Samantha Josephson // 485

Summary

Podcast Summary: Going West: True Crime - Episode 485: Samantha Josephson

Introduction In Episode 485 of Going West: True Crime, hosts Daphne Woolsoncroft and Heath Merryman delve into the tragic and harrowing case of Samantha Josephson, a 21-year-old University of South Carolina student who was abducted and murdered in 2019. Released on March 14, 2025, this episode serves as a solemn cautionary tale aimed at raising awareness about personal safety, especially for young women using ride-sharing services.

Background of Samantha Josephson Samantha Josephson was a vibrant and compassionate individual, known for her lively personality and deep empathy. Born on August 13, 1997, in Princeton, New Jersey, she grew up in Robbinsville, where she was particularly close to her older sister, Sydney. Aspiring to make a difference, Samantha pursued a political science degree at the University of South Carolina (USC), where she became actively involved in campus life, including pledging a sorority and maintaining a loving relationship with her boyfriend, Greg.

The Night of Disappearance On the night of Thursday, March 28, 2019, Samantha celebrated her upcoming graduation and acceptance to Drexel University's law school at a popular local bar, The Bird Dog, located in the Five Points neighborhood of Columbia, South Carolina. Around 2:00 AM on Friday, March 30, Samantha called an Uber to head home after a fun night with friends.

• Key Quote:
  Heath (02:22): “This horrific crime is something that anybody could fall victim to or avoid falling victim to with one small change.”

Mistaken Identity and Abduction Surveillance footage captured Samantha waiting outside The Bird Dog, wearing an orange top and jeans, using her phone to call for her ride. Due to the Uber driver's cancellation six minutes prior, Samantha mistakenly entered a dark-colored Chevy Impala at approximately 2:12 AM, believing it to be her Uber.

• Key Quote:
  Heath (08:22): “She was very ready to go. So when this car pulls up, she just gets in. She's like, here's my Uber.”

The Impala had been cruising the neighborhood since 1:30 AM, suggesting premeditation. Tragically, the car sped away with Samantha inside, leading to her untimely death.

Investigation and Discovery Samantha’s friends and family grew increasingly worried when she failed to return home or attend her scheduled work shift. A missing person report was filed around 1:30 PM, and Samantha’s body was discovered the next day by hunters in Clarendon County, South Carolina.

• Key Quote:
  Daphne (04:09): “That lit up a room every time she entered. She had absolutely no chance.”

Police quickly focused on the Chevy Impala, linking it to Samantha’s disappearance. The vehicle was found to contain blood, and further investigation revealed that Nathaniel Rowland, a 24-year-old with suspicious behavior, was linked to the case.

Arrest and Evidence Nathaniel Rowland was pulled over by police approximately 10 hours after Samantha’s body was found. Blood was discovered inside his Impala, and forensic evidence, including a double-bladed multipurpose tool with Samantha’s blood and hair, tied him directly to the murder.

• Key Quote:
  Heath (11:43): “The vehicle was pulled over around 2:30 AM... inside, they found narcotics and multiple cell phones belonging to Nathaniel, as well as a rose gold iPhone and a set of pink keys wedged under the driver's seat, which detectives believed belonged to Samantha.”

Surveillance footage placed Nathaniel at various suspicious locations, attempting to use Samantha’s debit card, and interacting with her phone post-murder.

Trial and Conviction Nathaniel’s trial commenced on July 20, 2021, after delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite his defense’s attempts to undermine the evidence, the overwhelming physical and circumstantial evidence led to his conviction for kidnapping, first-degree murder, and possession of a deadly weapon.

• Key Quote:
  Judge Newman (45:46): “The evidence in this case was so overwhelming... Every law enforcement officer that was available participated in working on this case.”

Nathaniel was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Attempts to appeal his conviction in 2024 were denied, solidifying his status as the perpetrator.

Aftermath and Legacy Samantha’s family transformed their grief into activism. They successfully lobbied for Sammy’s Law, enhancing ride-share safety by mandating visible driver identifiers and scannable QR codes. Additionally, they founded the What's My Name Foundation (SAMMY), promoting safety measures through their acronym: Stop, Ask, Match, and Inform.

• Key Quote:
  Daphne (48:32): “Make sure that you stop before you get into a car. Just don't get into any car that you see. Make sure that you ask if the person knows your name. Match the license plate. That's really important.”

Samantha’s story has empowered countless individuals to adopt safer practices when using ride-sharing services, ensuring her legacy contributes positively to community safety.

Conclusion and Safety Tips The episode concludes with Daphne and Heath emphasizing the critical steps individuals can take to avoid similar tragedies:

1. Stop before entering a vehicle.
2. Ask if the driver knows your name.
3. Match the license plate with the app information.
4. Inform someone of your ride.

• Key Quote:
  Heath (50:54): “We all got to, you know, find these good tips and talk about these cautionary tales so that we can stay as safe as we can.”

