On Thursday March 28th, 2019, 21 year old college student Samantha Josephson decided to go out for a night of drinking with her roommates and some friends. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for a typical college student like Samantha, she had done this many times before.

However, in the early hours of the morning on March 29th, 2019, Samantha got into an Uber to head home for the night but sadly she never made it home.

Less than 24 hours after Samantha’s night out with friends, her murdered body was found by a group of turkey hunters about 65 miles from where she was last seen. Samantha’s murder shocked and devastated not just her family and friends, but the entire University of South Carolina (UofSC) campus where she was a student at.

Police began working on Samantha’s case immediately, and although it didn’t take them long to find her murderer, it did arise a lot of safety concerns and changes that needed to be made for many college students that frequently use the ride share service known as Uber.

 

Samantha Josephson, also known as ‘Sami” by those close to her, was born on August 13th, 1997 in Princeton, New Jersey. However, growing up she was raised in Robbinsville, New Jersey.

Samantha’s parents Seymour and Marcy Josephson, described her childhood as very happy and full of love. She was very close with her older sister Sydney growing up, and no matter where life took her in her 21 years she always stayed in constant touch with her family and made sure they knew how much she loved them.

Samantha’s family, friends, and boyfriend Greg have described her in recent years as kind, loving, the life of the party, loyal, and extremely hardworking.

In 2015, Samantha graduated from Robbinsville high school and decided to continue her education at the University of South Carolina later that same year. She acclimated into college life seamlessly, and made lots of new friends despite being so far away from her family at home in New Jersey.

Samantha decided to study political science in college, and she had big hopes and dreams of becoming an attorney one day. She also joined the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority on campus her freshman year to make more friends and find a place she felt like she fit in best.

In 2018, Samantha decided to study abroad in Barcelona, Spain with her older sister Sydney. This study abroad trip with her sister made Samantha realize that she wanted to specialize in international law in her future.

During her senior year of college, Samantha was living in an off-campus apartment building with four of her best friends and this apartment complex was known as ‘The Hub”. She loved living with her best friends, and she was looking forward to graduating from college in May of 2019.

After graduating Samantha was planning to attend Drexel University of Law where she had received a full academic scholarship in order to pursue her law degree. She had so many hopes and dreams after graduation, but sadly she never got to graduate and attend the law school of her dreams because in March of 2019, her life was tragically taken from her.

 

 

On March 28th, 2019 it was like any other night of going out for Samantha and her roommates and friends. That night they all decided to go out drinking in a popular area known as Five Points in Columbia, South Carolina. Five points had a lot of local bars and restaurants and is only a three minute drive from UofSC campus and a seven minute drive from “The Hub” where Samantha lived.

Five points was an ideal area for many college students in the area, and it was a place that Samatha had visited frequently and she knew the area very well. After every night of drinking in Five points, Samantha and her friends would call an Uber to get them back to their apartment. This is exactly what Samantha did in the early hours of the morning on March 29th, 2019.

After going to a few bars in Five Points that night, the group ended their night in a bar known as the Bird Dog Bar. Samantha had to work the following morning, but her roommates and friends wanted to stay until the bar closed at 3 a.m.. However, she got tired so she decided to step outside of the bar around 2 a.m. and call herself an Uber home.

Before getting into her Uber and heading home that night, she had one last phone call outside of the bar with her boyfriend Greg at 2:04 a.m. to let him know she was getting an Uber home. Surveillance footage from outside of the bar shows Samantha hanging up the phone with Greg at 2:09 a.m. and getting into a black Chevy Impala car that she believed was her Uber driver.

After Samantha entered the car, her boyfriend Greg who lived two hours away at the time decided to check her location on his phone to make sure she got home safe that night. However, as Greg began to track Samantha’s location he noticed it going in the opposite direction of her apartment building. Greg began trying to call and text Samantha to make sure she was okay, but he received no response from her.

Eventually Greg noticed that Samantha’s location had been completely turned off, which he thought was strange. However, in the moment Greg thought that maybe she was going to a friend’s house she didn’t mention before or that she might have just left her phone innocently in the Uber.

Greg decided to go to sleep that night and just assumed that there had to be a reasonable explanation and he would talk to Samantha in the morning. However, the next morning on March 29th, 2019 when Samantha’s roommates woke up and she wasn’t home and they spoke with Greg and he mentioned what happened the night before, they all knew that something had to be wrong.

Samantha’s roommates called the police and reported her missing that morning, and Greg began the two drive to her apartment to help her friends search for her.

It wasn’t long after being reported missing by her roommates that police received a call from a group of turkey hunters about 65 miles away from Five Points. These turkey hunters were out hunting early that morning when they came across a truly horrifying scene.

Samantha’s body had been discovered in a wooded area and police determined that she had been stabbed to death approximately 120 times. It was clear to police when finding Samantha’s body that she had been the victim of a truly horrifying attack. It was also clear to police that Samantha had put up a fight with her attacker because she had many defensive wounds all over her arms and hands.

After police concluded that the body found was indeed Samantha and that she had been murdered and not just wandered off, they immediately began working quickly to try to find her murderer.

That same day that police discovered Samantha’s body they quickly were able to obtain the surveillance footage from outside of the Bird Dog Bar. After obtaining this footage, police were able to identify the license plate of the car that picked Samantha up that night and they immediately began searching for it.

Just a day after finding Samantha’s body the car was spotted by police and pulled over. The driver of the car was quickly arrested and identified as 24 year old Nathaniel Rowland.

