Married to Evil (2023) s01e04 Episode Script

I open up Facebook
and my best friend Amanda
just got married.
It was almost like a secret,
hush-hush kind of thing.
- You went off and got
married without me?
And I said,
"What in the hell is going on?"
He made us all feel like he
was going to take care of her.
- It was literally picture-perfect,
to the outside world.
Somebody was lurking
around her house.
Something's really wrong.
The hairs on my arms
are standing up.
- The first thing that thing
that came out of my mouth was,
like, "Pack your ---,
and get out of that house."
- Why couldn't I put
the pieces together?
Was I not intuitive enough?
- I should have done something.
I live a nightmare
from that day on.
A living, walking nightmare.
(INTERVIEWER SPEAKING)
(BRAE PERRAUL
SPEAKING)
- Well, it goes to show you that
you don't know
what's going on
behind those closed doors.
(BRAE SPEAKING)
- Amanda is
a Fourth of July
when it came
to personality.
When you think of Fourth of July,
you think of fun, having fun.
Amanda has a warmth about her.
- And that is Amanda
Pardue, age 35.
And the reason
why she's wearing scrubs
is 'cause she's working
at the Hamilton female clinic.
- She was the receptionist.
And she absolutely loved it.
- She loves helping people,
because that's how Amanda was.
Amanda was like a ball of sunshine.
And she would
make you feel like
you were
the best person
in the world.
She already had two children,
she had a boy and a girl.
She had already been divorced
for a couple of years
before I met her.
- The children ended up
going to live with
the grandparents.
But her kids were doing great
and so she was still
really happy and upbeat
and optimistic about the future.
- Amanda was a single female.
She was a beautiful girl,
so, yes, she dated.
At that time it was the big rave
to go on the internet
to find somebody
that you can connect with.
So, she was going on them sites.
(CHUCKLES)
She hit left.
And that's how she met Seth
Perrault, through the internet.
- Well, he was very handsome,
kind of dashing.
Had a little bit of money,
so that they could do things
and have fun.
- He made her feel wonderful,
beautiful.
Before you knew it, she was
in love. They're in love.
We were, like,
"Slow the roll, slow down."
But how can you tell somebody
when they're in love to slow down?
Seth had this beautiful home.
The town was called Social
Circle, here in Georgia.
But Amanda was looking for love,
not a home.
It wouldn't have mattered
if he lived in a mobile home,
or if he had that home.
She was in love with him.
They moved in together.
A little bit fast.
(CHUCKLES) A little bit fast.
But wonderful.
- I was so happy for her,
very happy.
- I went, um, and visited Amanda
to check out this guy,
'cause I wanna know more about him.
And I interrogate people
and I interrogated him.
And that's how I found out
a lot of things.
Well, he couldn't tell me
how he made his money,
'cause he didn't have a job.
You got your beautiful home,
you've got your cars,
you got your motorcycles.
Without a job.
(LAUGHING) How do you do that?
'Cause I would like to know,
'cause I wanna do that.
He didn't have no money, said
it was all his father's money.
That's how they were living,
that's how they were eating.
I mean, who's almost
40 and has their parents
paying for everything?
- Six months after her
and Seth had moved in together,
knock, knock,
you have a little girl.
(BRAE CRYING)
I get a phone call from Amanda.
It's funny now.
Um, saying he's got a kid!
And I'm thinking, "Where in the
hell did this baby come from?"
- It was a surprise
that Seth had a daughter.
Her name was Brae.
- Seth had this ex-girlfriend
and they ended up having a baby.
I know, that Amanda
was oddly cool about it, um
(LAUGHING)
She's a better person than I am,
I would have had questions.
- She opened her arms
and took that child in.
Amanda fell in love with her.
No qualms, no nothing.
She took that child in
and it was her own.
I open up my phone
and I look on Facebook
and my best friend of 38 years
just got married.
- The only people who were
at the wedding was Seth,
Amanda, her daughter,
her son and Brae, that's it.
It was almost like a secret
hush-hush kind of thing.
I said, "You went off
and got married without me?"
Oh, Vina, it was so rush,
rush, rush.
He wouldn't let me
get my hair done,
he wouldn't let me do this,
he wouldn't allow me to do that.
I said, "What in the hell
is going on?"
If you are so much in love
with somebody,
would you not give
them the wedding?
Would you not want her sisters
there and her best friend
and her to be so happy?
That tells you, it was a business.
He wanted Amanda
for a certain reason.
I told her it was a very
bad idea to stop working.
You always have to have
your own little money.
