19: Dark Secrets, Hidden Bunkers, & Lots of Shady Details | Samantha Sperry

In March 2018, 25-year-old Samantha Sperry disappeared in rural Kentucky after spending time with her boyfriend and his father. What began as an ordinary outing quickly spiraled into a baffling mystery. Conflicting stories about an argument, a night spent in the woods, and the last moment Samantha was seen walking in a different direction left investigators searching for answers. Her abandoned car, missing phone, and troubling behavior from those closest to her raised quiet red flags. Despite searches by law enforcement, Samantha was never found, and years later, her disappearance remains a haunting question mark. What really happened to Samantha Sperry?. If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow the show for weekly deep dives into the darkest true crime cases! To watch the video version of this episode, head over to youtube.com/@annieelise. .🔎Join Our True Crime Club & Get Exclusive Content & Perks..🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to both of my weekly true crime series 10 to Life & Serialously with Annie Elise wherever you get your podcasts on the Annie Elise Channel!🍎 Apple Podcasts | Where you can also unlock access to 100+ and growing extra exclusive deep dives.💚 Spotify🔴 YouTube🎙️ All Other Platforms.📸 Follow Annie on Socials Instagram: @_annieeliseTikTok: @_annieeliseSubstack: @annieeliseFacebook: @10toLife.👗 Shop Annie’s Must-Haves! ShopMY: bit.ly/AnnieElise_ShopMy Amazon: bit.ly/AnnieElise_Amazon.🫵🏻 Get Involved or Recommend a CaseAbout Annie: www.annieelise.comFor Business Inquiries: [email protected].📚 Episode Sources Blox Images | Charley Project | Disappeared Blog | Facebook | Front Page Detectives | Justice Warriors Podcast | KFVS12 | KMKS | Mayfield Messenger | NAMUS | NBC News | NBC News Dateline | Sleuthhound | WPSD Local 6 | West Kentucky Star | Where Are They Podcast | WKMS••••••••••••••••••🚨Disclaimers1️⃣ Some links may be affiliate links, they do not cost you anything, but I make a small percentage from the sale. Thank you so much for watching and supporting me. 2️⃣ Sources used to collect this information include various public news sites, interviews, court documents, FB groups dedicated to the case, and various news channel segments. When quoting statements made by others, they are strictly alleged until confirmed otherwise. Please remember my videos are my independent opinion and to always do your own research. 3️⃣ The views and opinions expressed in this video are personal and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Assumptions made in the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the creator(s). These views are subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time and are not to be held in perpetuity. We make no representations as to the accuracy, completeness, correctness, suitability, or validity of any information on this video and will not be liable for any errors, omissions, or delays in this information or any losses, injuries, or damages arising from its display or use. All information is provided on an as-is basis. It is the reader’s responsibility to verify their own facts.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:24Speaker 04

  Hello, my name is Amanda Portain, and my niece Samantha Sperry has been missing for five years.

• 1:31Speaker 05

  The more that we hear the story, the more detailed that we hear about the story, we feel like something is dreadfully wrong here.

• 1:41Speaker 06

  If she is out there, man, she's Jimmy Snookum because she's... she can vanish. I don't want to look at your kids.

• 1:55Speaker 06

  And tell them that we finally brought you home.

• 2:00Annie Elise?

  It was March 28th, 2018, very early in the morning. Like, the sun was technically up, but barely. And it was one of those very chilly spring mornings as well, on Highway 131 in Graves County, Kentucky. Now, this road is usually pretty normal. People heading to work, parents doing the school drop-off thing, just your typical Wednesday morning stuff. But then comes something you definitely don't expect to see. A man and a woman suddenly just come walking out of the woods on the side of the highway. The woman looked to be in her mid-20s, strawberry blonde hair, and the guy looked older, maybe even in his 40s.

• 2:43Annie Elise?

  And right away, you could just tell that something was super off. They looked like they had been through it. I mean, their clothes were soaking wet, they were dirty, they both looked completely exhausted. And whatever had happened out in those woods, it definitely wasn't good, and it definitely was not normal. And the weirdest part is they didn't even stay together. They just split. The woman walked south, the man walked north. No explanation. Nothing. Now, that woman was 25-year-old Samantha Sperry. And that strange little moment on the side of the highway,

• 3:24Annie Elise?

  it would become the center of a case that people in Kentucky, and honestly, true crime followers everywhere, still talk about today. Because that was allegedly the very last time that Samantha Sperry was ever seen alive. Her case today still has investigators, as well as her close family and friends, completely stumped as to what happened. So today, we are going to dive into Samantha's story. I'm Annie Elise, this is 10 to Life, and let's jump right in.

• 4:08Annie Elise?

  On the day that Samantha was allegedly last seen, some of her family members were reaching out to her, texting her, calling her, but she didn't respond. However, there weren't any alarm bells going off just quite yet because Samantha's friends and family had no idea that she had even disappeared. You see, in this moment, they just thought that maybe she was angry with them. Which I know, it might not make a whole lot of sense to you right now, but I promise it will in a little bit here. So they were all trying to reach her, but they were kind of just like, "Okay, Samantha is ignoring us. Maybe she just needs a little bit of space." And it's worth noting, though, that they still did think that it was a little bit weird

• 4:48Annie Elise?

  because they were a very close family and Samantha always stayed in contact with them. Now, her family knew that she was scheduled to work at McDonald's that night. Samantha had just recently been switched back to the night shift, and this was something that she had just told her family that week as well. So they waited until her scheduled shift was going to start, and then her mom Tina called McDonald's, asking to speak with her daughter Samantha. You know, she figured Samantha couldn't dodge her calls as easily that way. But to her surprise, Samantha's manager said Samantha was a no-call, no-show that night at work. Now, this was alarming because Samantha was very serious about her job.

• 5:31Annie Elise?

  It was how she paid the bills, how she helped take care of her two young kids, and it was how she could afford the car that she had just bought all on her own, and how she paid the rent at her new apartment. So not calling in sick and not showing up to work? To say that that was out of character for her, that would be a complete understatement. So understandably, her family started panicking. Their minds were going in a million different directions all at once, wondering where she was, why she hadn't been in contact all day, where she could possibly be. She wasn't answering anyone's phone calls. She also wasn't answering anybody's text messages at that point. And it wasn't like- She was just sending the calls to voicemail.

• 6:14Annie Elise?

  It seemed like her phone had been completely turned off. Which again, was really weird to them. Because not many people nowadays just willingly turn their phone off. Like ever. Most people don't even let their phones die, right? So, I get it, if you're going to sleep or if you're unavailable, maybe you turn the ringer off. But shutting your phone down? Not many people do that. Now by the time that Samantha's family learned all of this and processed what was going on. It was the very early morning hours of March twenty ninth. And after having exhausted all other options. Her family decided to go to the sheriff's department to file Samantha as a missing person. The authorities would of course step in, they would know what to do, right?

