Samantha Humphrey

Samantha Humphrey was last seen alive shortly before midnight on November 25, 2022, after going for a walk in Riverside Park in Schenectady's Stockade neighborhood with a boy she had been seeing on and off. <cite index="2-4,2-5">According to court documents, Humphrey went on a late-night walk in Riverside with Wright on Nov. 25, 2022, and her body was later found in the Mohawk River</cite>. Her family reported her missing that same night, and an extensive search involving Schenectady police, New York State Police dive teams and search aircraft covered the river and surrounding park for months.

<cite index="1-6">After an exhaustive search of the Mohawk River, her body was recovered in the river in the same park area on Feb. 22, 2023</cite>, nearly three months after she disappeared. Investigators initially recorded the cause of death as undetermined, leaving open the small possibility of suicide, but <cite index="4-6,4-7">the medical examiner had noted in his file that it was probably a homicide, and after further investigation was satisfied that suicide was not an option, ruling the manner of death to be homicide caused by asphyxiation</cite>.

No one was charged for more than two years after her body was found. Her father, Jeff Humphrey, became a public face of the case during that time, <cite index="4-5">renting billboards offering a reward for information about her death and starting a lawn sign campaign asking anyone with information to contact police</cite>, with some billboards carrying the stark caption <cite index="1-7">"Who Murdered Me?"</cite> above her photograph. In May 2025, Schenectady County District Attorney Robert Carney announced that a special grand jury, which heard from 46 witnesses over three weeks, had indicted Raymond Wright Jr., Samantha's former on-and-off boyfriend, then 17, on a charge of second degree murder. Carney told reporters that <cite index="3-8,3-9">investigators believed Samantha thought she was pregnant and that the sometime boyfriend was the father, that he wanted nothing to do with the baby and insisted she get rid of it</cite>, and that the two had argued as they walked along the river before her death. Wright pleaded not guilty and was held pending trial.

The renewed news attention around Samantha's name in late 2026 does not concern a new death. It concerns the long-delayed criminal trial of the man accused of killing her. <cite index="1-3,1-4">Nearly four years after Samantha Humphrey went missing in Riverside Park, jury selection in the case against Raymond Wright Jr. was set to begin on Oct. 19 at 9:30 a.m. in Schenectady County Court</cite>, with the trial itself expected to last about three weeks before Judge Matthew Sypniewski. Jeff Humphrey has said he is confident in the prosecution's case but has cautioned family members that no verdict will change the fact that his daughter is gone.

Samantha's family remembered her in an obituary as a light in the dark, with talents, loves and dreams of her own. <cite index="6-5">A brief memorial service was held for her on Saturday, March 4, 2023, at Daly Funeral Home in Schenectady</cite>, followed by a visitation. <cite index="6-6">Her ashes were spread on the ocean beaches she had loved and missed</cite>. In the years since, her family and much of the Capital Region community have continued to mark anniversaries of her disappearance and to follow developments in the case as it has moved slowly toward trial.