The Most Disturbing Case You've Ever Heard | True Crime Documentary

I keep feeling like I should be waking up from a dream right now and it it's just not happening so yeah it's um it's like a movie or something it's not supposed to be real life in early November 2015 a young woman from South Carolina called Amy vard gave interviews to several state and local TV stations the interviews made people very emotional and viewers were on the edge of their seats Amy talked about how she found the bodies of her mother and three other family members who had been killed badly not long before went to

knock on the door and I walked in it was dark I heard TV's on and I flipped the light on and um that's about as far as I can go during any of the interviews her husband rossore Ross vard was with her but unlike her he was mostly calm and emotionless she thanked her friends family and the community for their prayers and support and she talked about how great her deceased relatives were she also said that she and her husband had nothing to do with the murders and she couldn't understand how the guilty party or

parties lived with themselves ironically these words would come back to haunt her almost a decade later before we start we want to send our deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the people who were killed in this case they were taken from us far too soon and in a most cruel way residents of Anderson County South Carolina have always been proud of their civic Spirit and the small town charm that their communities are known for since Anderson county is on the Eastern edge of the Bible Belt it's not surprising that many South Carolinians take

religion patriotism and Family Ties very seriously however Anderson County has always had its fair share of crime ranging from drug and domestic violence crimes to theft vandalism and even murder the shocking quadruple homicide that killed four members of Amy's family was unlike anything anyone had seen before the people in the Northwest South Carolina town who were normally carefree and trusting became more guarded and suspicious than they had ever been this was especially true for Amy's family members who were still alive because they couldn't help but wonder if the killer or Killers would Target them next

in early November 2015 Amy and and Ross valard had only been married for a week they had a beautiful wedding in Columbia South Carolina and then they moved into a trailer on Refuge Road in the small town of Pendleton Kathy Scott Amy's mother is 60 years old Kathy's husband of 59 years Mike Scott Barbara Taylor Mike's 80-year-old mother and violet Taylor Amy's 82-year-old grandmother lived together in a trailer on the same property according to Amy she saw her mother briefly on Halloween night around 8:00 p.m. the next morning November 1st she and Ross got up

early and drove to Broad South Carolina to pick up her two children from a previous relationship who had stayed with Ross's parents over the weekend they spent the day with the Ross family and that evening Ross came over Amy and the kids drove back to Pendleton and spent the night together no one talked to any of Amy's family members who lived in the other trailer that night Monday November 2nd Amy says she was a little worried when she didn't see her mother walking her dogs in the morning like they always did but she wasn't too

worried because her elderly mother lived with three other family members who took care of her if something was wrong Amy was was sure she would have heard about it but she called her mother's trailer just to be safe no one answered the phone that being said Amy says she left a message on the answering machine because she thought she would hear back from someone in a few minutes when no one answered she went over and knocked on the back door she thought it was strange that the door was only partially open and when no one

came to let her in she had a sinking feeling that something wasn't right after some thought Amy pushed the door open and walked in but the trailer was almost completely dark because all the curtains were drawn her eyes slowly got used to the darkness and as they did she thought she saw some strange dark shapes on the floor a few seconds later when she turned on the lights she saw the most horrifying thing she had ever seen victims suffered gunshot wounds as well as multiple stab wounds and lacerations the bloody mangled bodies of her grandmother

Violet stepfather Mike and Mike's mother Barbara were lying awkwardly on the living room floor Amy's Mother wasn't among them but she found her bloody lifeless body in a bedroom less than a minute later it was hard to tell what had happened in the trailer but it looked like all of the victims had been shot beaten and stabbed Amy could not feel a pulse in any of their wrists so she knew they were all dead for some reason Amy was shocked but she was smart enough to call 911 from the trailer phone around 12:30 p.m. the

operator told her the deputies were on their way and told her to wait outside until they got there according to Amy her husband and Ross arrived at the trailer a few minutes later when deputies and investigators arrived in response to Amy's call they saw a horrific scene that they had never seen anything like it in Anderson County there were no signs of forced entry and it didn't look like a theft because there were many valuable items left out in plain sight they were pretty sure they were dealing with murders but they had to think about

other possibilities like a murder suicide but this idea was quickly thrown out when the bodies were looked at more closely all of the victims had multiple wounds and had been shot and stabbed Mike Scott Violet Scott and Barbara Scott Taylor's throats were all cut so they were probably all dead before the killer or Killers Shot them sadly this doesn't seem to have been the case for Amy's mother Kathy the stab wound to the chest probably didn't kill her so she was still alive when she was shot the police knew that in particularly brutal murder cases

like this one the killers were usually friends family or close acquaintances of the victims in other words it wasn't likely that this was a random crime there was a good chance that the killer or Killers knew the victims and didn't like them investigators saw Ross and Amy Prime as Prime suspects from the start because they were the closest people to the victims the motive was still a mystery but they knew it could have been something as simple as a small argument over money or a silly family fight that had grown over the years during the