• 6:57Annie Elise?

  And right away, things with her case got pretty frustrating. The police were allegedly pretty nonchalant the entire time that they were talking with her family. They didn't really act like they were in any rush to get out there and to start looking for Samantha. In fact, they pretty much decided right away that Samantha had gone missing willingly. Which you might be wondering, okay, well, how could they be so sure when they literally? Had just discovered that she was missing? Can you really jump to that conclusion so quickly? Well, apparently, there was a little bit of bias involved. And it was really all they needed to make up their minds. You see Samantha was someone who had dealt with addiction throughout her life. Despite being so young still, only twenty five years old.

• 7:43Annie Elise?

  Things had gotten pretty bad for her during her teenage years and her addiction to substances had gotten way out of control. So much so, in a way that she just couldn't control or handle anything any longer. And like I mentioned earlier, she was extremely close with her family and they knew when it happened that she was going through a very severe rough patch. And they wanted better for her. So when she was just nineteen years old, they convinced her to go to rehab. And this really changed things for her. I'm not sure how long she was in that facility. But what I do know is that it really did make a positive impact on her and her life. Which to give you a better sense of who she was, she was described as the most loving and caring girl.

• 8:27Annie Elise?

  She was friendly, she was likable, she was outgoing, she was someone who always valued her relationships with her family. Which, of course, in turn, is what made them all so close and so worried when she disappeared without a trace. Samantha's favorite color was yellow, and she absolutely loved sunflowers too. She even had a sunflower tattoo on her left thigh. But really though, I mean, she loved any and all plants and flowers. Her middle name was Rose too, so it was almost like, you know, I don't know if the word is kismet, but it was meant to be. And her family said that she was just the kind of person who would go and sit with any person at a family gathering who was sitting all alone, just to make sure that they felt included and wanted.

• 9:11Annie Elise?

  She was the person who would go visit family members who hadn't had company in a long time, just to show that she cared. So all of that to say, she was so much more than her addiction and her battles. And after going to rehab, things really changed for her in the best way. She got out with this whole new mindset, she was doing so much better, almost like she was back to her old self again. Over the next few years, she met a man, got married, and ended up having two kids. Now, I personally have never dealt with addiction in my life, but I have seen and heard a lot of people say that every day can be an entirely new struggle. That it doesn't matter if you have been sober or clean for ten weeks or ten years,

• 9:56Annie Elise?

  there are going to be days where you just struggle and you don't feel as strong. And in 2018, the year that she disappeared, that was definitely the case for Samantha. For whatever reason, she and her husband had separated, so that was pretty complicated for her. Add in the fact that they had two kids together who were both pretty young, I mean, that complicated things quite a bit. Some sources said that she and her ex had split custody. And then some said that she had lost custody. So I'm not entirely sure where things between her and her ex and her kids really stood. But really, I think that everything was kind of an ongoing process because it was still so fresh.

• 10:37Annie Elise?

  And it was also during this time that her friends and family noticed another change in her. Which, when you're that close to someone, you just know, right? Samantha didn't need to come out and say that she was back in active addiction or that she was struggling. It's just something that her family was able to pick up on. And I'm not sure if the drug use was pre-divorce and custody battle, or if it was during it. Really, I'm not 100% sure if her family even knows that. That's not something that she would have been openly proud or bragging about. But either way, like I said, she was going through it. And she was not making the best choices. After her separation from her ex-husband, she reached out to an old friend named Ren Hendrickson.

• 11:22Annie Elise?

  Now, you might be thinking, okay, no big deal. She just wanted a friend through all of this. Or maybe she's even attracted to him and she wanted more than a friendship. That's fine, too. She's a single woman. I mean, what's the harm in that, right? Well, this was a pretty small area that Samantha and her family were from. And when you come from tight-knit communities like that, you kind of know everyone. Or you've at least heard about everyone. And the things that Samantha's family had heard and knew about Ren, and also his entire family, they really were not good at all.

• 11:58Annie Elise?

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• 12:31Annie Elise?

  They had a longstanding reputation for being troublemakers. It seemed like someone in the Hendrickson family was seemingly always getting arrested. There were burglary charges, theft, a slew of drug-related charges. I mean, possession, distribution, manufacturing. So I think it's fairly obvious why Samantha's friends and family definitely did not approve of this relationship. They already knew that Samantha had a fragile state of mind at this time. So being around somebody who was allegedly potentially doing drugs, selling drugs, and even making drugs at their house, not a good thing at all. But Samantha didn't see Ren or their relationship that way at all.

• 13:15Annie Elise?

  The two of them had apparently known each other since they were little kids. Ren said that he loved her ever since they were kids, and they had dated once before when they were much younger, so why not revisit that now? And like a lot of relationships when you're younger, things just aren't serious. They often break apart for one reason or another. So after Samantha separated from her husband, she messaged Ren, seeing if the spark was still there, seeing if they could reconnect. And truly, the rest was history. They'd finally been brought back together, and that was all that mattered to her. She felt like it was almost fate. Now, pretty much from the jump, Ren and Samantha's relationship was very toxic.

• 13:58Annie Elise?

  Not because of arguing and fighting, though that could have been possible too, but more so because of the substances that were involved. Ren admitted that when Samantha reached out to him wanting to catch up and meet up, he was a complete junkie. His words, not mine. He wasn't clean. His whole life was drugs. And when they actually got together, they just fed off of each other's worst habits.

• 14:23Speaker 06

  I tried, man. You know what I'm saying? But I'm a junkie. Was a junkie too. I can't. You know what I mean? I only get to say no so many times. Come on, Ren. Please, baby. You know what I'm saying? Hit me with them eyes. And plus, I'm wanting to get high. I'm not gonna lie. I was selfish. I was selfish. I should have, you know what I'm saying? I mean, she was risky. She was skits. She's bad.

• 14:54Annie Elise?

  So that was why Samantha and her family were in a bit of this rough patch. Samantha felt like she was head over heels for Ren and her family just wasn't getting it. They weren't supporting it. And she was kind of trying to retreat and just make her own decisions. So when she wasn't answering the phone calls or the text messages, her family just assumed she's with Ren. She's probably doing some bad choi- making some bad choices, doing some bad things. We'll give her a little bit of space. However, of course, her family wanted her to be in a good place again. And they didn't feel like her being around Ren was going to make that happen. They saw her declining and they knew that she wasn't clean anymore, even though she had successfully been clean for six years, which is a huge accomplishment.

• 15:38Annie Elise?

  So all of that to say too, that as soon as the police heard who Samantha was and who she was involved with, and that she had this history with addiction and potentially was no longer clean. They essentially just stopped listening and they weren't taking her being missing as seriously as they should have been. And I mean, I'm sure that the police still took notes and filed the report, but they were convinced that Samantha was just off on a binge somewhere. And that she would eventually show up or she would get back in contact with her family, you know? Give it a couple of days, she'll probably just show back up again. And Samantha had been in communication with her family members all the way up until this point.