But what I got from Amanda
is that Seth wanted her home
to be a housewife.
That was his way of controlling
her, financial control.
By telling her
how much she can spend,
what she can spend.
Why? He's got her
life in his hands.
And he knows it.
(CHUCKLES)
One day, I get a phone call
from Amanda,
saying that, "My husband's gonna
join the police force."
I said, "What?"
You go from not having a job
to becoming a police officer?
And in Georgia,
that is a lot of weight.
You're a good old Southern boy
that's a cop.
But she was so proud
that he did it.
You have pictures of him
getting his badge.
And she's standing right next to him
and they're all beaming with pride.
- The idea of Seth
becoming a police officer
was mind-boggling to me.
I think, that he
specifically choose
being a police officer for his ego,
so that he could have more control
even more than he already had.
When Seth wants something,
Seth gets it.
- For him, that uniform meant,
"I'm better than you and now,
I can prove it.
"I am above the law,
'cause I am the law."
- I am a real estate broker.
Amanda had reached out to me and
asked me to help Seth's father
with selling the house
at Social Circle.
So, I had a friend, at the time,
and I said,
"Let's make a road trip out of it.
"Let's go visit my
friend Amanda."
And Amanda was just so happy
to see me.
We walked through the house
and she's so proud of the decor.
But all of a sudden, Seth walks in,
and I look over at Amanda
and she's, like, ghost white.
Her entire demeanour changed.
Once we got into the car,
my friend said,
"Carrie, something's
really wrong."
And she said, "Look," she said,
"The hairs on my arms
are standing up."
She said,
"Carrie, don't be surprised
"..if he kills her."
I was, like, "You are insane."
I was so confused,
because Amanda had
what she'd always wanted.
She had the house,
she had Brae to take care of.
She's living her best life.
I didn't want to hear
what my friend was trying
to articulate to me,
that Amanda was in danger.
I wasn't ready to hear it.
- They had lake access,
they had golf carts.
Um, very safe neighbourhood.
It's a perfect
neighbourhood
to raise
your family there.
When they first moved in there,
everything was hunky-dory.
And the neighbours thought
Seth was a nice gentleman.
They felt a little bit more secure
because he was a police officer.
He was the law.
Life looked perfect, it was
literally picture-perfect.
Um, to the outside world.
Amanda always made it out to be
that everything was fine.
Everything's great.
So I started feeling
a little bit better,
uh, a little bit more comfortable,
until the texts started coming.
Amanda finally started
bringing me in a little bit
about some things
that were going on with her.
Seth would call her fat.
And would just demean her
and call her really ugly names.
- That's, like, the beginning,
but them little things escalate.
And before you know it,
he's pushing you around,
grabbing a hold of you.
For him, it's like a power trip.
They're trying
to mentally break you down.
They began to fight.
So what Amanda did was went
to the next door neighbour's bushes.
She hid in their bushes,
so he wouldn't see her.
- And Seth automatically assumed
that she went
to the neighbour's house.
And he literally barges in
the door of this neighbour
and he's going through their house
and they're just, like, in shock
and they're, like,
"What are you doing here?"
"I'm looking for my wife,
where's she at?
"I know, she's here."
And they're, like.
"No, no, she's not here,
get out of our house.
"We're gonna call the police."
And he says, "I am the police."
To me, that shows me that he's
not a real police officer,
he's more of a wolf
in sheep's clothing.
These were strangers.
And if he could treat
complete strangers like that,
I thought, "What must Amanda
have been going through all alone?"
I stopped receiving phone calls.
I stopped getting messages.
All of that went away.
- She'd be calling me
through the iPad or Messenger,
Facebook Messenger thing.
Amanda did not have a cell phone.
I believe the reason why she
did not have a cell phone
was that he could keep tabs
on her all the time.
I heard about the insurance policy.
Looking back at it now,
it scared me.
Looking back at it now, I would be,
I would be questioning
Amanda saying,
"You need to, you know,
what's going on here?"
Seth had completely
controlled the money,
because Amanda didn't have any.
- Amanda couldn't even buy
feminine products.
Her basic needs
were not even being met.
- We successfully got her
to leave a couple times.
She would leave
and he'd be on the phone
trying to get her back before
she could get out of the driveway.
- He finds her kryptonite
and her kryptonite is,
"If you don't come back,
"who knows,
what's gonna happen to Brae?"
- Seth would call,
make that phone call,
and she would go home.
That little girl
is what kept her in that house.
Because she considered
that little girl her own child
and she was not going to leave her.
My birthday's on June 6th,
Amanda always would call me.
