Kriti Mehrotra
If there’s one thing nobody can deny, it’s that the March 2019 homicide of Samantha Josephson left not just her loved ones but also the entire Columbia college community baffled to its core. That’s because, as carefully explored in Hulu’s ‘Death in the Dorms: Samantha Josephson,’ this 21-year-old University of South Carolina political science major was slain following a night out.
Who is Samantha Josephson’s Family?
It was reportedly back when Marci was a mere college student that she first came across supermarket cashier Seymour Josephson at his workplace, only to soon develop a real crush on him.”I used to [always] go through his lane because I thought he was cute,” she candidly revealed in the aforementioned original. “I [eventually] invited him to a party, and he did not show up. But then, two years later, someone introduced us, and we went out. We were driving past the supermarket one day, he said, ‘Oh! I used to work there,’ so then we knew he was the [same cashier].”
Marci and Seymour thus tied the knot in the early 1990s, following which they settled down before happily welcoming two beautiful daughters into their lives — Sydney as well as Samantha. This couple actually raised their girls in Robbinsville Township, New Jersey, where they were able to not only instill good values in them but also form a genuine, tight-knit familial connection. “Sami was younger than me,” her sister candidly said in the episode. “She was 20 months younger… I would, for the most part, refer to her as 2 years younger, she would always correct me since we were 1 year in school.”
Sydney then added, “[My sister] was always silly, goofy, the life of the party, would like to make people smile. She was a really good person who cared deeply about the people she cared about. She’d do anything for them.” Marci also stated, “Samantha was a little bit of a mix of everything. She was very sensitive, but she also wanted to be the class clown,” and because they were all so close, they knew her dream was to become a lawyer one day. According to them, this youngster wanted to hopefully change the world for the better a little bit with every single case by helping those in need.
It thus comes as no surprise that when Samantha went missing weeks before her graduation, with a scholarship for Drexel University Law School in hand, her family knew something was wrong. Her parents hence made the 12-hour drive to campus in a rush, where they learned she’d mistakenly entered a car she thought was her Uber for home at around 2 am, only for its driver to then take advantage and kill her. While she was found with over 120 deep stab wounds in a Clarendon County field roughly 14 hours after the kidnapping, her assailant was later positively identified as Nathaniel Rowland.
Where is Samantha Josephson’s Family Now?
It was on July 27, 2021, that Nathaniel was convicted of Samantha’s kidnapping as well as murder by a jury, leading the judge to hand him a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Before this term was announced though, all members of her family plus her boyfriend Greg Corbishley gave extremely emotional victim impact statements, just for him to still assert innocence. “Her dream was my dream and her death was my death,” Marci said, holding back tears. “I close my eyes and I feel what she endured at [his] hands 120 times. Over and over and over, fighting for her life, locked in his car.”
She continued, “I pray that when Sami closed her eyes she thought of beautiful things and his evil face was not the last thing she saw before she took her last breath.” On the other hand, Seymour asserted, “”Do I tell you that I contemplated suicide several times over the past 28 months? To me the monster has stolen that bright light..this enthusiasm for life out of me. I try to stop having these thoughts or desires only because I’m afraid of what this would ultimately do to Sydney and Marci… I still to this day can’t believe she is gone. I keep waiting for her to walk through the door saying “hey” only the way she does.”
Coming to their current standing, although the Josephsons concede there will never be any closure for them since they lost a part of their hearts when they lost Samantha, they are doing their best to move on while keeping her memories alive. In fact, these New Jersey natives have since established the What’s My Name Foundation, which aims to educate people about ride-share safety, all the while supporting charitable foundations plus awarding college scholarships. They’ve even worked with lawmakers over the years to advocate for policies promoting ride-share safety, leading to the formation of Sami’s Law in New Jersey (signed into place by President Joe Biden on January 5, 2023). Sydney in particular though is also following her sister’s dreams of helping others, but she does it as a nurse.
Read More: Samantha Josephson Murder: Where is Nathaniel Rowland Now?
