Fans of Midsomer Murders and Agatha Christie know villages are dangerous places, and I’m pretty sure Miss Marple made a tidy living from hamlets paying her to stay away. But the other afternoon there I was, minding my own business, half-listening to a crime podcast… actually a video of five homicides titled ‘5 Cases Solved With The Most Insane Twists’. The episodes had little in the way of twists, but I mentally noted how many crimes take place in out-of-the-way villages no one has heard of.
Then Case 5 queued up:
Valerie Tindall was born on August 29 2005 in Indianapolis, Indiana. She had a big loving family: her parents, a brother, and four sisters. They decided to leave the big city and move to a tiny town called Arlington, about an hour's drive from Indianapolis. With only a few hundred residents, …
Wait! What? What a shock. I know Arlington. It’s my hometown, I know it well. I graduated from high school there. My brothers and I sold the volunteer fire department land to build a new fire station. In upcoming issue 17 of Michael Bracken’s Black Cat Magazine, I set a story in and around Arlington and the county seat of Rushville. But deliberate death of a teenage girl?
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| Proximity from eastern edge of Lundin farm (at left edge of map) to crime scene. Fire Department sold to the town is depicted immediately to right of property. |
It’s not that we’re not exposed to sudden demise. Farming is the second most dangerous occupation, a percentage point or so behind construction. Indeed, the two professions account for a third of work-related loss of life. If heavy machinery, angry horses or bulls, open field lightning, blizzards, or drowning don’t kill a farmer, then carcinogenic chemicals could bring him down… or her… Everyone pitches in. Running a small farm is a family occupation for adults and children alike.
Childhood is a litany of don’ts: • Don’t reach into moving machinery. • Don’t go near the bogs. • Don’t go near the ponds. • Don’t go near the bullpen. • Don’t go near a wild boar. Don’t flip the tractor. • Don’t play in the grain silos. • Don’t play in the hay mow. • Don’t drown in the sugar bins– that’s a real thing.
Three classmates died, a girl and two boys, one of encephalitis and another from a tractor rolling over him. We grew up with this, but no one expects a teen to be intentionally killed. I can’t compare the violence with our colleague Fran Rizer’s ordeal, but the impact shocked me. Our home had been willfully violated.
The village of Arlington is perhaps six or seven blocks wide and maybe five blocks north-to-south counting the ‘new’ addition. Census generally claim three hundred or more residents, but I’m hard pressed where two hundred of them are hiding. I suspect the census includes domestic rabbits and hunting dogs.
My mother and a handful of friends used to keep me updated on current events, but after my parents died and friends either moved away or passed away, I lost touch without realizing it. I knew a number of Scotts in Rush and Shelby counties including in-laws, but not Patrick Scott involved in the case.
I didn’t know the Tindall family at all, but it turns out Haboob knew the grandparents and probably great-grandparents. The great-grandmother, according to her calculations, taught piano lessons to Haboob.
Setting aside my work, I rewound to the beginning of the story, listening carefully. The case made national news, but for reasons unknown, I missed it entirely. Other than a few reporting errors, the homicide and resolution are well documented, so I won’t go into detail.
Summary
On the 7th of June 2023, seventeen-year-old Valerie Tyndall left her family’s home, presumably to go to work for her neighbor and boss, Patrick Scott. He owned properties in Arlington and operated small businesses including landscaping and lawn care. When Valerie didn’t return that evening and her parents couldn’t locate her, they called Rush County Sheriff’s Office.
Soon the FBI, the US Marshals Service, and the Indiana State Police joined Rush County deputies. Authorities questioned Scott early on, who insisted Valerie was not scheduled to work.
Scott turned out to be a remarkably poor liar, and virtually from the beginning, detectives had an eye on him. For reasons unknown, he set fire to a garage he owned, but police couldn’t connect it to the case. Some news outlets stated Valerie’s corpse was found in a barrel in the burned-out shed, but that was not the situation.
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| Position of victim and perpetrator properties, and detail of search areas. |
Cadaver dogs signaled at a nearby pond, but divers turned up nothing. However, a couple of investigators noted prevailing winds and realized a breeze might have wafted scents from Scott’s home and office.