I getting a little confused,
because Amanda wasn't calling me
for my birthday
like she always does and we Zoom.
So, I would physically see her.
Well, she wouldn't Zoom me,
she would just call me.
And I said, "No, I wanna Zoom,
"I wanna see your face,
I wanna see you."
And she's, like,
"No, no, no, no, no."
And I'm thinking to myself,
"Mmm, something's not right."
I had my phone in my hand,
so, I quickly hit that button
for a Zoom,
to where we could be on camera.
And I took that picture
within seconds.
Picture I took of Amanda,
it scared me.
So, I took the picture,
um, I don't know,
so, I could show her one day.
So, she could see it,
you know.
Like, this is what he does to you.
You can see
where her jaw is all swollen.
And I asked her,
"What's going on here?"
Well, she told me
really what happened.
He turned around
and jacked her right in the jaw.
Just punched her like a man.
He almost broke her jaw,
that's how hard he hit her.
Then another occurrence happened.
These are the pictures
that she took of herself.
Looks like he punched her
in the face.
Her eye's all swollen.
It just makes me angry.
Just anger.
(SIGHS)
After that picture was taken,
life got a hell of a lot worse.
Everything escalated.
- Some days later,
I get this
really alarming,
cryptic text
from Amanda.
(TEGEDER READING)
And then she says
(TEGEDER READING)
You know, she's scared,
she can't do anything
without him seeing
what she's doing.
And then Amanda says
(TEGEDER
READING)
Amanda was leaving
bread crumbs with me,
because she trusted that
I would be able to communicate
if something ever happened to her.
I had the bread crumb,
why couldn't
I put the pieces together?
Was I not intuitive enough?
I feel guilty that
I could have done more
or should have done more.
- One night, I get a phone call
from Amanda.
This is probably,
I don't know, 9:30, 10:00.
Saying that somebody
was lurking around her house.
She saw somebody walking.
She didn't see who it was,
it was a shadow.
She could tell that it was a man
that walked by the window.
It scared the crap out of her.
I said, "Well, did
you call 911?"
She goes, "No, I called Seth
"and Seth told me
not to call the cops."
He said he's gonna take care
of it when he gets home.
He told Amanda,
"Do not call the police,
"don't get them involved."
The second time it happened,
again I thought,
"It's gotta be one of these hoodlums
that are around the neighbourhood
"trying to break into
people's cars or something."
(DOOR HANDLE WIGGLES)
- And then, the basement door,
somebody was trying to get in it.
She's got a child at home,
by herself,
somebody's wiggling the door.
She's scared, she
calls her husband.
He tells her, "Calm down,
I'll take care of it."
That's when I knew
something wasn't right.
He's a cop, somebody's trying
to break into your house.
Where's your security?
Where's your lights?
They only occurred
when Seth was on night shift.
It never occurred any time
when Seth was actually home.
- So, we had the suspicion
all of this burglary nonsense
was purely Seth playing games
with Amanda,
terrorising her
and just control over her
and making her feel fear.
- On January 28th of 2020,
I got a Zoom call from Amanda.
She was in the bedroom with Brae
and she was crying hysterically.
I knew, something was going on.
She's Zooming me.
So, I'm getting
an actual view of Amanda
when it actually went down.
Seth grabbed a hold of her
and pulled her out of the house.
And you can hear Brae
in the background,
"Mummy, are you OK?
"Mummy, are you OK?"
First thing come out of my mouth is,
"Hang the phone up, call 911."
- Amanda finally gets help
from someone outside.
The neighbours provided Amanda
with a safe place
and police are called.
(PHONE RINGING)
(OPERATOR SPEAKING)
(AMANDA
SPEAKING)
(OPERATOR SPEAKING)
(AMANDA SPEAKING)
(OPERATOR SPEAKING)
(AMANDA SPEAKING)
(OPERATOR SPEAKING)
(AMANDA SPEAKING)
(OPERATOR SPEAKING)
(AMANDA SPEAKING)
(OPERATOR SPEAKING)
(AMANDA SPEAKING)
(OPERATOR SPEAKING)
(SIREN WAILS)
- Seth Perrault's wife reported
that she'd been
assaulted by Seth.
The deputies
responded.
She had some reddish marks
around her neck area
her chest area, right in here.
He'd basically
battered her in that way
and thrown her out of the home.
They, in turn, uh,
talked to the daughter.
She ran and hid in the closet
while this happened.
That wasn't the first time
she hid in the closet,
that she tried to intervene
to help Amanda.
