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Samantha Dean spent her career advocating for victims of violent crimes, only to tragically become one herself.
In a devastating turn of events, Dean, who was expecting her first child, was discovered shot to death. Her body was found hanging from the passenger side of her black Dodge Charger in a Bastrop, Texas parking lot during the early hours of February 4, 2015, as reported by Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins.
“It’s heartbreaking to see a young woman in the prime of her life brutally murdered,” retired Texas Ranger Jimmy Schroeder shared in a November 9 episode. “It’s even more tragic that a baby, who never had the chance to experience life, was also taken.”
The shocking murder sent ripples through the close-knit law enforcement community where Dean served as a victim’s services counselor for the Kyle Police Department. The tragedy deepened when it was revealed that a fellow officer was behind the heinous crime.
Samantha had aspired to become a police officer from a young age, but her ambitions were sidelined during college when she was diagnosed with a rare cancer called sarcoma.
From a very young age, Samantha dreamed of being a police officer, but those dreams were cut short in college when she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer known as sarcoma.
Although Samantha fought, and won, her cancer battle, the treatments left her with weakness in her left hand and elbow that prevented her from being able to meet the rigorous physical standards required to become an officer. Undeterred, Samantha found another way to make a meaningful difference by becoming a victim’s services counselor, first as a volunteer with the Austin Police Department and later as a full-time employee with the Kyle Police Department.
“Sam has a way with people and speaking to people and de-escalating situations and just connecting with people,” her friend Amanda Lawrence-Weden recalled, describing Samantha as someone whose aura just attracted others to her.
Those who knew her say that Samantha had found her calling, as she accompanied officers on death notifications and helped victims of violent crimes recover from their harrowing ordeals.
But Samantha’s dream of helping others ended abruptly the night of Feb. 3, 2015.
Just hours into the next day, a sheriff’s deputy in Bastrop, Texas spotted her black Charger parked near a dumpster in a vacant parking lot around 2:09 a.m. When the deputy approached the vehicle, he saw a female body falling out of the open passenger door and called for back up.
According to Texas Ranger Lt. Brent Barina, “She was shot three times with a small caliber weapon.”
Investigators believed that due to the large pool of blood found in the car’s center console that Samantha had likely been shot in the driver’s seat and then was dragged across to the passenger side.
There were no fingerprints or shell casings found at the scene, but investigators did find around $100 in cash inside the vehicle. They also found marijuana scattered by the floorboard of the car, but interestingly, it was found sitting on top of the blood stains.
“It was obvious that was placed down after the crime that had occurred,” Barina explained. “So it appeared that the crime scene was staged to kind of make it look like a drug deal gone bad or something to that nature.”
The Father of Samantha Dean’s Baby is Revealed
Investigators also learned that at the time of her death, Samantha, 29, was pregnant. Samantha’s grief stricken parents told authorities that their usually open daughter had kept the identity of the baby’s father a secret.
Yet, Samantha’s closest friends were able to identify the father as Austin Police Officer Vontrey Clark.
Stephanie Burgess, Samantha’s friend and former co-worker, said Samantha had been embarrassed to reveal the father’s identity because he was dating another woman.
“She was very clear that it was not the situation that she wanted,” Burgess said, adding, “But she had been a cancer survivor and after the radiation and chemo she didn’t know if she’d have the opportunity to be pregnant again.”
Clark was brought in for an interview and confirmed he was the baby’s father, but said the relationship had just been “based on sex.”
“When we got pregnant, she told me she was in love with me,” he told detectives. “But…I didn’t feel the same way.”
He told authorities that on the night of the murder, he’d put his two other children to bed around 8:30 p.m. and then left home because he was “going through problems” with his girlfriend. He claimed that he’d gone to a school across the street from his house and “chilled” in his car and gone for a walk, before dropping by the Austin Police station around 11:45 p.m. and then heading home.
Surveillance footage at the station captured him arriving at 12:11 a.m. and leaving at 12:40 a.m. but the other aspects of his story couldn’t be verified.
Cell Phone Data Reveals Multiple Suspects
On the night of her death, investigators learned that Samantha used her ATM card at a Valero gas station at 9:36 p.m. to withdraw $100 in cash and then drove to Bastrop, where she was likely killed shortly after 10 p.m.
Phone records also revealed that as Samantha was traveling she got a text from an unknown number.
As police were trying to track down the person linked to the number, the case took an unusual turn when Burgess—the fellow victim’s service counselor—received an ominous text of her own from a different number.
“My phone dinged and I looked at it and it was a number I didn’t know and it said, ‘I got her, I’m coming for you. I’ll show you what a crisis is,’” Burgess recalled through tears. “And I just felt my heart drop through my stomach and I just started shaking.”
Investigators had to consider whether someone was targeting victims’ service counselors. The texts had been made by two different burner phones, but police were able to track the purchase of both phones to a man named Kevin Watson.
Watson had prior arrests for drug dealing in Houston, but he was also a close childhood friend of Clark’s.
The Texas Rangers ultimately determined that Clark, Watson and a third man named Freddie Smith had all been communicating with different burner phones the night of the murder. Geolocation data placed them all at the Bastrop parking lot that night and the phone authorities believed Clark was carrying showed him traveling with Samantha to the destination.
As Jenkins explained, “Detectives feel confident that Vontrey Clark, Kevin Watson and Freddie Smith are all involved in some way with the murder of Samantha Dean, but what they don’t have is a smoking gun.”
They caught a break after identifying a fourth man, Aaron Williams, as the person who had been with Watson when he purchased the burner phone later used to threaten Burgess.
Williams eventually agreed to talk, telling authorities that Smith confessed to being with Clark and Watson the night of the murder, adding, “He told me that they killed that girl.” According to Williams, Clark had wanted to kill Samantha so that he could keep the relationship and pregnancy from his girlfriend.
Watson and Smith were taken into custody after Houston Police conducted a traffic stop and found narcotics in their vehicle.
Who Killed Samantha Dean?
With all three men behind bars, Clark fled the country to Indonesia, but was later extradited back to Texas, where he was charged with capital murder.
Facing his own capital murder charge, Watson agreed to a plea and told authorities that Clark had convinced Samantha the night of the killing that he wanted to buy a tablet. After she stopped to take out money from the ATM, he used her phone while she was inside the store to send a text to one of the burner phones so that it looked like a drug deal.
When they arrived at the parking lot, Smith slid into the back of the car and shot her twice in the head. According to Watson, Clark then asked for the gun himself and fired another round into the mother of his child.
He agreed to pay both Smith and Watson $5,000 for their help carrying out the murder.
Watson was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his role in the crime, while Smith was found guilty of murder in a 2022 trial and sentenced to life behind bars.
Clark agreed to plead guilty to murder in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility for parole.
Williams had no role in Samantha’s death.
Ten years after her death, in February of 2025, the Kyle Police department named two special rooms used to interview crime victims in honor of Samantha and her unborn daughter, who she planned to name Madeline.
Her father Kelvin Dean shared, “Her legacy continues on even though she’s not here.”
To learn more about the other cases featured this season on Killer Relationship with Faith Jenkins, watch the series Sundays at 7/6 on Oxygen.
