Could this doorbell video help solve a murder?

On Feb. 3, 2020, Putnam County Sheriff’s Deputy Terrell Abernathy was dispatched to the home of a police officer with the City of Eatonton, Georgia. He was there to serve Officer Seth Perrault with a subpoena to appear in court as witness in a case for the department. No one answered the door, but as Abernathy said to CBS News anchor Anne-Marie Green, he could tell someone was home.

“I heard footsteps or footfalls, heavy ones,” Abernathy told Green in an interview for this week’s “48 Hours” report, “The Death of an Officer’s Wife,” airing Saturday, Jan. 28 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. “I’m announcing myself, who I am, what it is. I even turned my back to the door. I don’t care if you’re in your underwear. Just answer the door and take the paper,” he added. 

Seven minutes later, Abernathy left with the subpoena still in hand.

Twenty minutes later, Abernathy was on his way back to the Perrault home. Seth Perrault had called his boss, the chief of police, to report that his wife had killed herself. The chief then alerted Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills. In an interview for “48 Hours,” the sheriff told Green that Perrault claimed he and his wife Amanda were in bed arguing, “And then all of a sudden she just produced the gun outta thin air and executed herself.” 

But when Sills entered the Perrault’s home and saw the way Amanda Perrault’s body was lying in the couple’s bed, he knew something was wrong. 

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” said Sills. “Her body is flat on her back, her legs are almost together, and her arms are tucked against her side.” The gun Amanda Perrault had allegedly shot herself with was by her left foot, and the gun’s magazine was by her right hand. Sills says that was enough to convince him that Amanda Perrault had not killed herself.

District Attorney Wright Barksdale told Green that he agreed with the sheriff. “He told me, ‘This scene is not right. There’s…