Final Thoughts Going West: True Crime Episode 485 serves as a poignant reminder of the dangers that can lurk in everyday situations. By sharing Samantha Josephson’s story, Daphne and Heath not only memorialize her life but also equip listeners with knowledge to protect themselves and others.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Heath (02:22): Emphasizing the case as a crucial cautionary tale.
• Daphne (04:09): Highlighting Samantha's vibrant personality.
• Heath (08:22): Discussing Samantha’s mistaken entry into the Impala.
• Heath (11:43): Detailing the arrest and evidence against Nathaniel.
• Judge Newman (45:46): Affirming the strength of the evidence.
• Daphne (48:32): Outlining the SAMMY acronym for safety.

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the key points, discussions, insights, and conclusions presented in the episode, offering a clear and engaging narrative for those unfamiliar with Samantha Josephson’s tragic story.

Transcript

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What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, he.

[Heath]

And I'm your host, Daphne.

[Daphne]

And you're listening to Going West.

[Heath]

Hello, everybody. Hope you're doing well today. Today's case is so important to share because this horrific crime is something that anybody could fall victim to or avoid falling victim to with one small change. And her family has done so much since her murder to ensure that other young women are safe from this experience. So it's a very important cautionary tale for any young woman or person really to hear about.

[Daphne]

Absolutely. So big shout out to Tara, Ashley, Christy, Taylor, and Lydia. Oh, sorry. And also Kelly for sending this one in. A lot of you guys recommended this case, so thank you guys again and please make sure that you share this episode.

[Heath]

Yeah, it's kind of been a long time coming. This happened in 2019, but we have been getting so many requests for it. So thank you guys so much and without further ado, let's dive into this one.

[Daphne]

All right, guys, this is episode 485 of Going West. So let's get into it. The University of South Carolina student and New Jersey native was abducted and killed after getting into a car she thought was her Uber in South Carolina. A college student was killed after police say she got into a car that she thought was her Uber. Samantha Josephson was a 21 year old senior.

[Heath]

The University of South Carolina Sr. Was last seen on this surveillance photo outside a bar in the five point section of Columbia, South Carolina. She was killed, police say, after separating from friends when she mistook this dark colored Chevy Impala for her Uber. They had not heard from her. The next morning they became worried. They continued to look for her and try to call her and about 1:30 they reached out to the police department to report her missing. Later, hunters found a female body in the woods in Clarion County. Investigators also found blood inside that Chevy Impala. She had a personality and a presence.

[Daphne]

That lit up a room every time she entered. She had absolutely no chance.

[Heath]

None.

[Daphne]

The door was locked, the child safety lock was on.

[Heath]

She had absolutely no chance. FOREIGN Samantha Josephson was born on August 13, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey but she grew up in Robbinsville, New Jersey to parents Marcy and Seymour. And she also had an older sister named Sydney who was less than two years older and someone Samantha was so close with. Samantha was known for being the life of the party, very silly and fun, but with a sensitive and empathetic side as well. Her sister Sydney recalls that she cared deeply about the people that she cared about, would do anything for them now. Samantha considered multiple different careers during her childhood, as we all do, but eventually set her sights on obtaining a law degree because she wanted to help people. In 2015, following her graduation from Robbinsville High School, she headed south to start her college career at the University of South Carolina, majoring in political science. Samantha pledged a sorority there and loved her life on campus. She also found a loving boyfriend there and a fellow student named Greg. As her time at USC was coming to a close, she set her sights on law school, hoping to move back to her home state of New Jersey to attend Rutgers University.

[Daphne]

And by the way, I just wanted to clarify for any of you guys that heard USC not talking about the University of Southern California, which most people attribute to usc. This is the University of South Carolina.

[Heath]

Yes, but she was getting ready to move on. She actually was accepted to Rutgers University and even received scholarship money. But she also received a full ride scholarship to Drexel University's law school located in Philadelphia. So she had a big decision on her hands and after discussing the matter at length with her parents, she decided to accept Drexel's offer. Ahead of her impending graduation, she excitedly traveled up to Philadelphia to attend a Student orientation and then returned to Columbia to finish off her school year.

[Daphne]

And with her postgraduate plans complete, Samantha focused on enjoying the final months of school with her friends. On the Evening of Thursday, March 28, 2019, she headed out to a popular destination for bars and restaurants, especially for USC students in the neighborhood of Five Points. Five Points is located just east of downtown Columbia and it's walking distance from USC's campus. So naturally super student friendly. She and her friends, celebrating their upcoming graduation and Samantha's acceptance to law school, wound up at the Bird Dog, a now closed bar and restaurant on Hardin Street. So after a fun night out early on the morning of Friday, March 30, Samantha said goodnight to her friends around 2am and called an Uber to head home. Now, in surveillance footage from outside the Bird Dog, Samantha can be seen in an orange top and jeans, looking down at her phone on the sidewalk in front of the bar, with cars lined up in the adjacent spots in front of her. And we are going to talk a lot about this footage today, so it is very important to this case. So after this, she then walked to the street corner to the left of the restaurant from the camera's vantage point, waiting on that corner near a trash can, alternately looking down at her phone and then out at the street. At least once, she approached another rideshare, thinking that it was hers. Then, at 2:12am, a black Chevy Impala pulled up and she eagerly hopped in the backseat, tired and just ready to go home.

