Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Youtuber Had Her Husband Murdered - The Samantha Wolhford story

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

In February 2015, Samantha Wohlford staged an elaborate home invasion in Titus County, Texas—claiming masked intruders tied her up, beat her husband Ernie Ibarra, and kidnapped him while their children slept .

So this YouTuber had her husband killed. This is insane. Now the YouTuber, her name's Samantha. And Samantha's 21 when the story starts, living in Texas. And Samantha has big dreams. She has always wanted to be a famous actress. But unfortunately, she's just a mom from Texas. How's she going to be a famous actor?

Well, one day in 2010, I guess she realizes she could be famous and make money and stuff if she becomes an influencer. What's up, guys? Hey y'all. I'm not just like, hey. I'm kind of out there. And so she starts making YouTube videos, a lot of vlogs and mom influencer content,

another random review type stuff. And over time, her videos become more about her just complaining about her life. For starters, you do not have a life anymore after you have a baby. You become mom,

you lose your identity. But whatever, she's making the content she wants to make and it's making her happy. She seems to love doing it. However, However, not everyone loves the fact that she makes videos. Specifically, this guy.

His name's Ernie. And Ernie is Samantha's longtime boyfriend. And Ernie, he's the kind of guy who works hard. Like, he works two jobs to support the family. And they got five kids. So this isn't easy for him. And now Ernie wants to be supportive of Samantha's video making endeavors, but he gets frustrated with how much time she dedicates to making all this content.

Because as the years have gone on, she started paying more and more attention to her YouTube channel than to taking care of the kids and stuff. And Ernie, he doesn't like that too much. I'm not going to light a cigarette? Oh yeah, I forgot about it. Because you got that fucking iPad in your hands. Oh, where, but where, where, where? And so from what I read, Ernie and Samantha are just fighting a lot and not agreeing on things. And a few years later in 2014, I guess things start to get out of control.

and their fights get physical. And we don't know exactly what happens, but allegedly Ernie physically attacks Samantha. And Samantha calls the police and Ernie gets arrested and Ernie denies he did anything wrong while Samantha gets an emergency restraining order against him. Like, it's a whole mess. Now, at some point during all this,

Ernie and Samantha get married. And I'm not sure when in the timeline that happens because this relationship just seems very chaotic. Regardless, he is now her husband. But even so, Samantha is still unhappy that Ernie is not supporting her passion for making YouTube content. And for her, this has gone on way too long. And so she decides to do something about it. And so one day, Samantha goes to visit her friend in the hospital who just had a baby.

And while she's there, she meets her friend's boyfriend, this guy, Jonathan. And Jonathan, he's a really rough dude. In fact, he's just been released from prison, and he was sent to prison because he essayed his cousin. Jesus. So, Samantha is talking to Jonathan about all the alleged abuse that Ernie has been committing against her, and after hearing what she says, Jonathan gets really upset, and he offers to deal with Ernie for her. So, here's Jonathan's plan. Jonathan's plan is to get Ernie locked up.

He's going to plant meth in Ernie's truck and then call him. the police on him. And when they come, they'll find the meth in his truck and they'll throw him in jail. And so Jonathan and one of his go to goon friends and Samantha, they go to buy this meth that they're going to plant in Ernie's truck. However, Samantha can't seem to find child care that night. And so she brings the five kids with them. And so all eight of them go to buy this meth. And so they get this meth. And once they have it, I guess they decide, why are we going to plant this meth on Ernie? going to waste it? Why don't we just smoke it ourselves instead? And so now that they're not going to use the meth in their plan, they have to come up with a new plan for Ernie. And so they come up with

this new plan and the new plan is to kidnap him instead. I guess to scare him? I'm not actually sure. And so Samantha takes her kids home and she puts them to bed and Ernie's there. And so Samantha goes to bed herself and she waits for the kidnappers to arrive. They're supposed to show up later that night. Sometime later, Jonathan is with two goons who are going to pull off this kidnapping with him. And so they smoke all that meth that they saved and they head over to Samantha and Ernie's house to pull off this kidnapping. And so they get there and they quietly break through the front door and they creep upstairs. And suddenly boom, they pull Ernie and Samantha out of bed and they tie Samantha up and they

beat Ernie up and they force him into their car and they speed away. And so after that, Samantha is a little. Allegedly, somehow able to get to her phone and eventually the police show up. And so they talk to Samantha and she gives them this whole bullshit story about how she has no idea who kidnapped Ernie. So walk me through what happened? I don't honestly know what happened. Okay. And we heard a noise and the second I was able to open my eyes, somebody grabbed me and jerked me out of the bed and slammed me down on the ground and started to tie me up.

Didn't recognize anything about They had black masks on, black shirts, black pants. Meanwhile, Jonathan and the goons, they've still got Ernie. And they take him out into the woods, and by this point, Ernie is not really coherent. I guess they beat him up pretty badly. And so they're walking along, and they stop. And suddenly, blam, one of the goons shoots Ernie in the back of the head, and he dies. So then the men hide his body.

in the woods and they leave. Now, back at Samantha's, she's still there. She's still talking to police. And she asks them permission, I guess, to excuse herself and call her mom. And so she excuses herself and instead of calling her mom, she actually texts one of the goons a few times and tells him to basically destroy Ernie's phone. Because, you know, phones can be tracked.

Anyway, so for whatever reason, police, they're skeptical of the kidnapping story Samantha is telling them. And so they bring her into the station and they question her and she repeats her whole made-up story about how Ernie was kidnapped by some masked men. And she goes into all this detail about how it has something to do with his dad because his dad's a shady guy, I guess. I don't know. It's all bullshit. Now, already, police don't believe Samantha. They don't believe her story.

And as they keep questioning her, her story gets more and more flimsy. And so they keep talking to her. and her story actually starts to change. And at some point, she starts to kind of flip on Jonathan. And she tells police that maybe it was her friend's boyfriend who did it. And she blames it all on him and tells police that she's afraid he'll unalive her if she says anything. And so police find Jonathan and bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot.

Also, bam, they arrest one of the goons. Here's his mugshot. And so, once police have Jonathan, he immediately starts. talking. He tells them how he met Samantha in the hospital and he told her that he would take care of the Ernie problem for her and he even takes police to the spot in the woods where they unalived him and he leads police right to the body. And so bam, police arrest Samantha. Here's her mugshot. Also, bam, they arrest the other goon. Here's his mugshot. And so they're all found guilty or they plead guilty for their role in this and Jonathan gets 50 years in prison.

One of the goons also gets 50 years in prison. Another goon gets 93 years in prison because he didn't take a plea deal, while Samantha gets a total of 149 years in prison. And by the way, to this day, her YouTube channel is still up.