On the evening of November 11, 2002, 19-year-old Samantha Nicole Burns, a student at Marshall University's Community and Technical College, disappeared. She was last seen at her part-time job at the Huntington Mall in Barboursville, West Virginia, around 6:30 p.m. Later that night, at approximately 9:45 p.m., Samantha made a phone call to her mother, telling her she was at the Marshall University Court Yard Apartments visiting friends and was on her way to her home in East Hamlin.
This was the last time her family ever heard from her. Samantha, known to her loved ones as Sam or Sammy, was a responsible young woman living at home with her parents and younger brother while pursuing a degree as a physical therapy assistant. Her failure to return home was highly uncharacteristic, and concern grew quickly when she could not be reached, as her cell phone was discovered to be turned off.
The investigation into Samantha's disappearance took a grim turn in the early morning hours of November 12, 2002. At around 3:30 a.m., her 1999 burgundy Chevrolet Cavalier was found abandoned and engulfed in flames in a secluded, rural area on German Ridge and Haneys Branch Roads, near the line between Cabell and Wayne counties. There was no sign of Samantha at the scene of the burned vehicle, intensifying fears of foul play. The discovery launched a massive search effort and a widespread plea for information from the public, as family and friends distributed fliers throughout the community, desperate for any news about her whereabouts. The West Virginia State Police took the lead on the investigation into her troubling vanishing.
Within days, the investigation led police to two primary suspects: Chadwick E. Fulks and Branden L. Basham. The pair had escaped from a jail in Hopkins County, Kentucky, on November 4, just a week prior to Samantha's disappearance, and had since embarked on a violent, multi-state crime spree. Their spree also included the abduction and murder of 44-year-old Alice Donovan in South Carolina just days after Samantha vanished. In 2005, both Fulks and Basham pleaded guilty to federal charges for the carjacking resulting in the death of Samantha Burns, a plea that helped them avoid a potential death sentence for her murder. Prosecutors believe the men abducted Samantha, held her at gunpoint while using her bank cards at various ATMs, and then killed her. Despite their convictions and subsequent confessions to her murder, Samantha’s body has never been found. Numerous searches have been conducted in the tristate area of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, including a search in 2013 where Chadrick Fulks was temporarily released from prison to lead investigators to where he claimed she was buried, but these efforts have not led to her recovery.Last Seen: Nov 11, 2002