[Heath]

So this proves, like you're saying, the fact that she approached at least one other car. She's waiting for her car. She doesn't know where it is. She just wants to go home. She's very ready to go. So when this car pulls up, she just gets in. She's like, here's my Uber.

[Daphne]

Yeah, absolutely. And then after that, the car sped away with Samantha inside. But when her roommates arrived home, she hadn't made it there. And when morning came, they still didn't know where she was. And she wasn't answering her phone either. She was also scheduled for a shift at the restaurant where she worked as a server that morning, and she didn't show up, which is something that reliable, responsible Samantha would never do. When they checked her Find My Friends app, it last showed her traveling through the Rosewood neighborhood of Columbia, 2 miles or 3.2 kilometers southeast of Five Points. After that, her phone was either shut off or possibly it died and it stopped reporting her location. Her friends called everybody that they can think of, including contacting her boyfriend, Greg in Charleston. But no one had heard from her. So her friends called 911, while Greg alerted her parents back in New Jersey.

[Heath]

So Greg called her mom, Marcy, informing her that no one had heard from Samantha, nobody knew where she was, and that he was headed to Columbia to join the search for her. Now, Marcy, of course, was in complete shock, and she felt so helpless being in New Jersey and not in the state of South Carolina when this was going on. So she called her husband, Seymour, who called their other daughter, Sydney. And before long, the family had converged at the house, leaving Sidney behind to stay with their family dog, while Marcy and Seymour hurriedly packed up and drove 12 hours south to Columbia, South Carolina. Meanwhile, the Columbia Police Department and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or sled, as others call it, quickly joined forces to track Samantha's final known movements. They started with pulling surveillance from where she had last been seen, which, as we know, was the bird dog. Since Samantha had left before her other friends, they just assumed that she made it safely into her Uber. And while she was waiting, she actually spoke briefly to her boyfriend Greg on the phone and could then be seen climbing into a black Chevy Impala. But here's the thing. An analysis of Samantha's Uber app revealed a chilling detail of her last known movements. She had never made it into her Uber, which was obviously strange because on the footage, she got into a car. But the Uber driver, the one that was actually scheduled to pick her up, was a black Dodge Charger, not a black Chevy Impala. But it was canceled at 2:06am after the driver couldn't locate Samantha. So this is really weird because this is six minutes before she got into the Chevy Impala. So I have no idea what happened here. We couldn't figure that out. But this is probably why she was so urgently getting into this other car, because she's been waiting at this point for almost 12 minutes for her vehicle.

[Daphne]

Absolutely. And we have to remember that she was out with her friends. You know, they were probably having a few drinks to celebrate and stuff like that. She's very. She's very tired. It's, you know, two in the morning, she's ready to go home. So making that mistake between a black Dodge Charger and a black Impala doesn't seem impossible. But I also wanted to mention, quick little Google search here. It says that Uber usually waits about five minutes after they arrive to a location that was just what I found on Google, and that after five minutes, they are actually allowed to cancel the ride. So if this was Six minutes later, it seems like it's pretty quick to cancel the ride, but that's apparently what he did.

[Heath]

Right. So not sure again, what happened there. And she probably did not realize. I mean, I'm sure she didn't realize she was getting into the wrong car because she had also been on her phone. She was looking down. So when a black car pulled up and kind of pulled over in front of her, she probably didn't think twice about hopping in. Now, the camera showed the car slowing down and partially pulling into a parking space, you know, acting as if he was there to pick her up or pick somebody up. So an easy mistake if she had been half distracted, but a mistake that would change everything. This same Chevy Impala could be seen cruising the neighborhood since about 1:30am so almost 45 minutes earlier, as though he was looking for someone, perhaps looking for his next victim.

[Daphne]

So as police were kind of uncovering all of this, her friends and peers flooded social media with Samantha's picture to raise awareness. But no one had heard from or seen her since she got into that Chevy Impala. And then later that day, the search would conclude with the worst possible outcome. In the tiny unincorporated community of New Zion, South Carolina, which is an hour and a half east of Columbia, where she went missing from, two men who were out turkey hunting came upon the remains of a young woman located within Clarendon County. The rural farming community of New Zion is home to about 1,000 people, so pretty small. The remains were bloody and badly beaten, still clothed and barely concealed in the woods where they were discarded. Law enforcement immediately believed that the remains belonged to Samantha, just based on the description of the young woman and what she was found wearing. When Samantha's parents reached Columbia early on the morning of Saturday, March 30, 2019, they were brought into a room at the police station for a debrief. And Marcy immediately noted the man whose jacket sported a patch that read coroner. To their dismay, police informed them that there had been remains recovered, and they most likely belonged to Samantha, obviously pending DNA confirmation. And this was before Samantha's parents could really even begin looking for her, since they had just arrived in Colombia.

[Heath]

So they found her body really fast.

