April 8, 2025 • 44 mins
Samantha Humphrey was a brilliant, funny, and empathetic child taken far too soon. Who would want to harm her?
It was the day after Thanksgiving, 2022, when 14-year-old Samantha went missing in Schenectady, NY. For 3 months, New York State Police worked with various search & rescue organizations to look for the child in and around the last area she was seen - Riverside Park & The Mohawk River.
Meanwhile, a heartbroken family was putting the pieces together to figure out why Samantha left late in the night to meet someone at Riverside Park.
Join Dawn as she sits down with Samantha’s father, Jeff, and her aunt, Nica as they share this heartbreaking story.
There is currently a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. If you have any information about the murder of Samantha Humphrey, please contact the Schenectady County District Attorney, Robert Carney:
518-388-4364
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence you can call:
National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-800-799-SAFE
All persons of interest and/or suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty.
***
Method & Madness is researched, written, hosted, & produced by Dawn Cate
Music by Tymur Khakimov from Pixabay
***
Get in Touch!:
methodandmadnesspod@gmail.com
CONNECT:
DIVE INTO MORE:
MethodandMadnessPodcast.com
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All sources are listed on the website, under each episode description.
MethodandMadnessPodcast.com
Thank you for listening!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/method-madness--6241524/support.
It was the day after Thanksgiving, 2022, when 14-year-old Samantha went missing in Schenectady, NY. For 3 months, New York State Police worked with various search & rescue organizations to look for the child in and around the last area she was seen - Riverside Park & The Mohawk River.
Meanwhile, a heartbroken family was putting the pieces together to figure out why Samantha left late in the night to meet someone at Riverside Park.
Join Dawn as she sits down with Samantha’s father, Jeff, and her aunt, Nica as they share this heartbreaking story.
There is currently a $20,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. If you have any information about the murder of Samantha Humphrey, please contact the Schenectady County District Attorney, Robert Carney:
518-388-4364
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence you can call:
National Domestic Violence Hotline
1-800-799-SAFE
All persons of interest and/or suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty.
***
Method & Madness is researched, written, hosted, & produced by Dawn Cate
Music by Tymur Khakimov from Pixabay
***
Get in Touch!:
methodandmadnesspod@gmail.com
CONNECT:
DIVE INTO MORE:
MethodandMadnessPodcast.com
***
All sources are listed on the website, under each episode description.
MethodandMadnessPodcast.com
Thank you for listening!
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/method-madness--6241524/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains details that may be disturbing to some.
Please listen with care. All witnesses, persons of interest, and
or suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a
court of law. Welcome to method and madness. This is murdered,
(00:38):
Samantha Humphrey. I'm your host, don I didn't.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Just lose a daughter.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I lost somebody who had taken the best values in
life and had started developed them in herself as a person.
If we can take actions that stop one, just one
girl's life from ending shortly from preventable situation, then Sam's
life means more than it meant.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The day before, today's case unfolds with a three month
search for a missing fourteen year old that sadly turned
into a homicide investigation. The chilling statistic is that every
forty seconds, a child in the US goes missing. Fortunately,
most of those cases are resolved within a few hours.
(01:25):
The ones that aren't devastate families. They're then thrust into
a journey they don't want to embark on, like a
bad dream that never ends. Some suffer for decades with
no answers. Others suffer with answers. There's something so moving
about raising a child and watching who they become as
(01:46):
their personality develops from a fearless, funny toddler into this
whole person. You watch them develop their interests and beliefs.
You tune in as they try new things to find
their hidden talents. When you look forward to seeing where
their passions will lie, you observe how they interact with
the world around them and how the world interacts back.
(02:10):
Empathy and kindness are such powerful traits to see develop
in a child. But what happens when that kindness, that
goodness has taken advantage of Like a story right out
of the pages of The Brother's Grim where the fair
and innocent young maiden is targeted with cruelty, whether it's
out of jealousy, fear, or something else, Only this isn't
(02:33):
a fairy tale. In this case, it's every family's worst nightmare.
This is Samantha's story. Today you'll hear from Samantha Humphrey's
father Jeff and his sister, Samantha's aunt Nika. They sat
(02:54):
down with me to provide a deeper understanding of who
Samantha was, the impact she had on her loved ones,
and the tremendous hole left from being taken away far
too soon. We'll get into the details surrounding Samantha's disappearance
and the investigation that's followed. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I'm Jeff Humphrey.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
I'm Sam's father, and I'm Nika I'm Samantha's paternal aunt.
Jeff is my brother. Sam was a deeply empathetic child,
even from a really young age. So typically kids go
through phases where they can be really selfish and self
centered and they struggle to kind of understand or identify
with the other and Sam never really had that, maybe
(03:38):
because she had a little brother that she was really
close to. I just remember her always making sure that anything,
any activity she engaged in, any play she engaged in,
was appropriate for him, even though he was two years younger.
I remember once taking her to a mall near her
home that had a bounce house, and we walked past
a jewelry store and she said, Wow, everything in there
is so pretty, and she said, I can't wait till
(03:59):
I can grow up and get a job and buy
you everything in that store. And she was five, And
I mean, kids just don't I've never met another child
at that age who thought of other people that way.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Photos and videos of Samantha Humphrey depict a fun, loving
teenager grinning with family members, whether sporting a Yankees cap,
playing in mud, or experimenting with makeup and hair color.
The camera loved Samantha. Her loved ones describe her as
a beautiful soul.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
She had the capacity for almost anything intellectually emotionally. I
became a father late in life, and I spent a
lot of time in school and a lot of time
doing music and sort of moving through the world. And
there were a lot of things I wanted to.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Share, and I was able to share a lot of
those things.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
She liked Bob Dylan. We talked about actual philosophy. She
wasn't like this, you know, deep academic. She had a
very intuitive understanding of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Samantha's story takes us to Schenectady, New York, a city
in Schenectady County about eleven square miles with a population
near seventy thousand. It's about twenty miles from the state's
capital of Albany. With theaters, parks, a historical district, aquarium,
and restaurants. There's much to do in the area and
(05:21):
on Iroquois Way at Central Park, a playground where a
younger Samantha Humphrey would visit with her family, creating happy
memories captured in photographs. In the many photos that the
family has shared with me, Sam's personality shines through. She's
been described as funny, brilliant, and sweet, belting out Taylor
(05:44):
Swift songs when she was small enough to still be
in a car seat. Samantha was born on February eighth,
two thousand and eight, to Jacqueline and Jeff. In twenty
twenty two, Samantha and her little brother Matt were living
with their parents, who are separated. Here, Jeff explains a
little about the family dynamic and living situation.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
About eighteen months prior to sam disappear in Samantha's mother
had been living out of state and we had had
a conversation and I had expressed to her because Sam
had moved back to Schenectay. She'd been living at my
parents' house during COVID while I worked in an emergency
room and been going to school in a suburban school district,
and Sam and my son had moved back to Schenectady.
(06:29):
We lived in a two.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Story apartment with a finished attic.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So I had told Sam's mother that Sam moving back
to Schenectady was having some social difficulties and just wasn't
wasn't doing as well as we'd hoped, And that became
an occasion for Sam's mother to move back in, and
we spent time cohabitating, you know, platonically. And a few
months after that, downstairs apartment became open, so I rented
(06:55):
that and I split the rent with Sam's mother so
she could have some privateye and Sam lived downstairs for
a while. Then she wanted to finish the attics, so
four of us lived in the house. Sam's mom worked
online teaching English to Forlida students over the internet early
in the morning, and I continue to work as the
e ear nurse while the kids went to school.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
One of Samantha's peers was a boy she met when
she moved back to Schenectady at the age of twelve.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
He started out as a friend of Samantha's brother. They
would play video games together, they would go fishing. They
shared a lot of the same interests, so that's how
he originally started coming around. He didn't start out as
Samantha's romantic interest.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
This boy is, for all intents and purposes, known as
Samantha's ex boyfriend. To protect the integrity of the investigation
and the identity of a minor, for this episode, I'll
refer to him as Michael. Here, Jeff talks about an
incident that occurred about sixteen months before Sam went missing,
something that raised a bright red flag for when Michael
(08:01):
was involved in what the family says was an assault
on Sam and her brother.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
This was somebody that both my son and Sam was
associating with, and there was an occasion one day where
I got called by the kids and they told me
something had happened, and this boy had texted them both
and asked them to come out and meet him on
the front of porch where he had a group of
i'd say five to six kids who sort of threw
them off the porch under the grass and threw them
(08:28):
on the sidewalk. Not necessarily a beatdown, but in an assault.
While this young man stood back and watched it from
the sidewalk. I assumed, because he'd already been in the
system with a couple of felonies, that the way Sam
tould it, I didn't necessarily know what that was about
until later. But that was an occasion for me to say,
you guys can't see this is a bad kid, this
(08:49):
is a dangerous kid. We called CPS, we called s connected,
the youth Ade, the Bureau of the Police, We spoke
to the schools. It didn't get any action on it.
