CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · General Reference

Death of Samantha Reid

Open-knowledge reference entry

Cross-disciplinary reference desk with index cards, atlas, dictionary and catalogue
General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ5247523
Source-derived summary

Samantha Reid (January 2, 1984 – January 17, 1999) was an American poisoning victim. She grew up in the Detroit, Michigan Metropolitan Area and came to national attention due to her lethal GHB overdose, at the age of 15. Her death resulted in the first manslaughter trial of defendants who were accused of being responsible for a GHB overdose. Convictions of poisoning were upheld.

Summary

On January 16, 1999, Samantha Reid and her friends, Melanie Sindone and Jessica VanWassehnova, attended a party where three young men offered them drinks. Samantha and Melanie both asked for Mountain Dew. The young men brought them the cocktails, to which they had added either gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) or gamma-butyrolactone (GBL). Melanie stated that her face became numb soon afterward, and then she and Samantha both passed out. Jessica later noticed that they were having difficulty breathing. The boys eventually drove them to a hospital, but Samantha was not breathing when she arrived at the hospital.

Editorial summary

“Death of Samantha Reid” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Death, Samantha and Reid can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1984, 1999—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Death, Samantha and Reid.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Death of Samantha Reid” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Death, Samantha and Reid provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5247523. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1984 and 1999.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Death of Samantha Reid”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Death of Samantha Reid primary sources, Death of Samantha Reid archive and Death research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Death of Samantha Reid”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Death of Samantha Reid” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.