[Daphne]

Yes, they did. And then her heartbroken parents slowly underwent the painstaking task of letting their friends and family, including Sydney, know that Samantha was gone. Unfortunately, neither the license plate nor the driver of the Chevy Impala were visible in that footage we mentioned from the bar that night. But detectives had been chasing down security camera footage from the area businesses, hoping to Retrace the Impala's path that night and possibly glean some new details, feeling pretty confident that the driver was responsible for whatever happened to Samantha. Then that same morning, in a stroke of absolute pure luck on behalf of the investigation and sheer idiocy on behalf of the perpetrator, a black Impala could be seen cruising through Five Points. And it was actually stopped by police and it was flagged for further investigation.

[Heath]

The vehicle was pulled over around 2:30am this is Saturday morning, so like 24 hours after Samantha got into that Chevy impala and around 10 hours after her body was found. And when the officer approached the vehicle, he noted the smell of marijuana wafting out of the car. The driver admitted that he had been smoking, but not since hours prior. But even so, the officer asked him to step out of the car. And when he spotted the man's hand concealed in his right front pocket, you know, as if he had a weapon on him, the officer demanded, get your hand out of your pocket. What are you crazy? He went on to explain that they were pulling over cars that matched the description of a wanted murderer. But before he could finish his sentence, the man took off running down the street, which never looks good. Innocent people do not run. Well, thankfully, officers were able to chase him down, questioning him as he lay panting on the ground from this sprint. When asked his name, he just said breathlessly, I don't have id. He refused to talk or answer any questions. So officers eventually had to take his fingerprints and run them, determining his identity to be that of 24 year old Nathaniel Rowland. Back at his car. Remember, this is still in the middle of the night. The officers peered into his backseat with flashlights and made a startling discovery. Splatters of what looked like blood could be seen throughout the car, including on items inside the car. I mean, there was even blood on the driver's seat. When Nathaniel had taken off running, he left behind a female passenger who had been in the front seat watching all of this unfold, which also. Why is she hanging out in a bloody car?

[Daphne]

Yeah, that's kind of a strange detail here.

[Heath]

We are going to talk more about her and she is a huge part of this case actually. But it's so weird that there's just all this blood in the car and they're both just in it. Well, actually the police wondered this too and questioned her about it. But she reported that she didn't know anything about Samantha or her murder or where the blood was from. But she was able to confirm Nathaniel's identity. And the fact that the car was his. Inside, they found narcotics and multiple cell phones belonging to Nathaniel, as well as a rose gold iPhone and a set of pink keys wedged under the driver's seat, which detectives believed belonged to Samantha.

[Daphne]

So Nathaniel was obviously taken in for questioning, and he was agitated at the prospect of having to speak with law enforcement, Asking why he was still being detained. So detectives asked where he had been on the night of Samantha's murder. And Nathaniel claimed that he had been at the station stadium suites apartment complex near the usc campus, and he was apparently attending a house party there, which was easily disproven with the surveillance footage that they had. But he admitted that he had drank too much and was unable to drive, Passing out at this party, which, again, police were not buying. The next morning, March 29, 2019, Nathaniel explained that he had woke up hours after Samantha was abducted and that his keys weren't in his pocket where he had left them. When he went outside to retrieve his car, where he had parked it, it was apparently gone.

[Heath]

Of course, your car was stolen. Totally.

[Daphne]

And it just gets so much more stupid. So he alleged that someone else had taken it, then driven it back to the stadium suite's parking lot, Parking it in a different spot, and then leaving the keys inside the car.

[Heath]

Yeah. So someone stole his car and then brought it back.

[Daphne]

Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, I'm just going to borrow this real quick. Like, that's not what people do. So anyway, when he located where it had been parked, he said that he noticed blood inside the car. However, he couldn't provide any proof that any aspect of this story was true at all.

[Heath]

And he didn't report his car as stolen and said, hey, there's blood. Can. Can you guys help me out? This was not me.

[Daphne]

Right? Yeah. I mean, if you. If somebody stole your car and returned it and there was blood, I mean, obviously that's not true. But if they returned it and there was blood everywhere, you'd be like, I'm calling the police right now.

[Heath]

Absolutely.

[Daphne]

So when he was told that Samantha's phone had been in his car, he put his head down on the table, and he refused to keep talking. Now, while Nathaniel was being held, forensics were combing his vehicle, and they came upon even more disturbing details. The child lock on his Chevy impala had been engaged, which would have trapped Samantha in the backseat. There was even a footprint matching Samantha's on the inside of the window, indicating that a struggle had taken place right before her death. I mean, there had been so much blood spilled that it had soaked through the cushions of the backseat. And this blood was confirmed to be a match for Samantha's. Inside the car, they found a stack of papers, one of which did not belong to Nathaniel. And the paper was a typed up eviction letter from someone named Maria Howard, dated back three days prior on March 26, 2019, and sent to another woman. Now, when detectives tracked down Maria Howard at her home, her testimony wound up being the key to putting Nathaniel away. My friends, spring is coming up. We're doing some spring cleaning and we're also buying some new things to be able to replace those old things.

