Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
In November 2018, 18-year-old Samantha Guthrie mysteriously disappeared, leaving her Mother desperate for answers. The investigation began at an abandoned house linked to Samantha, where police would uncover bullet casings and blood stains with Samantha’s DNA. As detectives continued following the trail, they would unravel a case unlike anything they had seen before…
What began as a missing person’s report soon revealed a web of disturbing connections, all tied to the abandoned murder house… With tensions rising and lives on the line, the question remained: Would they find Samantha before it was too late?
Akron, Ohio.
everything started in november 2018 when a mother called police worried that her daughter had vanished without a trace, it had already been more than a day since anyone had seen 18 ear old samantha guthrie and the cops arrived quickly to take her mother joni statement
he’d become extremely familiar with lilian street as it would become the sight of hours and hours of investigation.
and one of the most distubing crimes to come out of the city
in years .
but now it sound as though samantha was murdered were at the very least kidnapped, but nobody can be sure ,all this information came over a mysterious phone call from someone they didn’t even know .
it turns out the house that joni is talking about was due to be boarded up in just a few days .
it’s in a rough area of town and has been abandoned for months and as joni said , samantha had been strugglng heavily, she left home as soon as she turned 18 and instantly fell in with a bad crowd.
she was often seen frequentling abandoned houses
used by drug abusers and criminals.
and she was slowly getting more distant from her family.
after this joni would give over a description of samantha incuding a distincting butterfly tatttoo on her right arm
before telling the cop one more crucial piece of information
this wasn’t a familiar name to police and the officer still wouldn’t seem to be too worried by the situation but that would soon come to change.
cause the same evening after publishing a missing person’s report of samantha
a lone man woud come to police claiming he knew exactly what happened to her and would lead police to launch a monthlong investigation
into multiple people all connected to the abandoned murder house.
back in Akron police had just published a detailed description of samantha and the morning after a very worried man would contact and claim to have detals that could either save her life or lead them to her body .
john marshall was the first of many witnesses in this case and he got in contact with the cops after hearing they were looking for samantha.
apparently he was actually at the house on the night everything happened, and saw it all with his own two eyes, the problem is it almost sounds too good to be true.
the cops don”t know marshall and can’t necessarily trust him to give a truthful statement , meaning they’ll have to verify all evidence he gives over
so as marshall talks to the cops we’ll be keeping tracks of each piece of information and then
following how the cops investigate and verify it all in order to hopefully solve the case and find samantha.
this is already an easy piece of information to verify if samantha’s dad did pay for the Uber then he’d certainly remember that and be able to confirm it
and conveniently the cops had interviewed her dad a few hours later and he did indeed tell him that he that he’ bought her an uber that night.
on top of that the address marshall gave was also correct
so it seems that he is turning out to be trustworthy so far ,this is incredibly useful information marshall is passing over
he’s just given the names of six potential withnesses and suspects and he seems to know them all personally ,if this is all true then marshall could have just taken this case from no leads at all to almost too much to handle.
the only thing the cops need now is verifiable information about exactly what happened to samantha.
that’s when detective ask this question and gets much more than he bargained for .
so sam and all them where upstairs(exept marshall) ,music was playing and sam runs downstairs , looking at marshall , marshall then go ” go out the back door “
sam panicking so marshall like ” leave.
she went to the basement and 2 or 3 minutes, later marshall heard little bit of commotion and then sam came upstairs ,first and she had like a little bit of a bloody nose or busted leap and she went back upstairs to jody’s room and danny and toni followed her
and five maybe 10 minutes later , sam came running down the stairs,Danny was right behind her and by the time she got to the fourth or fifth stari down from the living room floor ,he shot her in the back of the head.
it doesn’t get much clearer than that.
apparently samantha then fell to the ground and the house fell into disarray.
two men named Yoshi and william then started to order marshall and his friends around before helping carry samantha’s body to a vehicle outside.
the detective was starting to get a perfect what this case really was but there was stil one burning question .
is sam alive?
she kind of breathing at this point
but she got shot back of the head by 8 to 10 in with a smith a & weston MP40.
from the sonds of it samantha technically survived the shot but it wasn’t looking good, if she wasn’t taken to a hospital quickly she likely wouldn’t have made it .
