The 31-year-old influencer got engaged in Tanzania days before she died. Her family wants answers.
On April 3, Ashly Robinson posted a video to Instagram of the moment her boyfriend, Joseph McCann, proposed to her during a safari in Tanzania. A lion walked away in the background. She captioned it with quiet disbelief. Two days later, on her 31st birthday, she posted a photo feeding a giraffe and wrote that she was exactly where she needed to be. Six days after that, she was dead.
Robinson, a Miami-based lifestyle influencer with more than 100,000 Instagram followers known online as Ashlee Jenae, was found unresponsive at the Zuri Zanzibar resort on the night of April 8. She was transported to a local hospital and pronounced dead on April 9. Zanzibar police have stated publicly that she died by suicide following a dispute with McCann, 45, a prominent cryptocurrency fund manager. Her family disputes that conclusion entirely.
What the investigation has revealed so far
According to a statement from Tanzanian authorities, Robinson and McCann arrived at Zuri Zanzibar on April 4 and hotel staff noted repeated conflicts between the couple during their stay. On the night of April 8, hotel management separated them after other guests reported a disturbance. McCann was moved to a separate villa roughly eight to ten minutes away on foot. A few hours later, hotel staff found Robinson unresponsive in her room. Police stated she was found in a closet with a belt around her neck.
McCann has been questioned by investigators and his passport has been confiscated while authorities await the results of a forensic autopsy. Police have asked him to remain in Tanzania. He has not made any public statement, and attempts by multiple news outlets to reach him have been unsuccessful. Zuri Zanzibar management told ABC News the resort is cooperating fully with the investigation.
McCann is the founder of Asymmetric, a crypto hedge fund and venture firm backed by prominent investors. In December 2025, he announced he was shutting down the firm’s liquid fund following reported losses of roughly 78% that year.
Ashlee Jenae’s family pushes back on the official account
Robinson‘s parents, Harry Robinson and Yolanda Denise Endres, have spoken publicly about their daughter’s death through local Philadelphia media. Both said her demeanor in the days leading up to her death gave no indication of distress. Her mother said Robinson called her on April 8, the night of the argument, and told her she and McCann had fought and been moved to separate rooms. McCann later called the family to say something had happened and that Robinson was stable and at a hospital. The family learned she had died from a subsequent call from the hotel.
Robinson’s sister, Alyssa Endres, told NBC News that nothing about the sequence of events made sense given who her sister was. The family released a statement on Instagram describing the circumstances as suspicious and saying they are working with both Tanzanian and U.S. officials to find answers. A GoFundMe campaign the family launched to cover travel and related expenses surpassed its $50,000 goal.
The online conversation that followed
Within hours of Robinson’s death becoming public, a separate conversation took hold on social media. Because Robinson was a Black woman and McCann is white, much of the discourse shifted away from the investigation and toward debates about interracial dating, racial loyalty and what her choices supposedly said about Black women more broadly. Some posts framed her death as a cautionary tale.
The contrast with how similar cases have been covered online was striking. Deaths involving Black men in comparable circumstances have generally not produced the same volume of moralistic commentary. The speed with which Robinson was turned into a symbol of something larger, before any official determination of cause of death had been confirmed, reflected a pattern that critics have pointed to before. A woman’s death became a debate about her choices rather than a demand for accountability.
The investigation is ongoing. No cause of death has been officially confirmed pending autopsy results. Robinson’s family has said they are not prepared to accept the initial police account and will continue pressing for transparency. Whatever the outcome, the facts of the case have not yet been fully established, and the people who loved her are still waiting for answers that have not come.