TRUE CRIME EXCLUSIVE PART 2: Diving into the Samantha Wohlford murder case with 'Influencers Who Kill' author Madison Salters

This is a true crime exclusive interview from the On Deadline podcast. We're talking to author and journalist Madison Salters, author of influencers who kill, a true crime collection, real stories of online fame and fatal consequences. I'm your host, Lauren Barry. Have you ever been scrolling on TikTok or Instagram and found yourself fascinated by an influencer? Maybe their life seems absurd or chaotic, or maybe it seems too perfect to be true. Well, it just might be. In her book, Salter's details nine horrifying true crime cases linked to the flashy and sometimes captivating world of influencers over the past two decades. These cases include Yucatakaoka, a Japanese bar hostess who went to prison for a non-fatal stabbing. Nassim Ogdom, the YouTube headquarters shooter. Snow the Salt Queen, a cosplay shooter who maintains their innocence. David Katz, a shooter who targeted a sports video game tournament. Samantha Walford, a mommy vlogger, who was convicted of kidnapping and murder. Randy Stair, also known on YouTube as Andrew Blaze, who shot and killed his supermarket co-workers. Trey Sessler, known on YouTube as Mr. Anime, who pled guilty to murdering his family members. Pika Eric Ovenin, a YouTuber from the early aughts and perpetrator of one of Finland's few school shootings. And Abigail White, an only fan's model who was sentenced to life in prison for stabbing the father of her children to death. In this episode, we'll have a special focus on the Samantha Walford case. We also discussed the growing impact of social media on all of our lives. Here's my talk with Madison Sultors, author of Influencers Who Kill. Among the cases that Sultures covers in her book is the Samantha Walford case. Walford was a mommy vlogger who was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 2017 for the killing of her husband, Ernest Lee Ibarra. One that I was interested in a little bit from the list was the Samantha Walford case, because I think it touches on a lot of interesting stuff. Of course, she's the influencer. Her husband was a gamer, which is also kind of... you know, adjacent to the influencer lifestyle. What do you think that case kind of reveals about these themes that we've been talking about, the intersection between attention and violence? That case was by far the hardest for me to write personally, because while she did hire three men to kill her husband, essentially,

It was very clear that this person, to some degree or another, was abusive towards her five children as well, which... was tough because her whole thing was being a mommy blogger. What this really revealed to me was the toxicity of trying to have a persona that doesn't necessarily fit who you are. One of the things I always say having a background in investigative journalism, and especially when you're intaking stories from multiple different angles, you're going to find that... The facts, quote unquote, don't match up. People will swear they remember something one way, and the facts won't match. So I always say believe what you see, not what you hear. And Samantha was really devastating. Her entire influential spear was about how much she loved her children. And yet... she was smoking during her pregnancies. There were snippets of her saying, you know, you think that my children's birth would be the happiest time in my life. But no, it was kind of a bummer. It was kind of a letdown. The happiest moment of my life was when I cheated on their father with this guy, I invited to sleep in my house with my children before even knowing who he was. He was a hitchhiker. She was endangering her children. She was doing, You know, mommy blogs where in the middle of it, she would have her children go away, even though they were throwing up or using a plugged-in device that they shouldn't have been using, just really horrific stuff. And she was also interested in true crime, but particularly what she was interested in was violence against children. She did a lot of segments on the horrors of violence against children. But then really harped on what had happened to those kids and was clearly reading up on this sort of stuff in a way that maybe wasn't healthy. She didn't like that her husband was a gamer. She was, in my opinion, a narcissist who had a very bad problem with pathological lying. She said she entered the Maxime Gamer competition, but then was calling women who did gaming all sorts of horrible name. She said she only entered because her brother was dying. Her brother seems to be just fine from everything I found. Her husband had an online romance between his character and another character. They got married and she was so mad about it that that's why he married her in real life was to stop that, that jealousy. But ultimately... This idea that she had to be a mommy blogger became her sort of reason for existing, but this is somebody who's so unqualified to be a mommy blogger. She was not even qualified to be...

