The Disappearance of Samantha Ann Clarke

The seemingly peaceful backdrop of rural Orange, Virginia has been hiding a chilling mystery since 2010. Samantha Ann Clarke, fresh out of high school, vanished into the night, leaving behind a trail that has been cold for over a decade. Investigations led to a man, that three years later, was convicted of murdering another local teen. This episode covers the eerie story of Samantha's vanishing and the pursuit for answers that followed.

The search for Samantha took a grim turn in 2021 when it was reclassified as an abduction and homicide investigation.  This case intertwines with our previous episode where I tell you the story of what happened to Alexis Tiara Murphy. 

Transcript

Holly: 0:00

Tell me a true crime story. Hey there, welcome to episode 23 of Tell Me a True Crime Story. I'm your host, holly. This episode is about the 2010 disappearance of Samantha Clark out of rural Orange, virginia. Thank you so much for being here. I hope that you and your family are happy, healthy and together forever. Do you have a case suggestion for me? If so, please send me an email and let me know what case you'd like to hear me cover. My email is holliestellmepodcastgmailcom. Please, with a Y, h-o-l-l-y-s, tell me podcast at gmailcom.

Holly: 1:01

I'm only 23 episodes deep into my true crime podcasting journey and I need your help to grow my audience. I'm an independent podcaster, which means it's just me doing this whole shebang writing, researching, recording, editing and promoting the podcast. I don't have the benefit of the big guys marketing money and reach, so how you guys can help me tremendously is by leaving me a review or a five-star rating. That helps this podcast become more relevant and visible to more people. To leave me a rating and a review on Apple, just go to my show page and scroll down till you see ratings and reviews. Select a star rating, then, below that, click on Write a review and that's it. Thank you guys again for being here. Big, big hugs to all of you.

Holly: 2:01

Now let me tell you a true crime story. This episode kind of ties to the last episode, so if you haven't heard that one, please go back and listen to it first. It's called One Murdered, one Missing, and it's about the disappearance and murder of 17-year-old Alexis Murphy in 2013. In that episode, I told you that the man convicted of her murder, randy Taylor, is also the suspect in the disappearance of another young woman from the same area. This is that story. Today I will tell you about the disappearance of teenager Samantha Clark. Samantha Ann Clark was born on Wednesday, july 17, 1991. She went missing at the age of 19, just three months after graduating from high school. According to her Aunt Brenda, whom she was close with, samantha was a real sweet girl with a good personality, who liked hanging out with her friends, going roller skating and listening to music.

Holly: 3:06

Let's go back in time together to mid-September 2010. It was night time, either a little before midnight or a little after midnight reports varied on this, but Samantha Clark, who often went by Sam, hollered by up the steps to her younger brother, hunter, and said she'd be back in the morning. Samantha left their home on Lindsay Drive in the town of Orange, virginia, taking only her house key with her. She has not been seen or heard from since. Samantha's mom, barbara Tender, wasn't at home when Samantha left. She'd been working the overnight shift.

Holly: 3:46

At 12.30 am Barbara received a call from the house while at work, but she couldn't answer it at that time. When she took her break an hour later she called her house and a twelve-year-old hunter answered. He told his mom that Samantha had left, but he didn't know where she'd gone. That phone call made Barbara worried and a bit confused. When she'd left for work, samantha had been sitting on the couch in her pajamas watching TV. It was unusual for Samantha to leave the house in the middle of the night. According to Barbara, samantha didn't leave the house by herself after dark and on top of that Samantha did not have a cell phone, car or driver's license.

Holly: 4:29

When Barbara got off work and returned home at 7.05 am, samantha wasn't back yet. Barbara found Samantha's pajamas lying on her bed, so she knew Samantha had changed out of them before she left. Barbara took Hunter to school, then laid down to get some rest, hoping Samantha would get back in the meantime. When she awoke a few hours later Samantha was still nowhere to be found. Barbara was worried, so she went to the police for help and to report her daughter missing. When she was told she'd have to wait 48 hours to report Samantha missing, barbara and her sister Brenda drove around looking for Samantha. Barbara reached out to some of Samantha's close friends, but none of them had seen or heard from her. It wasn't likely that Samantha was staying away voluntarily. Samantha was the type to get homesick. She'd once gone to a neighboring town Culpeper, just 17 miles away for two weeks. During that time she'd called her mom or aunt every day until she returned home.

