A Queens woman beaten to death while on vacation in Jamaica sent her sister a haunting text just hours before she was left for dead on her 37th birthday at a hospital in the Caribbean island nation, according to Jamaican police, local news reports and the victim’s family.
Melissa Kerry Samnath sent her sister the ominous message on WhatsApp around 11 p.m. on April 28, writing, “Call the cops,” and giving her location as “a pink house,” the victim’s mother, Carmen Samnath, told the Daily News.
On her birthday the next day, the victim was pronounced dead at the Cornwall Regional Hospital in St. James, the Jamaica Constabulary Force wrote on Facebook.
An autopsy ruled Samnath’s death the result of “multiple blunt force trauma to the head.”
Police identified a suspect, Dane Watson, a St. James resident. He’s currently being sought for the murder.
Watson was seen taking a wounded Samnath out of a car at the hospital and leaving shortly afterward, according to local cops.
The Jamaican Constabulary Force identified Watson as the victim’s husband, writing on Facebook that the pair recently married this past December. The victim’s mother refuted the idea that her daughter was wed to or in a relationship with her suspected killer, saying she’d never heard of the man until after her daughter’s disappearance.
After Samnath went missing, the victim’s sister traveled to Jamaica hoping to find her alive, her mother said. When she checked the hospital where her sister died, staff said no one was registered there under the victim’s name.
“(The hospital) said they had no one under (the name Melissa Samnath) there,” said Carmen Samnath. “She was just an unknown person.”
When relatives finally met with authorities to identify the victim’s body, she was wearing the same clothes as when she flew out of New York City, the victim’s mom said.
“Just how she left, that’s the same way they found her,” Carmen Samnath said. “She didn’t even get to change her clothes. My daughter went over there and identified her. The same clothes.”
What was different, according to the victim’s mother, were the bruises covering her body and the broken nails on her hands.
“She fought back with him,” Carmen Samnath said. “Her nails and stuff are broken.”
According to a report in the Jamaican Gleaner newspaper, surveillance footage shows Watson carrying the victim’s suitcase as she follows him out of her Airbnb.
Investigators traced the pair to Watson’s home in Norwood, St. James, where they found some of Samnath’s belongings beside a pool of blood, the Gleaner reported. Most of the Queen’s woman’s belongings, including her laptop, jewelry, phone, watch and cash, have yet to be recovered, the victim’s mother said.
The victim worked as a senior accountant for Live Nation. She lived with her mother and sister in Queens Village.
“I lost my husband to pancreatic cancer. This is very sudden to me,” the victim’s mother said. “The two of us just came back from vacation. We were on a cruise. The same daughter. She’s a wonderful, sweet person.”
Samnath’s family are working to repatriate her body, her mother said.
“They have the DNA done and an autopsy done. Now we’re trying to get her body home and give her a final resting place,” she said. “That’s what we’re focused on.”