• 16:19Annie Elise?

  So it's not like nobody had heard from her for weeks leading up to her disappearance. However, some of the last conversations that she had with her family members, they weren't really conversations at all. They were arguments. But that was just another piece of the puzzle that to police, it really proved that she wasn't missing. She was just taking time away from her family. Her family also shared some of these text exchanges that they had with Samantha online, which is why I even feel comfortable sharing them here. They made them public. But it really does show the rocky dynamic between her and her family at this time. On March 22nd, her aunt texted her a very long text message, almost like a message

• 17:03Annie Elise?

  that's so long that you have to click the little button at the bottom for the text to even like show the entire thing. But what we can see is that she said this. "I have typed a text to you 100 times today only to erase it. I thought I would just wait on you and not bombard you. I suck at waiting. All I can say is I love you. I love you more than you will ever know." Now, the rest of the text, we can't see, but I mean, we can infer that it was something about Samantha's relationship, her relationship with Ren, her mental state at the time, whatever it may be. Because we see in the next text that Samantha says, "All of you can fuck off and leave me alone. Ren is a good man. He has been the one here for me."

• 17:48Annie Elise?

  Which again, I'm not bringing this up to shame them or to do anything like that. Families fight, they argue. It's a very real thing for most of us, let's be honest. However, you can only imagine the glances that the investigators probably gave each other when they realized that this was the state of Samantha and her family's relationship at this time. Like, maybe they thought that it wasn't all that crazy for Samantha to be ignoring them. So, from day one, her entire family really had to be an advocate for her. They tried to convince the officers that their theory about her just being off on some binge and running away willingly, it's just, it was not true. Could she be back on drugs? Yes. They were admitting that, acknowledging that.

• 18:32Annie Elise?

  Like I said, she was going through a really dark patch. But would she just willingly ghost everyone, including her kids? Her youngest was a baby, not even two years old yet. So, the idea of that was just unfathomable. That was not the Samantha that they knew and loved. But here's where it gets even crazier. When Samantha's family and friends walked into the sheriff's office that day to report her as missing, the investigators already had information that made Samantha's disappearance stranger than anyone had realized. And that is when everything- took a turn. You see, on March 28th, literally, the night before Samantha was reported missing,

• 19:14Annie Elise?

  another missing person had been reported in the area. And that person was Ren Hendrickson, Samantha's boyfriend. Now Samantha's family had no idea that Ren's family had reported him missing. They really didn't like him. They weren't close to him, so they just genuinely had no idea. But the officers knew. And for whatever reason, this wasn't a huge, big, red flag to them. And maybe I'm doing too much assuming here where I shouldn't be, feel free to let me know. But I would imagine that based on what I know so far, that the police probably brushed off Ren and Samantha as well as just two people who were out on a drug binge together, too high to tell their families where they were,

• 19:58Annie Elise?

  creating this whole mess for everybody involved and just not taking it seriously. But the story with Ren's disappearance, it was a little bit different. Which is why, to me at least, it doesn't make sense that they would categorize this as them missing together. His mom had been the one to get in contact with law enforcement because, apparently, on the evening of the 28th, Ren FaceTimed her and he was acting very strange. He was kind of out of it and he told her that he had just taken a bunch of pills and that he was going out to the woods to die. So basically, he was warning her that he was about to take his own life. And from what I can tell, he seemed to be alone in that phone call. He didn't mention anything about Samantha.

• 20:42Annie Elise?

  So it's not like his mom was calling in saying, you know, both of them are out high together, they're about to take their own lives, they're out in the woods. It wasn't really even a missing persons report because Ren's mom had given the investigators an exact location where Ren said he would be, which happened to be Doom's Chapel Road. So maybe this was gonna be more like a wellness check? I mean, this was a concerned mom pleading for help and saying that her son was potentially about to die. But get this, the police finished their notes, they wrote down his mom's contact information, hung up the phone, and then they did nothing. They didn't go and search the area, they didn't try to get in contact with Ren.

• 21:27Annie Elise?

  They just did nothing. Now, they had their own reasoning for this, which they did put out into an official statement. But apparently, when they got the call, it was pretty late at night. It was dark out already. So they claimed that going into the woods to look for Ren, it would have been putting their officers at risk. Apparently, they had had previous encounters with Ren, and he had been violent in the past. He also had been armed at the time. So he was already noted as being a safety risk to officers, which, okay, I get all of that. That would be dangerous to go into the dark with somebody who is potentially armed and dangerous. Certainly not disputing that.

• 22:08Annie Elise?

  But also, it's kind of weird at the same time, right? I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm way off here. But usually, when the police get a call about something, they don't just add it to their to-do list for the next day, whenever it's more convenient for them. They usually investigate right away. Dangerous person or not, that's kind of their job, right? I mean, especially if somebody is threatening to take their own life and you know the exact location where they are. Armed or not, you have flashlights, you have weapons yourself. Somebody's life is at risk. Why are you just jotting it down and doing no follow-up, right? But regardless, they waited until it was daylight on the 29th to go and check it out.

• 22:52Annie Elise?

  But when they arrived at Doom's Chapel Road, there were no signs of Ren. However, there was something there. At the intersection of Doom's Chapel Road and Highway 131, the investigators found an abandoned Ford Taurus. Now, a quick scan of the plates and tags revealed that the car belonged to none other than Samantha. So that was kind of interesting in all of this, and I'm not sure if finding her car happened before or after her mom filed the missing persons report, because obviously, the timelines here do matter. But I couldn't find the exact time that each of those things happened. But it is very possible that they had found Samantha's car before she was even reported as missing.

• 23:36Annie Elise?

  And either way, it was on the same day. The police either knew that Samantha's car had been dumped somewhere by the time that her mom came in and reported her missing. And yet still didn't act worried about her being missing. Or they had found her abandoned car after the family had reported her missing. Yet still didn't give it much thought as being weird. Either way you look at it, it feels like an epic failure, right? Now, the moral of the story is that finding Samantha's car and the knowledge of her car being abandoned. It didn't change anything for her case in the beginning. Yet they were still checking out where Ren was. So they went further into the woods where Ren's mom claimed that he would be.

• 24:20Annie Elise?

  And just like before, no signs of Ren. But they did find something, really multiple things. There was a four wheeler, keys to a car, two cell phones that looked like they had been partially burned. Ashes and remains of a small fire that had been recently put out. Which you might be thinking, okay, a four wheeler in the woods in Kentucky, sounds like a pretty normal day. But it was once they really started looking at the details of everything that they had found. That they realized that this was actually kind of strange. Pretty quickly, they learned that the car keys were the keys to the Ford Taurus, the one that they had found that was Samantha's car. But the four wheeler and the two phones, those did not belong to Samantha.