Holly: 5:30

The Orange Police Department started working Samantha's case on September 15, two days after she'd left. Authorities gathered information from the family computer and from phone records. They interviewed people she'd had contact with. Soon the investigation began to focus on a group of people that Samantha had recently become acquainted with. She'd first met them about a week before she went missing. One of the people in that group was then 45 year old Randy Allen Taylor, and just days before she vanished she'd met several of Randy Taylor's friends at a restaurant in nearby Green County. Through phone records, authorities determined that Randy Taylor was the last person to have spoken with Samantha, barbara. Samantha's mom, told WVIR News that she learned that Randy Taylor had called her house six times the night Samantha disappeared, and that he admitted that he was the last person to see her, but Randy Taylor claimed that he'd only wanted to warn Samantha that someone had threatened to beat her up.

Holly: 6:34

Now this is where this episode ties in with our previous episode called One Murdered, one Missing. In that episode, I tell you the story of the murder of 17 year old Alexis Tiara Murphy at the hands of Randy Allen Taylor. Yes, I'm talking about the same Randy Allen Taylor that is the suspect in the disappearance of Samantha Ann Clark. Three years after Samantha Clark vanished, alexis Murphy suddenly went missing too. Only about an hour southwest of where Samantha Clark lived, alexis left her house on a summer evening in early August of 2013 to go buy some hair extensions for her senior portrait. She was having taken the very next week and never returned. The store that Alexis was going to purchase the hair extensions at was in Lynchburg, virginia, which was a little over a 30 minute drive southwest on US Route 29 from her house in Shipman, virginia. Alexis was driving her dad's white Nissan Maxima when she left around 6 pm on Saturday, august 3rd 2013.

Holly: 7:44

Alexis Grandma awoke in the middle of the night on August 4th 2013, around 1 am, and realized that Alexis never returned from her shopping trip in Lynchburg. It wasn't like her to miss curfew. Worrisome was the fact that Alexis was always glued to her cell phone, but her family couldn't reach her. Her family knew she didn't run away. Alexis was about to start her senior year in high school, where she was going to be co-captain of the volleyball team. She'd just gotten a raise at her job. She was active on Twitter and had about 12,000 followers. Alexis was excited and she was a happy, typical teen girl. She had no reason to run away. This was reported missing.

Holly: 8:29

Authorities didn't waste time and started looking for Alexis in her dad's car that she'd been driving. The FBI and Virginia State Police and the Virginia Department of Emergency Management assisted the Nelson County Sheriff's Office in the search for Alexis. Investigators subpoenaed Alexis' cell phone records and received them two days after Alexis disappeared. Thankfully, they revealed a clue Alexis' phone had pinged at a popular teen hangout in Lovingston, virginia. At 7 pm the evening she went missing.

Holly: 9:03

This hangout was the Liberty Gas Station, which was not far from Alexis' home. Surveillance footage from the gas station revealed that Alexis had gotten gas there after she'd left her home. The video footage showed that as she entered the store to pay for her gas, a man held the door for her. The gas station attendants told police that the man was a regular customer who often sat for hours in his camo Chevy Suburban in the gas station parking lot, gawking at the young women that went in and out of the store. One attendant, melissa Gerald, said she was working the evening Alexis went missing. When Alexis walked out of the gas station and across the parking lot, she witnessed Alexis turn her head as if someone had called out to her. She then observed Alexis walk over to the man in the camo Chevy Suburban and the two talked. But the reason that investigators began to focus on that man was because of what they saw next on surveillance footage from that evening.