But I didn't really see or hear from the kid
in the inner period until about three weeks before Sam died,
when he appeared in my living room the day before
Halloween with a group of five or eight other kids,
(09:10):
and we kind of had a little stare down and
I decided to kind of look at him and nod
and go, how you doing.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
What's your name? Okay? Why don't you kids get moving?
For better or worse?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
The time, I felt like a confrontation was going to
make things worse, and I hadn't heard from him well
over years.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I thought, well, this association's done. He's just hanging out
with these other kids.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
As it turns out, Sam was spending time behind my back,
in particular seeing this kid, which has all come to
light since her death. So obviously with Sam knowing that
this was somebody who I not only disapproved of, but
it failed and intended to take legal action to get
protection for Sam against She knew that any mention of
him would would be met with the utmost disapproval on
(09:52):
my part. So whatever she was up to, she went
out of her way to make sure I didn't know,
and she was successful at that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
We're going to dive into that more throughout this episode,
but first let's go to the night of Sam's disappearance.
It was the day after Thanksgiving twenty twenty two, Friday,
November twenty fifth. Jeff, a nurse at a hospital located
close to home, was getting ready for his overnight shift
around six forty five pm. He was heading out the
(10:22):
door for his seven pm start time, and he was
scheduled to get off work at seven am on Saturday.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I'm walking out in my scrubs. Sam sitting on the couch,
you know, being casual. Say hey, Sam, I'm going to work. Okay,
do you need anything?
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
All right, love you, Love you too, bye. Walked out
the door, went worked my shift, came home seven fifteen,
seven point thirty, went in, checked on my son, he's asleep.
Checked on Sam. She's not in her bed. This is
a Saturday morning, so her not being in her bed
is not super weird.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
She would wouldn't be.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Anything strange for her to tell her mother, I'm going
over to so and so's house.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
We're going to stay over for the night. You know,
I'll talk to you tomorrow. So I went to bed.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I let I went downstairs, let my ex wife know,
you know, what's up with Sam?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
And she said, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I didn't hear anything like, okay, well there's a misunderstanding, miscommunication.
Sam was a very phone centered person, so I really
have any doubt that she would be reachable as she
always was.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So I went to bed.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I was awoken by my mother sort of yelling in
distress through the door in the mid to early afternoon,
you know, and hearing my wife and my son talking.
And they brought me up to speed that for a
couple hours or however long, they had been trying to
figure out where Sam was because she didn't answer her phone.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
This is now Saturday, November twenty sixth. Samantha's mother, Jacqueline,
was coming to the painful realization that Sam must have
snuck out of the house the night before while Jacqueline
and Matt were sleeping. Now in the light of day,
panic was setting in that nobody had heard from Samantha.
Jacqueline called the Schenectady Police, who in turn responded to
(12:14):
the Humphrey home. A missing person's report was made and
a search was under way. The police were not ruling
out that Samantha, like many teens, may have run away
via her cell phone. Samantha had shared her location the
night before with a friend. Now armed with that information,
both investigators and the family were beginning to put together
(12:37):
a timeline of Samantha's movements. According to the police, Samantha
had texted a friend to let them know she was
meeting up with her fourteen year old ex boyfriend, Michael
on the night in question. They had planned to meet
at Riverside Park, which is situated next to the Mohawk
River in Schenectady. The family used their own resources to
(13:00):
put some of the pieces of the puzzle together.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
My understanding was that prior to leaving the house, Samantha
cluded her brother and potentially a friend or two in
on the fact that she was leaving to meet the
main suspect. She snuck out, so when she didn't return home,
I think her her little brother had some idea at
least of who she was last with. Sam was in
ghostmode on Snapchat, meaning her location wasn't widely shared, but
(13:27):
I think she had it shared kind of with one
or two people. And I only say this because in
reading some of the documents very recently from the police dossier,
it indicates that one of her friends was able to
see you know, where her last location showed up in
the park. So that tells me that privately she was
sharing her location, at least with this one friend.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Video surveillance in the area showed Samantha walking into Riverside Park,
but it never captured her leaving just a few hundred
feet away. The front street YWCA appeared to be the
last known location where her cell phone had pained. Jeff
Humphrey headed to Riverside Park that Saturday evening, so I.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Went down there with a flashlight, looked around that it
was not anything to really be seen and wasn't a
ton of options to do much of a search. So
we went home and eventually got to bed, got up
Sunday morning, got my son's friend's family, who were also
(14:31):
good friends of Sam's, together, and we went back down
to the train bridge. I was walking a little bit
ahead of everybody, walked out onto the bridge, which is
one of these bridges with a metal grate that you
can see down through.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And I got a foot or two.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Out out of the bridge and looked down in the
river and her coat is sort of right up against
the shore, a coat which turned out to be her coat,
And that moment, I'm like, oh, all right, there's my
daughter's coat floating over. So that's kind of when Hope
left the conversation.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
The railroad bridge where Jeff found the coat was located
right near where Samantha's phone had last pained. Jeff walked
back to the surge party he'd gathered and told the
group he'd found a pink and black coat that looked
like Sam's. It was near the shoreline and appeared to
have blood on the hood. He asked the others to
go and stand guard to make sure the coat didn't
(15:26):
go anywhere. He then called the Schenectady Police to report
that he'd found his daughter's jacket. Officers arrived and marked
the area off as a crime scene. Somehow, photos of
the discovered jacket made its way to social media, where
it was circulated, and the jacket itself was sent to
the crime lab to confirm it was Samantha's and determine
(15:49):
if any evidence could be extracted from it.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
I don't have any clue what that was like emotionally
that was, you know, I wouldn't know how to access
the memory of.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
How I felt.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Then, you know, nothing, I think is a pretty good
just just void.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
On Monday, November twenty eighth, New York State Police dive
team and aviation team began assisting with the search for
Samantha along with other partner agencies. They searched along the
river on foot with canines and in the river using
dive teams, boat teams, and volunteer groups. The police also
(16:31):
worked with a Union College professor who's an expert on
the Mohawk River and its flow rate. Police Chief Eric
Clifford held a press conference to provide the public and
the press with updates. He said that family, friends, and
classmates of Samantha's were all cooperating with the investigation and
all tips were being thoroughly looked into. There were a
(16:55):
lot of challenges searching the Mohawk River in the late fall.
Water level had risen since Samantha had gone missing, but
was now starting to come back down. There were more
challenges ahead, with the temperatures getting colder and the water
getting icier.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
On Saturday, November twenty sixth, at one forty one pm,
Sketty Police Department was notified and subsequently responded to the
Humphrey residence where Samantha's mother reported or missing. With this
initial report, we learned that Samanthrow's last scene in night
before on November twenty fifth, round eleven thirty pm, in
(17:31):
the area of the Front Street pool along the Mohawk River,
and that she had shared this location with the print
first rebalance video. We were able to track some of
Samantha's movements to show.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
That she was a Lait area at that time.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
Following day and Sunday, November twenty seventh, a family member
lookated the jack is similar to that of Samittha's via
the Real Road Bridge underpass. That jacket was collected, moves
in familiar street flee slab to confront whether or not
it was Sam's. You're still waiting for those resents.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
A distraught family, a shocked community. Flyers were hung. Local
news outlets were reporting on Samantha's disappearance and the agony
of waiting for answers felt unbearable. Weeks later, in January,
it was confirmed by police that three different sets of
DNA were found on the coat that was sent to
the New York State Police crime Lab. One set was
(18:28):
confirmed to be Samantha's DNA, another was an adult male
identified as a convicted felon, and the third set belonged
to an unidentified mail Samantha's family made pleas to the
public for anyone to come forward with information if they
saw anything that night.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
We are watching thirteen now on this Wednesday, a day
that also happens to be Samantha Humphrey's fifteenth birthday. Because
of that, people planned to come together tonight to remember
the teen who's been missing for nearly three months now.
Samantha was last seen in Schenectady's Riverside Park on November
twenty fifth. Anyone can take part in the Light Up
(19:09):
of the World celebration. It's not a traditional candlelight vigil
where people get together in one central location. Instead, people
are asked to use the flashlight on their cell phone,
turn on their porch light, or light a candle.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Meanwhile, investigators had their eyes on four miles of the
Mohawk River. The Mohawk River is a major waterway at
one hundred and forty nine miles long. Larry Andrews, who's
lived on the Mohawk River for decades, knows the waterway
very well and has discovered and recovered bodies there before.
(19:43):
Ten days into the search for Samantha, Andrews told w
NYT News that the river's current was very strong. On
February twenty second, twenty twenty three, two fishermen reported seeing
what looked like a body in the water. The body
was unrecovered, and sources say that a shopping cart was
found nearby, while other reports indicated that the body had
(20:07):
been stuffed into the shopping cart to weigh it down,
but no credible information has indicated that as fact. Five
days later, the family of the missing teenager received the
devastating confirmation Samantha had been found in the Mohawk River.
Her body had been in the water for a while.
