Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - BONUS: Fake Uber Driver Stabs Beloved College Student Over 120 Times When She Gets Into Wrong Car. VERDICT, GUILTY!

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

A South Carolina jury convicted Nathaniel Rowland of first-degree murder in connection with the death of 21-year-old University of South Carolina student, Samantha Josephson. Police say security footage showed Josephson getting into a black Chevrolet Impala that pulled up to the Bird Dog bar parking lot at around 2 a.m. Josephson was waiting on an Uber ride, according to police, and mistook the Impala driver as the Uber driver. Forensics expert Joe Scott Morgan, professor at Jacksonville State University, breaks down the evidence. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Jackie Howard. After a seven-day trial, a jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict for Nathaniel Rowland in the kidnapping and murder of University of South Carolina student Samantha Josephson. Police and prosecutors say 21-year-old Josephson had been out with friends in Columbia's Five Points District. She called

an Uber to get home, then mistakenly got into the wrong car, an Impala owned by Nathaniel Rowland. Samantha Josephson's body was found by hunters hours later amid the brush in a field 70 miles or so from Columbia. Joining me now is Joe Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, Jacksonville State University, and author of Blood Beneath My Feet. Joe, before we dive into the forensics and the details of this case, let's take a listen to some of Marcy Josephson's victim impact statement. I close my eyes and I feel what she endured in his hands 120 times, over and over and over, fighting for her life, locked in his car. I used to have dreams for her. Now all I have are nightmares.

120 times. The final moments, her bare feet kicking and fighting for her life. I visualize the blood flowing from her body, her beautiful body, 120 times for what? That's where we start, Joe. Forensic pathologist Dr. Thomas Beaver with Medical University of South Carolina told the jury that Josephson was stabbed over 120 times. Dr. Beaver, you know, you have those aha moments many times in court. And whenever you get a pro like this forensic pathologist that sits on the stand and he says, I stopped counting at 129 times, and that's verbatim. 120, I stopped counting there that gives you the gravity of what we're talking about here the this this trauma that was inflicted on on samantha

or as her family called her family called her Sammy this this trauma that she endured and and trust me it was beyond anything that that I even have the words to describe because it was so so very violent and you know when he he goes into this he's he's not just describing stab wounds which in forensic pathologists, in forensic pathology, what we refer to as sharp force injuries, we can either have slices or stabs. These are stab wounds. But also, she had these unique injuries that were abrasions, which all of us can identify with, scrapes, that sort of thing. And then she had contusions, these bruises, and they all kind of centered around the stab wounds.

And the reason behind this is very unique. And that's because this perpetrator used a weapon that many of us have seen. Some of us have them. And it's called a multi-tool. And you see electricians and hunters and all kinds of people that wear them in a little pouch on their belt. And it has pliers in it.

It's got a file. It's even got a little saw blade on some of them. It's got a corkscrew. I've even used the corkscrew. I've got one. I've used corkscrews when I've been out camping. My wife and I have a glass of wine. But, Jackie, I've got to tell you, in this particular case,

it is actually postulated that he used both blades, that there were blades on both ends of this thing, and he deployed these blades so that it's almost like a reverse scissor where you have, you know, the scissors are kind of outward or kind of linear straight. These are kind of peeked in to form like a V

and he begins stabbing her. So every time he buries these blades into her flesh, it's leaving behind these little abrasions, these little contusions that actually match up with the underside of this multi-tool. And so it made it kind of difficult to interpret. But what we can surmise at the end of the day is that there were too many to count. And I don't know that we can actually ever begin to measure the horror that Sammy endured.

I'm having a real difficult time wrapping my head around what has happened here, Joe, because, number one, how long does it actually take, even in a frenzy, to stab someone over 120 times? And what does that do to a body? The fact that there were so many injuries gives us an indication that this perpetrator would have had to spend an excruciating long time with her. Because this is no small act. First off, there's evidence in the back of the car where she would have been transported that she may have fought back. In one kind of really telling moment here, the SLED personnel, that's the state of South

