Gary Coleman’s ex-wife, Shannon Price, took a polygraph test about the late actor’s fatal fall — and the test administrator wasn’t impressed with her results.
Price, 39, sat down with former FBI agent and veteran polygraph examiner George Olivo for the polygraph test conducted by A&E’s Lie Detector: Truth or Deception, which airs on Thursday, July 10. She was asked multiple questions about Coleman and the 2010 fall down the stairs that killed him at age 42.
“The [polygraph] recording is 100 percent accurate. It’s like a tape recorder. It records exactly every word, doesn’t change anything,” Olivo said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Tuesday, July 8. “So you can’t argue with me, ‘Hey, those aren’t my words.’ But what you could say is — if I play that recording for you of our conversation — you could say, ‘Yeah, those are my words, but here’s what I meant by them.’”
While the episode has yet to air, Price revealed the questions he asked Price and how she performed to the outlet. During the test, Price was questioned if she ever struck Coleman in their relationship and if she intentionally decided to withhold medical help that could have aided Coleman after he fell. While Price answered “no” to both questions, Olivo’s results were inconclusive, which meant that Price didn’t score high enough to pass or low enough to fail.
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Olivo acknowledged that Price’s inconclusive results could have been caused by a fidgety demeanor, an “inability or unwillingness to focus” or some other “outside issue.”
“So we have a lot of anomalies, and that’s going to bump the score one way or another. Again all of those things could be inadvertent or intentional,” he explained. “We have a lot of ways of determining intentionality on a test. We can kind of read between the lines and read the tea leaves — they’re called countermeasures when someone tries to cheat on a test. And I’ve received a lot of training on specifically identifying countermeasures. You can’t figure out exactly what somebody’s doing, but you can tell if physiology is being manipulated.”
Price was also asked if she physically caused Coleman’s fall. Price replied “no,” but she “failed with deception.”
Gary Coleman, Shannon Price Victor Spinelli/WireImage
“Those reactions are 100 percent [Price’s] reactions; [the polygraph] doesn’t change anything, it’s exactly what her body is saying,” Olivo said of Price’s results. “Now I have to interpret it, and there’s where there’s a little bit of — you know, you can’t say it’s 100 percent. But I’m confident because that’s the result I got. I’m not gonna say, ‘Hey, I’m 90 percent sure you’re not telling the truth.’ I have to be confident in my work and in the results.”
Olivo added that he trusts his charts and the polygraph “process.”
Because Olivo doesn’t know for sure what happened between Price and Coleman — despite the polygraph test — he says he can only theorize.
“Only Shannon knows what happened in that house. So I’m not here as a professional or even as a layperson to throw her under the bus in any way and call her a murderer or anything,” he shared. “I’m not saying anything like that. I don’t know what happened in that house, but what could have happened is that she and Gary got into a shouting match or an argument that turned into a shoving match, he fell and hit the ground. It doesn’t have to be any more sinister than that. That could’ve happened. It could have been 100 percent an accident that she doesn’t want to explain how the whole thing unfolded. All I know for sure, what I’m 100 percent certain of — at least through my process — is that there is more to the story than she’s telling.”
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Price agreed to undergo the lie detector test to “address persistent public suspicion regarding her potential involvement in his death, even though she was never charged in connection with it,” according to A&E. Price has denied any wrongdoing in connection with her ex-husband’s death.
Price told Us Weekly that she was “extremely disappointed with the overall experience” of the polygraph test.
“The testing situation was unfair and very uncomfortable, and the testing was performed non-verbally — which I should have refused,” Price said. “From the beginning, it was apparent they cared more about ratings than finding the truth.”
Coleman and Price got married in 2007 but filed for divorce the following year. After their split, Price claimed that she and Coleman continued to live together and had a common-law marriage until his death. Price was at the house the day Coleman fell and called 911.
“I was in bed and Gary was already downstairs. To me it sounded like pants that hit the floor. I got out of bed and I went downstairs and there he was on the floor with blood around his head,” Price recalled in the 2024 documentary GARY. “I did not want to intervene with where all the blood was because I knew help was coming.”
