Samantha Josephson.
In March of 2019, New Jersey native Samantha was 21, about to graduate from the University of South Carolina, and then go on to law school at Drexel University, where she had a full scholarship.
On the evening of March 29th, she went out for drinks in downtown Columbia with some friends, but grew tired, and told them she was going to take an Uber back to campus.
But Samantha never made it home. Instead, her body was found by turkey hunters in a rural area 65 miles from Columbia the next day. She'd been stabbed 120 times.
Surveillance footage from local businesses showed Samantha getting into her Uber тАФ a black Chevy Impala.
Except it wasn't her Uber тАФ that was Samantha's mistake. The car was owned by 24-year-old Nathaniel Rowland, who had reportedly been driving around the neighborhood hoping someone would mistake it for an Uber. The car had childproof locks engaged, so once Samantha got in, she was trapped, and the terror she must have felt when Rowland began driving in the opposite direction from campus must have been nightmarish.
We don't know exactly why Rowland тАФ who had no history of violent crime тАФ killed Samantha. He didn't know her, had never even met her. The day after the murder, he was posting casually on Facebook as if it was business as usual, even as he still had her phone and blood in his car, and her DNA under his fingernails. It's believed that he just wanted to kill someone, and Samantha was the person unlucky enough to get into his car. The judge called it a тАЬcrime of opportunity".
Rowland, who was said to be remorseless and emotionless during his trial, was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. It's terrifying that such people exist (and also why I refuse to use services like Uber or Lyft) тАФ this wasn't revenge, or jealousy, or greed, it was just murder for the sake of murder.
Samantha Josephson made one simple mistake, and she paid for it with her life
