Part 1

My name is Samantha. My friends call me Sammy.

I was 21 years old, a senior at the University of South Carolina. The world was literally at my feet. I had just gotten the news that I’d been accepted into law school at Drexel University. It was everything I had worked for, everything my parents in New Jersey had dreamed of when they sent me down south for school.

It was March 28, 2019. A Thursday night in Columbia, South Carolina.

If you know college towns in the US, you know Thursday is practically the weekend. The air was buzzing. The azaleas were starting to bloom, and the humidity was just starting to creep back in.

We were in “Five Points.” It’s the heartbeat of the nightlife here. Bars, neon lights, music spilling out onto the pavement, and hundreds of students moving in packs. It’s supposed to be safe. It’s supposed to be our haven.

We were at the Bird Dog bar. My friends were throwing me a little celebration for the law school acceptance. We were laughing, toasting, planning the future. Graduation was in May. I had my whole life mapped out in my head.

But as the night went on, around 2:00 AM, the fatigue hit me. You know that feeling when the adrenaline of the party fades and you just want your own bed?

I told my friends I was heading out. I didn’t want to ruin their night, so I slipped away. I pulled out my phone and did what millions of Americans do every single day without a second thought.

I ordered an Uber.

The app confirmed it. A driver was on the way. I stood on the curb, watching the traffic. It’s chaotic in Five Points at closing time. Cars everywhere, headlights blinding you, people shouting for taxis.

I was on the phone with my boyfriend, checking in. I was a little turned around—I walked left when I should have walked right, so I missed the exact pickup spot. My actual Uber driver cancelled because he couldn’t find me.

But I didn’t know that.

I was just a girl standing on a corner, waiting for a ride home.

That’s when I saw it. A black sedan.

It looked just like the car on my screen. It pulled up right next to me, confident, purposeful. It didn’t hesitate. It felt… expected.

Later, the police would say he was circling. Like a shark in the water. He had been driving around the block, watching, waiting for someone vulnerable. Someone alone. Someone just like me.

He pulled up to the curb. I saw the dark silhouette of a man in the driver’s seat.

I didn’t check the license plate. I didn’t check the app again. I just wanted to go home. I assumed he was there for me.

I opened the back door and slid onto the seat.

“Are you here for Samantha?” I probably asked.

He must have nodded or mumbled yes. He didn’t say my name. I didn’t ask him to say it.

I closed the door.

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The car pulled away from the curb, merging into the traffic of Columbia. I settled back, maybe checking a text, maybe just closing my eyes for a second, ready for the short drive to my apartment.

But then, I noticed something.

We weren’t turning toward my apartment complex. We were heading the wrong way.

“Hey,” I probably said, leaning forward. “I think you missed the turn.”

Silence.

The streetlights of the city started to fade. We were moving faster now. The familiar landmarks of the campus were disappearing behind us.

A cold spike of adrenaline hit my stomach. It wasn’t the alcohol. It was pure, primal fear.

“Sir?” I said, louder this time. “Where are we going? You need to stop.”

He didn’t speak. He just kept driving, his eyes fixed on the road, his hands tight on the wheel. He was wearing a hoodie, his face obscured.

I grabbed the door handle. I yanked it.

Nothing.

I pulled it again, harder, panic rising in my throat like bile. The handle moved, but the door didn’t budge.

Click.

Child locks.

The child safety locks were engaged. The windows were locked.

I was trapped in a glass and metal cage, hurtling into the darkness of South Carolina.

My heart was hammering against my ribs like a bird trapped in a box. I looked at the back of his head. This wasn’t a mistake. This wasn’t a bad GPS direction.

This was an abduction.

I thought about my parents. I thought about the law degree I would never use. I thought about the graduation gown hanging in my closet.

I started to scream. I started to kick the windows. I swung at the seat in front of me. I wasn’t going to go quietly. I was a fighter. I am a fighter.

But we were leaving the city. The lights of Columbia were gone, replaced by the deep, rural darkness of the South.

He wasn’t stopping. And I knew, with a terrifying clarity, that this ride wasn’t going to end at my front door.

Part 2

The click of the lock was the loudest sound in the world.