(INTERVIEWER)
(BRAE SPEAKING)
(INTERVIEWER)
(BRAE SPEAKING)
- And Brae says, you know,
"my daddy hit my mummy
and pushed her out the door."
(INTERVIEWER)
(BRAE SPEAKING)
- The cops put him in handcuffs
and take him out of the house.
- As they, um, were getting ready
to put him in the patrol car,
uh, and take him to jail,
he said to her, "I got you now."
- And Amanda's telling me,
"They're taking him to jail,
"They're taking him to jail."
The first thing that come out
of my mouth was, like,
"Pack your ---,
and get out of that house."
You don't get it, he's going
to lose his job over this.
He's going to kill you, Amanda.
The next day
(SIGHS IN EXASPERATION)
she goes to the court.
- The judge considered that Seth
had to stay away from his wife
as a condition of bond
while this matter was pending.
But Amanda actually said
she did not want that to occur.
Now she was distraught,
I could tell.
The judge was very adamant,
asking her, "Was she sure?"
She didn't want
a stay away order in place
and she answered that she was sure.
Her response was,
"Well, he doesn't have
"anywhere else to go."
- Of course he had somewhere to go.
He has family,
he had plenty of places to go.
He's sitting in that jail cell,
his world is crumbling around him
and Seth used
Amanda's love for Brae.
Amanda's worst fear
was would he hurt Brae?
He verbalises that to Amanda.
I can only imagine
that she felt defeated.
So that was Amanda's attempt
at trying to show Seth
"I can fix this. I can fix it."
And Amanda knows a
restraining order
won't stop Seth.
- And Amanda went to that judge
and told that judge
he can come home.
I was sick to my stomach.
When she did that, that judge
signed her death warrant.
- In his eyes,
Amanda had ruined his life
and that was it.
- Not only was Seth
getting ready to lose his job
as a police officer,
he was looking at
losing custody
of his child too.
- He sat there in that house
with her for six days.
I remember being on
the phone calls with her,
I'm talking to her, saying,
"Are you OK, Amanda?"
How is the situation?
How is he acting?
And he was acting
so nice it was disgusting.
I was, like, "You need to get
out of that house, Amanda.
"You need to get out
of that house."
- That day in February,
I pulled up to Long Island Drive
with my subpoena for Mr Perrault.
When I got to his place,
uh, he had, uh,
one of those video doorbells.
And I pushed the button and waited.
And I heard heavy footfalls
inside the house.
And I assumed that it was
somebody running to the door.
The footfalls moved
from one side of the house
kind of toward the front door,
but not to the front door.
And the footfalls retreated.
And I rang the doorbell again.
I was there for about
seven minutes.
I was, like, "Come on, man,
answer the door."
The man would have known,
what it was.
And finally, I gave up.
So, I drive away
from the Perrault's house
and I go on about my patrolling.
I make it three or four,
five miles away.
And I get a call
from my shift supervisor
requiring me to return
to the Perrault house,
because of a reported incident.
(SIREN BLARING)
I go quickly.
Seth Perrault comes out
the front door of the house.
He was holding his cell phone
and he was blubbering.
He was inconsolable.
He said that Amanda was dead.
- I get a personal call,
uh, from the chief of police.
He's got Seth Perrault on the phone
and Seth has told him that his
wife had committed suicide.
We drove as fast as we could,
you know, lights and sirens on.
I arrive on the scene.
Seth was sitting on the steps,
holding his hands over his eyes.
I, uh, walked in the house
and I entered the bedroom.
And I saw the body of the deceased.
It was Amanda Perrault.
And I could see a gunshot
wound to her head.
This is Amanda's body.
And the first thing you see
in the bottom right
hand corner there,
below her feet,
is the
pistol itself.
You see her body
with her legs together,
she's flat on her back,
arms are pulled
completely against her side.
And on her right side, maybe four
or five inches from her right hand,
is the magazine to the pistol.
Well, you know, I'm a graduate
of the FBI National Academy
and I've got a college degree.
But you know what?
Anybody could tell
that scene wasn't right.
- The sheriff had asked Perrault
if he would ride with me
to the sheriff's office.
He was not under arrest. I
realised just how clean he was.
The man had no blood on him.
Law enforcement officers
are trained first responders.
The first responders try to stop
the blood from coming out.
You don't walk away from scenes
like that clean.
Police cars have a, a cage
that separates the front seat
from the back seat.
And so I had opened
the little window
and so that you could
communicate back and forth.
Mr Perrault, he wailed
about his beautiful wife
and he said that several times.
It's a loud car.
