- Pregnant mum Ashley Bush was short on cash and looking for baby clothes when she fell victim to a twisted Facebook scam
- A woman named Amber Waterman preyed on Ashley’s situation, offering her clothes and a job opportunity
- Tragcically, there was no job, and Ashley was lured her death by Amber, who was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the crime
When it came to financial and material matters, Ashley Bush and her fiancé Joshua Willis didn’t have much.
Yet there was no shortage of love in their lives.
A mother of three, 33-year-old Ashley doted over her young brood.
So in early 2022 when the couple found out they were expecting again, they were ecstatic.
They decided to name their growing girl Valkyrie Grace Willis.
But with the purse strings already tight, concerns over providing adequately for their growing family of four children loomed.
Ashley was the main breadwinner, but as her pregnancy progressed, she faced complications after being diagnosed with gestational hypertension.
When Ashley’s doctor said she wasn’t able to work, their household income nose-dived.
So the determined mum took to Facebook that October, searching on a local mothers’ group page for work-from-home opportunities.
Her quest attracted the sympathies of a woman named Lucy Barrows.
Even though Lucy had only joined the mums’ group recently, she’d already displayed her generosity, offering to help several mothers.
I’m looking for a small baby swing and maternity clothes, one mum in need had posted.
I might have some tops in that size… could meet somewhere on Friday, Lucy replied.
When Lucy shared the details of a job opportunity for a local company where the successful candidate could work remotely, it captured Ashley’s attention.
If she could look after her kids and make money working from home, her family’s financial situation would be much less dire.
She reached out to Lucy and the pair arranged to meet at a local library later that week.
Joshua drove Ashley there, and afterwards she said the interview went well.
Lucy seemed genuine and trustworthy, and Ashley was stoked that the woman’s kind offer of free baby clothes as well as a job looked to be the answer to their immediate problems.
Three days later a meeting with Lucy’s boss was scheduled.
That day Joshua dropped Ashley outside a local convenience shop to meet Lucy who was going to drive Ashley the rest of the way to meet the boss and discuss the role further.
Around 3pm, Ashley texted Joshua to say she was on her way back.
And 10 minutes later, already waiting in the car park, Joshua saw Lucy behind the wheel of her tan-coloured ute with Ashley sitting in the passenger seat.
But instead of stopping as he expected them to, the car zoomed past him on the highway.
‘The driver looked at me and kept going,’ he later said.
Joshua phoned Ashley to see what was going on, but his call went straight to voicemail.
He tried to follow the vehicle but soon lost sight of it.
Desperately he kept trying to reach Ashley by phone, to no avail.
By 6.30pm Joshua was frantic.
He contacted police and a search commenced for the missing pregnant mum.
Around the same time, emergency services received a call from a woman named Amber Waterman saying she’d given birth in her car.
When paramedics arrived, they found Amber holding a tiny baby girl, who was unresponsive.
The placenta was in Amber’s trouser bottoms. Her husband Jamie was with her in the car.
Tragically, the baby couldn’t be revived, and the devastated couple began to make funeral arrangements.
On the day of the baby’s memorial, when the coroner arrived to perform an autopsy, Amber and her husband Jamie seemed on edge, and demanded to know whether a DNA test would be performed.
It seemed a strange question for them to ask, but grief often works in mysterious ways.
Meanwhile, as the search for Ashley continued, Joshua filled police in on her last whereabouts, including her involvement with Lucy.
Accessing Ashley’s social media accounts and scouring Lucy Barrow’s profile, posts and messages, police made a shocking discovery.
Her IP address – the number that identifies a device – led them to Amber Waterman, the same woman who’d just lost her baby.
Why would she lie about her name? And could she have been involved in Ashley’s disappearance?
Detectives labelled Amber as a person of interest and obtained a warrant to search the couple’s property.
There, they discovered a tan ute – the same as the car Joshua had reported seeing Ashley get into with ‘Lucy’. Inside it, police were horrified to find bloodstains.
Jamie was quick to claim these were the result of his wife giving birth, but police weren’t buying it.
It quickly became apparent to investigators that Ashley was dead and would never be coming home.
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Taken into custody, Amber Waterman changed her story and, in a spectacular revelation, tried to claim that Lucy Barrows was a real person and she’d kidnapped and murdered Ashley.
But it was Jamie who crumbled under questioning, admitting to police that, after his wife had killed the pregnant mum, he’d helped dispose of her body.
As detectives pieced all the information together, the details of Ashley’s grisly death were far worse than anyone could have imagined.
After luring Ashley in via a fake job opportunity on Facebook and the promise of free baby clothes, Amber Waterman had kidnapped the doting mum and taken her to the home she shared with Jamie.
There she fatally shot Ashley. Horrifyingly, Waterman then used a knife to cut Ashley’s unborn baby and placenta from her uterus, planning to pass the newborn off as her own.
After she confessed all to Jamie, the pair disposed of the body, burning it in a firepit behind their house before dumping Ashley’s charred remains in a location not far from their home.
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In July 2024, Amber Waterman, then 44, struck a deal, pleading guilty to kidnapping resulting in death and causing the death of a child in utero.
During her sentencing that October in Missouri, US, District Court Judge David Rush described the crimes as a ‘new level of graphic’, handing down two life sentences in prison without parole.
Jamie Waterman, 44, eventually pleaded guilty to one count of being an accessory of kidnapping resulting in death. He faces up to 15 years in prison.
State prosecutors are now seeking the death penalty for Amber Waterman, something that was abolished in Australia in 1985. She has appealed.
‘This is the beginning of moving forward,’ Ashley’s cousin Lainey Boone said. ‘[But] there’s been a void that can’t be filled…we still gather as a family and enjoy our time together, but there’s always that lingering, “Oh, they should both be here with us”.’
Joshua has remembered his fiancée as a wonderful woman and mum.
‘I wish that Ashley and Valkyrie were alive and home with us all. She was a great mother, a wonderful wife, a very outgoing, caring and kind person. They didn’t deserve any of this.’