It wasn’t a mechanical clunk; it was a final, sealing snap. It was the sound of a coffin lid closing, though I didn’t want to admit that to myself yet. I was Samantha Josephson. I was going to law school. I was the girl who always had a plan. Panic is a strange thing. It doesn’t always hit you like a wave; sometimes, it creeps in like a cold fog.

At first, I told myself it was a mistake. Maybe the child locks were on because he had kids. Maybe he was just a dad picking up extra shifts to pay for braces or a family vacation. I tried to rationalize the irrational.

“Sir?” I asked again, my voice trembling just a little. “The door is stuck. Can you unlock it? I think… I think you have the wrong person.”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t even flinch. His eyes were glued to the road, staring into the beams of the headlights cutting through the South Carolina night. He was wearing a hoodie, the fabric pulled tight, shadows clinging to his face. He looked like a void. A blank space where a human being should be.

We were moving fast now. The neon glow of Five Points, the safety of the crowds, the noise of the bars—it was all fading into the rearview mirror. We hit the highway, and the city lights began to thin out. The familiar brick buildings of Columbia gave way to strip malls, then gas stations, and finally, the encroaching darkness of the rural South.

I pressed my face against the glass. I could see the reflection of my own eyes. They looked wide, dark, and terrified. I tried to wave at a passing car, but the tint on the windows was dark. To the outside world, I was just a shadow in the backseat of a Chevy Impala. Just another passenger.

My phone.

I looked down at my screen. The battery was draining. The signal bars were flickering. I thought about calling 911. I thought about texting Greg, my boyfriend. I thought about my mom and dad back in New Jersey.

Seymour, come get me. Dad, please.

I remembered the conversation we had before I left for school. My dad, Seymour, was so protective. He told me, “Sammy, be safe. Don’t walk alone at night. Use the credit card for Uber. Don’t take chances.”

I had listened. I did use the app. I did call the ride. I did everything right. That was the cruelest joke of all. I followed the rules of safety, and yet, here I was, trapped in a cage moving at 70 miles per hour toward a destination I didn’t choose.

The car swerved slightly as we took an exit. We were heading away from the interstate, deeper into the backcountry. The road noise changed from the smooth hum of asphalt to the rhythmic thump-thump of older, cracked pavement.

I tried to bargain.

“Look,” I said, my voice shaking uncontrollably now. “If you want money, take my purse. take my phone. I have a debit card. You can have it. Just let me out. Please. Just pull over.”

Silence.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I lied. “I swear. Just let me go.”

He turned the radio up slightly. It wasn’t music; it was just noise. Static and a low beat. It felt like he was mocking me. He was in total control. He knew the doors wouldn’t open. He knew the windows wouldn’t roll down. He had prepared this car. He had set the trap, and I had walked right into it.

I looked at the handle again. I clawed at it. My fingernails dug into the plastic. I kicked the door panel. Thud. Thud. It sounded dull and hollow.

The landscape outside was pitch black now. No streetlights. Just the occasional farmhouse light in the distance, miles away. We were entering the deep woods, the swampy, isolated areas of Clarendon County. We were sixty-five miles away from safety.

My mind started to fracture. I thought about the graduation ceremony in May. I had already bought the dress. I thought about the law school acceptance letter sitting on my desk. I thought about my sister, Sydney. We were supposed to grow old together. We were supposed to be the Josephson sisters against the world.

Why is he doing this?

That question looped in my head. Why me?

I wasn’t rich. I wasn’t famous. I was just a student. I was just a girl who wanted to go home and sleep.

The car slowed down. My heart leaped. Is he letting me go? Is he just scaring me?

But he didn’t pull over to the shoulder. He turned onto a dirt road. The tires crunched over gravel and dry earth. The car bounced and rocked. Dust billowed up in the red taillights behind us. We were in the middle of nowhere. A place where screams don’t echo. A place where no one passes by.

New Zion. That’s where we were, though I didn’t know the name of the town then. I just knew it was the end of the line.

The car came to a halt. The engine kept running, a low, menacing rumble.

He shifted the car into park. The sudden lack of motion was more terrifying than the speed had been.

For a second, just a split second, there was total silence. The crickets outside were deafening.

Then, he turned around.

He didn’t look like a monster. He didn’t have horns or glowing eyes. He looked like a young man. A person you might pass in the grocery store. A person you might stand next to in line at the bank. That was the horror of it. Evil doesn’t always look like evil. Sometimes, it just looks like a guy in a black Chevy Impala.