but it doesn’t seem like the killers were expecting her to leave at least the cops now have
at least the cops now have a possible murder weapon a smith & western MP 40
remember though the cops have already searched the house and didn’t find any evidenceof a murder ,but given the importance of this information
they decided to go back and see if they missed anything , at this point samantha’s life hangs in the balance , if they find a single bullet casing or blood splatter
it likely that marshall was the truth and samantha is long dead.
this are the step s that samantha allegedly shot on but the cops can”t stop investigate yet.
knowing how hot this house is and how many places there are for people to hide, they have to be on high alert and clear the entire place out before thay can even thin about letting their guard down.
all three officers have their guns drawn and are doing their best to stick togetherif anybody should be inside.
it seems like the house is empty but it is a complete mess ,there,s no obvious evidence of a murder anywhere so it’s now clear why the the cops didn’t find anything their first time here.
however,marshall had told them two very important things , exactly where the shot was allegedly taken and more importantly that william and yoshi had actually come back to clean up the scene
that means that any signs of the murder could be extremely difficult to find but not impossible.
in fact you ‘ve actyally already seen some evidence that proves marshall’s story to be 100 % true take anothe look at the marking on the this wall, right below the crack ,it’s a little difficult to see but that isn’t grafiti. -that’s Samantha Guthrie ‘s blood.
once the cops spotted this it all fell into place,multiple blood spatters that hadn’t been cleaned up were found on the walls
as well as the bullet casings that looked similar to the bullets that the smith & western MP 40 uses,marshall was telling the truth
danny and tony were now wanted for murder and they had four other witnessesthey can could use to track them down and convict them
2 days after samantha’s disappearance
and in facts they wouldn’t have to wait long as police was soon called to a house where a girl claimed a couple had chased her with a gun.
this is kimberly one of the girls that marshall mentioned was at the house the day samantha was shot , the owners of this home called the cops after she beggs them to let her inside as she was being chased, allegedly by some others that frequent the house on lillian street .
they cops are desperate to know what could have possibly made her this distress so they bring her outside to their cruiser to talk
whatever happened to kimberly was clearly a blur to her but the cops are starting to get a little concerned, barely a couple days after samantha’s supposed death one of the witnesses gets chased by a group of people holding guns, it could just be coincidence.
the cops ask her why she was in town to see if this could be related to anything else and they get the most worrying answer possible.
the only reason kim was in town was town was to meet her friend jody on lillian street and she doesn’t know anyone else from around here.
that’s when the cops come to a horrifying realization, they think kim was just attacked because she was a witness to samantha’s supposed murder and now they have a terrifying situation on their hands, if they don’t track down the killers and all their accomplices quickly they could be looking at a lot more than just one murder.
this case had now become a top priority and all local officers and detectives were on high alert for any leads that could help them find even just one of the suspects.
and that’s when they got potentially lif-saving, a man was claiming that danny and toni had pulled a gun on him inside the house and the suspects were now in the parking lot outside bragging about killing somebody jsut days earlier.
cops immediately headed to the scene thinking this might be their chance to catch the lead suspects behinds samantha’s disappearance.
so far this has been surprisingly easy, at this point the officer had no idea it would actually be the interrogations that’d be the hardest part of this process but he’s enjoying the simplicity while it lasts
soon a couple more officers arrive on the scene to help search danny and tori, secure them and collect some information before they taken away for questioning
eventually the officers brought danny and toni back to the station for interrogation .
and this is where the hard part started for the detectives.
here it’s important to note that danny thinsk he’s been brought in just because of the gun incident, at this point he is unaware the police have him and toni as lead suspects for samantha’s disappearance.
detectives are doing this potentially lead him into a fake story or timeline that they can prove wrong later.
danny ‘s been in this situation before and he knows excatly what to do at the very least stall the detectives process for as long as possible.
he’s staying quiet and refusing to speak whitout an attorney present as is his right.
so the detectives have no other choice but to switch over to Toni and see if she will budge instead.
they decided to be a lot more upfront with toni and treat her not as a suspect but more of a witness
it’s likely she wouldn’t confess to being involved in the murder but they think there could be a chance that she’d turn danny in if she thought it meant she’d get away.
unfortenately though having been on the wrong side of te law in the past herself she’s not about to help the cops out so easily.
the route detective is taking is obvious and would eork on the majority of people, he’s trying to scare toni into giving up what she knows so they can get to the bottom of things faster .