Carolina's law enforcement agency, kind of their state police. They detail a footprint on the inside of the rear window. Like, you know, she's flailing for her life and she actually puts her foot on the window, leaving an impression up there. very confined space, he would have had to have taken a protracted period of time because just imagine this repetitive event over and over. And this is no small task. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to drive this instrument. And it's not like a regular knife. I can't emphasize that enough. It's not like a single bladed butcher knife. This is something that's kind of blunted. It has a sharp end on it, but there's also other elements of it that are blunted. So it would have taken a tremendous amount of force to go through not just skin, but muscle, sinew, bone,

and then down into her internal viscera, into her organs. And so this is done over and over and over and over again. It is not, it is not beyond reasonable to think that he would have literally exerted himself to the point where he is sweating during this period of time. He is just driving this weapon into her over and over again. And it would have, I don't know that there's necessarily a measure, but I do know this. What was fascinating about this case is that someone

had locked, used the child locks for the rear doors on this vehicle. So when she would have gotten into the vehicle, guess what? She couldn't have escaped. And by the time she realized this wasn't her Uber driver, you can imagine panic had begun to set in. And, you know, like has been said, she was found well in excess of 60 miles away from downtown Columbia, South Carolina. She was found a long, long ways away in what we would refer to as the sticks. Her body wasn't found until some hunters came along and found her, some turkey hunters, actually.

Jill, what was the primary location of the stab wounds on her body? Were they primarily in the torso? Yes, these injuries, the injuries that she sustained were concentrated in the torso. And I think that our listeners, our listeners are so bright that Nancy has. And I know that I know they'll understand this when you're in a confined space and everybody can identify with being in the back of a four door sedan. OK, it's a tiny area. It's not like you're in your bedroom. okay? There's very little room to move around. It's not like you can extend yourself across the room away from an individual. At most, you might have a foot to two feet of clearance if you really press it out.

So these injuries she sustained were concentrated from the neck region all the way down to the torso. And there's evidence that she had thrown up her arms as well, where she's got these contusions that are covering her hands and her arms. And of course, we all know what that means. That's an indication of what we refer to as defensive injuries, that she had an awareness. She had an awareness that she was being attacked. This is not like you see in some kind of movie where someone took a knife and essentially drove it into the base of her brain or cut her throat where life just suddenly left her body. This is something that she was very, very painfully and acutely aware of that was happening to her. And you couple that with the panic of not being able to escape from this confined space to the fact that she suddenly came face to face with this monster. And she probably had an awareness that her life was about to end out there in this desolate, abandoned area. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace.

This crime scene, the Impala, a crime scene on wheels. Josephson's blood was found everywhere inside this car, a large amount of blood. In fact, the pathologist said that almost every drop of blood was gone from her body. Yeah, just let that sink in just for a moment. When you begin to think that the pathologist said that every drop, I think with the exception of possibly, I think the pathologist framed it as maybe a couple of tablespoons. Everybody knows what a tablespoon is. It's gone. And this, in forensic terms, this is what we refer to as exsanguination. It's kind of a fancy word for saying she bled to death.

And that means that he insulted her body enough. He insulted her body enough with this weapon that there were so many defects in her body, so many stab wounds, that all of the blood, all of the blood literally came out. And let me tell you another chilling part to this. The fact that the blood came out of her body gives us an indication that her heart was beating.

That means that she was alive while this was going on because, you know, look, I worked a lot of cases over my career where people sustained stab wounds for the chest, okay? And they'll have blood contained within the chest walls, all right? That means they bled out for a little bit and then they died. Just organ failure. No, that's not what happened. She was stabbed so many times and in all of these variety of locations over her torso that there was blood coming out multiple holes in her body till everything was left around her you know the seats the clothing even the backs of the seats the door jam and i suspect and i suspect all over the perpetrator as well he would have been bathed in her blood

up and down his arms certainly the weapon weapon, you remember, he was found, he was witnessed later attempting to, I think by a lady friend of his, trying to clean this instrument. He had it on his arms. He probably had it on his neck. He had blood everywhere. Her blood, Sammy's blood, he had all over him. So that gives you an idea. Again, it goes to the horror of this, that it's a hopeless situation at this point in time where life is slowly draining out of her body. And finally, you know, she, because of lack of strength, she just would not have had the ability to fight back any longer. One other thing that came out in the trial is that Josephson had facial injuries that looked as if she was dragged. Yeah, and that gives you an indication that perhaps he didn't even take the time to essentially cradle her and carry her away. Just like some dead animal, he perpetrated this horrific crime on.