Holly: 10:05

A camera outside of the gas station showed the man in the camo Chevy Suburban pull out onto Route 29 heading north, and Alexis stads white Nissan Maxima following directly behind it. Police learned that the man's name was Randy Allen Taylor. He was 48 years old and he had a criminal record. He lived in a 1956 camper on his ex-girlfriend's mom's property off of Route 29, less than three miles north of the Liberty gas station. They soon realized that he was also the same man that is the last known person to have spoken to Samantha Ann Clark the night she vanished in 2010,.

Holly: 10:48

Just three years before Alexis stads Nissan Maxima was located on August 6th, thanks to an anonymous tipster. It was left abandoned in the parking lot of what used to be a movie theater in Charlottesville, virginia, which is over an hour's drive north of Lynchburg, in the complete opposite direction of where Alexis was headed that day to buy hair extensions. Camera footage from a nearby business showed someone getting out of Alexis stads car and walking away from it. However, the video was of poor quality and it was impossible to see who it was that left the car there. When questioned by cops, randy Taylor claimed he didn't know Alexis or anything about her disappearance. However, when confronted with the video footage from the gas station that showed him holding the door for Alexis, he and Alexis talking in the parking lot and her following him going north on 29 out of the parking lot, he changed his story. He said that she'd been to his camper that night, but that she was with a man. He said that they smoked pot and drank beer together and were there for about an hour.

Holly: 12:00

Subsequent searches of Randy Taylor's tiny dirty camper turned up some startling evidence. Truth that Alexis Murphy had been there, and the evidence showed that it had been anything but a casual meeting. The evidence indicated that a violent struggle had taken place there. The items discovered were a fingernail embedded in the carpet, a stud earring and a long black hair with the root attached. That strand of hair was found on Randy Taylor's pillow. Also found bald up and shoved under a couch was a bloody t-shirt that belonged to Randy Taylor. Hidden inside the bloody t-shirt were black hair extensions and a strip of false eyelashes. The items were sent for DNA testing and were determined to belong to Alexis Murphy.

Holly: 12:50

A couple days later, specially trained canines sniffed out Alexis missing iPhone 70 feet from Randy Taylor's camper under bushes. It seemed to have been intentionally destroyed. It was smashed, cracked and its battery was missing. The FBI was unable to get any information off of it. Investigators believed that Alexis was no longer alive. They sat her family down and told them that they believed she'd been murdered by Randy Taylor and that they wanted to charge him with her murder, even though they had not found her body.

Holly: 13:25

A year later, in 2014, randy Taylor was convicted of the abduction and murder of Alexis Murphy by a jury of his peers. He received two life sentences and now resides in the Supermax Red Onion State Prison as inmate number 1032583. He appealed and his appeal was rejected. But that's not the end of the story. On December 3, 2020, seven years after Alexis Murphy disappeared, her remains were recovered on private property in Lovingston, virginia. According to sources, randy Taylor was brought back to Nelson County, Virginia, from his prison cell and led authorities there. Two months later, those remains were positively identified as being those of Alexis, now going back to 2010 and Samantha's disappearance. In December, nearly three months after Samantha vanished, her family and friends held a candlelight vigil for her. The vigil produced several tips for police, but none of them panned out. Throughout the years, near the anniversary of her disappearance, samantha's family and friends would gather for many more candlelight vigils or balloon releases.

Holly: 14:46

In February of 2011, five months after Samantha was last seen leaving her home in Orange County, investigators searched Green Acres Lake in Green County, which is about 25 miles west of where Samantha lived. The lake is in Green Acres subdivision and is about 27 acres and at its deepest point is about 32 feet. In April of that year, 2011, the lake was searched again by a state police diving crew and another crew that used a remote operated vehicle to record video of the lake's floor. In fact, green Acres Lake was searched many different times by investigators. Three years later, in 2014, the lake was searched yet again. James Fenwick, who was the chief of police of the town of Orange at the time, said that there were thick spots of aquatic grass in the lake that had previously kept divers from clearing about 10% of the lake, but in the time since the prior searches, the Green Acres Homeowners Association put grass eating carp into the lake, which made the divers job easier. As far as we know, that search turned up nothing.