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Would you kill for me? Black Bag we did r under 1700 meter without parent. Now playing only in theaters with special engagements in Dolby. So because of the paperwork with Maria Howard's name on it found in Nathaniel's car, detectives questioned the nature of Maria's relationship with Nathaniel because she was alive and well, and she told them that they had been seeing each other romantically and that he would often spend nights at her home. That's where he was supposed to be on the night of Samantha's murder. But instead, after Maria went to bed at around 1.30am, Nathaniel had left in his vehicle to cruise the Five Points neighborhood. As we know, he had been doing that for over 40 minutes by the time Samantha got into his car. When asked about the eviction notice that she was serving her tenant with, that's what that paperwork was all about. Maria explained that she had been allowing her cousin and her cousin's daughter to live with her and her four year old daughter, but that her cousin's lack of cleanliness had driven Maria to evict her. Maria typed up an eviction notice and placed it inside Nathaniel's car so that she could take it to get notarized because she didn't have a car of her own, so she would frequently borrow Nathaniel's. When Maria was asked about Nathaniel's movements on the morning of Samantha's murder, she claimed that he went out frequently in Five Points and that she would sometimes go to bed only to wake up and find him absent, having left to party late into the evening. The early morning of Friday, March 29th was no exception. Later that morning, at 7am, hours after Samantha's murder, Maria was due to her job at McDonald's and she had asked Nathaniel to give her a ride. But of course he showed up late and then told her that he would first need to pick up his nephew and take him to school because he had promised his sister he would do so. So he is saying that he has this errand that he had to run first. So to Maria's frustration, Nathaniel left again while Maria let work know that she would be running late.

[Daphne]

And on top of this, Maria was also irritated that he had promised to wash her collared work shirt for her and had forgotten to do so. Cause the day prior, Maria asked Nathaniel to include it in his laundry because she didn't have a washer and dryer at home and he frequently did laundry at his sister's house. So he agreed to do so and took the shirt with him. But when he returned to Maria's house to pick her up for work, he gave her a wet shirt, having forgotten to do it the day before. He had also lost the visor that she wore for work, which had been in the window behind the backseat the day before and now was missing. When asked where that visor had gone, Nathaniel responded flatly, quote, it's in the country. When Maria asked why and how it wound up in the country, Nathaniel just told her that it had blood on it.

[Heath]

The fact that he even said that, but with no explanation, as if that's any kind of rational answer.

[Daphne]

And. Yeah, so of course she asked, you know, why there's blood on it. And he basically told her to mind her own business.

[Heath]

Then why did you even offer, but there was blood on it and that it was in the country.

[Daphne]

Yeah, you could have just said mind your own business from the. From the get go. But.

[Heath]

But then, of course, when we line this up with where Samantha's body was found out in the country, hours away from where they live in Colombia, it's. It's a lot of clues.

[Daphne]

Absolutely. Well, that morning, the two set out in his Impala, making a brief stop for gas and picking up food from the adjacent convenience store. And that's when Maria noticed the blood in the back of the car. Nathaniel had apparently draped a white sheet over the backseat, but it couldn't conceal the vast amount of blood splatters throughout the inside of the car. Obviously it just kinda seeped through. When she asked about it, he snapped at her, saying, why the fuck are you asking me all these questions? Nathaniel had promised to pick her up from work as well, so Maria gave him the keys to her home because she noted that he looked exhausted. When he again failed to pick her up, she was forced to get a ride home with a co worker. So obviously this guy just sucks and is not reliable in any aspect of his life.

[Heath]

And he was up all night doing some horrible shit.

[Daphne]

Yes, he was. So when she got home, she knocked loud enough to wake him up so that he could let her in. And he admitted that he had overslept. She noticed that he was still wearing clothes that he had been wearing the day before, so she basically just told him to go take a shower and change.

[Heath]

Well, Maria herself then went to shower, and when she got out, she saw Nathaniel in front of her house cleaning out his car. And when she got closer to investigate, she claims that the car reeked of bleach. Maria again questioned why he was doing this, and Nathaniel again refused. Refused to answer her. Later that afternoon, Maria needed to pick up her daughter from daycare, and Maria and Nathaniel went to do so together. Nathaniel told her that he didn't want her daughter in the car because of the blood inside, but he wouldn't elaborate further. At the time, this was the only car Maria had access to, and her daughter's car seat was situated inside. So she felt like she had really no choice here. And because of this, her daughter's shoes wound up with Samantha's blood on them.

[Daphne]

I feel like that is one of the most heartbreaking details of this case. That this child is sitting in the back seat that's covered in blood and.

[Heath]

Clearly he did a horrible job at cleaning this all up. Well, back at Maria's house that evening, which was Friday again, two friends of Nathaniel's stopped by and the three of them left in the Impala to head to Five Points to party. After they left, Maria was watching the news and saw the report of Samantha's abduction alongside the footage of her boyfriend's car. And she claims that she recognized it immediately by the patterns in the dirt on the exterior of the vehicle. So she like imagine she's watching the news about A young woman's 21 year old woman's abduction in her city and the car on the footage, they're trying to get information on whose car this is and she looks at it and thinks that's my boyfriend's car.

