in an instant.

"They had went out to eat for dinner one night and, of course, he started out drinking…" she explained.

When her sister left the restaurant, Hall said Sam followed her.

"… and they got into the car and he started threatening her. …took his gun out, was shootin' his gun up in the air in the parking lot."

Theresa called 911. But when the police arrived, they didn't arrest Parker. Instead, they took him to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

"After an incident like that, why didn't Theresa walk away?" Smith asked Hall.

"You know - she just didn't wanna give up," she said. "And, you know - and she - she loved him. She was in love with him."

It's a story Keila Beaird said she knows all too well because she lived it. She was Parker's second wife and was married to him for four years.

"One time, he was drinking a glass of water and he - threw the glass on the floor and it broke…" Beaird explained. "He actually took me by the hair and drug me through the living room into the bedroom and he drug my feet. I was barefooted and he drug my feet through that broken glass and they were bleeding and pulled out his handcuffs on the top of his belt and handcuffed me to the bedpost."

He eventually let her go because he had to go back to work. But Beaird said when Sam Parker abused her again a few months later, he gave her a warning.

"…he told me before he left, that I'd better not tell anybody or call anybody, because if I did he would kill me. He said, "You can believe me that I know how to do it without getting caught and they will never find your body.'"

Still, neither Keila Beaird nor Theresa Parker ever filed a police report about Sam Parker's alleged abuse. His brother, Kenneth, doubts it was ever that bad.

When Smith asked if Sam ever hit Theresa, Kenneth said, "Not that I know of."

"Do you think he was physically abusive to Theresa in any way?" continued Smith.

"No. Not physically," he replied. "Mentally, both ways because they liked to play mind games, honestly believe - and he'd always said that she knew exactly what button to push if she wanted to fight."

Kenneth Parker said his big brother is simply misunderstood and not a murderer. In fact, he's convinced his sister-in-law Theresa is still alive.

"I have a theory. I believe that she's either in Mexico or California," he said.

Sam Parker revealed his theory to Special Agent James Harris.

"His exact words to me were, 'She's in Mexico with a guy named Elvis,'" Harris said.

It turns out, Theresa had vacationed in Mexico with her nieces and on that trip they met a resort entertainer named Elvis. Investigators followed up on Parker's hunch and traveled to sunny Cancun.

"Is it possible that you missed Elvis and Theresa in Mexico?" asked Smith.
"No," he replied.

"Is it possible that she could still be walking around alive? That she just wanted to get away?" Smith asked prosecutor Leigh Patterson.

"No. It doesn't make sense and it's not a reasonable theory," she said. "Sam Parker murdered her and disposed of her body and obviously it doesn't bother him that her family still cries for her every day."With no body, no crime scene and no murder weapon, prosecutor Leigh Patterson has an uphill battle.

"You wish that you had everything, but that's not how a case works," she said. "And we felt like even though we didn't have a lot of forensics that we had a lot of other stuff that was really good."

Defense attorney David Dunn said this case is unique in that there's no body.

"It's very rare in the history of the state of Georgia," he told Smith. "There's been about four of those over 200 years."

The prosecution admits they don't know exactly how Theresa died, but they're convinced the circumstantial evidence against Parker proves he's a murderer.

"He had threatened people in the past and said, "If you don't do such and such or if you keep botherin' me, I will kill you and bury you where nobody will ever find you," Patterson said.

"What we're going to see at trial is we're gonna see a trial by character assassination," Dunn said.

"Any time she would turn her back he would flip her off and cuss her behind her back," Theresa's niece, Ashten Gilbert, testified.

"He told me that he would kill me and he knew how to do it without getting caught and they would never find my body," Keila Beaird, Sam Parker's second wife, told the court.

The prosecution laid out its theory: Theresa left her new apartment shortly after midnight, driving to the home she shared with Sam Parker. She didn't think he'd be there, but he was waiting for her. Sometime between 12:30 a.m. and 1:30 a.m. on March 22, 2007, he killed her.

"After he killed her he put her body in the back of the SUV and then he went to Christy Bellflowers' house," Patterson told Smith.

Incredibly, prosecutors said Sam Parker was heading out on a date.

