What was under the rubble
Inside the hole were two large homemade wooden boxes, both wrapped in tarp.
Investigators opened the first one. It held old VHS tapes and paperwork.
Then they opened the second.
Inside were human remains, wrapped in black plastic and taped up.
The remains could not be identified on sight. But the investigators noticed one small detail: the fingernails were painted orange. In a social media post on June 7, the day she disappeared, Valerie had been wearing orange nail polish.
On November 30, the Rush County coroner, Brenda McMahan, confirmed the remains were Valerie’s.
Scott was arrested without incident on the day of the search and booked into the Rush County Jail.
“This is not the outcome we had hoped for,” Sheriff Allan Rice said at a press conference. “This case is still under investigation to ensure those responsible are successfully prosecuted.”
“It just kind of happened”
After he was read his rights, Scott talked. According to the probable cause affidavit, as reported by local media, he admitted killing Valerie.
He said that on June 7, she met him at an apartment complex in town instead of going to work, and they drove to his house together. There, he said, they argued. He claimed Valerie had tried to “blackmail” him into buying her a new car, and that he believed she was going to try to seduce him. “I wasn’t going to have it,” he told detectives.
He strangled her with his belt.
He told them he hadn’t planned it. “It just kind of happened,” he said.
He left her body in his office. The next day, investigators said, he went to Home Depot and bought four 2x4s and two sheets of oriented strand board. He built a box, wrapped Valerie in black plastic and tape, put her inside, screwed it shut and wheeled it to a hole on his property that he had dug earlier for concrete. Then he covered it over.
Valerie’s car had been part of the runaway story from the start. Scott admitted that he had moved it himself, because someone had seen it. Investigators said it ended up in a lot among other broken-down cars, with its keys and license plates gone. Scott told them he had thrown the plates and keys into a river.
He insisted his wife and daughter “don’t know nothing.” Police said they had no information that anyone else was involved.
On November 30, prosecutors charged him with murder, obstruction of justice and false informing. A judge ordered him held without bond.
“We moved across the street from her predator”
For almost six months, Valerie’s parents had searched, put out flyers and waited for a phone call. The whole time, she had been buried a short walk from their door, on the property of the man who had sat in their home and told them she would come back.
“We moved away from Indy to get away from violence,” her mother, Shena Sandefur, told NewsNation. “And we moved across the street from her predator.”
Speaking to reporters after the arrest, she asked the question the whole town was asking. “How the h— could you come in my yard, look us in the eyes and act like our friends?”
Her father, Jack Tindall, said the man who had employed his daughter for more than two years showed no remorse at all.
57 years
Scott never went to trial. In January 2024, he signed a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to one count of murder. The obstruction and false informing charges were dropped.
On Monday, March 11, 2024, a Rush County judge accepted the deal and sentenced Patrick Scott to 57 years in prison. He was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution to Valerie’s family.
For months, the official theory was that a 17-year-old girl had run off, and that someone might be helping her stay hidden. In a way, that was true. Someone was hiding her. He lived 100 yards away, and he came over that first night to comfort her family.