[Daphne]

Yeah. And then she's probably immediately having like this epiphany that oh my God, I saw blood in the backseat of the car earlier.

[Heath]

Yeah.

[Daphne]

And making that connection.

[Heath]

Absolutely. But she did not call the police. And later she explained that the reason she didn't do so was because she was scared for her life and the life of her child. Well, mere hours after heading out to Five Points for the second night in a row, Nathaniel was pulled over by the police. This happened at 2:30. This is what I was talking about earlier. And meanwhile, detectives obtained a search warrant from Maria's residence on Mountain Brook Drive in Columbia. And from the large plastic trash bags outside, they pulled multiple plastic bags filled with bloody cleaning supplies, including surgical gloves, blood stained sheets and towels, and a sock and bandana belonging to Nathaniel. This is all the stuff that he removed from the car earlier when he was cleaning it.

[Daphne]

When he half assed cleaned it.

[Heath]

Yeah, terribly cleaned it. They also found a black leather jacket of Nathaniel's with multiple scratches running down it, leading investigators to believe that they had been left behind by Samantha in the fight for her life.

[Daphne]

Also recovered was a multi purpose tool with two blades containing Samantha's blood and hair as well as DNA from 24 year old Nathaniel. Thus he was officially placed under arrest for the kidnapping and murder of Samantha Josephson. Though he maintained his innocence, a forensic search of their phones revealed that the devices had been tracking together until her phone was eventually turned off, proving that they were together. Then his phone pinged on towers all the way out to Cumberland county, last pinging near where Samantha's body was found. The site where her body was recovered was just 3 miles or 4.8 kilometers from his parents house. So he was very familiar with this area. Samantha's autopsy was disturbing and it revealed over 120 stab wounds. So many in fact that the coroner couldn't even ascertain the exact number. There had been so many rapid strikes that the coroner remarked that it seemed as if the knife had two blades. Something that was later confirmed to be true when detectives came across the double bladed multipurpose tool. Now, at 5:45am on the morning of March 29, 2019, shortly after Samantha's murder, Nathaniel attempted to use her debit card at two separate Wells Fargo ATMs. His first attempt was made in Sumter, South Carolina about an hour east of Columbia. And there he twice tried to pull out cash and left. When he was unsuccessful, he could be seen on surveillance footage dressed head to toe in black, wearing gloves with his face concealed.

[Heath]

Quite the get up for a pre Covid ATM run with somebody else's card.

[Daphne]

I mean he's just being caught left and right for all of this. Then back in Colombia, the same man in the same outfit again attempted to use her card, this time trying nine times to withdraw money. Danny Conyers, who was called by the prosecution as an expert witness following his career in fraud prevention from Wells Fargo, noted that though he couldn't be sure of the man's identity because of his face covering, the man was wearing the same shoes in both videos which were slip on sandals that stuck out to Danny because they were bedroom shoes. Then later in the day, Samantha's phone was powered on at Cellular City phone repair when Nathaniel was attempting to jailbreak it and sell it. When they weren't able to complete his request, he took it back where it was later found in his car. So detectives were able to glean the footage from Cellular City and Nathaniel can clearly be seen driving up in the Impala parking and then walking inside the store holding Samantha's phone.

[Heath]

So he is so guilty. You know, we have so many pieces of evidence, so many surveillance videos proving that he is in all of these suspicious locations when he shouldn't be.

[Daphne]

Oh yeah, we've got the Mount Everest of evidence here. So Maria claims that Nathaniel later offered Samantha's phone to her, but that she preferred her Android phone, so she declined this.

[Heath]

So now he, he knows he can't sell it, he can't get into it because it's 2019 and so he's now trying to pawn it off on his Girlfriend.

[Daphne]

Right. Well, at some point that day, Nathaniel was also spotted on security camera footage pulling through a Wendy's drive thru with the white sheet still visible in the backseat of his car. While Samantha's friends, family, and the entire University of South Carolina community reeled from this news, a massive vigil was held in which many of her friends, as well as her boyfriend Greg and her dad Seymour, made speeches. Two months after her murder, Samantha was honored at her college graduation, with her parents accepting her degree on her behalf. They then held a funeral for her friends and family back home, and she was finally laid to rest in a Jewish cemetery in her native New Jersey.

[Heath]

Frustratingly, as 2020 was underway, Nathaniel's trial was pushed back because of COVID leaving her family to wait in agony for over a year. Finally, the trial commenced on July 20, 2021. The defense relied solely on the fact that Nathaniel had no defensive wounds on him and that his DNA had not been found on Samantha. However, he's believed to have been heavily layered in clothing, including gloves, so DNA shedding wouldn't have been too difficult to avoid. And also with, you know, thick clothes, that would explain no defensive wounds. But then we think about the leather jacket.

[Daphne]

Yeah, there was scratches on the leather jacket.

