Search efforts for a 17-year-old girl who vanished after leaving her Indiana home in early June came to a grim end this week when authorities learned she’d been right next door all along: Her body was found buried on the property of a neighbor.
“This is not the outcome we had hoped for,” Rush County Sheriff Allan Rice said Wednesday in announcing the shocking twist in Valerie Tindall’s disappearance. The teen was last seen leaving her house in Arlington on June 7, and just over a week later, police appealed to the public for help finding her, warning that she was thought to be “in extreme danger.”
The same neighbor who reassured Tindall’s parents that she’d probably just run away is now charged with her murder. Patrick Scott, 59, was arrested on a preliminary charge of murder, police said Wednesday.
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Tindall’s family was friends with the Scott family, according to her mother, Shena Sandefur, who reacted to the news of the arrest with shock on Facebook.
“Here’s the sick fuck who took our babygirl from us,” she wrote, captioning Scott’s mugshot. “Valerie absolutely trusted him,” Sandefur wrote, adding that her daughter “loved him and his family.”
“HOW THE HELL COULD YOU COME IN MY YARD, LOOK US IN THE EYES AND ACT LIKE OUR FRIENDS???”
She told WTHR that her daughter was friends with Scott’s granddaughter, and Scott and his wife had sought to comfort Tindall’s family by telling them she was sure to come home.
“My daughter didn’t deserve this,” Sandefur said. “We just want answers right now. We just want answers as to why.”
Tindall would have turned 18 on Aug. 29. Her remains were found just 100 yards from her family home, according to a source cited by Fox 59, who said her body had been stuffed into a barrel which was then buried beneath rubble.
“I’m doing my best to not have any hate in my heart, but I just don’t think it’s possible. How could someone take away such a beautiful soul?” Tindall’s aunt, Precious Miniard, wrote on social media.
Police say the coroner still has yet to determine a cause of death and provide a positive identification, but investigators have already preliminarily charged Scott with murder based on their belief the remains belong to Tindall.
