Last appearance "Undertow" Portrayed by Poppy Montgomery Played by Poppy Montgomery First appearance "Pilot" | Created by Hank Steinberg Gender Female Creator Hank Steinberg TV show Without a Trace | |
 | ||
Family Patricia Spade (mother)
Emily Reynolds (sister)
Randy Spade (nephew) Spouse(s) Unknown man (ex-husband)
Jack Malone (boyfriend)
Martin Fitzgerald (ex-boyfriend)
Brian Donovan (ex-boyfriend) Occupation Federal Bureau of Investigation Significant others Jack Malone, Martin Fitzgerald Similar Jack Malone, Martin Fitzgerald, Vivian Johnson, Danny Taylor, Elena Delgado | ||
Special Agent Samantha "Sam" Spade is a fictional character portrayed by actress Poppy Montgomery on the CBS television drama Without a Trace.
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 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. For a short time while she was eighteen, Sam was married, but the marriage didn't last long. 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, that ended because of disagreements between them on whether or not to reveal it to the rest of the team. She has a son Finn with her ex-boyfriend Brian Donovan who is played by Adam Kaufman, Poppy Montgomery's real-life boyfriend at the time.
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 donor. 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.