• 25:06Annie Elise?

  They belonged to a man named Dusty Holder. And Dusty's name was all too familiar to the police. You see, Dusty was Ren's dad. He was part of that whole crew that I mentioned earlier that was like nine out of ten times just like up to no good. So this was all kinds of strange. Who was involved? Who was here? What's going on here? Ren and Samantha were both reported missing under completely different circumstances. Really Samantha's family didn't even know the circumstances surrounding how she was missing. Just that she was missing and that something weird was going on. Then Samantha's car and car keys end up where Ren was supposed to have been taking his own life in the woods.

• 25:49Annie Elise?

  Yet there were no signs of either of them, just his dad's four wheeler and phones. It was just very, very odd. Could they have stolen all of this stuff? Were they off on a bender truly? Like what's going on here? So the investigators got a hold of Ren's dad Dusty and they asked him a couple of questions. And boy, oh, boy, did he have an entire story. And I say story because that's just what it seemed like it was. One big make-believe story. He started off by saying, first of all, he had no idea where Samantha or Ren were. But yes, he had been with Samantha not too long before, on the night of the 27th, and also the very early morning hours of the 28th.

• 26:33Annie Elise?

  And his story went a little something like this. Samantha and Ren had come over to his house in Kentucky on the 27th. At some point during the evening, Samantha and Ren got into an argument. Now, what exactly they got into an argument over, he either didn't say, or it just wasn't reported. But apparently, the argument got so heated that Ren stormed off, leaving Samantha behind with Dusty. And I say stormed off, but really, he drove off, and he drove off with Samantha's car, I might add. And look, I'm sure that for a lot of us, maybe something similar has happened before in our relationships. But what would you do in that situation if you were Samantha? Maybe stay at Dusty's and wait until Ren comes back?

• 27:18Annie Elise?

  Maybe have Dusty take you home? Maybe call a family member to come and pick you up? I mean, those are the most likely options, right? But Dusty claims that instead of doing any of the above, Samantha just ran off, right into the woods that were near Dusty's house. Now, it's important to note that Samantha lived in Murray, Kentucky, which is about 30 minutes south of where Dusty lived. So it's not like Samantha lived nearby and was just gonna go walk home and make a shortcut through the woods. There would have been no logical reason for her to have gone out into the woods. But this is when Dusty claimed that he got on his four-wheeler and he went out searching for Samantha.

• 28:01Annie Elise?

  And apparently, it took him a while to find her, which, to me, kind of seems like another red flag. I mean, because the way I'm interpreting his claim is that he went into the woods right after her. So if she's on foot and he's on a four-wheeler, she couldn't have gotten that far, right? Yet he says it took a long time to find her. And I mean, even if he waited 30 minutes behind, she probably couldn't get that far on foot, especially, again, if he is on something with four wheels that goes pretty fast and would have caught up with her quickly. But that's what he says happened. And he said that by the time he found Samantha, they were very deep in the woods. So deep in the woods, that in the middle of riding back to his house, they ran out of gas.

• 28:46Annie Elise?

  And by the time all of this happened, Dusty said it was very late at night. Late enough to be really dark out, essentially pitch blackout, without the lights on the four wheeler being turned on. So instead of trying to find their way back to the house and potentially getting really, really lost in doing so. They decided to just stay with the four wheeler for the night. Then make their way back first thing in the morning when the sun came up. Dusty said that it was really cold that night, so they decided that they were gonna try to make a fire for warmth. But it was also wet out, so it was hard to get the fire going and keep it going. So basically, they spent the night in the middle of the woods with no camping gear, nothing really to keep them warm.

• 29:30Annie Elise?

  A fire that wasn't doing much of anything at all. No working four wheeler, nothing. Now, keep in mind though, there were those two cell phones that were found that were partially burned. Almost like they had been thrown into the fire. And I'm no camping expert, but I would imagine that if you are desperate for a fire and for warmth. And you have no gas. Cell phones probably are the thing you want the most and aren't something that you're using to start a fire. And just another side note here, really quickly. Both of those cell phones ended up belonging to Dusty. Which is bizarre in and of itself. Maybe one was a burner phone, maybe a work phone, a personal phone, who the heck knows?

• 30:14Annie Elise?

  But after a long night of being stuck out in the cold. Daylight finally started to break. So they started walking in the direction that they thought was the right way. But instead of ending up back at Dusty's house, they ended up on a highway one thirty-one. Either way, they had made it out of the woods and technically to safety, so that was good. But Dusty said at this point, they decided to split up. He knew where he was. He wanted to walk to the nearest store to warm up, to get something to eat, to just like regroup, you know? He knew that there was a payphone there as well, that he would be able to call for help. But he said that Samantha, she didn't want to join him.

• 30:54Annie Elise?

  She apparently told him that her cousin lived nearby, that she was gonna just walk there in the opposite direction that he went. So that was the last time that he saw her. And really, this was allegedly the last time that anyone had seen Samantha. Because she never showed up at her cousin's house. She also, as we know, didn't show up for work later that night. And again, that was all from Dusty's perspective. And a lot of his story has been heavily scrutinized. Starting with the fact that it makes no sense how Samantha's car and car keys were nearby where they were if they had been lost in the woods and had been on foot. Not to mention, according to his own story, Ren had taken Samantha's car.

• 31:38Annie Elise?

  So how did her car end up on the road abandoned near where they allegedly went their separate ways? And why were her car keys with the four wheeler? Ren didn't go to the same place they went to. It just wasn't making sense. And I really was trying to wrap my brain around every possibility. Like maybe Ren heard that Samantha was missing and he went out into the woods looking for her? Maybe he accidentally left her keys with the four wheeler? Maybe he heard the four wheeler and decided to drive that direction? I, I was trying to think of every possibility. But even that couldn't be true. Because nobody knew that Samantha was missing until after Ren was reported missing himself.

• 32:22Annie Elise?

  Or, at least, that's how everything seemed. Which there's always a chance that maybe Ren had known something before Samantha was ever officially reported missing by her family. Possibly, but I don't know. That's all just scrutiny based on the circumstances, not really making sense. And there are other things to consider too. Like the fact that only one set of footprints were ever found in the woods near the four wheeler. And also, only one set of footprints leading up to the road where Dusty said they both finally found safety after that horrible night in the woods. Then there's also the fact that Highway 131 was a pretty busy road and not a single

• 33:03Annie Elise?

  person ever came forward to say that they saw a woman matching Samantha's description walking alone on the road that morning. And the more you start to look into this and the more you start to piece together that these statements really aren't adding up, the more it appears that Samantha wasn't even in the woods at all that night. Now, at this point, even the police are kind of like, yeah, we gotta admit, all of this is weird. So on March 30th, the investigators decided to do a very serious and thorough search for both Ren and Samantha. It had been two days at this point since Ren was reported as missing and one day since Samantha had been reported missing.