It's a fast car but
it's a loud car,
and the road noise,
it's difficult to hear.
Most conversations,
the person in the back seat
has to be right at the window
talking to you in order
for you to understand
what they're saying.
And so, the things that
Perrault said in the back seat,
he meant for me to hear.
He didn't care
what happened to him.
He said that he believed he'd spend
the rest of his life in prison,
and he didn't care if he spent
the rest of his life in prison,
he just worried about his daughter.
And that didn't sit well with me.
He just kept talking
and blubbering.
He reiterated that his wife
had committed suicide.
But when we got closer
to the sheriff's office,
he begged me to pull the car
over and shoot him in the head.
It was unsettling.
It made the little short hairs
come up on your neck.
Because it wasn't right.
Perhaps his wife
hadn't killed herself.
- And so we went back to my office
and I interviewed him about
what had occurred that day.
(SETH SPEAKING)
- Of all the times
I've ever questioned anybody,
I've never heard anyone
use the term executed.
(SETH SPEAKING)
That's not a usual,
uh, term to use,
uh, when making reference
to a suicide.
(SETH SPEAKING)
(SILLS SPEAKING)
(SETH SPEAKING)
The only thing he wanted to tell me
was that my deputies shouldn't have
arrested him on January the 28th
and what a great
police officer he was.
(SETH SPEAKING)
(SILLS SPEAKING)
(SETH SPEAKING)
(SILLS SPEAKING)
It was a very bizarre interview,
uh, it really was.
- I kept on getting a Facebook
phone call.
And I'm thinking, "Who in the
hell is calling my phone
"at 10:00 at night
through Facebook?"
And it was Amanda's cousin.
And the first thing he said,
"Did you speak to Amanda today?"
I knew it.
I said, "He killed her.
He killed her."
And that's how
I found out my best friend died.
- Well, I knew he was guilty,
but what I wanted was more evidence
before I actually,
uh, made an arrest.
So, I let him go that day.
- We already knew
that he killed her.
We knew it wasn't a suicide.
And
knowing that he was let go
and back out on the streets
was devastating.
- And then I lived
a nightmare from that day on.
A living, walking nightmare.
- I went back out to the scene.
I laid down on the bed myself
to show the district attorney
the position the body had been in.
You mean to tell me
that she shot herself
and then she laid supine
and pulled her legs together,
completely together, pulled
her arms against her body,
took the magazine out of the
gun, after she shot herself?
Dead people don't remove
magazines out of guns.
You know, it was just evidence
of guilt in my opinion.
(SIREN BLARING)
- I decided to obtain
an arrest warrant
and go arrest him.
When I went to his sister's home,
where I knew he was staying,
when I pulled up in the yard
to get out of the car,
he's sitting on the porch,
talking to his attorney.
During the trial,
I testified in court.
It was absolutely obvious to me
that Amanda Perrault
could not have shot herself.
And somebody absolutely
had to have taken the magazine
from that pistol,
moved that pistol to the location
it was and had
to have moved that body.
Throughout the trial,
at any time I looked at him,
I never saw Seth express
any remorse or anything of that.
He was pretty much,
uh, stoic and often
looked at the table itself,
not even in the direction
of the witnesses or anything.
One of the most damaging pieces
of evidence against Seth uh,
was when his daughter said
that Amanda had told her that if,
uh, Seth lost custody of Brae
because of that arrest,
that, uh, Seth was going
to shoot her dead
is what the child said.
Well, he was convicted of murder.
And when the jury returned
the guilty verdict,
Judge Trammell,
our chief Superior Court judge,
promptly sentenced him to life
without parole.
Well, it goes to show you that
you don't know
what's going on
behind those closed doors.
The facade of what you see
on the outside is not indicative
of what's going on on the inside.
Very sad, sad situation.
- Right now what's important
is that Amanda's story is out.
But it hurts a lot.
It's tremendous amount of guilt
and pain and sadness.
- She was my life, so, yeah,
I'll go to my grave thinking
I should have done something.
I should have just got in my
car, or got on a damn plane.
And just pulled
her out of that house.
(SNIFFS)
But I didn't.
I gotta look up to the sky
to talk to my best friend,
because I did not take
the initiative.
So, yeah.
Go find out what's going on,
do something.
Just do something.
- I do take solace
in that I kept the messages.
When I spoke with my friend,
she'd say,
"You will always have my back
"and I love you so much for that."
My thoughts and prayers
are with you in these days,
months and years ahead.
That was Amanda.
Captions edited by Ai-Media
ai-media.tv