Leigh Patterson: When the defendant got there, March the 22nd, um did he have anything with him to drink?
Christy Bellflower: Yes.
Leigh Patterson: What did he have with him?
Christy Bellflower: Vodka.
Leigh Patterson: All right, well tell me what kind of container did he have it in?
Christy Bellflower: A water bottle.

"OK, so an hour to kill her. And then you say he left her body in her SUV at their home and went on a date?" asked Smith.

"That's right," Patterson said. "He had to have an alibi. And Christy Bellflower had expected him to come over there. How's he gonna explain, 'Well, I had a date and broke it."

After the date with Christy Bellflower early Thursday morning, prosecutors believe Sam Parker drove home. Then, sometime between 5:30 a.m. and 7:30 a.m., he drove off in Theresa's SUV with her dead body inside and dumped her.

"That's our theory of the case, because that fits with the timeline. He goes back because he has to dispose of her body. He can't leave her lyin' in the carport," explained Patterson.

Defense attorneys Doug Woodruff and David Dunn said that scenario is ludicrous.

"Murder is a messy business," Dunn said. "It's virtually impossible to do this kind of thing and leave no traces, no indications, no evidence."

Of the blood found on the rear bumper of Theresa's car, Woodruff said, "They had no idea how old that DNA was. They simply couldn't say whether it was a paper cut, an accidental injury or anything else."

But then prosecutors would call their most controversial witness: Police officer Ben Chaffin.

Prosecutor Natalee Staats: Were you and Sam friends?
Ben Chaffin: Yes, ma'am. I considered him a big brother.
Natalee Staats: Had you ever seen Sam and Theresa have a fight?
Ben Chaffin: Yes ma'am. I had.

Chaffin would tell the jury the most explosive evidence of the trial - a phone call from Sam Parker the night Theresa disappeared.

Ben Chaffin He said something that he'd really done it this time, or he's really gonna do it this time.
Natalee Staats: What else did he say?
Ben Chaffin: He said that he had a place that was gonna be hard to find her, they never would find it.
Natalee Staats: And what else?
Ben Chaffin: And that - he had shot Theresa through the head.

Chaffin told the jury that after that confession, he hung up the phone. But a few minutes later, Sam Parker called him back.

Ben Chaffin: He said if I told anybody, he'd have to kill me too.

Devastating testimony? Maybe not. It turns out Chaffin had given investigators five different stories and he had been arrested for helping Sam hack into Theresa's computer. The prosecution gave him immunity in exchange for testifying.

Defense attorney David Dunn: In your very first conversation with the GBI about Theresa Parker being missing, you didn't tell them about this so-called murder confession you heard simply because - you forgot about it.
Ben Chaffin: I forgot about it.

"If somebody calls you and says, 'I killed my wife,' that's something you'd remember. How could you forget that?" Smith asked.

"And I agree with you. That was my initial reaction when I started reading his statements," Patterson said. "But when we talked to him, it became very clear to us that he was very, very close to Sam Parker. The person that he looked at as a father, as a brother, had done somethin' so terrible he couldn't wrap his mind around it."

"Is Ben Chaffin a good witness? A believable witness?" Smith asked Dunn.

He replied, "Oh, he's probably the most unbelievable witness I've seen in 26 years of practicing law.

"The people that's been in my life for 25 to30 years, they recall things one way and I recall them a little bit differently," Sam Parker told Smith during his trial.
"Have you been looking at the jury at all?" Smith asked.

"Yeah," Sam replied.

"Wondering?"

"I'm not wondering. I'm going to accept what they say. That's what I'm gonna do."

Sam Parker may have the jury on his side.

"How many of you thought Ben Chaffin was believable?" Smith asked jurors a month after the trial ended.

"None of us even the slight bit thought he was credible at all," a female juror said. "We all felt like he was lying."

Not only did they dismiss Chaffin's testimony, they had problems with other evidence, too.

"How strong was that blood evidence?" Smith asked the group.

"To me the blood was another circumstantial thing. It wasn't hard evidence for me," said another female juror.

"Most of the evidence was all circumstantial," said a male juror. "It was more so for us we were putting together a jigsaw puzzle…"

The jury would have to piece it all together, but it was beginning to look like the prosecution's murder case against Sam Parker wasn't adding up. How Theresa Parker may have died has always been a mystery, but the prosecution believes photos showing bruises on Sam Parker's right arm are a significant clue to what happened.

