Ashley Barnett was on the verge of fulfilling her ambitions as an actor when she decided to take a celebratory cruise for her 25th birthday. However, her journey ended in tragedy when she was discovered dead in her cabin.
Two decades later, her mother, Jamie Barnett, is still haunted by the unresolved circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death aboard the Carnival Paradise ship. The incident was not thoroughly investigated at the time and was dismissed by authorities.
Ashley, then 24, embarked on the cruise from Long Beach, California, for a three-day getaway with her boyfriend and friends. The next day, Jamie received a call from the ship’s nurse at 6pm, stating her daughter had been found dead at 2.45pm due to an ‘unknown cause.’
Jamie recounted the painful details in an interview with the Sun, expressing anguish over how the cruise continued its activities despite Ashley’s unexplained death. Her body was left at a Mexican port while the ship carried on.
Arriving in Ensenada, Mexico, Jamie encountered a wall of silence, waiting four hours at the harbor to learn what happened to her daughter.
“I couldn’t believe it. Nobody ever came and talked to me. It was horrific,” Jamie described. “They just dumped her in Mexico. Nobody got off with her.”
Despite her efforts, no information was forthcoming. Jamie recounted: “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 subsequent investigation only compounded Jamie’s grief and confusion.
Ashley’s body was transported to a Mexican morgue, while her boyfriend and friends continued their journey back to California. He did not contact Jamie until a day after Ashley’s passing.
On the first night of the cruise, Ashley attended a show and tried her luck at the casino with her partner. After a disagreement, he left the cabin. He returned hours later, claiming to have slept next to Ashley and found her lifeless the following afternoon.
The boyfriend reported missing medications from his bag. The Mexican autopsy later revealed Ashley had died from a methadone overdose.
He asserted he never provided her with the drug, often used to wean off heroin, and those close to Ashley insisted she was staunchly against drugs.
Jamie was certain that her daughter did not use drugs, insisting ‘Ashley would not have taken methadone.’ The autopsy only raised more questions: “How did this drug end up in her beautiful, healthy body? Who did it?”
These uncertainties prompted Jamie to seek a second autopsy once Ashley’s body returned to the US, but it was denied because she had been embalmed before transport.
This was one of several critical pieces of evidence lost in the aftermath of Ashley’s death, compounded by the failure to establish a crime scene on the ship.