Holly: 16:02

In 2018, samantha's mom, barbara Tender, told Dateline that she misses having Samantha home with her. She said quote I miss her smiles, her laughs, the funny things she would say to make me laugh. She's a happy girl, she would always stay happy and if you were sad, she'd find a way to make you happy end. Quote. I read in several news articles that the family had a Facebook page called Help Find Samantha Clark and a website, but I couldn't find either of those. On Samantha's mom's personal Facebook page, there's a post showing a big decal on the back window of what I assume is her vehicle. The decal reads Samantha and Clark still missing, scenes 9, 13, 10. Date of birth 7, 17, 91. Long brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, right eyebrow, nose and tongue pierced. Weight 145 pounds. 5 foot 1 inch. Call the OC Sheriff's Department with any information 540-672-1200.

Holly: 17:13

In covering true crime cases and learning the intricate details and circumstances of each one, you see how cases can be handled vastly differently from others. Samantha was 19 years old when she left home and never returned. Her mom, barbara Tender, felt that many people had given up on Samantha's case because of the lack of publicity it received and, from an investigative standpoint, samantha's case was merely deemed suspicious for more than 10 years before it was reclassified by authorities to an abduction and murder case. Alexis Murphy, on the other hand, was 17 years old she was a minor so when she went missing, the FBI became involved in her case. From the onset, her case received a lot of media attention, including national media coverage. In 2018, eight years after Samantha disappeared. Then, chief Fenwick told Dateline they did suspect foul play in Samantha's case. He said that Samantha's case was not an inactive case and was still a top priority. He also said that a detective that had been assigned to the case had retired in 2015 but came back part-time solely to work Samantha's case In January of 2021, within weeks of the discovery of Alexis Murphy's remains.

Holly: 18:37

The town of Orange, virginia Police Department Chief James Fenwick, and the Orange County, virginia Commonwealth's attorney, diana O'Connell, announced at a press conference that the disappearance of Samantha Clark in 2010 had been reclassified as an abduction and homicide investigation. Chief Fenwick said that the decision was made due to new information and advances in investigative and forensic technology. He acknowledged that Randy Taylor is known to have been one of the last to have contact with Samantha Clark, but he would not say if Randy Taylor is still under investigation as the prime suspect in her case. He stated quote it's no secret that Randy Taylor was one of the last people to have contact with Samantha Clark. Beyond that, we're not going to comment any further. End quote the chief said he believes the community could possibly have more information and that it's not too late for anyone that has information to come forward.

Holly: 19:38

At the time of her disappearance, samantha Clark was 5'4 and weighed 145 pounds. Samantha has brown eyes and wore eyeglasses. She had long, wavy brown hair and usually wore it up in a bun. She has several ear piercings, including a bar in her right ear. Her right eyebrow, right nostril and tongue were pierced too. She had four tattoos a playboy bunny on her right arm, a tigger above her right ankle, two dolphins on her lower back and the word lucky on her left ankle. One month ago she would have celebrated her 32nd birthday. If you have any information about the disappearance of Samantha and Clark, please call the Town of Orange, virginia Police Department at 540-672-1491.

Holly: 20:32

Thank you, guys, for listening to this episode of Tell Me a True Crime Story. Please tell your friends, coworkers and family about this podcast. Share a link to the podcast with someone who loves true crime and follow the podcast on social media. Facebook, instagram and TikTok are at Tell Me a True Crime Story. And remember it would really really help me out a ton if you would write a short but sweet review for the podcast on Apple Podcast or give it a five-star rating on Spotify or anywhere else that you know of that you can review or rate podcasts. Thank you so much for being here. I truly, truly appreciate each and every one of you. Please join me in episode 24 when I'll tell you another True Crime Story. Big, big hugs to all of you. Bye-bye, thank you.