He reached into the darkness of the front seat. I saw the glint of metal.

It wasn’t a gun. It was a knife. A multi-tool with a double blade.

Panic exploded in my chest. It wasn’t the freezing kind of panic anymore. It was the “fight or flight” instinct, and since flight was impossible, I had only one choice left.

I was going to fight.

I wasn’t going to let him take me without a war. I was a Jersey girl. I was strong. I was loved.

“No!” I screamed. “NO!”

He climbed over the console, pushing into the back seat. The space was cramped. The smell of stale cigarettes and marijuana filled my nose, mixing with the metallic scent of fear.

I kicked out. I aimed for his face, his chest, anything I could reach.

But he was on me.

This wasn’t a robbery. He didn’t ask for my PIN number. He didn’t ask for my jewelry.

He just started swinging.

Part 3

The first strike felt like a punch. A sharp, stinging punch that took my breath away.

I didn’t realize it was the blade until I felt the warmth spreading across my skin.

I screamed, a sound that tore through my throat, raw and primal. I kicked him again, hard. My sneakers connected with his chest, pushing him back for a fraction of a second.

“Get off me! GET OFF ME!”

I scrambled backward, pressing myself against the far door, trying to phase through the metal and glass. I grabbed the handle again, yanking it with desperation, praying for a miracle. Open. Please, God, just open.

It stayed locked. The child lock held firm. The mechanism designed to keep babies safe was now sealing my fate.

He lunged again.

The space was so small. There was nowhere to run. I was trapped in a box with a predator. The darkness of the car was broken only by the dim dome light that flickered as we struggled.

I raised my hands. I put my arms up to block him. I grabbed at the knife. I grabbed at his hands.

I have to survive. I have to see my mom again.

The blade sliced into my hands. My palms, my fingers. Defensive wounds, the coroner would later call them. They were the marks of my will to live. Every cut on my hands was a testament that I did not give up. I fought for every second of air in my lungs.

He was relentless. He wasn’t saying anything. There was no monologue. No reason given. Just a mechanical, brutal violence. It was a frenzy.

I felt the impacts all over. My arms, my legs, my face.

Pain is a strange thing when adrenaline is coursing through your veins. It feels distant at first, then overwhelming.

I managed to get my feet up against the window. The window I had looked out of just an hour ago, watching the happy students of Columbia.

I kicked the glass. I kicked it with everything I had left. I wanted to break it. I wanted to shatter the world and let the air in.

My footprints.

I left my footprints on the glass. Smears of my own blood, the tread of my sneakers stamped against the window. It was my message to the world. It was my cry for help that no one could hear.

I was here. I fought. I tried to get out.

The struggle seemed to last for hours, but it probably only lasted minutes. The human body is resilient, but it is not made of steel.

My strength began to fade. The screams turned into gasps. The kicks became weaker.

The terror didn’t leave, though. It stayed until the very end. The realization that this was it. That I would never walk across that graduation stage. That my dad would never walk me down the aisle.

The car was filled with the smell of copper. The smell of blood.

I slumped against the seat. The fight was leaving me, flowing out with the blood that soaked the upholstery of the Chevy Impala.

He stopped.

The heavy breathing in the car was the only sound.

I looked at him one last time, through a haze of pain and fading consciousness. He wasn’t looking at me with pity. He wasn’t looking at me with regret. He was just… done.

He climbed back into the front seat. He started the car.

I was alone in the back. The darkness of New Zion wrapped around the car like a shroud.

My thoughts drifted to my parents. I hoped they knew I loved them. I hoped Sydney knew she was my best friend. I hoped Greg knew he made me happy.

The pain started to dull into a cold numbness. The world blurred. The ceiling of the car spun.

And then, there was nothing.

I was gone. Samantha Josephson, the girl with the bright future, the girl with the law school acceptance, was gone.

But my story wasn’t over.

He thought he had erased me. He thought he could dump me in the woods like trash and drive away. He thought the darkness of the South Carolina countryside would keep his secret.

He was wrong.

Because I left pieces of myself behind. I left my blood. I left my DNA. I left my footprints on that window.

And he made a mistake. He kept the car. He kept the weapon. He kept the phone.

The shark had circled, and the shark had attacked, but the shark was arrogant.

