The Fake Uber Homicide - The Murder of Samantha Josephson

January 12, 2026

On this episode, Garrett and Payton cover the tragic case of Samantha Josephson, a college student who never made it home after a night out. When her rideshare suddenly veers off course, it sets off a chain of events that leads to a shocking discovery and a case that would change rideshare safety forever.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

And I'm the husband.

Welcome back to another episode. Happy Monday. Hope you are having a great start to the week.

So, I think for my 10 seconds real quick, instead of a hot take this week… someone tried to cut me today in the Dutch Bros line. Someone tried to cut me. I don’t know how else to say it. I don’t care if I cared it out. Someone tried to cut me today.

I’m going to explain this to you guys real quick. We’re in line in Dutch Bros. One car, two car, three car, lane split. Okay. The person in the right lane, boom, goes naturally. First of all, I was there before the car behind the other right car. Naturally, my turn, left lane. Boom.

This guy looks at me, I mean looks at us, and then just says, “Nope.” Just goes. Just starts going. Boom. Instantly, I honked my horn. He looked over. I rolled down the window. I put my drinks up. I said, “Hey, we already got our drinks. We’re going to go in front of you.” And he just stared at me. He went like this. And then I said, “Also, by the way, there’s a line.” I was pissed, right? Was it not kind of crazy that he tried to do that?

Babe, we need to weigh in on this, guys.

Wait, first of all, mind you, mind you, we were just halfway through the episode when Garrett remembered this 10 seconds and demanded that we go back and retell it.

I’m not a Karen type of person. I actually despise them. So, if you are a Karen and you’re listening, I’m sorry, but I’m also a we-got-to-follow-the-rules type of person. So, when someone tries cutting me in a line, it’s not happening. And the worst part was, it’s like early in the morning.

I don’t know why Dutch didn’t have their music going, but it was dead quiet outside. I was like, “Dude, what are you doing?” And Garrett just honks his huge truck horn. He looked at me like a deer in the headlights. He’s like, “I’m going in front of you.” I was like, “No, you’re not. Guess who? Guess who didn’t go in front of me? That guy did not go in front of me.”

All I’m saying, don’t cut me. Don’t cut me. If you ever see me in public and you try cutting me, I want to find your IP address and you’re never going to be able to listen to the podcast again.

That’s my 10 seconds. Let’s get back into the episode. Let’s get back, actually, to starting the episode for you guys and get into today’s case.

Our sources for this episode are WhatsMyName.org, Womenspace.org, Heal.com, NBCPhiladelphia.com, WISTV.com, Crime and Investigation.com, NBC News, CBSN News, KFOX TV, The Independent.com, FoxCarolina.com, The State.com, The Cinemaholic, Mirror.co.uk, ABCNews.go.com, CNN, APNews.com, and NewYorkTimes.com.

There’s a lot of things in this world that we just implicitly trust. Things that have become such a part of our daily lives and routines that we don’t even question them anymore. For example, say that you’re booking a doctor’s appointment. Do you really verify their credentials and certifications before you walk into the office?

I do.

I don’t. I don’t even know.

Or like if you’re posting your photos on Instagram, have you read the fine print on the information of what you’re supposed to be sharing, the policies?

No.

How about getting into a rideshare vehicle? Are you diligent about checking the license plate to make sure it’s the model, it’s the correct one? Do you always make sure the driver matches their pictures and knows your first name?

In a rapidly changing world full of technological updates, it’s these little things that fall by the wayside. And not because we forget, necessarily, but because we just trust. We trust that these systems work and that the people operating within them have good intentions.

But today’s story is proof that that is not always the case. Some people take advantage of these tools that we’ve been told we can rely on, and they use these resources to prey upon people, to trick people, even to scam them, and in some rare cases, even to take another person’s life.

Today, I want you to meet 21-year-old Samantha Josephson.

In 2019, she is a senior at the University of South Carolina, and she’s majoring in political justice. She’s only months away from getting the degree that she has worked her butt off for.

Samantha’s not from South Carolina originally. She’s actually from New Jersey. She was born in the picturesque little college town of Princeton, basically the Hogwarts of the tri-state area, but she was raised about 13 miles away from there in another smallish town called Robbinsville, New Jersey.

Now, growing up, it was just her, Samantha, and her older sister, Sydney, and then her parents, Macy and Seymour. And while Samantha loved being close to her family, she had always dreamed of life outside of her small New Jersey town.

So when she was accepted to the University of South Carolina in 2015, she begged her parents to let her travel 670 miles to college.

Now, they were hesitant to say yes at first. The South was a lot different than the Northeast. They weren’t sure how their young daughter would fare in another part of the country that she hadn’t spent much time in. But Samantha had always been reliable, responsible, respectful. She always made the best choices for herself, and her parents knew life down there would be no different.

So in the fall of 2015, they helped her pack her bags, and they made the drive down south, where Samantha would start her new life as an undergrad. And as expected, Samantha took to it like a fish to water.

She joined a sorority, making dozens of new sisters in Alpha Gamma Delta. And with Greek life being a big part of the school’s culture, that actually opened her up to even more connections and friendships. At one point, she even studied abroad in Barcelona, traveling through Europe to places like Paris and then Madrid.

And before she knew it, her college experience was starting to come to a close. By her senior year in 2018, Samantha was thinking about what life after graduation would look like. And for her, there was only one answer: law school.

She had been offered scholarships from both Rutgers in New Jersey, which would take her back closer to home, but she ultimately chose Drexel University in Philadelphia. Okay, also honestly not too far away from her parents. Samantha honestly was excited about being closer to her family again.

And plus, her boyfriend, Greg Corbishley, who she had met at USC and started dating back in the spring of 2017, was also planning to attend Rutgers School of Law. But first, he was going to spend a little time in Charleston, South Carolina to reset.

So, all of this to say, the two of them both were going to go to law school. They had a bright future ahead of them. Now, Greg called Samantha the love of his life. He was in it for the long haul.

And so by May of 2019, when Garrett and I were getting married, there was a lot worth celebrating for Samantha over in her life, which was exactly what she was doing on the night of the 28th in downtown Columbia, just a few miles from the USC campus.

So that evening, Samantha, like a lot of the kids at USC, went to a collection of bars and restaurants down in an area of Columbia known as Five Points. And Samantha spent the night with a few friends at one particular spot called the Bird Dog Bar. She was having a few drinks, blowing off some steam from the week, and they treated the outing, honestly, as a sort of celebration for Samantha having gotten into law school.

And by this point, she was in the final stretch. Graduation was just around the corner. Samantha could practically smell the freedom.

But around 2:00 a.m., the bar was starting to shut down. And honestly, so was Samantha. She was exhausted from the long week and decided to say goodbye before the rest of her friends.

Now, Greg, her boyfriend, wasn’t there that night. He was actually already down in Charleston getting ready for his post-graduation move. But the two spoke on the phone a few times throughout the night, and they were texting.

And around 2:00 a.m., she told Greg she was leaving the bar. He told her to get home safe and said he would track her location.

And then Samantha left the bar. She went outside, and she got lost in the crowd of dozens of other college students who were emptying out the other bars.

And as promised, Greg watched her little blue dot on his Find My Friends app basically travel along a familiar road home. And then, several minutes into the drive, her location stopped at a place called Montgomery Avenue in Rosewood, South Carolina.

Now, when Greg noticed Samantha’s phone didn’t make it back to her address when it probably should have, he tried calling her, but there was no answer. So he called one of Samantha’s roommates.

When they said that Samantha had left alone from the bar, he told them he noticed her phone had stopped in that Rosewood area. So the roommate and a friend hopped into a car and went to look for Samantha and her phone in that same vicinity, but they couldn’t find it.

Now, both she and Greg assumed, okay, maybe Samantha had left it in the Uber and then had not gone home and just had continued the night somewhere else.