A mother in some respect, she has a video on the way back machine, which I had to use quite a bit, where literally she was smoking and saying she had no vices while being pregnant and saying her doctor had told her that cutting back to only like one or two a day was so noble of her. No doctor on earth would tell you just cut back to two a day while pregnant. It was very clearly a lie, not even very thinly veiled. That makes me wonder, you know, we're both journalists. So I do, and I'm sure you do kind of greet a lot of things I see online with some skepticism. You know, if you see a mommy vlogger, I don't always think that they have a perfect life. You know, I know there's different things going on. behind the scenes often. But has researching this book made you even more skeptical when you are, you know, going through TikTok or Instagram and you see influencers? How has it changed your own relationship with social media? That is such a great question. I I think it has made me even more wary of using social media, I will say. The way that people can take whatever you post and run with it, it's sort of, one of the things I learned is there's almost no good video. If you have a video up online, it could be of you saving a kitten, and somebody will be like, you handled that kitten wrong. It could be of you buying cupcakes for a birthday party, and somebody will go, but did you check that they had... Peanuts, I bet you didn't because you're evil. Like somebody will be upset about something after hours and hours and hours of going through social media. I was like, whew, okay. So maybe don't read the comment section. That's what I learned. But I also learned to think about social media less in how I'm in taking it, like I'll see something beautiful by an influencer. Like, wow, I love that outfit. And to think about it more. intentionally, what was their intention in posting it? What are they trying to say, not just what is the impression I am taking from it? Because that tells me a lot more about why the post is up. Like if my mother posts a photo for my birthday of me when I was a baby, I know that she's reminiscing. I'm like, there's nothing really deeper going on there. But you know, if somebody's like, I got this really cool new watch, check it out. you know, they probably want people to be impressed. Like you are posting it to impress people. And I think that can help. at least for me, me reply with what people's needs actually are. Like it's not going to be helpful to be like, who uses a watch anymore? Use a phone. Like, no, just say like, that's really cool. Thanks for sharing that with me. So I think I come at it from a much more intentional point of view of thinking, what are you trying to accomplish with this post? And if it's my friend, how can I help you accomplish it? And if it's a stranger, I do not.

I don't interact with it much anymore. I'm just like, you know what? You never know. I need to detox a little bit after this book. That's probably a good way to go about it. I support that. And then something else I wanted to touch on. So the three cases that we talked about were all women, which, you know, I write a lot about true crime and I've researched a lot about it. And the fact is, Often men are the perpetrators. Women are a little smaller percentage. But it seems a little bit different, at least in this sample size of influencers who kill. Now, do you think that that is just representative of there being more women in the influencer industry? Or do you think there's something else going on? I'm so happy you brought this up. In my second book, Scams and Cons, it was also a little bit more female leaning than what the demographics would show. I believe the most recent demographics, I might be off, this might be 2025, is that 77% of all violent crime is perpetrated by men, whereas 18% by women and 5% the data is unknown. So really in my second book, I went into a lot of research on why are we sort of focusing more on female con artists than male con artists if there are so many more. And I kind of came to the same conclusion with the influencers who kill book, which is it's not indicative. No, men are still the perpetrators of more violent crime, even in the influential spheres and online spheres and parasocial spheres. people, readers, are usually more interested in something a little bit rarer. Because women are more rarely the perpetrators of violent crimes, their stories are more interesting, more intriguing. They raise a lot more red flags, like, how did that happen? Why did that happen? Tell me more. So again, the list I was given was pretty female or even non-binary heavy. I believe that Nassim, Samantha, Abigail, those were women, and then Snow and Randy are sort of in the non-binary area. And Yucca, of course, is women as well. And then the rest are men. So men are a little bit underrepresented in this book. But again, I think it's because there's more of a shock value around women. Like, unfortunately, that is just sort of what it is. If you say that, you know, a strange man. killed a child, like that's terrible and shocking. But if you hear like a mother killed a child, everybody's like, how does that happen? So I think there's some bias in publishing. I think there's some bias in myself, probably. There's some bias in reading where people are just a little more fascinated by the rarity of female murderers. Yes, I agree. That's something that I see as well. Just, you know, how many people are going to click on a story, it does happen to be something a little bit more, you know, off the beaten path like that. So I think you're right. I just wanted to end asking you if there's anything else you think that our listeners need to know about this topic. Are you planning on? It's kind of an evolving.

So do you plan on, you know, doing an update to this book or maybe a second one about the same topic or are you moving on to different true crime topics? Thank you for asking. So, yeah, I picked these cases specifically because I learned from my second book, don't do evolving cases. So for the most part, so that I won't have to edit or update. These cases are pretty much done. And I wanted to be able to have all of the evidence. The main thing I would say is when you're reading, try to read it in your own voice, because I'm not allowed to come to conclusions for you. I am only allowed to present you the information. And that's some of the fun, if we can call it that of true crime, is you kind of pick up the breadcrumbs and you decide who was that fault and what could have made a difference and could anything have made a difference. So examine it yourself, read deeply. decide who you think is at fault or what you think is at fault. And yeah, no, I don't have any plans to do an update, but I did just get my fourth book commission and it'll be my first fiction book, but it is also about murder. So stay tuned for fictional murder in the future. I'm excited about that. Maybe we'll have you back on to talk about it and your maybe inspiration for it. That's very exciting. Thank you. That would be great. Thank you so much for listening to this True Crime Roundup from the On Deadline podcast. This episode was written and produced by me, Lauren Barry. Special thanks of course to our guest, Madison Salters. author of Influencers Who Kill, A True Crime Collection, Real Stories of Online Fame, and Fatal Consequences. You can find her book on Amazon and many places online. You can find these true crime roundups and exclusive interviews by subscribing to the On Deadline podcast, the Who Killed Strawberry podcast, or the Bitter Academia podcast, on the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts.