Samantha Rabon sentenced to life in prison for killing father, brother in 2018 murder-for-hire scheme
HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — An Horry County woman will spend the rest of her life in prison after a jury found her guilty Wednesday afternoon of killing her father and brother in a murder-for-hire plot in 2018.
A judge in Horry County Circuit Court sentenced Samantha Ford Rabon to life in prison on two counts of murder. She also was sentenced to 30 years for two counts of criminal conspiracy to commit murder and two counts of solicitation to commit a felony. A judge ordered the sentences to run consecutively.
Jurors found Rabon guilty on all counts in the murder-for-hire plot that ended with the deaths of her father and brother, Robert and Robbie Ford, both of whom lived in the Conway area.
The jurors deliberated for about two hours Wednesday morning before returning with their verdict. They began deliberating at about 10:15 a.m. after getting instructions from the judge. Closing arguments in the case took place Tuesday afternoon.
The jury deliberated for about 90 minutes before returning to the courtroom to ask the judge for a definition on “conspiracy.” They returned to the courtroom with a verdict at about 12:15 p.m.
After the verdict was read, a judge heard statements from those affected by the killings.
The Fords were killed in August 2018, and a codefendant in the case, Randy Grainger, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2023.
Authorities found the Fords dead in the front yard after they were called to a home off Highway 19 to do a welfare check. Grainger, one of three people arrested two years later, testified on Monday.
He said that he and another woman, Theresa Martin, who was also charged in the case and pleaded guilty as an accessory, were living together and that Martin’s mother lived next door to Rabon’s mother. Earlier, prosecutors said Martin was the one who introduced Rabon to Grainger.
“She said that she needed her brother and her daddy killed, that she needed a specific day that had needed to be done,” he said. “I guess that’s when she knew where they were going to be at and what time. She needed both of them killed because if she just killed her daddy, her brother would get half an inheritance and she didn’t want that.”
Grainger testified that Rabon wanted the murder to look like a robbery and that she stole the gun that was used in the killings from her dad’s house.
Earlier Monday, text messages and online search history were shown to jurors during Day 4 of the trial.
Rabon searched things like “can you be a suspect in murder but not be charged?” and “how fast can you get a passport?” as well as “can you clean up a double homicide in four hours?”
Between June 30 and Oct. 31, 2018, there were 72 calls and texts between Rabon and Martin. Two dozen of those were between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Aug. 17, 2018, the day before the Fords were found dead.
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News13 will have a reporter in the courtroom on Wednesday and will livestream the verdict.
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Caleb is a digital producer at News13. Caleb joined the team in January 2023 after graduating from Liberty University. He is from Northern Virginia. Follow Caleb on X, formerly Twitter, and read more of his work here.
Dennis Bright is a Digital Producer at News13. He joined the team in May 2021. Dennis is a West Virginia native and a graduate of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Follow Dennis on, Facebook, X, formerly Twitter, and read more of his work here.
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