EATONTON, Ga. — Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills says it was "absolutely obvious" to him from the start that Eatonton officer Michael Perrault killed his wife.
Sills testified in a Putnam County Superior Court court hearing about Perrault, who's charged with murder.
Sills started by describing how he found Amanda Perrault’s body on Monday, Feb. 3.
The sheriff spoke about the location of the gun, pools of blood on the floor, and other details.
Perrault had told officers on the scene that his wife committed suicide, but Sills said, "it was absolutely obvious to [him] that Amanda Perrault could not have shot herself.”
He said he believed right away that someone had moved the pistol and moved her body.
Sills said Perrault told him they were lying in bed together and had been arguing.
Amanda "just suddenly produced the handgun, looked him in the eye and said, 'I can’t take this anymore' or something to that effect" and shot herself, Sills said Perrault told him.
Perrault was "adamant" he had not touched the body or the gun, Sills said.
"He was clearly lying," Sills said in his testimony.
Sills also described seeing liquor-store video of Perrault buying booze at 10:14 a.m. on February 3 -- about three hours before his wife died.
He says Perrault was not wearing the same clothes he was wearing three hours later.
Perrault purchased small airplane-style bottles of “Fireball" -- the same ones found near the couple’s bed at the death scene.
As officers investigated Amanda's death, Sills said, Perrault “constantly” wanted to talk to him that day about his Jan. 28 domestic-violence arrest and how Sills' deputies had “improperly arrested him."
The defense lawyer challenged whether the January 28 arrest was relevant to the death investigation.
But Sills said Perrault told him that he and Amanda were arguing in bed that day about his arrest on the 28th and the bad publicity that resulted.
Sills then described what investigators heard from Perrault’s neighbors.
“All of the neighbors, every one of them, told us there had been one almost continual domestic fight going on at that house… as long as they’d lived there," Sills said.
One neighbor said she saw Perrault hit Amanda and kick her. Amanda took refuge in the neighbor’s house. The neighbor said Amanda told her, “If anything happened, she did not kill herself.”
Another said, “I knew that was going to happen.” The couple fought “every minute, all the time," Sills said.
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