He just kind of drug her along the ground and deposited her out there in the sticks. Let's backtrack just a little bit, Joe. Josephson is driven out to this remote area, nearly 60, 70 miles from Columbia, to a remote area nearby to where Roland's parents lived. But the defense pointed out that nothing from the woods, either dirt or debris, is on Roland's clothing or shoes. How's that possible? How's it possible that he didn't actually leave the scene with nothing on his person that would tie him back?

You know, in forensics, we actually have the practice of, you know, say, for instance, soil science, all right, that goes back to trace evidence where we can identify a certain, you know, depending upon a region that you're in, in the country. And this part of South Carolina is actually referred to as the Piedmont region. There's specific soil that you find in these locations. It's kind of a sandy, loamy kind of composition mixed with a little clay. And it's very distinctive, particularly when you look at it under a microscope. But people will say, well, how did he not have this dirt on him? Or how did he not have vegetation or anything?

I'll tell you why. Because he cleaned himself up. He cleaned himself up to the point where there was nothing left behind that they could find. And also, I would offer up that because he had so much of her blood on him, I think he was probably, and this is a horrible turn of events, probably partially shielded by Sammy's blood on his person from taking on anything else, any of the debris that might be associated with a specific identifier back to that area. We're going to talk about the DNA evidence here in just a second, Joe, but I want to talk about the video and the digital evidence that came out in this trial. There was video of the car in the area where Josephson went missing. There were phone pings to the area, camera footage of them seen driving throughout the town. Then you have the dash cam video when Roland was actually pulled

over. It was almost too much to try to get away with this. There was so much evidence there. What's amazing about the world that we live in now, it's really difficult for anybody that perpetrates a crime to not leave behind some kind of electronic signature. And even in this case, we're not necessarily talking about things that are very electronic specific, you know, where they're pinging phones and this sort of thing. Although that is part of this, probably the most compelling thing, the most visceral thing that you can see in this case, and I'll kind of break this down for you, is the CCTV footage. And the reason is, is that you can see Sammy in the video where she is out on the street. And you can tell, like many young people nowadays, and I'm guilty of it as well, where she has her smartphone in her hand and she's actually looking at the phone. You know that she's already ordered a car up. She's waiting for the car to come up.

And there's even one instance in this view of her. You're kind of looking at the right side of her body. So you kind of see her in profile. She actually steps off the curb into the street because there's a car that comes by and she thinks that it's her Uber. And it wasn't. And she does an about face and goes back up to the curb. There's like a diagonal parking spot for a handicapped person, the vehicle there.

She comes back to the curb, but guess what? Off in the distance, almost out of sight at that moment, Tom, there's the perpetrator's car. And guess what he's doing? He's already passed down the street a couple of times. He's looking. He's looking for a victim. And the first thing I thought of when I saw this, you know,

was a person in the water and a shark is circling. You don't necessarily know where they are, and you might not even have an indwelling fear that there's a shark there. But suddenly, at this moment in time, he appears. He actually pulls up to the light, which would have been to Sammy's left at this point, and makes a turn toward her. And matter of fact, it's almost like he's so excited when he sees this potential victim that when he turns, he turns his car, his wheel to the right,

the right rear tire of this vehicle that Sammy was murdered in actually goes up on the curb. He cut the corner too quickly and then swung right into the handicap spot. And without thinking about it, she opens the door, and she gets in the back of the car and the reason this is so chilling is that is the last time that's the last time that we see sammy alive he backs out waits for traffic to pass and then pulls on out and you know you're thinking all along you know you're watching this cctv play out before you and And you're actually thinking, you know, my God, I wish I could freeze time.

