NEW: Saratoga x Barstool Collection SHOP NOW

Advertisement

Gary Coleman's Ex-Wife, Known For Placing One of The Coldest 911 Calls of All-Time, Just Failed a Lie Detector When Asked About Her Involvement in Gary Coleman's Death

I loved me some Gary Coleman as a kid. I fondly remember watching Different Strokes re-runs before bed on Nick at Night. Although, I just pulled up the old Nick at Night schedule, and according to Wikipedia they only aired Different Strokes for a year from 2001-2002. But apparently that was an impressionable time for me, because I swear as I kid I thought Gary Coleman was one of the funniest, most famous actors in the world. Looking back that doesn't make much sense, but for whatever reason, Gary Coleman left an impression on me. 

Unfortunately, he had a bit of a sad life overall. And the way it ended was tragic. He died from falling down the stairs in his own home. His death was ruled an accident, but there's a large faction of people who believe he may have been murdered by his wife. 

TMZ – Gary Coleman’s ex-wife, Shannon Price, took a lie-detector test on TV over suspicions she had something to do with the 1980s TV star's death -- and the results? Buckle up.


Catch the clip ahead of Thursday’s two-hour premiere of A&E's "Lie Detector: Truth or Deception" ... where ex-FBI agent and polygraph pro George Olivo tells Shannon she flunked two of his key questions -- with the results indicating some level of deception.


Shannon, for her part, stays cool as a cucumber -- so much so that George repeats his findings, and asks if she has anything to say. Her response? Calmly calling his results "false."


But George was all business -- telling her flat-out he didn’t think she was fully honest during the polygraph exam, and he's 100% convinced there’s more to the story of Gary's demise.


Catch the clip ahead of Thursday’s two-hour premiere of A&E's "Lie Detector: Truth or Deception" ... where ex-FBI agent and polygraph pro George Olivo tells Shannon she flunked two of his key questions -- with the results indicating some level of deception.

Yikes, girl. For those who may have not grown up watching old late night re-runes of Different Strokes, and weren't as plugged into the bizarre circumstances surrounding Gary Coleman's death in 2010, Gary Coleman allegedly died from a brain hemorrhage just a couple days after falling down his stairs. Gary Coleman dying from a fatal stairs fall definitely isn't the most farfetched cause of death in the world. He suffered from frequent seizures, which may or may not have had something to do with him living a majority of his life with zero kidneys. He was born with two failed ones. He had a kidney transplant as a child. But by the time he was a "grown" adult, his body had apparently absorbed his transplant. So most of his life he was sans-kidneys, forced to spend multiple hours for multiple days per week on a dialysis machine. The point is, Gary Coleman had a lot of health problems. He was known to have frequent seizures. He's even admitted to attempting suicide twice in his life. Death by falling down the stairs will inherently always be suspicious, but in the case of Gary Coleman, I can at least wrap my brain around how that might have happened one way or another. 

But at the time of the incident, Gary Coleman's wife Shannon Price called 911. As any wife would do in such a situation. But the infamous recording of her 911 call is what made people start to question some things. It's one of the coldest, most heartless sounding 911 calls you'll hear.

Even if it's not your husband, to be with any person who's bleeding profusely from their head, who's dying right in front of you, and you have a 911 operator on the line telling you what you need to do to help save his life… I don't care if it's a total stranger, to hesitate for even a second is insane. It'd be one thing if Shannon was genuinely panicking. If she was in complete shock about what was happening, she couldn't get her words out, she was in hysterics, and just blacked out under pressure. But to be able to fully and calmly articulate exactly what was happening and not even consider lending a hand. I mean that's just downright evil. More than anything she sounded annoyed that she was inconvenienced by the whole situation.

Still, gun to my head, I've never truly suspected her of murdering him. I had always just chalked it up to her being an incredibly heartless person. She probably married Gary Coleman for his money. She probably never loved him the way most wives loves their husbands. Even though they were still living together, her and Gary had actually divorced years prior. I think she she probably just didn't care about him that much.

But there were other weird things about Gary Coleman's death. For one, Shannon didn't accompany him to the hospital after he fell. She had the plug pulled on him as soon as he went on life support, even though Gary Coleman had reportedly stated in the past that he'd like to be kept on for two weeks. Shannon had also admitted to getting physical with him during arguments in the past. But in a documentary about the life and death of Gary Coleman, Shannon vehemently denies that she was anywhere near Gary when he fell. She says the doctors assured her that there was no chance of him surviving when she pulled the plug. And Gary Coleman did have conscious conversations with people between the time of his fall, and when he eventually died two days later. He never accused Shannon of causing his fall. 

Advertisement

NY Post – Price did not accompany Coleman to the hospital.

“I was not in the right frame of mind to have gone with him,” she explained. “I was frantic. I was stressed. Anxiety. Sad. Just stuff like that, that any normal person would feel.”

Price said she talked to Coleman on the phone later that day.

“He’s, like, ‘I have a really bad headache. I think I’m just gonna go to sleep,’ ” Price recalled. “I was, like, ‘I’ll talk to you later. I love you.’ He’s, like, ‘I love you too.’

“And that’s the last thing he said to me.”

The next day, Price learned that Coleman had an intracranial hemorrhage. He went into cardiac arrest and ended up on life support, at which point Price made the decision to pull the plug after she said the doctors told her Coleman wasn’t going to survive.

So I don't know. In the end, Gary Coleman's death was ruled accidental. Shannon Price was never charged. But the circumstances surrounding it have always been suspicious. The documentary that goes into his life and death in greater detail, and sits down with his ex-wife Shannon, is called 'Gary'. I believe it is still streaming on Peacock.

But apparently, even though Shannon Price was in the clear when it comes to her ex-husbands death, she must not have been satisfied with how she's viewed in the court of public opinion. To the point that back in January, she agreed to take a lie detector test for A&E's premier of "Lie Detector: Truth or Deception". The show hasn't yet aired. It premiers this Thursday. But in a preview of the show, it's revealed that Shannon Price did NOT pass the polygraph with flying colors. If her goal by going on the show was to finally clear her good name, based on this clip at least, it appears she failed to do so. Mightily. 

You couldn't just leave well enough alone, could you Shannon? What the hell are we supposed to do with this information now? I'd always been under the impression that Shannon Price was just a shitty person who was willing to let her ex-husband die. But now I don't know what to think. Now I'm starting to think she had a real role in it. I know lie detector tests aren't 100% accurate. And in Shannon's defense, I don't know why the hell she would ever agree to do this if she felt like she had anything at all to hide. Unless she really thought she could just take some Xanax to lower her heart rate and fool the test altogether. But that's seems like an unnecessary risk when you're already in the clear. Or maybe she REALLY does not give a fuck what people think, and accepted a bag of money from A&E to come on their show knowing that she was going to fail, but since polygraphs are inadmissible in court in Utah, she just said fuck it and took the payday. 

Advertisement

Or maybe A&E is just pulling a really shitty fast one, and are trying to make Shannon look bad to make a good documentary. Maybe they were extra stringent when it came to what constitutes the truth on their lie detector test. And maybe once we see this clip in full context, it won't look quite as bad as it does now. I'm just spitballing any possible explanations other than Shannon Price pushed Gary Coleman down the stairs and caused his death. But as it stands now… boy does that clip make Shannon look bad.