He drove to a spot further into the woods, a place called Black Bottom Road. It sounds like something out of a horror movie, doesn’t it? Black Bottom Road.

He dragged me out of the car. He left me there, amidst the pine needles and the dirt, under the uncaring stars.

He got back in his car. He drove away. He went to clean the blood. He went to see his girlfriend. He went to buy fast food. He went on with his life as if he hadn’t just destroyed an entire universe.

But the sun was coming up. And with the sun, came the truth.

Part 4

The next morning, the sun rose over South Carolina just like it always did. But the world was different now. A light had gone out.

My friends were the first to worry. When I didn’t text back, when I didn’t show up for work, they knew. They tracked my phone. It had gone dead in a spot that made no sense.

They called the police. They called my parents.

I can only imagine that phone call. The call that every parent dreads. The ringing phone that shatters a life. My dad, Seymour, driving down from New Jersey, his heart in his throat, praying, bargaining with God. Let her be hurt, let her be in a hospital, just don’t let her be dead.

But I was found by turkey hunters. Two men walking through the woods in New Zion. They saw something that didn’t belong. They saw the tragedy that had been hidden in the brush.

The news broke. “Missing USC Student Found Dead.”

The hunt for the killer began. And it didn’t take long.

Officer Jeffrey Craft—a hero in this story—was patrolling Five Points the next night. He was looking for a black Chevy Impala. It was a needle in a haystack, but he was determined.

And then, he saw it.

The same car. The same shark, circling the same waters, maybe looking for another victim.

He pulled it over.

The driver ran. He bolted like a coward. He ran through the streets, hopping fences, trying to escape the inevitable.

But they caught him. Nathaniel Rowland.

When they looked inside the car, the story told itself.

He had tried to clean it. He had used bleach. He had used wipes. But you can’t wash away a soul.

My blood was everywhere. It was in the seams of the seats. It was on the floorboards.

And there, on the window, were my footprints. The ghostly outline of my sneakers, preserved in the very fluid of my life. It was the undeniable proof that I had been there, and that I had fought to get out.

They found the child locks were still engaged.

They found the knife—the multi-tool—in his girlfriend’s trash, covered in my DNA.

They found my phone, which he had tried to sell.

The trial was agonizing for my family. They had to sit there and listen to the details. They had to see the photos. They had to hear the defense try to say there was no DNA on him, as if wearing layers of clothes and gloves made him innocent.

But the jury saw the truth. They saw the footprints. They saw the calculation. They saw the evil.

It took them only a little over an hour.

Guilty.

Guilty of kidnapping. Guilty of murder.

The judge showed no mercy, just as Nathaniel had showed me none. Life in prison. No possibility of parole. He will die in a cage, just like the one he trapped me in.

But justice isn’t a cure. It doesn’t bring me back. It doesn’t let me graduate. It doesn’t let me hug my mom one last time.

My parents, though… they are warriors. They took their grief, their unimaginable pain, and they turned it into a shield for others.

They started the “What’s My Name” foundation.

It’s a simple rule. A rule written in my blood, so that no one else has to spill theirs.

Before you get in a car. Before you open that door.

Ask the driver: “Who are you here for?”

Make them say your name.

If they don’t know it, don’t get in.

Check the license plate. Match it to the app. Check the child locks if you can.

My life ended in the back of a black Impala on a dirt road in South Carolina. But my voice is louder now than it ever was when I was alive.

Every time someone checks a license plate, I am there. Every time a girl asks, “What’s my name?” I am there. Every time a ride-share driver has to display a placard because of the new laws my parents fought for, I am there.

Don’t let my story just be a tragedy. Let it be a lesson. Let it be a warning.

The world is beautiful, but there are sharks circling in the water.

Stay safe. Look out for each other. And please, for me… never, ever get in the car without asking the question.

“What’s my name?”

My name is Samantha Josephson. And I will never be forgotten.

Epilogue: A Note from the Darkness

To the students in Five Points tonight: Have fun. Dance. Laugh. Celebrate your acceptances and your friendships. But keep your eyes open.

To the parents sending their kids away to school: Hug them tight. Tell them you love them. Teach them to be aware.

To Nathaniel Rowland: You took my life, but you didn’t take my legacy. You are a number in a cell. I am a movement.

I am the girl who fought. I am the girl who left her mark on the window.

And I am finally, finally going home.