A Tennessee woman’s trip with her 8-year-old daughter to meet a man she met while gaming online ended in tragedy after authorities found her body covered in a sheet outside a dilapidated home, officials say.
Cleveland, Ohio, authorities found Amber Graham, 37, dead, the Spring Hill Police Department in Tennessee told Law&Crime. The investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death remains ongoing.
On or around June 14, Graham left Spring Hill, Tennessee, with her daughter, police said. The mother “told family that she was traveling to Cleveland, Ohio, to meet a friend.”
Spring Hill sits about 35 miles south of Nashville. The suburb sits about 500 miles south of Cleveland.
Six days later, on June 20, Graham returned to Tennessee before leaving again. According to authorities, her family saw her for the “last time” that day.
On July 2, the Spring Hill Police Department said it received a missing persons report for Graham and her daughter. The following day, the Cleveland Police Department notified Spring Hill detectives that they had found Graham dead.
Fire crews responded to a welfare check at a home on Bosworth Road in Cleveland, local NBC affiliate WKYC reported. Graham’s friends had turned to social media to try to figure out where she was.
The friends were apparently right to worry. Authorities found a body under a sheet behind the residence that they later identified as Graham.
The house “was in disrepair,” with a gutter hanging off and garbage blocking the front door, Lt. Mike Norman with the Cleveland Division of Fire said.
Two days earlier, an 8-year-old girl reportedly walked into a Cleveland firehouse about half a mile away. Cynthia Clair, a friend of Graham’s, confirmed to the Ohio TV station that this girl was Graham’s daughter.
“Amber loved that little girl more than anything in the world,” Clair told WKYC. “Having her dropped off at a fire station is just not something Amber would ever do.”
More details about the case have since emerged. According to Nashville WSMV, Graham had met a man online while playing “Call of Duty,” a popular first-person shooter video game.
“I think she really just wanted love,” Clair said. “She was having a hard time finding that here. We all — every single one of us in here — tried to tell her, you know, ‘we love you here, you have a family here, we love you.’ And she went anyways.”
The friend added that Graham failed to show up for her shift at a grocery store where Clair served as her manager on the day she was supposed to return to work. Hours later, Graham called Clair and quit. Then, Clair heard a man on the line.
“He was really, really upset. He was screaming at me. He was screaming at her,” Clair said.
The Spring Hill Police Department said the cause and manner of death for Graham remains under investigation. Ohio’s Department of Children and Youth now has custody of Graham’s daughter, and police from both states are working together on the case.
A GoFundMe set up for Graham’s daughter states “Amber’s life was cut short far from home” and that her “family is in a state of deep shock, trying to process this devastating loss.”
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