Rowland’s ex-girlfriend says she saw him cleaning weapon, blood out of his car
The former girlfriend of the man accused of murdering Samantha Josephson testified she saw him cleaning a knife and blood out of his car after the late student’s death.
According to Maria Howard, Nathaniel Rowland was at her house on March 28, 2019, just hours before Josephson went missing. Rowland told Howard he planned to stay the night but left after she fell asleep at 1:30 a.m., Howard said in the longest testimony of the trial so far.
Rowland loved to party in Five Points, Howard testified. And it wasn’t uncommon for him to slip out after she fell asleep and go to Five Points, she said. She woke up in the middle of the night and noticed Rowland wasn’t there. She tried calling him on both of his cell phones, but he didn’t answer, she said.
“I was upset because I knew I had to go to work and I don’t like being late for work,” said Howard, who had a 7 a.m. shift at McDonald’s on Garners Ferry just off the Rosewood intersection.
Rowland, 27, is on trial in the murder of Samantha Josephson, a University of South Carolina student who was killed in March 2019. Josephson had gotten into a car outside a bar in the Five Points nightclub district that she mistaken thought was her Uber ride. Her body was found by hunters the day after she went missing.
Friday morning, just hours after Josephson was stabbed more than 100 times, Rowland returned to Howard’s house. Howard had given Rowland her work shirt to wash and had left her McDonald’s work hat in the back of his car.
Howard was running late to work, so she went outside and asked Rowland where her shirt was. Rowland didn’t have it on him, so he left and 10 minutes later arrived. Her shirt was wet and her hat was missing.
When she asked where her hat was, Rowland said “It’s in the country,” Howard testified.
“Why is it in the country?” Howard testified.
“It had blood on it,” Rowland said, according to Howard’s testimony.
“Why?” Howard pressed.
Rowland told her to “Mind my business,” she said.
As Rowland drove her to work in his 2017 black Chevrolet Impala, they stopped to get gas and groceries. That’s when Howard said she noticed the blood in the back seat. A sheet covered much of the blood in the backseat, but the sheet wasn’t laid perfectly in the backseat and there was some visible blood.
Again, she asked why there was blood in the backseat.
“Mind my business,” Rowland told her, according to Howard’s testimony.
Howard got to work 45 minutes late, and when she returned home — Rowland had failed to pick her up after work, she said —she was angry and began banging on the door.
Rowland was “shook” and looked “like he had seen a ghost.” when she saw him. Howard went inside and showered, and when she got out, Rowland was washing out his car. She smelled chlorine.
The cleaning supplies had Howard’s DNA on it, which she said was because Rowland got the supplies from her house, she said after being questioned by defense attorney Alicia Goode. Howard also admitted to putting her daughter in the car while she knew there was still blood in it because she “had no choice.”
Later Friday, Rowland and Howard were driving to Howard’s mothers house to pick up rent money, she said. Howard was driving the car when Rowland put on blue, surgical gloves and began cleaning a multi-tool with wipes.
After that, two of Rowland’s friends came over and they went out to Five Points. She asked why he would take a car out to a popular area while there was still blood in it.
Again, he told her “mind my business.”
After Rowland left, Howard turned on the news and saw the now infamous footage of Josephson standing outside Bird Dog and a snippet of the Impala on the curb. She recognized it as Rowland’s Impala because of the dirt on it.
“It all makes sense now,” she said, recalling the moment.
Howard didn’t call the police after seeing the blood in Rowland’s car because “I was scared for my life. I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she testified.