So the roommate and Greg are like, “Okay, let’s just get back to this in the morning. Like, it’s early hours at this point. We’re tired. You’re tired.”

The roommate goes home to get some sleep, but when they wake up in the morning, Samantha is still not home.

And so at this point, everyone’s like, “Wait, this is actually pretty bad.”

So that’s when Samantha’s roommate actually called 911 to report her missing. And 911 sent a SLED agent from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division over to speak with the roommate, who told them Samantha had a shift at a local bar that morning.

She was supposed to work at a spot called the Liberty Tap Room and Grill, less than three miles from where she was actually last seen the night before. But she never came home. She didn’t show up for her shift.

So the agent goes to Samantha’s place of work, and they’re like, “Yeah, she really did never show.” Which is weird, because as we’ve heard many times before on this show, it is just very unlike Samantha. And then you add in the fact that the boyfriend had been tracking her location and it had gone off rail and then just not gone home.

That would be so scary.

That’d be horrible.

And everyone in her life is trying to tell the agents at this point, like, she’s extremely responsible. She takes her commitments seriously. She wouldn’t have done this.

So when her parents also hear that she didn’t come home last night and had missed her shift that morning, they too instantly know something is wrong. So they hop in the car almost immediately and start making the 10-hour drive down to South Carolina.

Now meanwhile, SLED actually transfers the case over to the Columbia Police Department, and they put out a BOLO, be on the lookout for Samantha Josephson.

But after five hours into their drive, the Josephsons actually get a call from someone at the Columbia Police Department, and it’s not a reassuring one. They pretty much just ask the parents, “Hey, when is your ETA?” And then they hang up. They don’t give the family any details. They don’t really ask why they’re asking, okay, but it is enough for the Josephsons to think this has to be bad news.

Like, why would they ask when we’re going to be there but then not tell us anything else?

And unfortunately, their instincts are correct, because that morning, about 14 hours after Samantha was last seen at the bar, there are some turkey farmers out in a field in New Ellenton.

Oh gosh, man.

Now, police are called to this crime scene, and they find it’s a female who has been stabbed repeatedly. She has scratches all over her face and body, as if she was dragged out here to the middle of nowhere. Her wounds are actually so severe, police are having a hard time identifying her. It hasn’t been that long, but her face is kind of unidentifiable.

Now, unfortunately, there’s nothing else at the crime scene that can help them find the killer, but they are fairly certain that these are the remains of the missing 21-year-old Samantha Josephson that everyone had gotten the notification about that morning.

I don’t know what’s worse when we cover these cases. And I don’t know, it’s all horrible. You never find them, or you find them quick like this within hours, and it’s like, we found her, but she’s not alive.

Yeah.

You never find them, or you find them quick like this within hours, and it’s like we found her, but she’s not alive.

And it’s not like, oh, is it nice to have that closure? At that point, it probably doesn’t even matter. It’s probably just all so effed up, you don’t even know unless you go through it. Horrible.

I will say, it’s, you know, not only are they being told, hey, your daughter is dead, they’re saying, hey, your daughter was brutally murdered, like most likely tortured.

So they’re like, hey, we believe this is your missing college student. And it is something that’s confirmed to the police from where her body was found when her parents finally do reach the police station in South Carolina later that day.

Now meanwhile, the Columbia police are terrified that there’s a predator on the loose, and at any moment another life might be claimed. And this is just not something people are used to, especially because most of the people here are college students. They are vulnerable. They are ambitious. And they’re trusting.

I feel like you’re always so trusting in college.

Yeah, honestly, I would agree. I feel like when I was in college, I had zero.

You just, I was stupid. You go anywhere with anyone, to any house.

Like, maybe it’s changed now with a lot more information that’s out there. And this was the time we were in college, though.

Correct.

But I mean, it’s been, what, 10 years?

Long time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Um, so police move quickly on trying to track the killer down. And meanwhile, the autopsy reveals its own set of clues.

Pathologists find that Samantha’s been stabbed, prepare yourself, approximately 120 times.

Oh, no way.

No way.

And, you know, I’m going to go into a little bit of depth of where these stab wounds are, so just skip 10 seconds if you don’t want to hear. But the reason she was so unidentifiable is because several of these fatal wounds had been to her brain and neck.

Oh my gosh.

No.

She also had a severed hyoid bone, which, as we’ve talked about before, could be an indicator of strangulation. Many of the stab wounds, though, were through her hands and arms, which did show that Samantha probably was trying to fight these stab wounds, which is how she even got them on her hands and arms. She obviously tried hard to fend off her attacker.

Now, just to give you a scope of how bad her injuries were, when pathologists tried to take a DNA sample, they were having a hard time finding enough blood in her body to get the DNA from, because so much of it had drained out from 120 stabs.

Now, luckily, by this point, the Columbia police had already gotten a few good leads on her killer because when police spoke with Samantha’s friends, they learned that as she was leaving the bar the night before, she had called an Uber to take her home.

Samantha’s parents always encouraged her to be careful about drinking and driving. Her father even let her sync his credit card to her Uber account so she would never have to worry about spending the money and making the choice. She could always just get an Uber instead of driving drunk.

So that is exactly what Samantha did. When she got too tired to keep the party going, she just ordered an Uber on her phone.

Except what police learn is her Uber driver never actually picked her up.

The night before, there were tons of other rideshare drivers driving to pick up clients outside the bar, especially because every bar was closing in this area. But the Uber Samantha called told police that he never actually picked her up. She never got in his car. In fact, the driver said he couldn’t find her, so he just canceled the ride and chalked it up to time lost. Maybe she decided to go back in and not leave.

So investigators go back to the Bird Dog, where Samantha was last seen, and they ask to see the camera footage from outside the bar the night before.

Sure enough, thank goodness, we have some cameras.

They see Samantha. She’s standing by herself in a sea of people outside the bar, waiting for her Uber to obviously pick her up.

Now, the car that she had ordered, that she was waiting for, was a dark-colored Dodge. And you can actually see Samantha in this footage approach a car, realize that it’s not her Uber, and then go back to the curb.

But clearly, at this point, this situation is chaotic. It’s confusing. Lots of people are ordering Ubers. I mean, honestly, if you’ve ever ordered an Uber at an airport or a busy place, like, I think if you’ve been to, let’s say, Vegas, for example, Payton and I have been a couple times, and when we order an Uber there, it’s a nightmare because drivers just roll up and are like, “Uh, are you for me? Are you for me?”

So it’s after this first mix-up that another dark-colored car pulls up, and Samantha walks over, opens the back door, and gets in. And then the vehicle drives off.

Now, obviously, when police are watching this, their first thought is, but she never got in her Uber. So what car is that?

Yeah.

Who picked her up?

Now, a few things about this car in the footage. First, it’s a Chevy Impala, not a Dodge like Samantha was supposedly waiting for. But not everyone’s familiar with a car’s make and model. She may have seen the color, walked up, he said yes, thought, this is my ride.

Another detail that’s frustrating: the windows of this car are extremely tinted. There’s no way to make out the driver of the vehicle or see if there’s even anyone else inside riding as a passenger in the front.

But now, police at least have a vehicle to search for.

And as they look at more security footage around the bar and Five Points in general, they see that this Chevy had actually been driving around the area quite a bit that night, especially as the bars were letting out.

At one point, it almost seems to take notice of Samantha because the car passes her, does a U-turn about a block away, and then comes back around and pulls up right in front of her.

And while police can’t see inside the vehicle, like I said, they assume it probably doesn’t take Samantha very long to realize that she’s not in the Uber that she had called.

That makes me sick to my stomach. I cannot imagine being trapped.

’Cause here’s the thing: this car immediately starts driving in the opposite direction from her dorm. So from the get-go, he’s already driving an odd way.

And after that, remember, they’re trying to track Samantha through security footage. The trail on Samantha takes a suspicious turn. Her phone is turned off about 20 minutes into that car ride. And then, about 45 miles away from the Columbia area where she was picked up, there’s activity of someone trying to use her debit card nine different times.

Okay.

So police head down to the area, and they pull up the security video from the ATM. And they find on that video a man standing alone. It is not Samantha using her card. He’s wearing a bandana around his head and a hoodie with the drawstring pulled tight around his face. He’s also wearing gloves, so they’re not going to find any fingerprints on the machine.

But that’s not the final place he’s actually spotted that night. His car is also seen passing through a Wendy’s drive-thru in the area.

So police go to the Wendy’s. They talk to the people that work there, and they said, “Oh yeah, we remember this car that night. We actually got a peek into the backseat of the car. It was covered with a white sheet. It, like, stood out to us. We noticed it, man.”

And they tell police there was no girl in the car. There was no sign of Samantha anywhere in the vehicle.

So, I will say, I will be very shocked if it’s not someone that she knows, or the family knows, or friends know, just because of how intimate the murder was.

Mm-hmm.

Being stabbed that many times usually doesn’t happen, usually, right? It’s when it’s a crime of, I mean, I guess you can say passion, like that, where there’s stabbings multiple times, that many times. It’s usually, like, out of anger.

It’s definitely feeling like, if it’s not someone she knows, it’s more serial killer route than someone just looking for money.

Correct.

So, less than 24 hours after Samantha Josephson disappeared, police have already discovered her body and the make and model of the car that took her, and a lot of security footage. They know it was a dark Chevy Impala.

So that night, a Columbia police officer named Jeffrey Craft starts his shift. Now, obviously, he knows Samantha is missing, but he hasn’t heard news that her body was found earlier that day yet. So what he’s looking for tonight on his shift is any sign of the Impala that they are looking for.

And it is actually a lot easier than you would ever imagine, because around 2:30 a.m., this police officer is cruising about when he spots a car fitting the description of the car they’re looking for.

So he throws his lights on and pulls the car over.

Now, as he approaches, he sees a man and a woman inside this Impala, and the car reeks of marijuana. So Craft, the police officer, asks the driver for his license and registration. The man says he doesn’t have it with him, so they have him get out of the car.

Now, he doesn’t put up a fight at first, but when police tell him, “Oh, the reason we actually pulled you over was not because you broke any driving laws. It was because your vehicle matches the description of a suspect’s vehicle that we’re looking for,” this driver takes off running.

They tell him this, and he just books it. Instantly folds.

This leads to a full-on pursuit, and eventually the guy is caught and apprehended.

But in the meantime, that female, you know, I would love to know how many people have run away from police and, like, evaded it forever. And I’m talking about on foot, not in a car or, like, on a bike. You ran on foot. They never learned your name.

No, it’s, I bet you, if we take the last 30 years, I bet you it’s got to be 0.00001%.

’Cause what are the chances they’re driving a car that’s not linked to them or someone that they know that’s going to tattle on them? I don’t know.

So he takes off running, and, like I said, he gets apprehended. But in the meantime, the female passenger is actually still sitting in the car, frozen in fear.

And when police ask her what the driver’s name was, she tells them Nate, a.k.a. 24-year-old Nathaniel Rowland. He was from a tiny little town near New Zion, South Carolina, where Samantha’s body was found.

Now, New Zion, it is not a place you would ever seek out unless you were familiar with the area. So this is a major red flag to detectives.

Which, just a quick insert here, this is so interesting to me because I’ve actually lately been doing a lot of research on the serial killer Israel Keyes.

Now, if you don’t know, Israel Keyes would basically drive around America and find extremely small towns. He would then kidnap someone from a different area, drive them to that small town, find an abandoned house, and kill them there for the exact reason that police jump to. Who would ever kill here unless they knew of this area?

So he would do it to trick.

But in this case, police are doing the same thing. Like, who would know of this area? It has to be someone who grew up around here.

So that’s what is actually happening in this case. This is a major red flag to detectives. And what’s even more worrisome is that if Nathaniel is the one who killed Samantha, it means he dropped her body off there last night and then drove back to Columbia, to the Five Points area, basically the scene of the kidnapping, that same day, and got pulled over by police.

So what’s he doing? Hunting? Looking for another victim?

I’m also a big believer in karma. Like, what goes around comes around.

This is all really strange, and it was looking worse and worse for Nathaniel as police examined his car.

Now, inside, they find a set of keys with a pink keychain. And when they ask the passenger if they’re hers, she says no. Also on that key ring, a USB drive that’s given to all of the college students at USC, and a key that’s labeled “room.”

They also find a pink cell phone in his car that doesn’t belong to either him or the passenger.

But the most damning evidence is a female footprint on the window in the back seat, almost like someone was trying to kick their way out of the car. And there is a lot of blood in the back seat and trunk of his car. There’s no way this girl didn’t know about it, or—we’ll get there.

Alongside that, a bunch of cleaning products and bleach are found in the car. And that’s when they realize they actually likely just found the place where Samantha Josephson was killed and then her body was dumped.

They also realized Nathaniel probably had his child safety locks on in his back seat, which was what likely kept Samantha from being able to get out and run away.

Luckily, police now had the 24-year-old Nathaniel D. Rowland in custody, and soon he was charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder.

Now, it seems like it’s going to be open and shut, but why?

Problem was, Nathaniel, from the beginning, insisted that someone else had borrowed his car the night before. He wouldn’t name names. Like, I’m not ratting, but I did not do this. It was an angle his defense attorneys would also take.

There’s no footage of him in any of the surveillance. It’s just his car.

Now, prosecutors knew this was going to be tricky. There was nothing they could actually prove that Nathaniel was the one driving. His windows were tinted. Also, though, Wendy’s drive-through footage doesn’t show his face.

Samantha hadn’t been sexually assaulted, meaning there was no semen that could tie it back to Nathaniel. In fact, Nathaniel’s DNA wasn’t even showing up under Samantha’s fingernails.

However, police believed that was because Nathaniel was wearing so much clothing that night that she was never actually able to make skin-to-skin contact with him. If you remember how the person looked on the ATM footage, there’s barely any skin showing.

Right now, the only thing they could prove was that Samantha Josephson had been killed inside Nathaniel’s car, but not really that he was the one who did it.

So the prosecution knew, before we go to trial, we’re going to need more evidence. And their best chance at gathering that was by taking a closer look at the Impala.

So as police go to gather more clues, they discover something interesting in Nate’s car: an eviction notice that included the name and address of Nate’s girlfriend, a woman named Maria Howard.

So police go to speak with her, hoping she can shed some light on her now arrested and charged boyfriend, and they get more than they bargain for.

She says that the morning Samantha went missing, Nathaniel came to her house and tried to clean his car. He had rubber gloves on and was scrubbing down the console when she saw him grab this knife that had two blades, basically like a multi-tool, that also had blood on it.

When she asked him what was going on, she says he told her to mind her own business.

Okay.

He doesn’t give her any details. It’s clear he’s in a panic.

So she lets police search her home for any more evidence that might corroborate her side of the story. And she leads the police to the garage, where there’s a garbage can, which is where she says Nate disposed of many of those cleanup materials.

And in there: the clothes, the knife.

Ah, okay.

They find the murder weapon, the multi-blade tool that Maria claimed she had seen him with. They also find some of Nathaniel’s clothes that are covered in blood, as well as a leather jacket of his that appears to have scratch marks all down the side of it, as if someone was dragging their nails along it trying to fight back.

Now, this is important because it’s another, it’s his clothing that has evidence on it, not hers, not someone else who could have borrowed the car.