(20:35):
The next step procedurally was conducting an autopsy, but one
hurdle in the investigation is that the medical examiner was
unable to determine the manner and cause of Samantha's death.
Despite those findings, on March third, Schenectady Police announced that
the discovery of Samantha Humphrey's body was now being treated
(20:56):
as a homicide investigation.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
DA has specifically stated that one of the challenges in
the case is the absence of.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
A cause of death.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That has allowed us to speak on a narrow range
of points that are covered by that, and that includes
she did not.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Die of a drug overdose, she did not die of
massive trauma, She did not drown, she did not drown.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
So we say these things only because the District Attorney
has made it clear there's not an idunidentifiable cause of death.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
All of those things would have been identified, you know,
including suicide, which is what he initially tried to claim
that sam said she killed herself. Some people ran with
that narrative, but that is of course ruled out by it,
and she killed herself.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
The way that she killed herself was she took her
hands to her own throat and strangled herself to death.
That would be the means of suicide. There are two
ways to end someone's life, depriving them of a circulation
of blood, depriving them a circulation of oxygen, and that's
really the only mechanism by which which, by my understanding,
you could have a person who died as Sam did
(22:05):
in the autopsy results.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
That you do.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
So she was either deprived of blood to her brain
or oxygen to her lungs. She was not deprived of
oxygen to her lungs by water. She was not deprived
of blood to her brain by trauma. Right, So that
leaves a very narrow range to explain what happened. Many
of us have had the unfortunate occasion to watch mixed
(22:28):
martial arts, and we know if you stand behind someone
and put your arm around their neck, how long it
takes to make them unconscious and just a little bit
longer to make them dead.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
That's about it. That's what we have. And when you're
standing there by a river which you may or may
not have selected in advance for its lack of.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Cameras and for the ability to hide a body in it,
I can't speak to that, but it's certainly something that
will come up. What do you do once you've found
yourself in a position where you've deprived the young woman
of oxygen or blood?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
What do you do with the evidence of that? Well,
there's a river right there, isn't there.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
Let's take a break.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It's been more than two years since the announcement that
Samantha's case was being treated as a homicide. Still no
arrests have been made. Billboards have been hung in and
around the area depicting Samantha Humphrey's picture and asking who
her killer is. Jeff Humphrey has no doubt who the
(23:47):
main person of interest is.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I've had a clear idea in my mind who did this,
so I've been very much focused on that, and I
think that's been one of these healthy, unhealthy psychological mechanisms
where you've you've got a certain amount of anger and
focus that maybe saves you from the grief that would
make you completely inoperable. I expect that the day is
(24:09):
coming where that grief is faced without any filter, without
any distraction, without any anger, towards something external, without any
mission that needs to be accomplished. And that's the day
I'm not looking forward to.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
We have a mission that we have to accomplish, and
we can't. We can't fully give into grief yet until
somebody has been sentenced in there behind bars, and then
once that's done, I don't know what life is going
to be like after that, because we'll just be staring
down the barrel of a life without Sam, where we
can't do anything more for her.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Any loving parent wants the best for their child, wants
to keep them safe from anyone who may hurt them.
Despite Jeff's efforts to make sure Samantha didn't see Michael anymore,
it became clear after her disappearance that she'd been keeping
some things secret.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I think the main thing is, you know, her sneaking
out to meet him kind of made it apparent that
that wasn't a one off incident, that they had been
seeing each other and had been talking secretly. Sam just
didn't bring him to the house anymore because he wasn't
allowed right.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And to be clear that the one off incident would
be the sneaking out. She may have snuck out other times,
but that never was anything that came to my attention. Obviously,
he was seeing him multiple times, and she saw him
at school, and I come to learn socially, but the
sneaking out wasn't something in our house that I had
(25:33):
been aware of until the one event that led to
her death.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Of course, there's been public speculation, as with any murder investigation,
about who killed Samantha. Humphrey. When it's a child that's
a victim, people naturally blame the parents or the family,
and it's a fact that most child victims of homicide
are killed by a member of their family or by
someone they know. Jeff has not been immune to these accusations,
(26:00):
despite that he was on the clock at the hospital
when Samantha's life was senselessly taken.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
He realized early on that I was in a different
position from a lot of fathers whose kids are murdered.
But the first thing was, I'm in an emergency room
with you know, dozens of patients and dozens of coworkers
and on security cameras for twelve hours. So I don't
have to you know, I don't have to be like
John Benet's father, where it's like where were you, What
were you doing? Everybody knows where I wasn't what I
was doing. And the second thing is, this isn't a stranger.
(26:31):
It's not like we were lax with Sam and we're like, oh,
just go meet any stranger and get murdered. This was
somebody who was violent who I alerted all the authorities
I could do sixteen months before this event happened.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
But Jeff is focused on facts. Here, Samantha's family talks
about what they've discovered about the ex boyfriend's movements on
the night of November twenty fifth and into the next morning.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
The event happened around midnight on the Black Friday.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
At five am that morning, he went back a couple
hundred yards down river to where there's a casino and
was at the river bank twice five hours.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Twice. Okay, after the eventual he went.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
So he went back, and that was gonna be a
max point. He went back sometime shortly after three am alone. Again,
this is Schenectady in general is not the safest city,
but this is a particularly bad area. And then he
returned again to the river alone at five am, and
it was almost like he was looking to see if
if Sam's body could be viewed from the shore or
from where he put her.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
This is one of the main things in the case
is Sam's body was found where the crime occurred. They
searched there, They searched downriver. One of the divers you know,
even made the statement, oh, if she'd have been there,
we'd one hundred percent found her. Yet that's where they
found her, and something happened. Whether it was currents or
(27:53):
god knows what.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
She was put in the river.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
And everybody in the police department expected her to float
down the river. Expected in the months after she disappeared,
to get a phone call. We responded to one fake sighting,
you know where they actually saw. I don't know if
it was debris or something, but everybody's expectation she was
going to float down river. And that was also the
killer's expectation. You murder a young girl, you placed her
body in the river. What you expect to see is
(28:18):
her body float down the river. And then what happens
when it doesn't. He comes back several hours later, you
stand down river and you wait for her body to
float by.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
So that's sort of one of the turning points of
the case is what the hell happened?
Speaker 4 (28:31):
Why was he there? Why was he even awake at
that hour, let alone, you know, at this park.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
The family also shares how Sam's brother, Matt, contacted the
ex boyfriend via FaceTime to find out what happened to
his sister. Matt's mother was there offscreen listening. Here, Nika
explains how that conversation went.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
He claimed that he and Samantha got into a fight
in the park and that she attacked him. This is
not consistent with what I know about Samantha or who
I know her to be. I never knew her to
be a violent person. She was deeply empathetic, so I
didn't vibe that she attacked him. But he has a
history of violence. Sam has told me about two or
three felonies prior to this, and they were for different
(29:16):
types of violence against women, some even much older, like
one was a woman who was in her thirties and
he was thirteen, So I kind of thought that was
the other way around, meaning he attacked her. And then
he claims that he puts her to the ground and
she said that she was going to kill herself, And
again that's not consistent with what I know about Sam
(29:36):
because she wouldn't manipulate somebody that way. And he claims
he left her alone in the park, and I guess
his famous last words too, Sam's brother were, she's dead, dude,
I know she's dead. And that's always stuck with me
because how did he know? How was he so confident
and so callous and uncaring and unfeeling that this person
(29:56):
he had shared a romantic history with is deceased. If
he believed that, why didn't he called nine to one one.
Why didn't he call police? Why didn't he pext her
brother and say, your sister's in distress, come to the park,
you know. Just there's a lot of questions around that,
and it seems extremely suspicious. So that's kind of my
understanding of events.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Samantha's family did contact the police to report this.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
The police went his home and talked to him, and
then he called Samantha's brother, and my understanding is this
was their last communication. He basically yelled at her brother, said,
why did you call the police? They're going to pin
this on me. Man, They're going to pin this on me.
If he didn't do anything wrong, why was he so
worried about that? Why was he telling it Sam's brother
for calling the police, Like he's saying Sam is dead
(30:42):
and he thinks the police aren't going to be involved.
I mean, I know he's young, but he was fourteen.
He's old enough to know if a child's eyes, the
law will be involved.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yeah, but how would he know that she was likely dead?
He didn't know.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
We found her coat floating, you know, at the edge
of the river.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
He didn't have access to that, So.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
What information did he have that would lead her to
think him to think she was anything other than missing.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
We know that there were search warrants and wire tapping
warrants executed against his property and the various devices in
their home. We also know that their Amazon Alexa was
seized and recordings were pulled from that. I don't know
the results of that.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Circumstantially, it's understandable that Jeff's confident about the identity of Samantha's.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Murderer based on the police report. You know, they tracked
his cell phone pings, and we've learned that he removed
his SIM card twice the night Samantha went missing, so
his movements couldn't be tracked by cell phone powers. This
is a person who's fourteen years old at the time.