I wish that somebody would step up and grab her. But who has any awareness of this? We live in a world of ride share now. And because that happened, it leaves us with this sense that she's gone forever. And she, as it turns out, she is. He drove off with her and he had been looking for someone. He had been trolling this area looking for a potential robbery victim. And what's really also another part to this that's so very startling about this particular case is that all of us that have children,

when our kids were little and they'd kind of gotten out of car seats, we used to put in booster seats in the back of the car. Well, in the back of this car was a little booster seat. It was a little booster seat that was used to transport children with, and this was actually in the back of the car. So here Sammy is. She's seated in the back seat, and on the other side of the car from her is a child's booster seat. Now, what could have been going through her mind at that point in time? Well, maybe this is a dad that's just working extra to make a living for his family. No, what it was, was a monster that was using this vehicle, the same vehicle that she used to transport small children,

he actually used it to take Sammy to her death. It's very chilling, Joe. Let's move on and talk a little bit about the DNA. As we've mentioned, there was blood everywhere. And as you said, you theorized that the perpetrator, Nathaniel Rowland, was covered in Josephson's blood. So let's talk about the significance of the DNA, what was found and what wasn't found. The evidence that we saw presented in the trial, the defense and the prosecutor really pushed some facts about the DNA. You know, the DNA, I think that when the defense in this case, they come forward with a theory or a supposition that they put before the court that it is a bona fide fact in forensic science that an absence of DNA from the perpetrator is an indication of innocence. And those two things, they don't necessarily exist in the same plane.

Just because the perpetrator's DNA was not found on her, on Sammy, or underneath her nails, does not mean that he's innocent. It just doesn't. Now, her DNA, however, was found everywhere because it was deposited vis-a-vis her blood, which we've already talked about that she had, what, it was a couple of tablespoons left in her body. So this car, him, her, the surfaces, they're awash in her blood and her DNA. So there was a minuscule amount of DNA of his that was found, but it was also commingled with other people. I think that even on the multi-tool, they had trouble finding DNA. But keep in mind, when it comes to the instrument itself, he was actually witnessed

to have been cleaning this thing. And they couldn't say with a reasonable scientific certainty that his DNA was present. They thought that they found some, but it wasn't within the parameters. However, for her, the numbers were astronomical. I mean, I think they were talking in the sextillions. If anybody out there can kind of wrap their brain around that, how vast that number is. So you can't just simply say that because she, Sammy, did not have his DNA deposited on her that, you know, he wasn't the perpetrator. And also one other thing that folks need to keep in mind, there is no indication in this case that this was a sexual assault. There's no indication that, you know, this was a provocative event where her clothing was disordered in the sense that you would see, say, for instance, a sexual attack victim. There's no indication of that. This was, at least prosecutors and the investigators believe,

this was an actual property crime. It was actually a robbery that was taking place. Remember, he was actually found pawning. I think that he had pawned some of her items. So the intent here was that he was merely out there to rob her. And at the end of the day, he did rob her. He robbed her of her life and he robbed her family of her life and any kind of future she might have all for, you know, a few bucks. And, you know, it's by no fault of her own that his DNA was not there. But there was enough of her DNA spread around that it was very, very difficult for the defense to explain that away.

And so much so that the defense didn't really offer up anything to the contrary. As a matter of fact, they didn't call any of any of their own experts. They didn't even have any experts. Essentially, they relied upon the prosecution to provide all of the experts, and then they just tried to undercut them. And they didn't really present a defense in this particular case. And Roland did not take the stand in his own defense either. But we also know, you were talking about the possibility of items being pawned. We know that the perpetrator tried or someone tried to use Josephson's debit card.

I also want to point out Nathaniel Rowland did not have a mark on him or cut, not a bruise, but we also know he was wearing long sleeves and gloves. So this pretty much means there was a lot less chance of transfer of DNA. Yeah, when an individual is essentially cocooned like this, you're not going to get a lot of transference from the individual. Say, for instance, if folks at home will just kind of think about with your arms being exposed, okay, one of the first primal defense moves that we make as human beings is to thrust our hands out to capture an attacker's hands to try to prevent them essentially from attacking us. Well, if you're talking about like contact DNA or trace DNA that's left behind, a partial DNA,

it's not going to be on his skin. And also, she's not going to have access to his arms in order to scrape him. Now, one of the hurdles that's hard to overcome here is obviously an absence of, say, scrapes down his face and that sort of thing. But look, she just didn't react potentially in time. Maybe she was so injured by the initial attack that she didn't have the will to fight back at that point in time. Can you imagine the terror that was overtaking her at that point in time? And he just continued to stab her over and over and over and over again. So again, after a seven-day trial, the jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict for Nathaniel Rowland in the kidnapping and murder of Samantha Josephson.

The judge went straight into sentencing. Nathaniel Rowland gets life in prison. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I'm Jackie Howard. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.