'Sex Rock' victim's tragic mistake that would have saved her from horrific death: Traumatized eye-witness reveals haunting new details about teen's final moments

By BEN ASHFORD IN GRAYSON, KENTUCKY Published: 15:27, 8 July 2026 | Updated: 15:33, 8 July 2026 One of the last people to speak to Marly Kinney before she mysteriously drowned in a Kentucky lake has revealed how he desperately tried to help the tragic teen avert disaster, the Daily Mail can reveal.  The 19-year-old and her party-loving pals had rented a pontoon boat on June 24 for an afternoon of swimming and cliff jumping in Grayson Lake State Park. Marly and three others clambered to the top of a steep sandstone bluff known locally as Sex Rock and prepared to hurl themselves from the 20ft overhang. The stunt made onlookers uneasy, prompting one to call out to the bikini-clad thrill seekers to take care. ‘My husband told Marly, "throw a life jacket down there",’ said Leah Ross, who was nearby supervising her daughters aged six and 10 as they jumped off a much smaller rock. ‘He said, "if something goes wrong when you hit the water you can grab onto it". He wasn’t trying to intervene or lecture them. He just urged them to think about their safety. ‘Marly replied, "Ok yeah thank you, I’ll do that." But she didn’t throw one down. I think she was just trying to be polite. They didn't have life jackets, not on them anyways.' Ross, 30, and her family watched with their hearts in their mouths as Marly surfaced and safely swam back to the pontoon after the dizzying leap. Marly Kinney, 19, mysteriously drowned after her and her party-loving pals rented a pontoon boat for an afternoon of swimming and cliff jumping in Kentucky's Grayson Lake State Park The 19-year-old and her friends were spotted clambering to the top of a steep sandstone bluff known locally as Sex Rock before hurling themselves from the 20ft overhang  Cameron Conley, 23, who was driving the boat, was arrested for boating under the influence after Kinney went missing. He declined to speak to the Daily Mail outside his home in Ashland, Kentucky on Wednesday But the warning would prove prophetic when the teen slipped back into the water hours later to take a pee – and never climbed aboard again. Marly's 10-strong party of girlfriends and guys in their early 20s from the northeastern Kentucky town of Ashland noticed she was missing around 3pm. ‘They had all gotten off in the water somewhere to use the bathroom. A few people stayed on the boat but about six got off,’ her sister Willow VanHoose explained on TikTok. ‘One of the girls said, "Where is Marly?" and realized she was not there. ‘They tried to circle back to where they thought they last saw her and asked other boats around if they had seen a girl, and no one had seen her. ‘They told me they were screaming for her, yelling for her. They had looked for her.' The group pulled into the Grayson Lake Marina around 4pm where 23-year-old Cameron Conley ‘advised marina staff he was unable to locate a female passenger on the boat he was operating,’ according to police.  Frank Jeffrey, a resource manager for the US Army Corps of Engineers, which operates the nearby Grayson Lake Dam told the Daily Mail that Conley 'was in shock' when he reported one boat passenger was missing.  'The group was hysterical,’ he added. Leah Ross and her husband Josh were among the last people to speak to Marly Kinney before she went missing. Ross said her husband had urged the group of youngsters to have a life jacket handy if they planned to keep jumping  Friends have said Marly was a strong swimmer and went to the gym every morning Deflated floating devices were spotted discarded near Grayson Lake in the wake of the tragedy  The alert triggered a frantic, four-day search of the 1,500-acre reservoir.  Jeffrey immediately set off on a patrol boat to try to find Marly, who attended community college and worked as a server at a barbecue restaurant. The search was bolstered by game wardens, helicopters, divers, drones and cadaver dogs before the pretty brunette was found dead in the water at 3:45pm on Sunday afternoon. Thus far, the only person arrested over the boat trip is Conley who was detained for boating while intoxicated. State troopers noticed ‘the odor of an alcoholic beverage emanating from him, as well as bloodshot glassy eyes,’ according to citation paperwork. Conley had a blood alcohol level of .137 - nearly twice the legal limit, according to authorities. He is set to appear in court on July 22. If Conley could shed light on what happened to Marly in the 60ft-deep lake, he wasn’t prepared to share it with the Daily Mail after his release from the Carter County jail. ‘I’m not interested brother,’ he said, closing the door on a reporter who called at his two-bed home in Ashland, a city of 21,000 people on the southern bank of the Ohio River. According to Willow, Marly attended the gym every morning and was a strong swimmer. Marly's group pulled into the Grayson Lake Marina to report her missing – triggering a four-day search of the 1,500-acre reservoir Conley wasn’t prepared to speak with the Daily Mail about the fatal incident on Grayson Lake  ‘From what I heard she was not too intoxicated to the point she would not be able to swim. She was not too intoxicated that she would have blacked out,’ said Willow, 21. Willow, who was not on the boat, said in another post that she had been told Conley wasn't operating the boat at the moment that her sister disappeared.  ‘There are a few conflicting stories but I don’t care about that right now,’ she added. Drownings at Grayson Lake are few and far between. Conley was arrested for boating with a blood alcohol allegedly twice the limit  Victims include a 22-year-old man who died in July 1998 and a 90-year-old who perished while trying to swim to his boat in July 2018. Cliff jumping is strictly prohibited but difficult to police along the 20-mile waterway. Jeffrey told the Daily Mail he had not heard of a single death in the vicinity of Walker Point, the rocky outcrop nicknamed Sex Rock. The current is rarely dangerous in the sort of calm, sunny weather conditions experienced last Wednesday afternoon, he said. ‘It’s not a designated swimming pool with a shallow end and a deep end. But it’s not especially dangerous if you’re sensible. ‘I’ve never heard of a single instance of someone drowning while wearing a life jacket.’ When the Daily Mail hiked out to Sex Rock this week, we found the secluded beauty spot strewn with beer cans and trash. Vandals had carved their initials into the sandstone and daubed slogans including a faded swastika and the ACAB symbol – an acronym for ‘all cops are bastards.’ But if the shaded haunt was a magnet for teen hi-jinks, there was little indication that Marly and her friends were up to no good, according to Ross. Wellwishers donated around $22,000 to a GoFundMe page raising funds for Marly’s funeral ‘They weren't overtly drunk or stumbling around. We probably would have stepped in if we would have noticed anything like that,’ she said. Ross took an image of her children playing on the rocks that inadvertently captured Marly in the background, preparing to plunge into the water at 2:20pm. She posted it to Facebook when she learned the churchgoing teen was missing to try to help rescuers pinpoint her last known location. ‘They just seemed like kids having fun on the lake,’ Ross added. ‘I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.’ Wellwishers have donated around $22,000 to a GoFundMe page raising funds for Marly’s funeral, which took place on Friday, July 3.  Marly attended Ashland Community and Technical College, where she earned a place on the president’s list, according to her obituary. She was also active in 4-H from the age of 10 and served on the Boyd County 4-H Teen Council. Marly’s parents Tracy and Michael VanHoose issued a statement thanking search and rescue teams while they were still looking out for her. But in the wake of her daughter’s confirmed death, Tracy, 55, told the Daily Mail she didn’t wish to say more. ‘We are going to the funeral home now. We are very private people,’ the distraught mom said. Colleagues at Smokin’ J’s Ribs and Brewhouse remembered Marly as a ‘model employee loved by all.’ And close friend Baylie Hanshaw wrote on Facebook: ‘Not only did I get the privilege to love Marly but I got the chance to be loved by her.’ The Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife said Marly’s cause of death would be determined by the State Medical Examiner's Office.