So the question, of course, is what was he doing
that he felt people would look back on those hours
and try to trace his movements. What was so bad
about what he was doing that he felt the need
(31:47):
to hide it? So that's always been incredibly suspicious, and
neither he nor his mother has been able to explain that.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
And how would you say the investigation is going currently?
Do you do you feel it still being actively worked on.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
I think at the beginning there was a loss of confidence.
There was different points where it seemed like they dropped
the ball or could be doing more. But of course
we don't have the full picture of what's all going
on behind the scenes due to it being an act,
an active investigation. But I think that things have picked
up quite a bit. They've done a lot to regain
our confidence. They are working closely with us, They are
in close contact with us, and I think that that's
(32:24):
restored a lot of our confidence as a family and
their ability to get this done.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
How much information is shared with you the family, there's a.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
Bit of a hierarchy of information. You know, Samantha's parents
get to know the most, but there are things that
they can't share with anybody else, even within the family.
So you know, they have information I do not have.
They've shared with me what they can, but when I
ask questions, they have been very clear, like, you know, yes,
I can answer this question, here's the information. And other
times it's due to the nature of the investigation, I
can't answer that question. But we do have an answer,
(32:55):
I simply cannot share it. So I have found them
to be open and honest, and they're caring forward with
the utmost integrity.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
And on social media, some members of the community question
whether the police are actually working the case.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
We've heard stories about people saying, oh, I tried to
leave a tip. These are generally the same people who
tell outlandish stories about this. If you have actual information
on Samantha's case, the police in the DA will take
your call and will take you seriously. If you have
some nonsense to say, they probably won't. I do want
to apologize. There are folks who I still have to give.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Lawn signs to. The winter got a little deep to grind.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Got first, we got snowbanks, and I was placing signs
and then going back and seeing them plowed over. So
I've taken a pause to, you know, probably about this
week to go ahead and start putting them back up.
So there are folks who have asked for signs I
haven't gotten them to and this is a venue in
which I want to apologize to them. The lawn sign
campaign is still active and we welcome folks participation in that.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Working alongside families who have lost a loved one to
violent crime, you get a deeper understanding of how hard
it is knowing that the perpetrator is walking the streets freely.
They're going about their life while a loved one is
gone forever, and with each tick of the clock it
can feel like nothing's being done. Although behind the scenes
(34:18):
police are doing everything they can, they do.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Feel the need to say, you know, sorry, we can't
tell you everything. I would just don't tell me everything.
Just go go do your job.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
I can't imagine what Samantha's mom is going through. How
is she doing through all of this.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
This is a person who has lost her daughter through
no fault of her own. Although people on the internet
have this very weird tendency when a child is murdered
to talk about whether it's me or Sam's mom some
perceived or real lack of parenting that might carry the
(34:56):
death penalty.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
She just I think she's doing the best she can
to try to keep busy and stay distracted and keep
her head down. She just she she was really under
fire for a long time and that that was terrible.
You know, she's she's suffering enough. She doesn't need it
compounded by these other people. So I think we're doing
the best we can to kind of step in so
(35:19):
that she doesn't have to be on the front lines
taking this assault of her character because she doesn't deserve it.
It's not her fault that somebody decided to kill her daughter.
So I think she's doing the best she can under
the circumstances. But it's it's hard, and you know, obviously
she's she's never going to be okay and she's never
going to get over it, but she's doing the best
she can'd of her life.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Sam's mother and I made an agreement early on about
a division of labor that one of us was going
to have to be a more public face and take
more heat, and I'm happy to do that. I'm happy
to extend to her, you know, any courtesy to let
her heal, because as much as I barely comprehend the
(36:00):
pain of a father whose daughter has been murdered, I
certainly don't comprehend the pain of a mother.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
The murder of Samantha Humphrey is under investigation by the
Schenectady Police Department in the Schenectady County District Attorney's Office.
I asked the police department for a statement and received
this quote. I can confirm that the investigation is open
active and ongoing and remains a high priority here at
the department. I'm sorry that I cannot provide more details,
(36:28):
but with it being an open investigation, I wouldn't be
able to elaborate on it more at this time. On
Method and Madness, we often pull back the curtain and
discuss what survivors or loved ones of homicide victims experience
(36:49):
in their journeys toward truth and justice, the struggles, the
frustration on top of the immense grief. One of the
most common themes that comes out of the those conversations
is that the family doesn't feel heard or they feel
law enforcement hasn't done enough. In Samantha's case, however, there's
(37:09):
a different conversation to be had a different source of frustration.
Jeff tells me that a family member of the main
person of interest has been allegedly harassing the Humphrey family.
Along with that, an adult member of Samantha's extended family
has caused Jeff and Nika payne.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
She wants to be, you know, the Nancy Drew of
her own story, but it's not her story. It's samantha story.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Jeff and Nika explain that this family member started posting
sensitive information about the case on their own social media pages,
information that was only meant for the family and could
jeopardize the investigation. Information that Jeff and Nika don't even
want shared on this podcast, but they did want to
share this other side of grief.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
The DA personally told me that they've sent in so
much false information that they were deliberately trying to waste
police resources and send them on wild goose chases, and
they couldn't investigate the real killer.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Unfortunately, It's not unusual for people to get online and
talk theories and allegations. But what's troubling Jeff and Nika
is that this member of the family barely knew Samantha,
so they question if her motive is to actually seek justice.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
In the months before Sam died, you know, we used
to be a camping family, and we still are. But
Sam grew tired of camping and she said, Dad, buy
a plane ticket, take me somewhere nice of the hotel.
So we booked a trip to Puerto Rico, you know,
booked some condos for Christmas. Sam disappeared, you know, right
after Thanksgiving, and my son and I decided that we
(38:45):
would do that trip for sam that we would, you know,
bury one of her care bears on the beach because
we didn't have her ashes yet, and they made that
into some conspiracy and this is this sort of idiocy
that you want to respond to just because it's so stupid,
And then you know why am I responding this nonsense.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Jeff tells me that due to this online harassment, people
involved have shown up to his work and engaged in confrontations.
Grief doesn't always look familiar to an onlooker. It may
not look like what we've seen depicted in fictional TV
or movies. One may say, I would never act like
that if my loved one was a victim. There is
(39:26):
a positive side to social media in cases of unsolved murder.
There's a community of other family members who've gone through
something similar. There are advocates offering assistance and resources. There's
the public sharing the family's story and amplifying the voices
of the victims. Online speculation is never what solves murders.
(39:49):
As a victim advocate, my focus is on Samantha Humphrey,
who should be celebrating being seventeen, getting her driver's license
and going to prom So please share this episode, say
Samantha's name, and let's concentrate on the road to justice. Here,
Jeff shares what he calls a surreal moment from one
(40:10):
of his last conversations with his daughter.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
This is one of the sort of more odd for
lack of a better word, and I was searching for
a word the last thing she told me. And she'd
gone through a bunch of different goals in her life,
and Nika knows a lot about this. The last thing
she wanted to be, you know, before she was gone.
She wanted to do forensic criminology. She had apparently started
(40:37):
to watch true crime stuff. But she wanted to do,
you know, something not unlike what you or some of
your colleagues are doing. And that's that's just one of
the you know, maybe one hundred surreal aspects of this
whole thing.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It's like, oh great, now now you're the subject of this.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
There is currently a twenty thousand dollar re war for
information leading to an arrest and conviction of Samantha's killer.
If you have any information, please contact District Attorney Robert
Carney at five one eight three eight eight four three
six four. There will be more information in the show. Notes.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
She was really like a beacon of hope and empathy
and kindness for a lot of her friends, and a
lot of them have talked to me since she's passed
and said things like they're going through different things in
their lives and they're struggling without Sam because she always
knew what to say. She was sort of the go
to friend in that group for our shoulder to cry on,
her advice. She was really the light of our family,
(41:40):
in the center of our family, and so with her
being gone, it's just like that light has gone out.
You know. Every time we get together, her absence is
so loud because she should be there and she isn't
going to be and just grappling with the fact that
she's never going to be there again. It's still really
hard to get my head around, even though it's been
more than two years, just because of who she was
and her presence.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
For more updates, join me on Facebook at Method and
Madness podcast and join the Justice for Samantha Humphrey facebook page.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
No, there's no closure to a loss that they can't
be regained of, something something so unlosable, something so you
would never want to misplace something that. I mean words
like irreplaceable, feel like they're they're quarter measures.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Here.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Jeff has one more thing he'd like.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
To share in the haze of things and in the
years to come, the thoughts of what Sam's legacy is
is approaching legislators and approaching lawmakers and saying, we know
we want to protect young men at risk, and we
don't want, you know, some girl's father who doesn't like
him to be able to get a restraining order just
for the heck of it.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
But we should have a mechanism when we know this kid.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Is violent, when we know he's got multiple felonies, where
the cops are compelled to go, Okay, we're going to
take your call, we're going to return your messages, we're
gonna have a CPS investigation, we're going to separate them
in the school, and we're gonna protect teenage girls the
same way that we would protect an eighteen year old woman.
If Sam had been eighteen and this kid had done this,
she could have got a restraining order against them in
(43:14):
a minute. But I couldn't get one because the law
protected this kid. And that's that is that's unacceptable.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence,
you can call National Domestic Violence Hotline at one eight
hundred seven nine to nine safe or text start to
eight eight seven eight eight. Thank you to Jeff and
Nika for sharing Samantha's story. Thank you so much for listening.
(43:45):
Method and Madness is a completely independent podcast, research written,
produced and hosted by me. To find out more about
the show, including access to all episodes, visit Methoddmadness podcast
dot com. To support the show, consider leaving a rating
or review, and to connect them on Instagram at Method
(44:07):
and Madness Pod. And you can find me on TikTok.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
As well.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
To chat, suggest a case, or to discuss the episode.
Reach out to me at Method and Madness Pod at
gmail dot com. That's it for this week. Until next time,
take care of yourself. You matter. For crisis support, text
hello to seven four one seven four one
This episode contains details that may be disturbing to some.
Please listen with care. All witnesses, persons of interest, and
or suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty in a
court of law. Welcome to method and madness. This is murdered,
(00:38):
Samantha Humphrey. I'm your host, don I didn't.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Just lose a daughter.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I lost somebody who had taken the best values in
life and had started developed them in herself as a person.
If we can take actions that stop one, just one
girl's life from ending shortly from preventable situation, then Sam's
life means more than it meant.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The day before, today's case unfolds with a three month
search for a missing fourteen year old that sadly turned
into a homicide investigation. The chilling statistic is that every
forty seconds, a child in the US goes missing. Fortunately,
most of those cases are resolved within a few hours.
(01:25):
The ones that aren't devastate families. They're then thrust into
a journey they don't want to embark on, like a
bad dream that never ends. Some suffer for decades with
no answers. Others suffer with answers. There's something so moving
about raising a child and watching who they become as
(01:46):
their personality develops from a fearless, funny toddler into this
whole person. You watch them develop their interests and beliefs.
You tune in as they try new things to find
their hidden talents. When you look forward to seeing where
their passions will lie, you observe how they interact with
the world around them and how the world interacts back.
(02:10):
Empathy and kindness are such powerful traits to see develop
in a child. But what happens when that kindness, that
goodness has taken advantage of Like a story right out
of the pages of The Brother's Grim where the fair
and innocent young maiden is targeted with cruelty, whether it's
out of jealousy, fear, or something else, Only this isn't
(02:33):
a fairy tale. In this case, it's every family's worst nightmare.
This is Samantha's story. Today you'll hear from Samantha Humphrey's
father Jeff and his sister, Samantha's aunt Nika. They sat
(02:54):
down with me to provide a deeper understanding of who
Samantha was, the impact she had on her loved ones,
and the tremendous hole left from being taken away far
too soon. We'll get into the details surrounding Samantha's disappearance
and the investigation that's followed. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I'm Jeff Humphrey.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
I'm Sam's father, and I'm Nika I'm Samantha's paternal aunt.
Jeff is my brother. Sam was a deeply empathetic child,
even from a really young age. So typically kids go
through phases where they can be really selfish and self
centered and they struggle to kind of understand or identify
with the other and Sam never really had that, maybe
(03:38):
because she had a little brother that she was really
close to. I just remember her always making sure that anything,
any activity she engaged in, any play she engaged in,
was appropriate for him, even though he was two years younger.
I remember once taking her to a mall near her
home that had a bounce house, and we walked past
a jewelry store and she said, Wow, everything in there
is so pretty, and she said, I can't wait till
(03:59):
I can grow up and get a job and buy
you everything in that store. And she was five, And
I mean, kids just don't I've never met another child
at that age who thought of other people that way.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Photos and videos of Samantha Humphrey depict a fun, loving
teenager grinning with family members, whether sporting a Yankees cap,
playing in mud, or experimenting with makeup and hair color.
The camera loved Samantha. Her loved ones describe her as
a beautiful soul.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
She had the capacity for almost anything intellectually emotionally. I
became a father late in life, and I spent a
lot of time in school and a lot of time
doing music and sort of moving through the world. And
there were a lot of things I wanted to.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Share, and I was able to share a lot of
those things.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
She liked Bob Dylan. We talked about actual philosophy. She
wasn't like this, you know, deep academic. She had a
very intuitive understanding of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Samantha's story takes us to Schenectady, New York, a city
in Schenectady County about eleven square miles with a population
near seventy thousand. It's about twenty miles from the state's
capital of Albany. With theaters, parks, a historical district, aquarium,
and restaurants. There's much to do in the area and
(05:21):
on Iroquois Way at Central Park, a playground where a
younger Samantha Humphrey would visit with her family, creating happy
memories captured in photographs. In the many photos that the
family has shared with me, Sam's personality shines through. She's
been described as funny, brilliant, and sweet, belting out Taylor
(05:44):
Swift songs when she was small enough to still be
in a car seat. Samantha was born on February eighth,
two thousand and eight, to Jacqueline and Jeff. In twenty
twenty two, Samantha and her little brother Matt were living
with their parents, who are separated. Here, Jeff explains a
little about the family dynamic and living situation.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
About eighteen months prior to sam disappear in Samantha's mother
had been living out of state and we had had
a conversation and I had expressed to her because Sam
had moved back to Schenectay. She'd been living at my
parents' house during COVID while I worked in an emergency
room and been going to school in a suburban school district,
and Sam and my son had moved back to Schenectady.
(06:29):
We lived in a two.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Story apartment with a finished attic.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
So I had told Sam's mother that Sam moving back
to Schenectady was having some social difficulties and just wasn't
wasn't doing as well as we'd hoped, And that became
an occasion for Sam's mother to move back in, and
we spent time cohabitating, you know, platonically. And a few
months after that, downstairs apartment became open, so I rented
(06:55):
that and I split the rent with Sam's mother so
she could have some privateye and Sam lived downstairs for
a while. Then she wanted to finish the attics, so
four of us lived in the house. Sam's mom worked
online teaching English to Forlida students over the internet early
in the morning, and I continue to work as the
e ear nurse while the kids went to school.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
One of Samantha's peers was a boy she met when
she moved back to Schenectady at the age of twelve.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
He started out as a friend of Samantha's brother. They
would play video games together, they would go fishing. They
shared a lot of the same interests, so that's how
he originally started coming around. He didn't start out as
Samantha's romantic interest.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
This boy is, for all intents and purposes, known as
Samantha's ex boyfriend. To protect the integrity of the investigation
and the identity of a minor, for this episode, I'll
refer to him as Michael. Here, Jeff talks about an
incident that occurred about sixteen months before Sam went missing,
something that raised a bright red flag for when Michael
(08:01):
was involved in what the family says was an assault
on Sam and her brother.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
This was somebody that both my son and Sam was
associating with, and there was an occasion one day where
I got called by the kids and they told me
something had happened, and this boy had texted them both
and asked them to come out and meet him on
the front of porch where he had a group of
i'd say five to six kids who sort of threw
them off the porch under the grass and threw them
(08:28):
on the sidewalk. Not necessarily a beatdown, but in an assault.
While this young man stood back and watched it from
the sidewalk. I assumed, because he'd already been in the
system with a couple of felonies, that the way Sam
tould it, I didn't necessarily know what that was about
until later. But that was an occasion for me to say,
you guys can't see this is a bad kid, this
(08:49):
is a dangerous kid. We called CPS, we called s connected,
the youth Ade, the Bureau of the Police, We spoke
to the schools. It didn't get any action on it.
But I didn't really see or hear from the kid
in the inner period until about three weeks before Sam died,
when he appeared in my living room the day before
Halloween with a group of five or eight other kids,
(09:10):
and we kind of had a little stare down and
I decided to kind of look at him and nod
and go, how you doing.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
What's your name? Okay? Why don't you kids get moving?
For better or worse?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
The time, I felt like a confrontation was going to
make things worse, and I hadn't heard from him well
over years.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
I thought, well, this association's done. He's just hanging out
with these other kids.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
As it turns out, Sam was spending time behind my back,
in particular seeing this kid, which has all come to
light since her death. So obviously with Sam knowing that
this was somebody who I not only disapproved of, but
it failed and intended to take legal action to get
protection for Sam against She knew that any mention of
him would would be met with the utmost disapproval on
(09:52):
my part. So whatever she was up to, she went
out of her way to make sure I didn't know,
and she was successful at that.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
We're going to dive into that more throughout this episode,
but first let's go to the night of Sam's disappearance.
It was the day after Thanksgiving twenty twenty two, Friday,
November twenty fifth. Jeff, a nurse at a hospital located
close to home, was getting ready for his overnight shift
around six forty five pm. He was heading out the
(10:22):
door for his seven pm start time, and he was
scheduled to get off work at seven am on Saturday.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I'm walking out in my scrubs. Sam sitting on the couch,
you know, being casual. Say hey, Sam, I'm going to work. Okay,
do you need anything?