• 33:45Annie Elise?

  Now, for believing everyone's stories, the main area that correlated between the two different disappearances was the woods. This particular area of the woods, which is also known as Kayler's Bottom. It's pretty vast, there's around 1,900 acres of nothing but woods. And during the springtime, which is when all of this took place, there are a lot of swampy areas that are apparently just pure mud. In fact, 91% of it is swamp, if we're getting super specific here. And investigators could not find a single thing that showed Samantha herself had ever been out in those woods. No footprints, no fingerprints, just nothing. And that was just Samantha.

• 34:30Annie Elise?

  They still hadn't found Ren either, or any evidence of him being in the woods. But then, on April 1st, there was some major breaking news in both of their cases. Ren was found, alive and well. And really, he hadn't even been found, he had wandered out of the woods all on his own. Interestingly enough, he came out of the woods right by his dad Dusty's house too, which, talk about miraculous luck, I guess, or too much to be a coincidence, I don't know, we'll get there. But he looked pretty rough, almost like he had been out There for quite some time. So he was immediately rushed to the nearby hospital. Ren was hypothermic and really dehydrated.

• 35:16Annie Elise?

  But overall, the medical professionals said that he was gonna be fine. So after he was cleared and the doctors knew that he would be fine, he was kind of like the man that they all wanted to talk to. The police definitely wanted to talk to him about Samantha. And what's weird is after they did, they literally told NBC News, quote, "Something smells bad." Not like, "He's been missing for days and he stinks," although that was probably the case too. But there was something about the entire case that just was not landing right. And to get there, we have to go through Ren's version of events.

• 35:57Speaker 04

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• 36:30Annie Elise?

  According to him, yes, he and Samantha went to Dusty's on the 27th. But here's where things between his story and Dusty's story, they start to diverge. Remember Dusty claimed that Ren and Samantha got into an argument? And that's why Ren took off, left Samantha behind, and took her car. However, Ren said that they never got into an argument at all, and that that part of the story was just simply false. He said that he had just decided to go back to Samantha's house in Murray, which this detail definitely matters because it complicates things. If they weren't arguing, why wouldn't Samantha have gone with him back to her house? You know, why wouldn't she have gone in her own car to her own house?

• 37:15Annie Elise?

  And taking that a step further, if Ren hadn't taken her car, angry and leaving her behind to be petty, why would Samantha have allegedly run into the woods? None of it makes any sense or adds up. So anyway, get this, Ren claimed that he had no idea that Samantha was ever missing. So when I was first looking into this case, I kind of feel like I had it all wrong. It seemed like Ren knew that Samantha was missing and was inconsolable about it. So he went into the woods to take his own life, something like that perhaps. But when Ren finally came out of the woods, he acted shocked that everybody was asking him about Samantha and whether she was with him or not. He claimed to have no idea what had happened to her after he left her at Dusty's that night.

• 38:01Annie Elise?

  Now, is this particular detail a red flag? I mean, it definitely could be, depending on who you ask. Samantha's family found it to be awfully odd, especially the timing of it all. One of her family members even wrote on Facebook, "Why was Ren suicidal? I mean, he has been a piece of crap his whole life, but now all of the sudden he wants to die? Why?" Which it might sound like a very harsh way to put it, but I also kind of get what they mean. If Ren was saying that he and Samantha didn't argue that night, that everything was fine, that it wasn't an argument or a potential breakup that made him feel the way he did, and if he wasn't aware of Samantha being missing yet, then that wouldn't have been the reason either. Why would he have wanted to take his own life?

• 38:45Annie Elise?

  Ren had told the investigators that when he went out into the woods with the hopes of overdosing and dying, he took some items of his and also some items of Samantha with him. He said that he lost them whenever he was lost and trying to find his way back and the police were never able to find them, but it was another weird detail. And I don't know about you, but it kind of sounds like a guilty conscience to me. Almost like he was so upset about something happening to his girlfriend that he just couldn't go on any longer. That he was also taking some of her things with him so that they would be with him during his final moments, that they would be together, which, I don't know, is at a stretch? Maybe, maybe not, that's kind of just where my mind goes.

• 39:30Annie Elise?

  And what these items were exactly, we don't know. It wasn't stated in the official documents. However, the police did say that whatever those items were, they could be important to Samantha's case. Long story short, when Ren walked out of the woods without Samantha, the investigators were kind of like, okay, this is serious. The two of them weren't together, and Ren is saying that they were never together in the woods. So we actually do have a missing woman on our hands here. And Ren and Dusty's involvement in all of this, I mean, it was just complicated, and it complicated everything. Neither one of them were exactly people in good standing with law enforcement. Their word alone was far from being trustworthy.

• 40:15Annie Elise?

  So investigators had each of them take a separate lie detector test. And apparently, both of them passed, which I would have loved to know the exact questions that they asked them, truly. But even though they passed those polygraph tests, neither one of their stories still added up. It was all too convenient and suspicious. And after Ren was found, he really started separating himself from his dad Dusty, which you would think that both of them would be on the same team of sorts, but they weren't a unified front. Apparently, Ren felt like Dusty was hiding something, something major. Since being found alive and well, Ren also has come forward to give one interview, the only public interview that he's ever done.

• 41:00Annie Elise?

  It's less than an hour long, but he really had a lot to say. So I want to go over some of the things that he touched on here. Something that the interviewers really wanted to know was why he went into the woods that day, planning to die. Like I said, it was a really convenient timing. He claims he's innocent in Samantha's disappearance. But is he? Could he have wanted to take his own life because he knew that something had happened to Samantha? Maybe he knew that she was dead. Of course, he says no way that that was not the truth. He was not thinking of taking his own life for anything that even was remotely involved to her or her case. And he tried to give an explanation of why, but it doesn't really make much sense.

• 41:44Annie Elise?

  So don't listen to this clip that I'm going to play for you and expect a whole lot of clarity. It's not really there, but take a listen.

• 41:51Speaker 06

  I was in bad shape when I come out them woods. I took a bunch of, I did take a bunch of pills. I was scared, man. They the truck started revving its engine, I run out of gas. Man, I mean like revving its engine aggressive, but I got scared, man, I ain't gonna lie, I was, I, I knew something's up. And I don't know who it was. Oh. All I know is, all I know is, something's going on. And I ran into woods.

• 42:22Speaker 06

  Called my mom, told her I loved her. Said my goodbyes. I meant to die that day. I'll be honest. And I'm not scared a minute. I was really wanting to die. I would rather die by my own hands than let another one get me.

• 42:38Speaker 03

  And you, were you wanting to die because of what?

• 42:41Speaker 06

  I was scared out of fear. No, I didn't know. I, I didn't know, I didn't know.

• 42:49Speaker 06

  It don't, it would.

• 42:54Speaker 06

  Just put this way, I'm.