"What we felt was, that Mr. Parker, who is known to abuse choke holds in the past, had used this maneuver on Theresa and that she had fought back by putting her hands up. And that's what left the bruises on the inside of his arm," explained FBI Special Agent Marc Veazey.

"I think she fought for her life at the end. And those bruises are evidence of that," said Prosecutor Leigh Patterson.

"Would you argue they didn't come from a struggle with Theresa?" Smith asked Defense Attorney David Dunn.

"Oh no. They're inconsistent with that, certainly," he said. "I didn't see them as a significant factor."

Patterson gave the courtroom a dramatic demonstration of the rear naked choke hold - the move she believes Sam used to kill his wife, Theresa.

"What did you think when the prosecutor brought up the choke hold and actually asked to be put in a choke hold?" Smith asked.

"I think it was absolute fabrication," Dunn replied.

There's one more piece of explosive evidence the jury would see before they deliberate: a poster of a badly bruised woman with a crude title discovered in Parker's police locker.

"Shoulda thrown it in the garbage. Probably shoulda done that, but instead just threw it in the locker and that's where it sat until it was pulled out," Dunn said of the poster.

"So we shouldn't read into it that he had some issue with women?" asked Smith.

"No. It means nothing," said Dunn.

But it meant something to Prosecutor Leigh Patterson.

"This was the guy who thought this was funny," Patterson told jurors, referencing the poster. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Theresa Parker almost made it out. She almost made it to her new life. Find him accountable. Find him guilty. Thank you."

Defense attorney David Dunn pleaded with the jury to be mindful of reasonable doubt.

"Listen to the charge, especially the charge on circumstantial evidence. Follow the law. Find Sam Parker not guilty."

The jurors said the task of deciding Sam Parker's fate was particularly daunting because they had an overwhelming amount of circumstantial evidence, but not much else.

"In the beginning, it was very split: two and ten. Two were guilty, and ten, ten were undecided," said a female juror.

A male juror said their deliberations "got quite heated at times."

When asked if they watched Sam Parker during the trial, a female juror said, "I tried to get eye contact with him as much as I possibly could. I just needed to. Just because of the feeling of this could be my uncle. This could be my brother. You know, I had to do that."

After three days of deliberation, the jurors seemed hopelessly deadlocked.

"There wasn't that smoking gun," the male juror said. "We did have to make a decision on someone else's life."

"I was very worried about sending an innocent man to jail or releasing a guilty man to do the same thing again," said a different female juror.

The judge urged the jury to give it one more try. This time, they would take an even closer look at the cell phone evidence.

"It threw up that red flag of 'Hey, here I am.' And looking at the cell phone records, he was not where he was telling us he was," the male juror said.

On Sept. 3, 2009, two-and-a-half years after Theresa Parker disappeared; her family would finally have a verdict:

In Superior Court of Walker County, state of Georgia, state of Georgia versus Samuel L. Parker, we the jury, after due deliberation, find the defendant, count one: guilty.

Guilty of first-degree murder, Parker shows no emotion. The judge handed down the ex-cop's sentence on the spot: life in prison. Theresa's family left the courthouse in tears.

The verdict is a victory for the prosecution and a defeat for the defense.

"This fight has not ended. It's barely just begun," said Dunn.

"Does Sam still have a little bit of power?" Smith asked Patterson.

"Sure, he's still got some control because he hasn't told us where she is. It's still about manipulation and control. Still," she replied.

"In your gut do you think that you'll ever find her?"

"I hope so. We're gonna keep tryin'."

Sam Parker, the former police officer, who is now a convicted murderer, was still willing to talk to "48 Hours."

"I never caused her any, you know, bad times or you know, never once ever hurt her," he told Smith.

"Did you kill Theresa Parker?"

"No," he replied.

"Her family thinks that you did. And thinks that you could ease their agony by saying where she is. Can you help them at all?"

"No, I can't."

Christina Hall hangs on to memories of her older sister - grateful for the guilty verdict, but painfully aware that the man destined to spend the rest of his life in prison may be the only one who holds the key to finding Theresa.

"You want to find her, bring her home, lay her to rest. That's what she deserves, you know. She's not a piece of trash," she said. "And that's how I feel he treated her. Wherever she is out there, she doesn't deserve to be there."

Produced by Marcie Spencer