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Nope?
Speaker 3 (10:38):
All right, love you, Love you too, bye. Walked out
the door, went worked my shift, came home seven fifteen,
seven point thirty, went in, checked on my son, he's asleep.
Checked on Sam. She's not in her bed. This is
a Saturday morning, so her not being in her bed
is not super weird.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
She would wouldn't be.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Anything strange for her to tell her mother, I'm going
over to so and so's house.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
We're going to stay over for the night. You know,
I'll talk to you tomorrow. So I went to bed.
Speaker 3 (11:10):
I let I went downstairs, let my ex wife know,
you know, what's up with Sam?
Speaker 2 (11:14):
And she said, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I didn't hear anything like, okay, well there's a misunderstanding, miscommunication.
Sam was a very phone centered person, so I really
have any doubt that she would be reachable as she
always was.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
So I went to bed.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
I was awoken by my mother sort of yelling in
distress through the door in the mid to early afternoon,
you know, and hearing my wife and my son talking.
And they brought me up to speed that for a
couple hours or however long, they had been trying to
figure out where Sam was because she didn't answer her phone.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
This is now Saturday, November twenty sixth. Samantha's mother, Jacqueline,
was coming to the painful realization that Sam must have
snuck out of the house the night before while Jacqueline
and Matt were sleeping. Now in the light of day,
panic was setting in that nobody had heard from Samantha.
Jacqueline called the Schenectady Police, who in turn responded to
(12:14):
the Humphrey home. A missing person's report was made and
a search was under way. The police were not ruling
out that Samantha, like many teens, may have run away
via her cell phone. Samantha had shared her location the
night before with a friend. Now armed with that information,
both investigators and the family were beginning to put together
(12:37):
a timeline of Samantha's movements. According to the police, Samantha
had texted a friend to let them know she was
meeting up with her fourteen year old ex boyfriend, Michael
on the night in question. They had planned to meet
at Riverside Park, which is situated next to the Mohawk
River in Schenectady. The family used their own resources to
(13:00):
put some of the pieces of the puzzle together.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
My understanding was that prior to leaving the house, Samantha
cluded her brother and potentially a friend or two in
on the fact that she was leaving to meet the
main suspect. She snuck out, so when she didn't return home,
I think her her little brother had some idea at
least of who she was last with. Sam was in
ghostmode on Snapchat, meaning her location wasn't widely shared, but
(13:27):
I think she had it shared kind of with one
or two people. And I only say this because in
reading some of the documents very recently from the police dossier,
it indicates that one of her friends was able to
see you know, where her last location showed up in
the park. So that tells me that privately she was
sharing her location, at least with this one friend.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Video surveillance in the area showed Samantha walking into Riverside Park,
but it never captured her leaving just a few hundred
feet away. The front street YWCA appeared to be the
last known location where her cell phone had pained. Jeff
Humphrey headed to Riverside Park that Saturday evening, so I.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Went down there with a flashlight, looked around that it
was not anything to really be seen and wasn't a
ton of options to do much of a search. So
we went home and eventually got to bed, got up
Sunday morning, got my son's friend's family, who were also
(14:31):
good friends of Sam's, together, and we went back down
to the train bridge. I was walking a little bit
ahead of everybody, walked out onto the bridge, which is
one of these bridges with a metal grate that you
can see down through.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And I got a foot or two.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Out out of the bridge and looked down in the
river and her coat is sort of right up against
the shore, a coat which turned out to be her coat,
And that moment, I'm like, oh, all right, there's my
daughter's coat floating over. So that's kind of when Hope
left the conversation.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
The railroad bridge where Jeff found the coat was located
right near where Samantha's phone had last pained. Jeff walked
back to the surge party he'd gathered and told the
group he'd found a pink and black coat that looked
like Sam's. It was near the shoreline and appeared to
have blood on the hood. He asked the others to
go and stand guard to make sure the coat didn't
(15:26):
go anywhere. He then called the Schenectady Police to report
that he'd found his daughter's jacket. Officers arrived and marked
the area off as a crime scene. Somehow, photos of
the discovered jacket made its way to social media, where
it was circulated, and the jacket itself was sent to
the crime lab to confirm it was Samantha's and determine
(15:49):
if any evidence could be extracted from it.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
I don't have any clue what that was like emotionally
that was, you know, I wouldn't know how to access
the memory of.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
How I felt.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Then, you know, nothing, I think is a pretty good
just just void.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
On Monday, November twenty eighth, New York State Police dive
team and aviation team began assisting with the search for
Samantha along with other partner agencies. They searched along the
river on foot with canines and in the river using
dive teams, boat teams, and volunteer groups. The police also
(16:31):
worked with a Union College professor who's an expert on
the Mohawk River and its flow rate. Police Chief Eric
Clifford held a press conference to provide the public and
the press with updates. He said that family, friends, and
classmates of Samantha's were all cooperating with the investigation and
all tips were being thoroughly looked into. There were a
(16:55):
lot of challenges searching the Mohawk River in the late fall.
Water level had risen since Samantha had gone missing, but
was now starting to come back down. There were more
challenges ahead, with the temperatures getting colder and the water
getting icier.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
On Saturday, November twenty sixth, at one forty one pm,
Sketty Police Department was notified and subsequently responded to the
Humphrey residence where Samantha's mother reported or missing. With this
initial report, we learned that Samanthrow's last scene in night
before on November twenty fifth, round eleven thirty pm, in
(17:31):
the area of the Front Street pool along the Mohawk River,
and that she had shared this location with the print
first rebalance video. We were able to track some of
Samantha's movements to show.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
That she was a Lait area at that time.
Speaker 5 (17:47):
Following day and Sunday, November twenty seventh, a family member
lookated the jack is similar to that of Samittha's via
the Real Road Bridge underpass. That jacket was collected, moves
in familiar street flee slab to confront whether or not
it was Sam's. You're still waiting for those resents.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
A distraught family, a shocked community. Flyers were hung. Local
news outlets were reporting on Samantha's disappearance and the agony
of waiting for answers felt unbearable. Weeks later, in January,
it was confirmed by police that three different sets of
DNA were found on the coat that was sent to
the New York State Police crime Lab. One set was
(18:28):
confirmed to be Samantha's DNA, another was an adult male
identified as a convicted felon, and the third set belonged
to an unidentified mail Samantha's family made pleas to the
public for anyone to come forward with information if they
saw anything that night.
Speaker 6 (18:48):
We are watching thirteen now on this Wednesday, a day
that also happens to be Samantha Humphrey's fifteenth birthday. Because
of that, people planned to come together tonight to remember
the teen who's been missing for nearly three months now.
Samantha was last seen in Schenectady's Riverside Park on November
twenty fifth. Anyone can take part in the Light Up
(19:09):
of the World celebration. It's not a traditional candlelight vigil
where people get together in one central location. Instead, people
are asked to use the flashlight on their cell phone,
turn on their porch light, or light a candle.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Meanwhile, investigators had their eyes on four miles of the
Mohawk River. The Mohawk River is a major waterway at
one hundred and forty nine miles long. Larry Andrews, who's
lived on the Mohawk River for decades, knows the waterway
very well and has discovered and recovered bodies there before.
(19:43):
Ten days into the search for Samantha, Andrews told w
NYT News that the river's current was very strong. On
February twenty second, twenty twenty three, two fishermen reported seeing
what looked like a body in the water. The body
was unrecovered, and sources say that a shopping cart was
found nearby, while other reports indicated that the body had
(20:07):
been stuffed into the shopping cart to weigh it down,
but no credible information has indicated that as fact. Five
days later, the family of the missing teenager received the
devastating confirmation Samantha had been found in the Mohawk River.
Her body had been in the water for a while.
(20:35):
The next step procedurally was conducting an autopsy, but one
hurdle in the investigation is that the medical examiner was
unable to determine the manner and cause of Samantha's death.
Despite those findings, on March third, Schenectady Police announced that
the discovery of Samantha Humphrey's body was now being treated
(20:56):
as a homicide investigation.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
DA has specifically stated that one of the challenges in
the case is the absence of.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
A cause of death.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That has allowed us to speak on a narrow range
of points that are covered by that, and that includes
she did not.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Die of a drug overdose, she did not die of
massive trauma, She did not drown, she did not drown.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
So we say these things only because the District Attorney
has made it clear there's not an idunidentifiable cause of death.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
All of those things would have been identified, you know,
including suicide, which is what he initially tried to claim
that sam said she killed herself. Some people ran with
that narrative, but that is of course ruled out by it,
and she killed herself.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
The way that she killed herself was she took her
hands to her own throat and strangled herself to death.
