Special Agent Samantha "Sam" Spade is a fictional character portrayed by actress
Poppy Montgomery on the CBS television drama ''
Without a Trace
''Without a Trace'' is an American police procedural drama television series created by Hank Steinberg that aired on CBS from September 26, 2002 to May 19, 2009 with the total of seven seasons and 160 episodes. The series focuses the cases of ...
''.
Samantha is a
Special Agent in the New York City FBI
missing persons case squad led by Special Agent
Jack Malone. She was raised in a poor, troubled home in the town of
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Kenosha () is a city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the seat of Kenosha County. Per the 2020 census, the population was 99,986 which made it the fourth-largest city in Wisconsin. Situated on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Keno ...
and as a result is particularly empathetic to kids in troubled situations. She was very unhappy as a teenager and tried to run away when she was sixteen, but was stopped by her mother and a policeman. She had a short-lived marriage when she was eighteen. She has had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Jack Malone, that began with an affair while he was married. She also had a secret office romantic relationship with Martin Fitzgerald, which ended because of disagreements between them on whether or not to reveal it to the rest of the team. She has a son, Finn, from a one-night-stand with Brian Donovan, who is played by
Adam Kaufman, Montgomery's then-real-life boyfriend.
In Episode 18 of Season 5, Sam's estranged older sister, Emily (
Molly Price), visited. When Samantha was fourteen, she killed her mother Patricia (
Tess Harper)'s then-boyfriend (
Joe Henry) with a shovel because she caught him sexually abusing Emily (Episode 19). They buried him in the woods next to the cabin and eventually grew distant from each other. Samantha learns that as a result of this abuse, Emily had a son, Randy, who now has cancer so she sought a
bone marrow
Bone marrow is a semi-solid tissue found within the spongy (also known as cancellous) portions of bones. In birds and mammals, bone marrow is the primary site of new blood cell production (or haematopoiesis). It is composed of hematopoieti ...
donor
A donor in general is a person, organization or government which donates something voluntarily. The term is usually used to represent a form of pure altruism, but is sometimes used when the payment for a service is recognized by all parties as rep ...
. Sam is not a match but her mother is a possibility.
Spade received her name because her mother was a fan of fictional detective
Sam Spade from ''
The Maltese Falcon'', created by
Dashiell Hammett.
References
External links
''Without a Trace'' Official CBS Website*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Spade, Samantha
Without a Trace characters
Fictional characters from Wisconsin
Fictional Federal Bureau of Investigation personnel
Television characters introduced in 2002