Grandfather of missing Schenectady girl Samantha Humphrey opposes private investigator fundraising effort

SCHENECTADY — The grandfather of missing Schenectady girl Samantha Humphrey is opposing a fundraising effort by the girl’s mother to hire a private detective to assist in the ongoing search.

Humphrey, 14, was last seen on Nov. 25 at approximately 11:30 p.m. in the area of Riverside Park in the city’s Stockade neighborhood.

Samantha’s mother Jaclyn Humphrey started a GoFundMe page on Dec. 1 in order to raise funds to hire a private investigator and attorney to complement the police search for her daughter.

John Matarazzo, Samantha Humphrey’s grandfather, said on Wednesday that he and his wife Diane are opposed to the fundraising plan and wholeheartedly support the efforts of the Schenectady Police Department and the additional agencies that continue to search for their granddaughter.

“Her mother is distraught,” Matarazzo said. “But she just doesn’t understand — we don’t need money to find the girl. A private eye is not going to find the girl. She’s not hiding somewhere. My wife and I raised her brother [Mattox] for the longest time. We’re the closest to them of anybody. If Samantha was alive, she would have at least let us know that she was alive. Because she cared about us. So there’s no way that I believe that she’s hiding somewhere. I hope that I can be proven wrong, but I don’t have that feeling.”

Samantha Humphrey lived with her grandparents from the ages of 7 to 13.

Sgt. Patrick Irwin, spokesperson for the Schenectady Police Department, said on Wednesday that police continue to search the Mohawk River in hopes of finding Humphrey.

Matarazzo, who served for three decades as a first responder with the Schenectady Fire Department, said that he believes the police are doing everything they can to find his granddaughter.

“I worked in public safety my entire career and I stand by the agencies that are working to try and find our baby girl,” he said. “They are working diligently. If you go to the [Mohawk] River and look in the river and think about what a massive effort it has to be to find an 80-pound girl that’s in there somewhere. It’s like the old saying, looking for a needle in the haystack. It’s even harder than that.”

Jaclyn Humphrey’s GoFundMe page has raised $2,005 of its stated $5,000 goal, as of 10:15 p.m. Wednesday.

In her post on the crowdsourcing site, Humphrey said she hoped to hire a private detective and attorney to speed along the search process.

“We feel the current search protocol with the police is moving too slowly on this time sensitive matter,” she wrote.

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Matarazzo said the family has been in daily contact with the police as the search for the ninth-grader continues.

“I was involved in searches like this before,” he said. “To say that these guys are not doing enough, it breaks my heart. I know many of them and even the ones I don’t know personally, I have a bond with them. It hurts for someone to say that they’re not doing their job. They want nothing more than to put closure on this because that’s what their living is and their life is about.”

Matarazzo said he sympathizes with Samantha’s mother during a difficult time, but simply disagrees with her plan.

“She’s one person and that’s the way that she feels and that’s okay,” he said. “But the family thinks that everything that should be done is being done. That’s the bottom line. We’ll wait and see what happens.”

The grandfather said he journeys to the Mohawk River every day to watch the police search for his granddaughter.

“I go see where they’re launching from and I talk to whoever I can to see if they can tell me anything,” Matarazzo said. “But there’s nothing to tell yet. We don’t need money. We need them to find our baby girl.”

Anyone with information about Samantha’s disappearance is urged to call the police at 518-630-0911.

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