The call came in just after midnight. Ginger’s phone lit up with her sister Rosie’s name, and the panic in Rosie’s voice was immediate. “Go check on Samantha. Something’s wrong.
”
Ginger lived close by, so she rushed over to the house where her niece lived with Ernie Ibarra and their five small children. What she found stopped her cold. Samantha was upstairs, gagged, her hands tied behind her back, her feet bound together. The kids, ages one through seven, were asleep in their rooms, completely untouched.
Ginger untied Samantha and called 911. The dispatcher asked who the intruders were. Samantha said she didn’t know. She said a group of men had burst in, thrown her to the floor, hit her in the face, held a knife to her throat.
And then they’d dragged her husband Ernie out of the house and taken him. Deputies arrived at 2:18 a. m. and found the front door smashed to pieces.
But something about the scene didn’t sit right with them. The lock was intact. The door frame was solid. It looked like the door had been broken from the inside.
And Samantha, supposedly just traumatized by a violent home invasion, was full of details. Too many details for someone in shock. She told them exactly how she’d been hit, how her hair had been pulled, how the men had threatened to kill her in front of Ernie. But the officers saw no injuries on her.
No bruises. No marks. Nothing that matched her story. Ernie’s phone was still pinging.
It showed up less than a mile from a house in Pittsburg, Texas. Then it went dead. Officers asked Samantha if she knew anyone in Pittsburg. She said no.
But a cell phone record would later tell a different story. At 2:31 a. m. , Samantha had texted a man named Octavius Rhymes: “Kill Ernie’s phone, shut that shit down.
” At 3:18 a. m. , she texted him again: “Ditch phone, move. ”
Ernie had no enemies.
He was the guy who worked two jobs, a full-time gig at a woodcraft shop and a night shift at Little Caesars, to provide for his family. He was the guy who bought a $100 sketching set for a coworker’s daughter when the coworker couldn’t afford it. The guy who, on a brutally hot day, walked over to a neighbor mowing his lawn and offered to do it for him. His manager remembered him telling troubled kids that just because life wasn’t fair didn’t mean they couldn’t do better.
He’d met Samantha in 2008 at a tattoo shop. She was the mother of twins from a previous relationship, and soon they had two more babies together, then a fifth child. Ernie’s family had always worried about Samantha’s priorities. She’d launched a YouTube channel in 2010, chasing online fame.
She posted makeup tutorials and stories about her life, and she grew obsessed with it. Her sister later said they seemed like soulmates at first, but Ernie’s sister saw it differently. She believed Samantha stopped paying attention to her kids and acted like her “job” mattered more than anything. Ernie didn’t like that side of her.
Their marriage was short and never happy. In 2014, Samantha called the police on Ernie over alleged family violence. Ernie never defended himself. He didn’t accuse her.
He just stayed quiet. His manager later said Samantha would call Ernie constantly, screaming threats into the phone. Once, in the middle of a rant, Ernie handed his manager the phone. When the manager told Samantha to stop calling, Samantha accused her of having an affair with Ernie.
Ernie posted on Facebook in November 2014: “Loving all that assumption, rumor-mongering, and lies. There are two sides to everything, and only a fool assumes without proof. ” Samantha responded publicly, accusing him of airing their business. He replied that he had no reason to trash their children’s house.
Now Ernie was gone, and Samantha was telling detectives she had no idea who took him. Then, hours into the questioning, she cracked. She blurted out a name: Johnny Reb. Jonathan Sanford.
She’d met him the day before, she said, at the hospital, while visiting a friend’s newborn. He’d just been released from prison. Samantha claimed she’d told Jonathan about Ernie’s alleged violence, and Jonathan was furious. She said he offered to help her.
She also mentioned a man named Tay and another named Jojo. Tay was Octavius Rhymes, the same man she’d texted to destroy Ernie’s phone. Jojo was Jose Ponce. Both lived in Pittsburg.
By 9:39 a. m. , police had arrested Jonathan and Jose at the hospital, both charged with aggravated kidnapping. Jonathan was dressed in black, matching Samantha’s description of the attacker.
Jonathan never denied being there. He testified that he’d met Samantha on February 14th through his girlfriend, Charla. Five days later, he, Octavius, and Samantha were all at the hospital. It was there that they came up with a plan.
The original idea was to plant crystal meth in Ernie’s car and make an anonymous tip so he’d be arrested. But that night, back at Octavius’s house, things escalated. They joked about killing Ernie instead. Then the joke turned serious.
Jonathan testified that Samantha was present for those discussions. He wasn’t sure she understood all the details, but she knew enough. And she did one crucial thing: she left the house unlocked. That’s why the door and the lock didn’t match the scene.
The men didn’t need to break in. They just smashed the door to make it look like they had. On the night of February 19th, Samantha drove her own kids with Octavius to get the drugs from his cousin. Then she brought them back to Octavius’s house where Jose was cooking enchiladas with his girlfriend, Lakona Slayton.
They drove Samantha and her kids home, removed the car seats from her vehicle, and delivered the enchiladas to Charla at the hospital. Then they went to Walmart and stole three pairs of black gloves. Around 3 a. m.
, the three men arrived at Ernie’s house. Jonathan had been there before and knew the layout. He directed them to where Ernie was sleeping. They dragged Ernie out, bound his hands behind his back with painter’s tape.
Octavius came outside and hit Ernie in the lower back with a log. Then they forced him into his own vehicle. Jonathan went back upstairs and saw Samantha sitting on the bed, holding her phone. She wasn’t tied up.
She told him she’d called her mother. He smashed the front door to make it look like a break-in, and they left. They drove to Sand Crossing in Camp County. They forced Ernie out of the car and marched him along a game trail through the woods.
About fifty yards in, Ernie tripped and fell face-first into the ground. As he struggled to push himself back up to his knees, Jose shot him in the back of the head. He died instantly. Back at Octavius’s house, the three stripped off their clothes and burned them.
Police found Ernie’s body half-dressed in thick brush at the edge of a bayou. The gun was recovered near Jose’s girlfriend’s home. Lakona initially denied knowing anything, then broke down. She said Jose had pulled a gun on her before.
She testified that Samantha had left the house before midnight that night because the kids were sleepy, which contradicted Samantha’s claim that she was asleep at home and tied up by intruders. Cell tower records showed Samantha’s phone wasn’t near her home until after 10:30 p. m. She had plenty of time to play her part.
Jonathan got 50 years. Jose got 50 years. Octavius got 23 years for aggravated kidnapping, then 75 more for murder, to be served consecutively, bringing his total to 98 years. He was also fined $10,000.
Samantha was convicted of aggravated kidnapping and got 50 years. Then, in September 2017, a second trial found her guilty of Ernie’s murder. The judge ordered the 99-year sentence to run consecutively with the first, giving her 149 years total. Her projected release date is 2164.
She’ll be dead long before then. She still posts personal ads on a site for inmates, describing herself as a country girl who loves reading and video games, looking for letters and legal help. She wrote, “Don’t regret it. ” The site disclaims any responsibility for the accuracy of the content.
Ernie’s five children are being raised by their grandmother and aunt. His funeral was held on February 26, 2015, in Omaha, Texas. One woman wrote online that young men in their twenties often can’t see the danger in a woman like Samantha, that Ernie knew something was off, wasn’t happy, and couldn’t make her happy. She said Ernie would have made a wonderful single father and eventually met someone who loved him for his goodness.
He never got the chance. For a man who gave without expecting anything back, his life ended at the hands of the people he trusted most.
