GREENVILLE, North Carolina — Robert Edward Rathmann will spend the rest of his life in a North Carolina prison. A Pitt County jury on Friday, October 30, 2026, found the 37-year-old guilty of first-degree murder in the beating death of Samantha Coppola, 39, and Superior Court Judge Andrew Womble sentenced him shortly afterward to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Source: Law&Crime via InterNewscast
The verdict closed a case that began four years ago in Grimesland, a small community about 12 miles east of Greenville in eastern North Carolina. Rathmann and Coppola had recently begun dating in the fall of 2022, according to testimony reported from an earlier bond hearing, and had been living with Rathmann's aunt before being asked to leave because of his aggressive behavior.
The couple then moved into a mobile home in Grimesland, where, prosecutors showed over a four-day trial, Rathmann beat Coppola to death with a curtain rod. According to the courtroom reporting of WCTI, the Greenville ABC affiliate, Coppola is believed to have died around October 12, 2022 — the morning family and friends last heard from her.
Source: WCTI NewsChannel 12
Discovered days later, after a family welfare check
Coppola's family, unable to reach her, asked authorities to check on her. On October 17, 2022 — four years ago this month — officers entered the mobile home and found her body. Investigators believed she had already been dead for several days.
Pitt County Sheriff Paula Dance said at the time that investigators had probable cause to believe Rathmann caused Coppola's death, and the sheriff's office charged him with murder, according to The Daily Reflector's reporting from the investigation.
Source: The Daily Reflector
Rathmann was already in custody when the murder charge came. On the night of October 13, 2022, he was arrested on a burglary charge after, authorities said, he drove Coppola's car to Fayetteville, threatened a man with a knife and demanded to see the man's girlfriend. Investigators never publicly identified a specific motive for the killing, and authorities classified the case as domestic violence.
A family that waited four years for a verdict
At a 2023 bond hearing, the court heard that Coppola's family had never met Rathmann before the killing. Her mother told the court: "He brutally murdered my daughter. Please don't let him go." Bond was denied, and Rathmann remained in custody through this week's trial.
Coppola's obituary, published by Smith Funeral & Cremation Services, remembered her in a single line that her family chose: "A free spirit, Samantha was a devoted mother, had a good heart and was loved by all."
Source: Smith Funeral & Cremation Services obituary
Under North Carolina law, first-degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole when the death penalty is not imposed. Judge Womble imposed that sentence immediately after Friday's verdict, meaning Rathmann, 37, will never be eligible for release.
Why this case matters
Domestic-violence homicides remain one of the most common forms of murder of women in the United States, and this case followed a pattern advocates in North Carolina describe repeatedly: a new relationship, escalating aggression that relatives and housemates noticed, and a victim cut off from contact with her family in the days before she was found. The four-year gap between the killing and the verdict also meant Coppola's family lived through repeated court dates before hearing a jury say the word guilty.
With the sentence imposed, the criminal case in Pitt County is complete. Any appeal would go to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, where first-degree murder convictions are reviewed as a matter of course, but the life-without-parole sentence itself is fixed by statute and is not something the trial judge had discretion to reduce.