That would be the means of suicide. There are two
ways to end someone's life, depriving them of a circulation
of blood, depriving them a circulation of oxygen, and that's
really the only mechanism by which which, by my understanding,
you could have a person who died as Sam did
(22:05):
in the autopsy results.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
That you do.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
So she was either deprived of blood to her brain
or oxygen to her lungs. She was not deprived of
oxygen to her lungs by water. She was not deprived
of blood to her brain by trauma. Right, So that
leaves a very narrow range to explain what happened. Many
of us have had the unfortunate occasion to watch mixed
(22:28):
martial arts, and we know if you stand behind someone
and put your arm around their neck, how long it
takes to make them unconscious and just a little bit
longer to make them dead.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
That's about it. That's what we have. And when you're
standing there by a river which you may or may
not have selected in advance for its lack of.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Cameras and for the ability to hide a body in it,
I can't speak to that, but it's certainly something that
will come up. What do you do once you've found
yourself in a position where you've deprived the young woman
of oxygen or blood?
Speaker 2 (23:01):
What do you do with the evidence of that? Well,
there's a river right there, isn't there.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
Let's take a break.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
It's been more than two years since the announcement that
Samantha's case was being treated as a homicide. Still no
arrests have been made. Billboards have been hung in and
around the area depicting Samantha Humphrey's picture and asking who
her killer is. Jeff Humphrey has no doubt who the
(23:47):
main person of interest is.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I've had a clear idea in my mind who did this,
so I've been very much focused on that, and I
think that's been one of these healthy, unhealthy psychological mechanisms
where you've you've got a certain amount of anger and
focus that maybe saves you from the grief that would
make you completely inoperable. I expect that the day is
(24:09):
coming where that grief is faced without any filter, without
any distraction, without any anger, towards something external, without any
mission that needs to be accomplished. And that's the day
I'm not looking forward to.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
We have a mission that we have to accomplish, and
we can't. We can't fully give into grief yet until
somebody has been sentenced in there behind bars, and then
once that's done, I don't know what life is going
to be like after that, because we'll just be staring
down the barrel of a life without Sam, where we
can't do anything more for her.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Any loving parent wants the best for their child, wants
to keep them safe from anyone who may hurt them.
Despite Jeff's efforts to make sure Samantha didn't see Michael anymore,
it became clear after her disappearance that she'd been keeping
some things secret.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
I think the main thing is, you know, her sneaking
out to meet him kind of made it apparent that
that wasn't a one off incident, that they had been
seeing each other and had been talking secretly. Sam just
didn't bring him to the house anymore because he wasn't
allowed right.
Speaker 3 (25:13):
And to be clear that the one off incident would
be the sneaking out. She may have snuck out other times,
but that never was anything that came to my attention. Obviously,
he was seeing him multiple times, and she saw him
at school, and I come to learn socially, but the
sneaking out wasn't something in our house that I had
(25:33):
been aware of until the one event that led to
her death.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
Of course, there's been public speculation, as with any murder investigation,
about who killed Samantha. Humphrey. When it's a child that's
a victim, people naturally blame the parents or the family,
and it's a fact that most child victims of homicide
are killed by a member of their family or by
someone they know. Jeff has not been immune to these accusations,
(26:00):
despite that he was on the clock at the hospital
when Samantha's life was senselessly taken.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
He realized early on that I was in a different
position from a lot of fathers whose kids are murdered.
But the first thing was, I'm in an emergency room
with you know, dozens of patients and dozens of coworkers
and on security cameras for twelve hours. So I don't
have to you know, I don't have to be like
John Benet's father, where it's like where were you, What
were you doing? Everybody knows where I wasn't what I
was doing. And the second thing is, this isn't a stranger.
(26:31):
It's not like we were lax with Sam and we're like, oh,
just go meet any stranger and get murdered. This was
somebody who was violent who I alerted all the authorities
I could do sixteen months before this event happened.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
But Jeff is focused on facts. Here, Samantha's family talks
about what they've discovered about the ex boyfriend's movements on
the night of November twenty fifth and into the next morning.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
The event happened around midnight on the Black Friday.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
At five am that morning, he went back a couple
hundred yards down river to where there's a casino and
was at the river bank twice five hours.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
Twice. Okay, after the eventual he went.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
So he went back, and that was gonna be a
max point. He went back sometime shortly after three am alone. Again,
this is Schenectady in general is not the safest city,
but this is a particularly bad area. And then he
returned again to the river alone at five am, and
it was almost like he was looking to see if
if Sam's body could be viewed from the shore or
from where he put her.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
This is one of the main things in the case
is Sam's body was found where the crime occurred. They
searched there, They searched downriver. One of the divers you know,
even made the statement, oh, if she'd have been there,
we'd one hundred percent found her. Yet that's where they
found her, and something happened. Whether it was currents or
(27:53):
god knows what.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
She was put in the river.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
And everybody in the police department expected her to float
down the river. Expected in the months after she disappeared,
to get a phone call. We responded to one fake sighting,
you know where they actually saw. I don't know if
it was debris or something, but everybody's expectation she was
going to float down river. And that was also the
killer's expectation. You murder a young girl, you placed her
body in the river. What you expect to see is
(28:18):
her body float down the river. And then what happens
when it doesn't. He comes back several hours later, you
stand down river and you wait for her body to
float by.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
So that's sort of one of the turning points of
the case is what the hell happened?
Speaker 4 (28:31):
Why was he there? Why was he even awake at
that hour, let alone, you know, at this park.
Speaker 1 (28:36):
The family also shares how Sam's brother, Matt, contacted the
ex boyfriend via FaceTime to find out what happened to
his sister. Matt's mother was there offscreen listening. Here, Nika
explains how that conversation went.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
He claimed that he and Samantha got into a fight
in the park and that she attacked him. This is
not consistent with what I know about Samantha or who
I know her to be. I never knew her to
be a violent person. She was deeply empathetic, so I
didn't vibe that she attacked him. But he has a
history of violence. Sam has told me about two or
three felonies prior to this, and they were for different
(29:16):
types of violence against women, some even much older, like
one was a woman who was in her thirties and
he was thirteen, So I kind of thought that was
the other way around, meaning he attacked her. And then
he claims that he puts her to the ground and
she said that she was going to kill herself, And
again that's not consistent with what I know about Sam
(29:36):
because she wouldn't manipulate somebody that way. And he claims
he left her alone in the park, and I guess
his famous last words too, Sam's brother were, she's dead, dude,
I know she's dead. And that's always stuck with me
because how did he know? How was he so confident
and so callous and uncaring and unfeeling that this person
(29:56):
he had shared a romantic history with is deceased. If
he believed that, why didn't he called nine to one one.
Why didn't he call police? Why didn't he pext her
brother and say, your sister's in distress, come to the park,
you know. Just there's a lot of questions around that,
and it seems extremely suspicious. So that's kind of my
understanding of events.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Samantha's family did contact the police to report this.
Speaker 4 (30:20):
The police went his home and talked to him, and
then he called Samantha's brother, and my understanding is this
was their last communication. He basically yelled at her brother, said,
why did you call the police? They're going to pin
this on me. Man, They're going to pin this on me.
If he didn't do anything wrong, why was he so
worried about that? Why was he telling it Sam's brother
for calling the police, Like he's saying Sam is dead
(30:42):
and he thinks the police aren't going to be involved.
I mean, I know he's young, but he was fourteen.
He's old enough to know if a child's eyes, the
law will be involved.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Yeah, but how would he know that she was likely dead?
He didn't know.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
We found her coat floating, you know, at the edge
of the river.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
He didn't have access to that, So.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
What information did he have that would lead her to
think him to think she was anything other than missing.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
We know that there were search warrants and wire tapping
warrants executed against his property and the various devices in
their home. We also know that their Amazon Alexa was
seized and recordings were pulled from that. I don't know
the results of that.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Circumstantially, it's understandable that Jeff's confident about the identity of Samantha's.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
Murderer based on the police report. You know, they tracked
his cell phone pings, and we've learned that he removed
his SIM card twice the night Samantha went missing, so
his movements couldn't be tracked by cell phone powers. This
is a person who's fourteen years old at the time.
So the question, of course, is what was he doing
that he felt people would look back on those hours
and try to trace his movements. What was so bad
about what he was doing that he felt the need
(31:47):
to hide it? So that's always been incredibly suspicious, and
neither he nor his mother has been able to explain that.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
And how would you say the investigation is going currently?
Do you do you feel it still being actively worked on.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
I think at the beginning there was a loss of confidence.
There was different points where it seemed like they dropped
the ball or could be doing more. But of course
we don't have the full picture of what's all going
on behind the scenes due to it being an act,
an active investigation. But I think that things have picked
up quite a bit. They've done a lot to regain
our confidence. They are working closely with us, They are
in close contact with us, and I think that that's
(32:24):
restored a lot of our confidence as a family and
their ability to get this done.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
How much information is shared with you the family, there's a.
Speaker 4 (32:33):
Bit of a hierarchy of information. You know, Samantha's parents
get to know the most, but there are things that
they can't share with anybody else, even within the family.
So you know, they have information I do not have.