[Heath]

Yeah. So that was in lieu of being on his body. Right. And as it goes, his parents seem to be the only ones convinced of his innocence, even though, again, it was so beyond clear that he was responsible. Ahead of the trial, his parents, Loretta and Henry Rowland, interviewed with a local news channel. But I will say his dad, at least seemed to be a little bit more reasonable, because through tears, Henry said to his son, I want to know if you did this thing and tell me. That's all I want to know. Tell me the doggone truth. He added, I know it's my child, but if you're wrong, you're wrong. And if he did it, I'll be the first one to put him behind bars, lock him up, and throw away the key. But Loretta said this. He is a very good young man, and when I talked to him and I talked to him yesterday, he told me that it wasn't him, and I believe him. By far, the longest testimony of the trial was that of Maria Howard, the prosecution's star witness. Maria explained to the court that after seeing news reports of the abduction, it all made sense to me. Now, sheepishly, she admitted that she was too scared to go to the police and that she didn't know what the ramifications would be if she did. The defense pointed out that in her first interview, she had claimed that she didn't know there was blood in the backseat. You know, hoping to paint Maria's minor inconsistencies as unreliability, because obviously then she said she did know about them. So the defense is trying to do what they can to say that she's not a reliable witness and that she should not be listened to, really. But Maria maintains that she had been so tired and so overwhelmed that she just wasn't thinking clearly and that her fear of Nathaniel had been keeping them together.

[Daphne]

The Josephsons have said in an interview that they were very thankful that Maria was willing to speak out against Nathaniel with police, and especially grateful that she testified against him. Seymour explained, she paid the price then afterward of having death threats and being put in bad situations, losing her job because she couldn't go back to work because of the death threat. And then Marcy added, we owe a lot to her for testifying and with her help. On July 27, 2019, after just one hour of deliberation, Nathaniel was found guilty of kidnapping, murder in the first degree, and possession of a deadly weapon. Shortly after his sentence was announced, the judge, Clifton Newman, permitted his mother to address the court even though she still believed in his innocence, ignoring all of the facts.

[Heath]

Ugh. Get ready to be pissed.

[Daphne]

Yeah. This is just so fucking annoying. So as Nathaniel looked down, Loretta said, quote, the state has accused my son of a crime that he didn't commit. You know. But then she was cut off abruptly by Judge Newman, who told her, ma'am, I'm not gonna hear any claim of innocence. He's been convicted by the jury. She attempted to speak over him, saying, alright, okay. He's a very caring young man. This is a young man who went through college, high school, played ball, active in his church, never had anything against him. Now, I know as a mother and a mother knows her child, I know my son didn't do this. I know.

[Heath]

Imagine Samantha's family hearing all this.

[Daphne]

I know. It's just insane. And then when the judge asked her, how do you know? She responded by saying, by the way, I raised him. And when you're a mother and you're a truly good mother and you raised your child in the right way, you would know when that child did something right or wrong. And I know he did not do this.

[Heath]

So she's taking this personally and she's saying, my son wouldn't do this. Like, I didn't raise a son who, who would do this. And it's like, well, he did.

[Daphne]

Well, he did. Yeah. So you're gonna have to learn to accept that. But I loved that the judge kind of clapped back at her, and he said, quote, ma'am, I'm not gonna hear any claim of what he did or didn't do. He's guilty of murder. He's guilty of kidnapping. He's guilty of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. And if you had any testimony that you wanted to give for the jury to consider, the trial was the time to do that. I'm not listening to any claim of what he did not do. You are not a witness, and of course not one to let the judge have the last word about her son. She nodded, but she added, quote, but he's a loving child. He's a good person, very respectful.

[Heath]

She's still going back to his values that she instilled in him or says that she instilled in him.

[Daphne]

I just think she. She cannot believe it, but it's so.

[Heath]

Disrespectful that she's doing this. It's insane. Insane.

[Daphne]

Well, at the conclusion of the trial, Judge Newman addressed Nathaniel directly, saying, quote, I hear a lot of mothers tell me what a good child their child is, and quite often I have to unfortunately tell the same mothers and fathers that your child was a good child. But that's when he was a child.

[Heath]

When asked if he wanted to make a statement, Nathaniel told the court, quote, I know I'm innocent, but I guess what I know and what I think really doesn't matter. I just wish the state would have done more in finding out who the actual person was instead of being satisfied with detaining me and proving my guilt. I feel like if they would have done further research in certain areas. That's all, your honor.

[Daphne]

So basically, he had absolutely nothing, had no remorse at all.

[Heath]

I just. It's so annoying because I would fully understand this type of statement and his mother's if it really seemed like they spearheaded a guy with no evidence and just based on one little thing. No, no, no, no, no.

[Daphne]

Right. But they didn't, you know, there was. There was, again, a mountain of evidence. Circumstantial, physical, other, otherwise as well.

[Heath]

Right. Which is why, calmly, Judge Newman responded, quote, the evidence in this case was so overwhelming, law enforcement did the best job of investigating a case that I have seen over the past 30 or 40 years. Every law enforcement officer that was available participated, apparently, in working on this case. And if there were a thousand roads, each road led to you, there's a thousand trails, each trail led to you.

[Daphne]

So perfectly stated.

