Featured Image Credit: Getty Images
Topics: True crime, Cruise ship, Mexico
William Morgan
Ashley Barnett's dream career as an actor was finally taking off when she went on a cruise ship to celebrate her 25th birthday with a big blowout. But before her adventure had really begun, she was tragically found dead in her cabin.
Some 20 years later, her mom, Jamie Barnett, is still tortured by the unanswered questions regarding her daughter's mysterious death on board the Carnival Paradise ship, which was not properly investigated at the time and brushed off by the authorities.
Ashley, 24, had joined the ship at its stop in Long Beach, California, for a three-day excursion with her boyfriend and some friends. A day later, her mom received a call from the cruise's nurse at 6pm, to say that her daughter had been found dead at 2.45pm due to an 'unknown cause'.
Mom Jamie shared the heartbreaking details of what happened next in an interview with The Sun, where she described how the ship carried on with its party schedule despite her daughter's unexplained death - eventually dumping her body in a Mexican port and carrying on its way.
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This experience deeply troubled Jamie, who was greeted with silence after jumping on a flight to Ensenada, Mexico, to find out what had happened. She waited in the harbour to speak to someone for four hours.
“I couldn’t believe it. Nobody ever came and talked to me. It was horrific," she shared. “They just dumped her in Mexico. Nobody got off with her.”
Despite persisting, she said that no one would speak to her about her daughter's death. Jamie shared: “I stood and stood and stood at the harbour, waiting for someone from the ship to come talk to me.
“The captain just kept going and passed me by and never said a word to me.”
The investigation that followed only left the grief-stricken mom with more questions.
Ashley's body was taken to a morgue in Mexico, while her boyfriend and his pals continued on the ship as it returned to California without her. The boyfriend did not phone Jamie until a day after her daughter's death.
On the first night of the cruise, Ashley had gone out to see a performance and try her luck at the casino with her partner, before returning to their shared cabin, where an argument ensued, and he left.
Returning hours later, he claimed to have fallen asleep next to Ashley and, upon waking the next day, went out to join his friends. Coming back to the cabin at around 2pm, he found out that she was dead.
The boyfriend also told Jamie that medications were missing from his bag.
Her autopsy in Mexico would later add to the mom's heartbreak, after finding that she had died from a methadone overdose.
He claimed to have never given her the opiate, which people use to get off heroin, and people who knew Ashley said she was vehemently anti-drugs.
Jamie was adamant that her daughter was not a drug user, saying, 'Ashley would not have taken methadone.' In fact, the autopsy only begged more questions, including: “How did this drug end up in her beautiful, healthy body? Who did it?”
These questions led her to commission a second autopsy once Ashley's body had been returned to the US, but it was refused because it had been embalmed before being transported.
This was another key piece of evidence that was lost in the days following Ashley's death, with police also failing to set up a crime scene on board the ship. A major focus of Jamie's frustration in the years since has been the cruise's lack of transparency over key events.
When someone dies on a ship at sea, it is basically the crew that holds jurisdiction. "There’s no independent police that’s got your best interests at heart," Ashley's mom said.
“The high seas are a pretty lawless territory. It’s as lawless as you can get.”
She added: “There’s no law enforcement or police. It’s just the ship’s own security staff — a few hours of online training, and suddenly they’re ‘investigators.’ It’s a total joke.
“I really thought the FBI would give me answers, but they told me almost nothing.”
Carnival Cruise Lines has been approached for comment.