if she gives danny up,she might get a good deal with them but if not ,things could end up real badly for her .
the most interesting dynamic here though is how the detective is tryingto use marshall’s earlier statement against her , this happens all the time but usually they’re exaggerating the strenght of evidence or making it up completely.
this time though they actually have an airtight statement but toni simply doesn’t believe them , that means she thinks she can just continue to deny everything and instead of taking a deal for less jail time ,she can just get away with no charges
so with this in mind what how confident she denies everything unaware that the detectives know every words she speaks is a lie .
toni is extremely familiar with the man in the photo as he’s the man that helped load samantha into her car that man is Yoshi
conveniently yoshi whose real name is Dylan had just been brought in on unrelated warrant and detectives couldn’t believe their luck,one of the main witnesses,possibly even an accomplice had been brought right to them without any effort whatsoever ,the best part-dylan wasn’t the hardened criminal they expected .
in fact his interrogation was unlike anything you’ve ever seen , not only is it truly heartbreaking but it was actally key to putting not one not two but three people behind bars for samantha’s murder.
not 5 minutes into the interview we see an emotion painted on dylan’s face you don’t often see in the interrogation room,he’s holding back tears,trying to hide his face and is exhibiting A type of stress your rarely seeing criminals ,he’s terrified and devastated at the same time
after all ,he’s just 19 years old , he shoudln’t be caught up in all of this .
detective picks up on this immediately and wants to figure out precisely why dylan feels so strongly about all this,they spent some time discussing simple details with dylan deflecting pretty much everything
but this whole time,the stress is building up in dylan and 15 minutes later detective motices that he’s on the verge of completely breaking down and he decides to exploit this perfectly.
there are hardly any words to descbribe what dyaln must be feeling here,he was clearly born on the wrong side of the tracks and fell in with a bad crowd
he also clearly loved samantha ,which is really the biggest tragedy of all.
over the dozens of interrogations with witnesses that were conducted, detectives realized that samantha was murdered over a small disagreement with danny and toni
it was needless senseless ruined countless lives and dylan is unwillingly right in the center of it all
detective give dylan a moment to calm down and work through his emotions , then he tells dylan that he has one more chance to tell him what happened bring peace to samanta’s family and get to the bottom of this once and for all.
the carpet is gone . burned and ( furniuters ) it wasn’t outside , it’s all in the kitchen.
all dylan has said lines up perfectly with not just marshall’s statement but the evidence too
outside the detectives found a fire pit or something had recently been burned .
they surmised that this was a carpet with all samantha’s blood on it .
and inside right at the bottom of the stairs we looked at earlier. a large area of carpet and drywall are missing right where samantha was shot
however that’s where dylan says his involvement ended , meaning he can’t answer the single most important question that the detective still had
where was samantha body ?
for that they told the cops to turn to the fourth and final suspect that the cops had had since the very beginning.
william ,who dylan said left in the car with danny to hide samantha’s body
william was happy to cooperate with the dtectives, which made their jobs cosiderably easier the only problem is that he didn’t actually see where they drove
he was forced to lay down in the back of the car so nobody saw him in the car from the outside so he might not be as helpful as detectives initially thought.
though however he was able to tell them that they didn’t travel for very long and gave a descriptio of the area where they finally hid the body
it wasn’t the most detailed description ever but it turns out it was all they needed.
a few days later , an officer mentioned they might know an area just outside akron that match the description
so they sent out a patrol car to search the area and sure enough thay found it , samantha’s body lying amongs the dirt not even buried just dumped out in the open .
immediately they were able to identify it by the butterfly tattoo on her arm that her mother had mentioned all those days ago
their search had finally come to an end and her family could finally make peace.
the only question now was what to do with the suspects.the detectives clearly named danny as the murderer with toni havinga larg role on the murder too
however despite how helpful william ended up being the rest of his interview and other witness statements implied he had a lot more to do with the murder than he initially led on
so he was charged with abuse of a corps and tampering with evidence with a sentence of 10 years
and the court had to decide on the fate of dylan, the 19 year old, they decided he shouldn’t have been involved in this and given a second chance he might be able to get his life back on track ,so he was charged with tampering and obstructing, but he was only given 5 years of probation.
as for the killer couple toni was given 16 years for tampering with evidence and obstruction of justice
and danny was charged with murder and abuse of a corps and given a life sencence with the possiblity of parole after 24 years.