Ashley Barnett’s acting career was finally gaining momentum when she boarded a Carnival cruise to celebrate her upcoming 25th birthday.
Instead, the 24-year-old was found dead in her cabin less than 24 hours after setting sail, leaving behind a grieving family and a mystery that remains unresolved two decades later.
Now, her mother, Jamie Barnett, has spoken out in a heartbreaking interview, saying Ashley’s death in October 2005 was never properly investigated and was quickly brushed aside as the ship continued its party schedule.
Ashley's Mother: "They Just Dumped Her In Mexico"
Ashley joined the three-day cruise in Long Beach, California, with her boyfriend and friends.
By 2.45pm the next day, she was pronounced dead in her cabin. Jamie received a call from the ship’s nurse hours later, around 6pm, telling her her daughter had died from an “unknown cause.”
Despite Ashley’s unexplained death, the ship continued to its scheduled stop in Ensenada, Mexico.
Jamie said her daughter’s body remained onboard for hours before being offloaded and handed over to Mexican authorities.
“I couldn’t believe it. Nobody ever came and talked to me. It was horrific,” Jamie told The Sun. “They just dumped her in Mexico. Nobody got off with her.”
The bereaved mother immediately flew to Mexico, but said she was met with silence when she arrived at the harbor. She waited four hours, hoping to speak to someone from the ship.
“I stood and stood and stood at the harbor, waiting for someone from the ship to come talk to me,” she said. “The captain just kept going and passed me by and never said a word to me.”
While Ashley’s body was taken to a morgue in Ensenada, her boyfriend and friends stayed on the ship as it sailed back to California. Jamie said the boyfriend did not contact her until the day after her daughter died.
Boyfriend’s account and the drug mystery
According to the boyfriend, the couple spent their first night on board at a show and the casino before returning to their shared cabin. He claimed an argument followed, prompting him to leave for a few hours.
He later said he returned, fell asleep next to Ashley, and went to join friends the next day, believing she was still sleeping. When he came back to the cabin around 2pm, he said he could not wake her.
He also told Jamie that some of his medications were missing.
Ashley’s autopsy in Mexico later concluded she had died from a methadone overdose. Methadone is commonly used to help people stop taking heroin, but Jamie insists the finding made no sense.
“Ashley would not have taken methadone,” she said. “How did this drug end up in her beautiful, healthy body? Who did it?”
Friends and family said Ashley was strongly anti-drugs, and her boyfriend denied ever giving her methadone.
Jamie tried to commission a second autopsy in the US, but it was refused because Ashley’s body had already been embalmed in Mexico. By then, key evidence was gone, her organs had been removed, and no crime scene had ever been preserved onboard the ship.
Jamie Says' The high Seas Are "Lawless" Territory
Jamie says the handling of Ashley’s death exposed serious flaws in how incidents at sea are investigated.
When someone dies on a cruise ship, the crew initially holds jurisdiction, not independent law enforcement.
“There’s no independent police that’s got your best interests at heart,” she said. “The high seas are a pretty lawless territory. It’s as lawless as you can get.”
She added: “There’s no law enforcement or police. It’s just the ship’s own security staff - a few hours of online training, and suddenly they’re ‘investigators.’ It’s a total joke...I really thought the FBI would give me answers, but they told me almost nothing.”
Mexican authorities and the FBI questioned Ashley’s boyfriend early on, but no one was ever charged. The FBI still lists the case as open.
Jamie has since turned her grief into action, helping to found and lead the International Cruise Victims group, pushing for safety reforms and accountability at sea.
“You can’t just wallow in your grief and do nothing - you have to fight,” she said. “I woke up one night and thought, if this had happened to me and Ashley was the one who survived, she would have fought like a tiger to find out what happened."
“Something has to give. Something good has to come out of this horrific situation," she continued.
The mother warned that people "need to be aware of the fine print in their ticket" and "what rights they’re giving up," and added: “If I can help do something that saves anybody else from ever having to do this or go through this… that’s what I’m going to do.”