[Heath]

This judge is like, no, no, no.

[Daphne]

Like, yeah, he's not taking any shit, as he shouldn't.

[Heath]

Now eyeing Nathaniel's family, Judge Newman added, quote, I can certainly understand the family being in total disbelief that the child that they raised could do such a heinous thing, could commit such a murder. I have dealt with the heartless and you fall into that category. A person without any remorse whatsoever. A person who is totally emotionless. And in the law we call it a depraved heart. Nathaniel was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He attempted to appeal his conviction in 2024, but was denied the opportunity to do so. In defense of their denial, the court claimed they possessed an avalanche of direct and circumstantial evidence that situated Rowland and Josephson together at the time of the kidnapping and murder. So Nathaniel remains in prison in Ridgeville, South Carolina. He has found himself disciplined multiple times in prison, though certainly not a model inmate for drug possession, assault, unlawful possession of a cell phone while incarcerated, and even posing as a security threat.

[Daphne]

So basically, this piece of shit did not learn any lessons whatsoever. Well, Samantha's family, however, have turned the worst thing that ever happened to them and to a way to spread awareness for the safety of young women. They were able to raise the attention of lawmakers in New Jersey who have since implemented Sammy's Law, which requires rideshare drivers to display lit signs in their vehicles as well as to possess a scannable QR code to match drivers and riders. Marcy and Seymour chose to donate any contributions that they received after Samantha's murder to womanspace, now known as Unity, spelled with a Y, which is a New Jersey based non profit organization for victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. And finally, in the weeks after Samantha's brutal murder, her family founded the what's My Name foundation, urging women to exercise caution when using RapidShares. Their acronym, SAMMY, stands for Stop Asking, Match, Inform, and Sidney's words quote, instead of saying, oh, are you here for Sidney? You say who are you here for? Or what's my name? And I really think this is incredible and something that all of us should take away from this episode. You should absolutely stop, ask, match and inform.

[Heath]

It's just like we said with another case recently about, you know, postmates or uber eats or DoorDash or any of those. You know, if you're a young woman, don't go out to meet your, your door dasher or whoever, maybe use a male's name. It's like there's all these little Tools that you can use to try to stay safer. And it's so sad because Samantha was just tired. She wanted to go home. Her driver had canceled on her. She didn't know what was going on. She thought that was her driver. And getting into that car was the worst mistake she ever made. But it's a mistake that any of us could make.

[Daphne]

Absolutely. And, you know, it's. It's just really unfortunate that this is the type of world that we live in. But, you know, going back to that acronym acronym, make sure that you stop before you get into a car. Just don't get into any car that you see. Make sure that you ask if the person knows your name. Match the license plate. That's really important. We always do that. We make sure we match it to the app and then just inform somebody that you just got into the car. And also just inform other people of this acronym and how they can stay safe if they're taking rideshares. And. Yeah, so Seymour even left his career in tech, which spanned 30 years, behind to work for the foundation full time. The foundation is working alongside rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft to extend their safety measures to keep people safe in the name of their beloved. Samantha Josephson. Foreign.

[Heath]

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West.

[Daphne]

Yes, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. Please make sure that you share, because there's some really great information in here that could help save a loved one's life. So please share this episode.

[Heath]

Yeah, you know, Heath and I love covering unless unsolved cases because it feels like there's a real call to action, like we can do something, and we're just not just talking about something horrible that happened and kind of opening up a scar again for a family. But cases like this really are so important to share. Any kind of case, really, that we can all learn from. I know there are other cases we've covered that are kind of similar to this, but again, this was such an easy thing to avoid that Samantha really just didn't know that she had had to avoid.

[Daphne]

Absolutely. And I think, you know that episode that you were talking about earlier about how you changed your name on Door Dash to. To a guy's name.

[Heath]

Right.

[Daphne]

We had a ton of listeners come to us and say that they did the same thing. And. Yeah, I mean, they're just keeping people safe out here.

[Heath]

Yeah. We all got to, you know, find these good tips and talk about these cautionary tales so that we can stay as safe as we can. So thank you so much again to everybody who recommended this case. That was Tara. Sorry, Tara. Tara, Ashley, Christy, Taylor, Lydia, and Kelly. You guys are awesome. And if you guys, anybody out there wants to recommend a case, please send us an email going west podcast gmail.com. and thank you for tuning in. We will see you on Tuesday. And actually anybody celebrating St. Patrick's Day the day before on Monday, like Heath and I were going to be at the pub all freaking day long, I want to tell you, my brother in law has an app called the Black Map. It's where you can find the best Guinness in town. You can rate, review and discover where to find the perfect creamy pint. And we're going to be doing just that, raiding our creamers on Monday. So if you guys want to do that, it's a free app. It's called the Black Map. It's so much fun. Check it out and we'll see you on Tuesday.

[Daphne]

Yes, everybody have a very safe and fun St. Patrick's Day and we'll see you on Tuesday.

[Heath]

Sla.

[Daphne]

Sla. All right, guys, for everybody out there.

[Heath]

In the world, don't be a stranger.

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