Seeing Red A True Crime Podcast · Mark Randell & Bethan Trueman

Left Behind: The Death of Parker Scholtes (Part One)

·1 hr 7 min·4 clips

Surveillance showed Christopher stealing beer at Circle K and Fry's while Parker stayed strapped in the car.

The core is painfully simple. The hosts describe Parker's death as the result of Christopher's negligence after Erica had already warned him about leaving the children in the car. She had asked him to stop. The narration says he heard those warnings and ignored them. That detail sits heavy. Erica is described as a medical professional who had seen emergencies before, but she could not stop one from happening in her own home. Then the case widens. Police begin finding disturbing pieces around the household, including evidence of an alleged extramarital affair during the investigation into Parker's death. The neighborhood had suspicions. Several neighbors reportedly believed Christopher was involved with Caitlin, a married woman who lived directly next door. Caitlin comes off as troubling in the account. Neighbors described her as close to Christopher, quick to defend him, and hesitant when police first asked for information. The tone is angry, but it is also heartbroken. The episode does not treat the alleged affair like side gossip. It treats it as one more awful weight beside a child's death. Erica's position feels almost impossible to sit with. The closing reflection imagines her coming home from a busy workday and, within an hour, learning her daughter was dead. Then she still had to tell the two older girls what happened to their younger sister. Part one ends in a bleak place, pointing toward the aftermath and a brutal end in November of last year, in a garage hundreds of miles from home.

As heard by us

A grief-first account of a domestic tragedy, told with patience and weight.

Left Behind: The Death of Parker Scholtes (Part One) treats Parker's death as the end point of a long, grim chain, not a mystery to solve. Christopher's repeated warnings about leaving the children in the car hang over every scene, and the tragedy lands as a hard consequence of…

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Why you'd press play

A painful true-crime case about ignored warnings, a child's death, and the fallout that follows.

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