Spade work turned up nothing, but at last the crew turned their attention to a mass of construction debris. Under a pile of dirt, they turned up a large, hand-crafted box. It turned out to contain VHS video tapes. Police have not said what the tapes contained.
But under that, they found another box that gave off an odor of decomposition. Inside, they found young Valerie.
Scott admitted killing her, claiming she tried to blackmail him. He denied having a sexual relationship, although he had strangled her with his belt. Observers noted at times he acted like a jealous lover. One article suggested another reason possibly hinted at by the mother Shena Sandefur, which I’ll leave to you to discover. Following a plea agreement, he was sentenced to 57 years.
Aftermath
No offense to city dwellers living in an atmosphere of anonymity, I’m not sure urbanites could understand the impact. At this moment, Haboob resides seven miles from the crime scene. She didn’t believe it when I first told her. She had to research it herself and then try to internalize it.
The surrounding towns mentioned in articles we know well. My cherry bedroom suite came from The Sampler in the hamlet of Homer. My high school girlfriend lived in Carthage. I loved reading in the quiet of the Rushville library. I worked summers in Shelbyville. Andrew Jackson signed the land grant for my mother’s people outside Morristown. The land and inhabitants resemble a small budget Tara, under the skin and affecting the heart.
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| Tindall family during happier times |
Worst of all, a family moved from the big city to a village, looking for a healthier, quieter, safer life. Instead, they lost their daughter and the promise of her future. It hurts us all.
Sadly, violence will most likely affect each of us, even if obliquely. About fifteen years ago we were living in a housing development in a small town in Maryland. Late one night, an estranged husband knocked on the door three houses down from us, where his wife was living with their small children. When she came onto the front step. he pulled out a gun and shot her, killing her. then wandered off down the street to the house directly across from us and blew his brains out. My wife and I slept through all of this -- the gunfire, the suicide, the police and ambulances. My daughter, whose bedroom was further to the front of the house, woke up when the police arrived. I've often why the man picked my neighbor's driveway to kill himself; the only thing I can think if was that my neighbor's driveway was paved, and ours was not. There but for fortune...Everyone around us was affected by this horrid tragedy; some of us think of it to this day.
ReplyDeleteA few weeks late, several streets down from us, a neighbor saw a little girl in shabby pajamas wandering the street at night. She had escaped from her bedroom window where her mother had kept her locked up. In the house was a freezer which continued the body of the girl's sister. who had died -- perhaps from natural causes -- some time before when the mother lived in another town. She had taken the freezer, along with the dead body, when her when she had moved to our neighborhood. The surviving daughter had been kept in a locked bedroom until her managed to escape. Again, everyone in our area was affected...
If we are very lucky, such violence and bizarre behavior will never directly impact us. But because we are all members of the community of mankind, it behooves us to never forget the victims, whether the violence is nest door or half a world away.
Jerry, you got me thinking about other incidences, although most that came close to me were suicide pacts and acts rather than homicide. But our colleague Fran Rizer had to cope with the murder of her best friend, cousin, maid-of-honor, neighbor, and fan club manager. I don't know how people manage to deal with such horrors.
DeleteTerrible things happen in town or country. It's just that small towns like to believe that such things don't happen here. And then they keep their traps shut about the horrors they know or have heard about, except for the endless whispering...
ReplyDeleteCertainly infidelity and thievery found no holiday in these small towns. But a murder in a place that never before experienced a homicide came as a shock. Abruptly, sadly, they had to join the real world.
DeleteWhat a story, Leigh! I remember my mother telling me, "Never mess with the emotions of men. Men are dangerous." So many murder tales seem to grow from men being betrayed when their emotions are involved. And yes, we do expect a different type of death in a rural setting (I come from families who had farms and spent time there as a kid. I can relate to that.) Melodie
ReplyDeleteI wonder if violence erupts because mad emotions can find no other outlet, Melodie. It certainly keeps emergency rooms busy.
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