Shortly after this, the DNA results came back from the vehicle, and it proves it was, in fact, Samantha’s blood and footprint inside the Impala, only strengthening the prosecution’s case.

Now, some time has gone on, not a lot, but it’s basically hit the time that should have been the biggest, most celebratory time in Samantha’s life. It was her college graduation.

There was a seat held in her memory. Her parents were given her degree, the degree which Samantha had worked so hard for and now would never get to pursue.

And around the same time, a vigil was held back in Samantha’s hometown. Friends, family members, and even complete strangers moved by her story showed up to light a candle for her.

And meanwhile, Nathaniel Rowland was skipping his court appearances back in South Carolina and still proclaiming his innocence.

Now, unfortunately, it was going to take two more years for him to face a trial because of COVID.

Oh, okay.

What?

July of 2021.

Attorneys on both sides are ready to go to battle. Now, arguably the most important witness in this case was Nate’s girlfriend, the one who lived at the home where the murder weapon was found, Maria Howard.

There was a lot of uncertainty around whether Maria would even agree to testify at the trial. She was worried about her safety, the safety of her young daughter, but at the end of the day, she knew it was the right thing to do.

So on day two, she showed up and was called to the witness stand.

Which I respect, because I understand being scared, but I also think she probably thinks, if I don’t testify, people are going to think I’m involved.

Which, yeah.

She tells the jury not just about Nate coming to her house and cleaning out his car that day, but also how she had asked him, after he cleaned the car out, about a visor that she needed to wear for work that she had left in his car. He cleans the car out, now she can’t find it.

And he tells Maria it was out, quote, “in the country.” And when she asked what he was talking about, he mentioned something about how the visor had blood on it and he needed to get rid of it.

But after pressing him for more details, he again threatened her to mind her own business.

Mm-hmm.

She also mentioned the details about the white sheet that was now covering the back seat, a detail that was validated by the workers and surveillance video out of that Wendy’s drive-thru.

Maria said it wasn’t until she finally saw something about Samantha’s disappearance on the news that she did put it together. She said the reason she didn’t immediately report it to police directly was because she didn’t know what Nate was capable of. She had her young child to worry about. Was she just jumping to conclusions?

But Maria wasn’t the only important witness called to the stand.

There was also the Uber driver that was supposed to pick Samantha up that night. He said he went to the designated pickup spot for Samantha, but when he got there, there was no sign of her. He even said he had called her cell phone but didn’t receive an answer.

And then came O’Shamar Williams. He owned a cell phone repair shop, and his surveillance footage from inside the store showed Nate coming in the morning Samantha disappeared. He had tried to pawn off Samantha’s cell phone.

Problem was, what an idiot. What an absolute idiot.

O’Shamar was only offering $125 for the phone, and Nate didn’t think it was enough. So he took the phone with him, where it was found in his vehicle when he was pulled over by police.

Okay.

Now, even more damning, O’Shamar got a look at the phone’s lock screen and noticed it had a picture resembling Samantha on it. And again, this is helpful because it’s Nate who is the one who’s trying to pawn the cell phone off.

That’s clearly her phone, because the witness identifies him and her, which helps against the defense’s theory that he had nothing to do with this.

Now, as anticipated, the defense tried to argue everything pointing to Nate was circumstantial, which is funny because at this point it’s not circumstantial. I mean, the murder weapon was found in his home.

Well, and what’s crazy is, at trial it comes out that they took samples from under Nathaniel’s fingernails after he was arrested, and they found it was a match for Samantha’s genetic material.

Plus, a pair of gloves, a sock, a bandana, and the knife he threw in Maria’s trash, all belonging to him, had Samantha’s DNA on it.

Yeah.

Open and shut.

Now, after six days of testimony, the jury deliberated for an hour and seven minutes. And when they came back, they had all unanimously agreed Nathaniel Rowland was guilty on all charges.

The family had chosen not to pursue the death penalty, but spoke out during his sentencing hearing.