Police discovered in Nathaniel’s car a mountain of evidence pertaining to Samantha’s brutal murder. There was a lot of Samantha’s blood still left behind in the car along with a lot of cleaning products that showed he did have intentions of trying to clean his car at some point.

Police also discovered Samantha’s phone turned off, but still left behind in his car which along with her blood confirmed to police that he was definitely the killer. Police also discovered inside of Nathaniel’s car that the child locks were activated. They quickly determined that this was more than likely how he was able to trap Samantha inside of his car so that she couldn’t escape once she realized he wasn’t actually taking her home that night.

After arresting Nathaniel, police began piecing together what exactly happened to Samantha that night. After reviewing the surveillance cameras it was believed that Samantha got into Nathaniel’s car willingly, thinking that he was her Uber driver picking her up from the bar.

It was seen on the cameras that just a few minutes after getting into Nathaniel’s car, Samantha’s real Uber driver did arrive to pick her up, but after discovering that she wasn’t there they cancelled the trip and drove off. After Samantha got into Nathaniel’s car she most likely quickly realized that he was driving in the opposite direction of her apartment but she couldn’t get out of the car because of the child locks that were activated.

Nathaniel’s car was also seen on surveillance footage that night driving up and down the street he picked Samantha up on, so it’s believed that he was most likely driving around looking for a victim regardless of who it was.

Police don’t believe that Samantha was necessarily Nathaniel’s target, he simply just got lucky when she willingly got into his car thinking he was her Uber and he decided to take that opportunity and murder her.

It’s then believed that Nathaniel drove to a secluded area near the woods her body was later found it and killed her inside of his car in the backseat where all of the blood was found.

After he murdered her, he dragged her lifeless body into the woods and just left her there and continued on with his life as if nothing had ever happened. Of course he was caught less than two days after the murder, but he still in that time had seemingly made no effort to try to dispose of any evidence at that point.

 

Nathaniel Rowland. PHOTO: NEWS 19 WLTX/YOUTUBE

 

So who is the fake Uber driver, Nathaniel Rowland? 

Nathaniel Rowland was a 24 year old man living in the area at the time, actually very close to where Samantha’s body was discovered. At one point he had attended South Carolina University in 2017, but in 2019 he was no longer a student and appeared to be unemployed.

Nathaniel had one past felony arrest on his record from October of 2018 when he was arrested for obtaining a signature for property under false pretenses.

In early 2019, a woman was also carjacked by two men who assaulted her and then forced her to drive to ATM and take out money for them. These men then forced this woman to drive to her home where they stole more of her belongings before fleeing the scene. Although Nathaniel was never arrested or charged for this crime, he was discovered later on to have been selling some of these stolen belongings but police didn’t have enough evidence to actually charge him with the crime.

Nathaniel also had a girlfriend that he was living with at the time of the murder named Maria Howard. Police were able to get a search warrant for the couple’s home where they discovered even more evidence linking to Samantha’s murder including a white bloody sheet and a two bladed knife with her blood still on it.

After Nathaniel was arrested and in police custody, police also discovered that he still had traces of Samantha’s DNA underneath his fingernails, despite actively denying his involvement. Although Nathaniel wasn’t admitting to anything, police knew that they had enough evidence so they decided to charge him with kidnapping, murder, and possession of a weapon during the commission of a crime.

Nathaniel Rowland pled not guilty to all of his charges and maintained his innocence through his trial. Despite him claiming he was innocent, given the mountain of evidence the police had against him it only took the jury one hour to come back with a guilty verdict on all charges.

Nathaniel was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, so he will be in jail for the murder of Samantha Josephson for the rest of his life.

 

After the trial concluded, Samantha’s family felt relieved and found some comfort in knowing that Nathaniel would be in prison for the rest of his life. However, they still wanted to do more to honor Samantha’s life and legacy and try to prevent this from happening to any other young woman.

Samantha’s family members decided to set up the #WHATSMYNAME foundation in Samantha’s honor. This foundation has done amazing work in spreading Samantha’s story on a national level, and also to implement more safety measures with ride share services.

This foundation has put on many walks and runs to raise awareness, and has also been able to get in direct contact with Uber to implement more safety measures to prevent another tragedy like this.

This foundation has provided many safety measurements and tips on their website to spread awareness to young people especially when using ride share services like Uber.

Samantha’s family was also able to pass a law named “Sami’s Law” which was introduced in May of 2019 and officially signed and passed by President Joe Biden in January of 2023. Sami’s Law requires all drivers for ride share companies like Uber, Lyft, etc. to prominently display lighted signs and scannable QR codes that will show customers that the car is actually registered to the ride share company before entering the vehicle.

Samantha’s family and close friends continue to advocate for safety when using ride share services to this day. They also work tirelessly to continue to share Samantha’s story and keep her name alive.

The foundation does amazing work and gives numerous safety tips that many college students should be aware of in this time of these services being so increasingly popular.

Visit the #WHATSMYNAME foundation here.

 

Sources:

Home: #WHATSMYNAME Foundation: Rideshare safety. WhatsMyName.

Keane, D. (2021, November 30). Who is Nathaniel Rowland and what was his motive for killing Samantha Josephson?The US Sun.

Nik. (2022, October 22). The uber imposter: The murder of Samantha Josephson: Nik. NewsBreak Original. 

Smith, R. C. (2023, January 5). H.R.1082 – 117th Congress (2021-2022): Sami’s law. Congress.gov.

YouTube. (2023). College Killing – Night Out Ends In Murder.