They've shared with me what they can, but when I
ask questions, they have been very clear, like, you know, yes,
I can answer this question, here's the information. And other
times it's due to the nature of the investigation, I
can't answer that question. But we do have an answer,
(32:55):
I simply cannot share it. So I have found them
to be open and honest, and they're caring forward with
the utmost integrity.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
And on social media, some members of the community question
whether the police are actually working the case.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
We've heard stories about people saying, oh, I tried to
leave a tip. These are generally the same people who
tell outlandish stories about this. If you have actual information
on Samantha's case, the police in the DA will take
your call and will take you seriously. If you have
some nonsense to say, they probably won't. I do want
to apologize. There are folks who I still have to give.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Lawn signs to. The winter got a little deep to grind.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Got first, we got snowbanks, and I was placing signs
and then going back and seeing them plowed over. So
I've taken a pause to, you know, probably about this
week to go ahead and start putting them back up.
So there are folks who have asked for signs I
haven't gotten them to and this is a venue in
which I want to apologize to them. The lawn sign
campaign is still active and we welcome folks participation in that.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Working alongside families who have lost a loved one to
violent crime, you get a deeper understanding of how hard
it is knowing that the perpetrator is walking the streets freely.
They're going about their life while a loved one is
gone forever, and with each tick of the clock it
can feel like nothing's being done. Although behind the scenes
(34:18):
police are doing everything they can, they do.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Feel the need to say, you know, sorry, we can't
tell you everything. I would just don't tell me everything.
Just go go do your job.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
I can't imagine what Samantha's mom is going through. How
is she doing through all of this.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
This is a person who has lost her daughter through
no fault of her own. Although people on the internet
have this very weird tendency when a child is murdered
to talk about whether it's me or Sam's mom some
perceived or real lack of parenting that might carry the
(34:56):
death penalty.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
She just I think she's doing the best she can
to try to keep busy and stay distracted and keep
her head down. She just she she was really under
fire for a long time and that that was terrible.
You know, she's she's suffering enough. She doesn't need it
compounded by these other people. So I think we're doing
the best we can to kind of step in so
(35:19):
that she doesn't have to be on the front lines
taking this assault of her character because she doesn't deserve it.
It's not her fault that somebody decided to kill her daughter.
So I think she's doing the best she can under
the circumstances. But it's it's hard, and you know, obviously
she's she's never going to be okay and she's never
going to get over it, but she's doing the best
she can'd of her life.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
Sam's mother and I made an agreement early on about
a division of labor that one of us was going
to have to be a more public face and take
more heat, and I'm happy to do that. I'm happy
to extend to her, you know, any courtesy to let
her heal, because as much as I barely comprehend the
(36:00):
pain of a father whose daughter has been murdered, I
certainly don't comprehend the pain of a mother.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
The murder of Samantha Humphrey is under investigation by the
Schenectady Police Department in the Schenectady County District Attorney's Office.
I asked the police department for a statement and received
this quote. I can confirm that the investigation is open
active and ongoing and remains a high priority here at
the department. I'm sorry that I cannot provide more details,
(36:28):
but with it being an open investigation, I wouldn't be
able to elaborate on it more at this time. On
Method and Madness, we often pull back the curtain and
discuss what survivors or loved ones of homicide victims experience
(36:49):
in their journeys toward truth and justice, the struggles, the
frustration on top of the immense grief. One of the
most common themes that comes out of the those conversations
is that the family doesn't feel heard or they feel
law enforcement hasn't done enough. In Samantha's case, however, there's
(37:09):
a different conversation to be had a different source of frustration.
Jeff tells me that a family member of the main
person of interest has been allegedly harassing the Humphrey family.
Along with that, an adult member of Samantha's extended family
has caused Jeff and Nika payne.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
She wants to be, you know, the Nancy Drew of
her own story, but it's not her story. It's samantha story.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Jeff and Nika explain that this family member started posting
sensitive information about the case on their own social media pages,
information that was only meant for the family and could
jeopardize the investigation. Information that Jeff and Nika don't even
want shared on this podcast, but they did want to
share this other side of grief.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
The DA personally told me that they've sent in so
much false information that they were deliberately trying to waste
police resources and send them on wild goose chases, and
they couldn't investigate the real killer.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Unfortunately, It's not unusual for people to get online and
talk theories and allegations. But what's troubling Jeff and Nika
is that this member of the family barely knew Samantha,
so they question if her motive is to actually seek justice.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
In the months before Sam died, you know, we used
to be a camping family, and we still are. But
Sam grew tired of camping and she said, Dad, buy
a plane ticket, take me somewhere nice of the hotel.
So we booked a trip to Puerto Rico, you know,
booked some condos for Christmas. Sam disappeared, you know, right
after Thanksgiving, and my son and I decided that we
(38:45):
would do that trip for sam that we would, you know,
bury one of her care bears on the beach because
we didn't have her ashes yet, and they made that
into some conspiracy and this is this sort of idiocy
that you want to respond to just because it's so stupid,
And then you know why am I responding this nonsense.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Jeff tells me that due to this online harassment, people
involved have shown up to his work and engaged in confrontations.
Grief doesn't always look familiar to an onlooker. It may
not look like what we've seen depicted in fictional TV
or movies. One may say, I would never act like
that if my loved one was a victim. There is
(39:26):
a positive side to social media in cases of unsolved murder.
There's a community of other family members who've gone through
something similar. There are advocates offering assistance and resources. There's
the public sharing the family's story and amplifying the voices
of the victims. Online speculation is never what solves murders.
(39:49):
As a victim advocate, my focus is on Samantha Humphrey,
who should be celebrating being seventeen, getting her driver's license
and going to prom So please share this episode, say
Samantha's name, and let's concentrate on the road to justice. Here,
Jeff shares what he calls a surreal moment from one
(40:10):
of his last conversations with his daughter.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
This is one of the sort of more odd for
lack of a better word, and I was searching for
a word the last thing she told me. And she'd
gone through a bunch of different goals in her life,
and Nika knows a lot about this. The last thing
she wanted to be, you know, before she was gone.
She wanted to do forensic criminology. She had apparently started
(40:37):
to watch true crime stuff. But she wanted to do,
you know, something not unlike what you or some of
your colleagues are doing. And that's that's just one of
the you know, maybe one hundred surreal aspects of this
whole thing.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
It's like, oh great, now now you're the subject of this.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
There is currently a twenty thousand dollar re war for
information leading to an arrest and conviction of Samantha's killer.
If you have any information, please contact District Attorney Robert
Carney at five one eight three eight eight four three
six four. There will be more information in the show. Notes.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
She was really like a beacon of hope and empathy
and kindness for a lot of her friends, and a
lot of them have talked to me since she's passed
and said things like they're going through different things in
their lives and they're struggling without Sam because she always
knew what to say. She was sort of the go
to friend in that group for our shoulder to cry on,
her advice. She was really the light of our family,
(41:40):
in the center of our family, and so with her
being gone, it's just like that light has gone out.
You know. Every time we get together, her absence is
so loud because she should be there and she isn't
going to be and just grappling with the fact that
she's never going to be there again. It's still really
hard to get my head around, even though it's been
more than two years, just because of who she was
and her presence.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
For more updates, join me on Facebook at Method and
Madness podcast and join the Justice for Samantha Humphrey facebook page.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
No, there's no closure to a loss that they can't
be regained of, something something so unlosable, something so you
would never want to misplace something that. I mean words
like irreplaceable, feel like they're they're quarter measures.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Here.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Jeff has one more thing he'd like.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
To share in the haze of things and in the
years to come, the thoughts of what Sam's legacy is
is approaching legislators and approaching lawmakers and saying, we know
we want to protect young men at risk, and we
don't want, you know, some girl's father who doesn't like
him to be able to get a restraining order just
for the heck of it.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
But we should have a mechanism when we know this kid.
Speaker 3 (42:53):
Is violent, when we know he's got multiple felonies, where
the cops are compelled to go, Okay, we're going to
take your call, we're going to return your messages, we're
gonna have a CPS investigation, we're going to separate them
in the school, and we're gonna protect teenage girls the
same way that we would protect an eighteen year old woman.
If Sam had been eighteen and this kid had done this,
she could have got a restraining order against them in
(43:14):
a minute. But I couldn't get one because the law
protected this kid. And that's that is that's unacceptable.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence,
you can call National Domestic Violence Hotline at one eight
hundred seven nine to nine safe or text start to
eight eight seven eight eight. Thank you to Jeff and
Nika for sharing Samantha's story. Thank you so much for listening.
(43:45):
Method and Madness is a completely independent podcast, research written,
produced and hosted by me. To find out more about
the show, including access to all episodes, visit Methoddmadness podcast
dot com. To support the show, consider leaving a rating
or review, and to connect them on Instagram at Method
(44:07):
and Madness Pod. And you can find me on TikTok.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
As well.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
To chat, suggest a case, or to discuss the episode.
Reach out to me at Method and Madness Pod at
gmail dot com. That's it for this week. Until next time,
take care of yourself. You matter. For crisis support, text
hello to seven four one seven four one
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