• 42:58Speaker 06

  I was just scared. I don't know what I was scared of. I don't know whether, I thought at first it was, I, at first I, I thought the cops was following me. But after that. I don't know. I didn't know. Would paranoid be the right word? Yeah, I thought, that's what I thought. Like at first I did, I until I started, license plates don't lie, numbers don't lie. Unless they're taking that same license plate and putting on a different car, same car.

• 43:29Speaker 06

  You know what I mean? And I just was scared. I didn't know who it was.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  You didn't know what was really happening?

• 43:36Speaker 06

  It just something happened a little earlier.

• 43:40Speaker 06

  About a couple of weeks before that.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  What was that?

• 43:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm not gonna speak on it. It's just.

• 43:47Speaker 06

  I don't wanna be. No, I just don't wanna speak on it.

• 43:50Annie Elise?

  So let's go over everything that was in that clip. Ren kept mentioning that he went out into the woods, wanting to die at his own hands because he was scared and because he thought that the cops were following him. He also mentioned toward the end that something happened a few weeks prior that made him believe that the cops were following him. Maybe a drug bust incident, who knows? The investigators did say that they had an incident with him not too long before. But either way, his explanation is more that he went out there out of fear of getting caught for whatever he was doing, rather than anything that had to do with Samantha. But of course, whether you believe that or not, that's up to you.

• 44:31Annie Elise?

  But then, there's his relationship with Dusty, which was another huge topic of conversation. After Ren came out of the woods and realized everything that was going on, he claimed that he allegedly went to Dusty, trying to understand what had happened and when he had actually last seen Samantha. But according to him, Dusty wasn't willing to talk. He even got mad at him for not dropping the subject. Take a listen.

• 44:59Speaker 06

  But he didn't look at me. No. And to me, I've asked him. I've asked him numerous times. I asked him right after it happened. I said, "Dad, what happened?" But...

• 45:15Speaker 06

  I actually didn't say "Dad." I said "Dusty," and he's like, "Man, we need to talk, man." I was like, "Look, dude, you need to give me some answers." He told me to shut up.

• 45:29Speaker 06

  "Why are you asking so many questions?"

• 45:33Speaker 06

  No. To me?

• 45:38Speaker 06

  You know how people avoid people when they know they did something foul?

• 45:45Speaker 06

  If he didn't do nothing foul, he'd be right here beside me in this interview.

• 45:51Speaker 06

  I don't believe him. And apparently, they had questions about the lie detector too. Mine wasn't questionable. Mine, I asked. Now... How much does that tear you apart?

• 46:03Speaker 04

  Knowing that, you know, somebody, your own father. Whether.

• 46:09Speaker 06

  I can't say, I can't say, I can't say he did anything because man, I would never expect it. You know what I'm saying?

• 46:19Speaker 06

  But I can say

• 46:22Speaker 06

  that he shouldn't turn his back. I mean, if he knew something,

• 46:32Speaker 06

  he should tell me. You know what I'm saying?

• 46:37Speaker 06

  I mean, whatever happened, they live for that for the rest of their life and it eats at them and eats at them. I can't say whether he did something, whether he didn't.

• 46:47Speaker 06

  But if he did, hope he lives miserable for the rest of his life.

• 46:51Annie Elise?

  Ren claimed that he and his dad were never that close. Apparently, he didn't even learn that Dusty was his biological dad until he was thirteen years old. Even though Ren knew Dusty and Dusty had been in his life, he never knew that he was his father. He just thought that Dusty was his uncle's friend, which, I don't know, that sounds like a very difficult family situation to deal with. But it really seemed like Samantha's disappearance kind of brought up a lot of unresolved family stuff.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  I ain't said nothing to him. I tried to talk to him afterwards. I ain't said nothing to him since. That day, he told me, why am I asking so many damn questions? I'll never forget it. Because I deserve some answers.

• 47:39Speaker 04

  Not only did you lose the love of your life, you lost your relationship with your father, huh?

• 47:45Speaker 06

  Well, hell, there wasn't much of a relationship there anyways, but I'm not gonna point fingers at him. Because I'm not God. I ain't got, I ain't got the power to judge him.

• 47:57Speaker 06

  All I got to say.

• 48:02Speaker 06

  It's karma come back around.

• 48:04Annie Elise?

  During that same interview, Ren was really defending himself, claiming that he was out searching for Samantha, that he was doing everything that he could possibly do to bring her back home to her kids and the rest of her family.

• 48:17Speaker 06

  Did you ever go out and search or look for her? Yeah, I did. I, uh, I went and bought a Jeep. And I, I went out a little bit, but really, a lot of people point fingers at me. A lot of people hold resentment against me. The only resentment they should hold against me is I was a junkie and really a piece of shit, to be honest.

• 48:48Annie Elise?

  The interviewers even brought up an interesting theory. Could she and Dusty have been doing drugs that night after Ren left? Maybe she overdosed, maybe Dusty didn't want to deal with it or get in trouble for it. So he hid her body and then he made up this whole elaborate story. But Ren, he shut that theory down too.

• 49:10Speaker 06

  If she did OD, I'd call 911. I wouldn't have, but did she? No, she didn't OD. Oh, yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 06

  Well, first of all, where's the IV users?

• 49:27Speaker 06

  My dad don't use an IV.

• 49:31Speaker 06

  He's, he was smoke, he smoked. You're talking meth? He don't, he don't use an IV. So, and I had the rigs, I had the needles.

• 49:43Annie Elise?

  Now, it might sound a little bit like Ren puts the full blame for whatever happened to Samantha on Dusty, but really, he has his own theories, some that don't even include Dusty or his family at all. Take a listen.

• 49:58Speaker 06

  I think it's bigger than, man, way bigger than what we think.

• 50:06Speaker 06

  There's, there's people, the other people that had motive. What would that be? We didn't, I'm not gonna speak on that. I don't wanna be like that. What that motive would be?

• 50:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, something very precious to him.

• 50:24Speaker 06

  So, I'm just saying

• 50:33Speaker 06

  that she got herself into something with someone

• 50:45Speaker 06

  that she didn't know what she's getting into.

• 50:49Speaker 06

  You know?

• 50:52Speaker 06

  And that's what I think. But I think that we was being followed.

• 50:58Speaker 06

  And they was waiting for an opportunity with her alone. And the reason we was being followed so, so long is because she was never alone. She didn't like to be alone. Hell, I couldn't even get her run to the gas station to get a pack of cigarettes.

• 51:17Annie Elise?

  Now, those were all just Wren's own theories and feelings. But what about Dusty? What about the Sheriff's Department? And what about Samantha's family? What did they think? Well, buckle up because things only got more bizarre from here. And there were a lot of twists and turns. Dusty wasn't even willing to talk to his own son, let alone the media or the investigators. As for Samantha's family, they have other theories and feelings about it. And let's just say they do not match up with Wren's. Now Samantha's different family members will frequently post on their social media page that's dedicated to finding Samantha. But some of her family has also done some interviews,

• 52:02Annie Elise?

  one of them being Samantha's stepdad, Tony. He talked with Heather Cohen on the Justice Warriors podcast, and she was kind enough to share that audio with us. His interview is very interesting, too, because it gives more insight into the investigation and everything from her family's point of view. For example, the situation with the polygraph tests. The media and the police say that Dusty and Wren both took these polygraph tests and that they both passed. But according to Tony, it's much less straightforward than what's currently out there.

• 52:37Speaker 06

  A call came in that the guy she was seeing

• 52:42Speaker 05

  Apparently called and said he was suicidal and he went into the woods. Left her car, her car on the side of the road. And that was just odd to me because. My daughter was proud of, of getting this car. It's the first thing that she was able to buy on her own. So automatically we knew something was wrong because. My daughter's just not gonna let somebody just take her car. If you're under the influence of, of drugs, you can beat a polygraph.

• 53:12Speaker 05

  Um, Oriole comeback, not, not conclusive or something like that. Well, the old sheriff, uh, Redman, he did, he did tell me and my wife that they, everybody passed. Um, I do know several times Ren was supposed to go get a polygraph. And for some reason he had go to the hospital or they took him to the hospital. Uh, because he was heavily. Uh, drugged with meth. Um, finally they got, they got him to get one. And then that's when the sheriff said everybody passed. Well, the new sheriff. Has told me, nobody passed it.

• 53:50Annie Elise?

  Tony says that the old sheriff on the case said that they both passed the polys. But once the new sheriff came into the picture, he allegedly told Tony and Samantha's mom that neither one of them passed. Tony also says that when you're on certain drugs, you can pass a polygraph test. So. I don't know what the truth is here. Is that even possible? Maybe. I've never taken a poly. I've also never been on drugs taking a poly. And while we're on the topic of the sheriff's department for a moment, I do want to talk a little bit about them and about. Their investigation with everything. The sheriff's department has claimed since day one that Samantha's case was always a high priority.

• 54:33Annie Elise?

  Now, like I mentioned earlier, her family feels otherwise. They believe that the department showed a bias towards her case and that they didn't care until way later, days later. When they finally realized the severity of the situation. Now, not too long after Samantha's disappearance, the investigators decided to do a search of Samantha's house in Murray, Kentucky. She hadn't lived there for very long. It was her first place after she got her divorce, but. The first search was apparently a dud. They didn't find anything of any sort of significance.

• 55:07Annie Elise?

  However, a week after the first search, a second search warrant was issued. And this search was different. Because this time, they found some blood in what they described as quote, "an undisclosed part of her house." So they took some samples and they sent them to the lab. Now, the sheriff at the time, Sheriff Ramage, he was quoted as telling NBC News, quote, "At this point, we don't have anything back on that, and we don't know when we will get the results back on that." That article was published on May 14th, 2018. But in October of 2018, the sheriff's department released a three-page letter going over the

• 55:51Annie Elise?

  investigation and how it had progressed over those few months. And in that letter, they wrote that the evidence that they had submitted so far came back as negative. Now, what exactly those different pieces of evidence are, we don't know. The letter didn't specify. Although, they did say that they had 39 items in total. I assume that the evidence included the blood and the blood tests that had been sent out. However, on the Bring Samantha Home Facebook page that's run by her family, they claimed that the evidence mentioned by the investigators did not include the blood tests. And that post was back in 2018 as well.

• 56:34Annie Elise?

  Which I've tried to look up if those blood tests ever came back. I would assume that they probably had, since that was years ago. But I had a really difficult time finding anything that specified whether or not those results ever came back and what those results were. Now, that letter that was released by the authorities, it wasn't just to update the public. It was also to defend themselves. Like I mentioned a second ago, Samantha's family created a public Facebook page where they had been advocating for Samantha and her case, pretty much from the moment that she went missing. They also have been very vocal about how displeased they have been with the handling of her case. Which, again, I totally get, totally understand. And, and I'm sure any of you guys listening, if any of our family members were missing,

• 57:19Annie Elise?

  we would want none other than the best of the best investigating it. So the Graves County Sheriff's Office argued in their letter that the best of the best was them. They claimed that not too long into Samantha's investigation, both the Kentucky State Police and the FBI took a look at the files, that they reviewed everything and allegedly they told them that they were doing everything that they should have been doing. And that because of that, they didn't need to get involved or offer any sort of extra help. But Samantha's family, they still had their doubts. Because literally just two months prior, there had been a scandal in the sheriff's office. The old sheriff in Samantha's case had been indicted on a drug charge

• 58:04Annie Elise?

  for stealing controlled substances from the sheriff's office's drug box, taking them for personal use. Obviously not a good sign. Now, this doesn't mean that they had something to do with Samantha's disappearance or any sort of cover up or anything like that directly, but it definitely shows that there was some shady business going on in that office. I mean, at the very least, it proved to Samantha's family that they weren't the most honest or reliable people involved, right? And when I first found that out, part of my mind also went to, and your mind might be going there too, if that sheriff is the same one who lied about Ren and his dad Dusty passing the polygraph tests, is it because he was helping them with drug dealings?

• 58:48Annie Elise?

  That they were all colluding together, that he was trying to cover for them? How deep does this go? And exactly one year to the date of Samantha's disappearance, the sheriff's office put together an entire new task force to work the case. It was made up of a handful of seasoned investigators and officers from the nearby region. Some Kentucky State Police members and even some representatives from the FBI joined as well. The goal was really to look at everything through a new lens and hopefully discover something that had potentially been missed before. That included searching the area, doing new interviews, getting new leads, all the things. And that was in the spring of 2019.

• 59:31Annie Elise?

  And it really gave Samantha's family a renewed sense of hope. Like maybe this was the moment that something new would come out, something that would change the entire investigation. And there were a few times when they got leads that felt like, okay, maybe this is it. One of those leads was actually that same spring of 2019. The task force was out in the woods conducting yet another search. And that's when they stumbled upon something that was literally out of a movie. On the ground, covered in dark colored leaves, in almost this way that camouflaged it. It was a literal underground bunker. And if you've ever seen the movie The Lovely Bones, it kind of gives that vibe.

• 1:00:14Annie Elise?

  Where it's like this underground bunker that is a large room stocked with food, clothing, drug-related items, two-way radio equipment. I mean, clearly, somebody was living in this little, like, hidden bunker in the woods.

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• 1:01:37Speaker 03

  A fugitive on the run for seven months is found in an underground bunker just a couple hundred yards from where police last saw him. And tonight, we have new video from In

• 1:01:45Speaker 04

  Beside the bunker, Kelsey Anderson has more.

• 1:01:48Annie Elise?

  Oh my god. It's crazy. This is crazy. Graves County Sheriff's deputies and K-9s were out searching this area for Samantha Sperry, who's been missing since this time last year.

• 1:02:02Speaker 04

  We were walking through the woods and one of our dogs, the dogs that were with us, kind of almost fell in a hole.

• 1:02:08Annie Elise?

  After some digging Detective Brooke Nelms tells me they found the opening to what looked like an underground bunker.

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  The hole was very small and I was the smallest person on scene at the time, so we decided that I would go in and see if there was anybody in there.

• 1:02:22Annie Elise?

  She says when she announced herself, no one answered, but once she was underground, she could tell someone was there.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  I observed several pieces of clothing and items that indicated somebody was living there. The mattress was kind of slanted up and thought possibly somebody could be in there. And I raised one end of the mattress and saw feet and that's when I announced myself again and advised the subject he needed to show me his hands.

• 1:02:50Annie Elise?

  Dean, I will shoot your [BLEEP].

• 1:02:54Annie Elise?

  Put your hands up now. The biggest detail being that somebody was in fact living there. Someone with a very popular last name. Hendrickson. Just like Ren. Just like Dusty.

• 1:03:07Speaker 04

  What's the first thing that goes through your mind? Is he armed? And am I in a position where I can protect myself and hope the good Lord's with me?

• 1:03:17Annie Elise?

  While she's getting the praise today, she says she knows all of her fellow officers would have done the same thing.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  I feel like any of the deputies here, anybody that works at the sheriff's office would have done the same thing. I feel like I just kind of got the short end of the straw because I'm small.

• 1:03:31Annie Elise?

  The man inside was named Ernest. Forty-one-year-old Ernest Hendrickson. And a warrant had been out for his arrest for a slew of drug-related charges. So it was clear that he had been living in this bunker for a while, just trying to evade and hide from the police. And everybody kind of wondered the exact same thing now. Could this have once been a place where Samantha was maybe? Held against her will, maybe her body had been disposed of here. I mean, talk about the perfect hiding spot, right? And the fact that there was this underground bunker in an Appalachian swamp? A bunker that belonged to a family member of Dusty and Ren. I mean,

• 1:04:13Annie Elise?

  where there's smoke, there's fire, right? This is not a coincidence. It can't be. But here's the thing. Ernest wasn't related to Ren, at least not that I could find or that anyone had announced anywhere. And there were no signs of Samantha, no signs that she had ever even been there. Which it's just unbelievable because like it feels like it's ripped from a movie. You cannot make this stuff up. They find this underground hidden bunker, yet seemingly no connection to Samantha. And then years began to pass. And as every single year that passed, Samantha was missing key milestones. Her children's birthdays, first days of school, holidays. I mean, she never came back home.

• 1:04:55Annie Elise?

  And this only solidified to her family that she had never left willingly. The leads ran dry. The searches slowed down. The investigators have said that Samantha's case has not gone cold and that they are still actively searching for her. And they want to give her family a sense of peace. Not only that, but justice. And what's kind of crazy to me is that even though Dusty and Ren were the last two people to have ever seen Samantha alive, neither one of them has ever officially been named a person of interest or a suspect in her case. And this case honestly reminds me a lot of the Crystal Rogers case that happened in two thousand fifteen, also in Kentucky.

• 1:05:38Annie Elise?

  I've done multiple videos on Crystal's case, but for those of you who might not be familiar or you're maybe new listening here, Crystal disappeared under very mysterious circumstances. For years, the public deconstructed every single move that her boyfriend made too. His stories just never fully matched up. His demeanor was off, but there was no proof to connect him to her disappearance. No body, seemingly no evidence. But then finally, years later in

• 1:06:05Annie Elise?

  Twenty twenty two, the investigators found enough evidence to arrest her boyfriend, her boyfriend's father, and a friend of theirs. And they were all ultimately convicted in twenty twenty five, although Crystal's body has still never been found. Now I bring her case up specifically, not because they both happened in Kentucky, but because in Crystal's case, it really seemed like the case had run cold, like her disappearance would forever remain one huge mystery, and that whoever had done this to her would just get to live the rest of their lives, knowing what happened to her, but live freely. But then, justice was served. And yes, years have passed since Samantha first went missing, but it's never too late for justice to be served.

• 1:06:51Annie Elise?

  Her loved ones believe that there is no other situation involved other than foul play here, that someone made her disappear that day in March of two thousand eighteen, and that someone out there knows what happened to her and where her body is. Which, I'll just say, I have a feeling that it has to do with the Hendrickson family. I don't know, maybe Samantha really did overdose that night, and Ren and Dusty worked together to get rid of her body. Maybe Ren left and Dusty did something very terrible to her that somehow ended in her death and he disposed of her body. Maybe they're working together, maybe they're not, maybe the dad enlisted, the bunker guys helped too, I don't know, but

• 1:07:34Annie Elise?

  there's too many coincidences, in my opinion, for there not to be some sort of connection here. And I can't even say with any sort of confidence that maybe something did happen to her after leaving Dusty's to go walk to her cousin's house because nobody saw her on that road. There was no evidence of her ever being in the woods that night with Dusty either. I think something happened that night before they split off into the woods. It just seems highly unlikely that her disappearance was some sort of freak thing where she got picked up off of the side of the road by this deranged killer, that there's people failing polygraph tests and lying in hidden bunkers, but they have no involvement, that Ren and Dusty were still the last ones to have seen her, but

• 1:08:19Annie Elise?

  they're cleared, and both of them, by the way, have been in and out of trouble since she went missing as well. So something here just does not smell right. Today Samantha will be thirty-three years old. She has strawberry blonde hair, hazel eyes, multiple different tattoos, and she was last seen on or around March twenty-seventh, two thousand and eighteen, in the Kaylors Bottom area of Kentucky. She was also last seen wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, gray sweatpants with a red waistband. Also, she had sneakers on her feet. So if for some reason, anybody watching this episode or listening to this episode believes that they might have any relevant information involving Samantha's disappearance or her case,

• 1:09:04Annie Elise?

  please contact the Graves County Sheriff's Office at two seven zero two four seven four five zero one. Her family deserves answers, her kids deserve answers, she deserves justice. So, thank you so much for listening to Samantha's story, and I'm curious to know what you think too. Are you aligned with me? Do you think there's something shady with the dad? And possibly even the boyfriend, or mainly just the dad? Do you think that they are just shady people? And they had no involvement, and it's something different? What's with that bunker that was in the woods? What's with the sheriff? Who had drug involvement as well? And lied and said they passed the polygraph test? It feels like, you know, it's giving collusion, in my opinion.

• 1:09:49Annie Elise?

  But, I don't know, maybe I'm just a pessimist because I've been doing this too long. But tell me what you think. Thank you so much for hearing Samantha's story, and until the next one, stay safe. Bye.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

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