Ashley Janae, a 31-year-old lifestyle influencer from Miami with more than 100,000 Instagram followers, was found unconscious inside a private villa at the Zuri Zanzibar Resort in Tanzania on the morning of April 9th, 2026. She was pronounced dead the following day. Just seven days earlier, on April 3rd, her fiancé, 45-year-old crypto fund manager Joe McCann, had proposed to her during an African safari. The timeline has drawn intense scrutiny.
After the proposal, Ashley celebrated her 31st birthday on April 5th, posting what would become her final public photo. The couple checked into the luxury resort on April 6th. On April 9th, Ashley was found unconscious, and by April 10th, she was dead. McCann told authorities that Ashley had taken her own life, and Tanzanian police initially ruled the death a possible suicide.
However, medical records obtained by Ashley’s family from a second hospital tell a different story. According to ABC affiliate WPVI in Philadelphia, those records list the cause of death as cerebral hypoxia, a loss of oxygen to the brain, caused specifically by strangulation and suffocation. The hospital report also noted an unidentified mark around her neck, a finding inconsistent with the specific mark typically left by hanging. Her family rejected the suicide narrative immediately.
Her mother, Yolanda Denise Endress, said, “She was loved. She was not just going to be discarded and forgotten about. ” Her father, Harry Robinson, said the circumstances didn’t look right. A close friend and PR executive, Savannah Britt, posted on X, “Anyone who knows Ash knows she would never commit suicide.
We need justice for Ashley Janae. ”
Adding to the concerns, police confirmed that hotel guests reported hearing a disturbance coming from the couple’s room before Ashley was found. Hotel staff intervened and physically separated the two, moving McCann to a separate villa about a ten-minute walk away. According to IB Times UK, there was an 11-hour gap between the last time Ashley was seen alive and when she was found unconscious.
McCann eventually returned to the villa, but according to her father, he came back with resort security staff, which is how Ashley was discovered. The family has demanded security camera footage from the resort, but it has not been released. They are also questioning why McCann returned to her room at all after staff had separated them for safety. McCann’s behavior in the aftermath has also raised questions.
While Ashley was missing, he remained active on X, posting about topics such as socialism versus capitalism, investment success stories, and AI and defense tech. He posted on April 6th, 7th, and 8th without a single public word about his fiancée’s whereabouts. He later deleted his Instagram accounts after the story went viral. The case gained broader attention in part because of McCann’s background.
At his peak, he ran Asymmetric, a crypto hedge fund focused on Bitcoin and Solana that was once considered one of the best-performing in the world. But by the time of the trip, his company had experienced severe losses, and his follow-up project, Accelerate, had reportedly fallen apart with institutional investors backing out. On April 16th, Ashley’s father flew to Washington, D. C.
, to personally push U. S. government officials to get involved. TMZ confirmed that U.
S. officials made contact with Tanzanian authorities on the family’s behalf. That same day, the family was told an autopsy had been completed, but they have not received the results. The investigation remains ongoing, and Ashley’s body has not yet been returned to her family.
McCann is currently being questioned by police as a witness and has not been charged with any crime. However, Tanzanian authorities have withheld his passport, meaning he is not free to leave the country. The family is demanding the full autopsy results, the resort security footage, an independent investigation, and the return of Ashley’s body.
Based on the medical records indicating strangulation and suffocation, the case could potentially move from a suicide ruling to a homicide investigation.