Samantha’s mother, Marcy, said in court, quote, “Her dreams were my dreams, and her death was my death. I closed my eyes and I feel what she endured at his hands.”

Which, I’m sure, like, haunting.

Her father, Seymour, said through tears, quote, “Do I tell you that I contemplated suicide several times over the past 28 months? To me, the monster has stolen that bright light, this enthusiasm for life, out of me. I tried to stop having these thoughts or desires only because I’m afraid of what this would ultimately do to Sydney, Samantha’s sister, and Marcy.”

Which is also just, like, yeah. Horrifying.

The judge then told Nate that leniency was not in his DNA and that he was sentencing him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Now, what’s unusual about this case is there’s really never been a clear motive. As I mentioned, Samantha wasn’t sexually assaulted. He didn’t know her. If the motive was robbery, the murder that followed was, like Garrett said, particularly gruesome and uncharacteristic of what we see following robberies gone wrong.

So, what did Nate want?

Which is, sorry to interrupt, which is scary. These are the scariest types of killers. I mean, every killer is scary, but someone who kills for fun and for pleasure. That’s what my mind goes to. Is he a serial killer in the making?

Yeah.

Was he just stopped before he could get away with anything else? Was this just a thrill kill and nothing more?

I’m not sure we’ll ever really have the answers to those questions.

What we do have, though, is some meaningful change.

Samantha’s death forced lawmakers in South Carolina to pass new legislation stating that rideshare drivers must display an illuminated sign given to them by the company when picking someone up, which we see now a lot.

That’s great. I mean, I guess someone could really fake it if they wanted to, but I think it’s a great start.

So, that’s awesome, ’cause this wasn’t really a thing back in 2015.

Uh-huh.

It was not.

And if anyone stops working for the rideshare company, it’s illegal for them to keep and continue using the sign. It’s also illegal to have a fake one.

Okay.

It was called the Samantha L. Josephson Ride Sharing Safety Act.

Since then, the law has sparked national change, and in 2023, Samantha’s law went into effect federally, which is why we now see this everywhere. This required all rideshare drivers nationally to display illuminated signs and scannable QR codes to verify their identity before you get in the car. It also criminalized misrepresentation of being a rideshare driver and promoted more effective background checks for drivers.

But the advocacy doesn’t even end there.

Samantha’s family has since established the What’s My Name Foundation to educate people about rideshare safety, and they came up with a memorable slogan to help you stay safe when using a rideshare app: What’s my name?

It uses Sammy’s name as an acronym.

S is for stop. Before you request a ride, think about where you’re headed and review the app’s safety features before you get in.

A is for ask. Ask your driver, “What is my name?” before getting in.

M is for match. Be sure the make, model, and license plate of the car match what is listed on the app.

And finally, I is for inform. Share your ride details with a friend using the share status function in these apps.

And that is Sami’s acronym.

Now, because Samantha’s story shouldn’t be a cautionary tale. It should be one about a driven young woman who went on to be a great lawyer, who lived a long, happy life full of success, surrounded by family. But one person robbed her of all of that.

All it took was one quick Uber ride for Sammy’s story to become a warning of what happens when the systems that we implicitly should be able to trust are weaponized against us.

This is crazy. Not often do we cover a case where someone is murdered so brutally like that and there’s really no motive behind it. That’s scary.

I forgot to say, the female that was riding in the car must have been completely cleared, and I think her identity was protected. Just, yeah. So if you had any questions involving that.

That’s so sad. Horrible.

Shout out to the family.

I’m happy that there’s been change.

Yeah, I’m happy that there’s been change. I’m extremely sorry that something this tragic and brutal has happened to them, but I’m happy that they’re able to get some change and have a lasting effect. You know, they probably don’t even know how many people they’ve saved.

Yeah, probably.

Because I’m sure it has been a lot.

Maybe not even just murder, but like assault, robbery, so many different things.

All right, you guys. That was our episode for this week, and we will see you next time with another one.

I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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