first search of the valard trailer Anderson County officers found 18 Firearms two vehicles and $887,000 in cash in a gun safe it was interesting to see how the money was carefully wrapped and sorted by denomination and year approximately $887,000 in cash was found in the single Wild trailer Bel belonging to Amy bardi there was a gun safe in the trailer the cash was wrapped the builds were wrapped and separated into into nominations by year it's a very specific way of organizing the money and what was significant about that was that that was the way that

the victim Terry Michael Scott organized the money in his house investigators did some research and found that Mike Scott bought and sold gold on the side and always had a lot of cash on hand his family members told them that he organized and wrapped his bills by year and denomination just like the money that was found in the gun safe however Amy denied that the money ever belonged to him she said that she and Ross had saved it over the past few years but they couldn't show any proof to back up their claim investigators didn't

believe Amy's story and a closer look at the vady financial records showed that they would have had to have saved such a large amount of money on their own because they ran a dog grooming business that had been losing money for a while additionally their personal vehicles were very close to being repossessed and they were about to be kicked out of the space they rented for their business things had gotten so bad that Ross wrote a post-dated $88,000 check to the landlord with the promise that there would be enough money in the account to cash

it on November 2nd as far as investigators could tell the only other source of income for the valard family was Ross's small pension from the Marine Corp however Amy received an undisclosed inheritance after the murders and she and Ross started paying off some of their most important debts on the day she found the bodies Amy quickly paid down her mother's $140,000 estate to less than $1,000 but investigators still couldn't figure out where most of the money went the four murders were still not solved but the valor's dire financial situation and the money found in the

trailer were to say the least suspicious another red flag was that investigators never found the message Amy said she had left on her mother's answering machine Amy reported that before going over to check on her mother she had called the home phone and left a message yelling for them to pick up the phone as I stated earlier that R message was never found later investigators talked to family and friends of the deceased and learned that they didn't get along with Amy and Ross at one point Amy may have stopped her kids from visiting their Grandma

your further investigation a multitude of witnesses it was revealed that Amy valard and the victims did not get along um and it gotten to the point where Amy had refused to to interact with her children after the autopsies the coroner said that the victims could have been dead anywhere from a few hours to more than a day before their bodies were found this meant that they probably died on October 31st or November 1st a ballistics test showed that all the bullets found in the victim's bodies came from the same gun and weren't fired from any

weapon found in the vard trailer however as the months and years went by most people stopped caring about the case and thought it was over Amy and Ross went back to their normal lives as if nothing had happened but the victim's other family members didn't they had a hard time accepting what had happened and tried to stay positive even though it seemed like The Killers might never be caught investigators stayed quiet but kept working on the case but it wasn't clear if anyone would ever be charged with the murders in 2016 the valard family sued

the Anderson County Sheriff's Office to get back the cash guns and vehicles that had been seized right after the murders according to the vard attorney investigators went through the items with a fine- tooth comb but couldn't find any evidence linking them to the killings the judge said that the items did not have to be returned but later that Year Chris McBride was sworn in as the new Anderson County Sheriff there was New Hope in his eyes and the eyes of a few detec detectives who had worked on the case early on Deputy McBride and his

team also made sure to get a lot of media attention because they thought someone out there might still have important information still to come forward they knew that Justice took a long time to work but they were sure that the killers would be brought to court to answer for their crimes more than 8 years after the killings in December 202 3 they were arrested at home in Columbia South Carolina by deputies they were taken back to Anderson County by the Anderson County Sheriff's Office and charged with four counts of murder each later they were taken

to the Anderson County Detention Center and booked at a press conference after their arrest Sheriff McBride said again that the vades had always been Persons of Interest and that he was hopeful that they would be caught and charged with the killings one day tells us that they've suspected the valores for several years but he could not provide any further details on that evidence they have against them or possible motive he said that that would all be coming out in he then said that the murders were senseless and brutal but he wouldn't say why they happened

or what new evidence led to the arrest people at the press conference were upset that more information wasn't given but Sheriff bride told them that it was important not to give the defense more information than was legally required The Bard's first court appearance was for their preliminary bond hearing on December 16th 2023 after the hearing they were sent back to their jail cells but their lawyers set up another bond hearing for February 14th 2024 during that hearing prosecutor Heather Weiss from the South Carolina attorney general's office told the court that two Shanks or homemade prison

knives had been found in Amy's cell the day before Lori Murray Amy's defense lawyer said that Amy kept her things on an unused bunk and shared the cell with two other inmates so it was hard to tell who made the shanks or who they might have belonged to the shank or whatever the weapon that was found in the cell first of all I've talked to my client gotten her side of this she was in a cell with two other people there were four bunk beds in there miss valard kept her belongings on top of a

bunk bed that wasn't in use this shank knife whatever it was was found in a drawer they said it was her drawer uh but were in that drawer as in the first parole hearing the prosecutor said that Amy planned the brutal killings and that both she and Ross were likely to run away in these types of hearings lawyers usually can only talk about Bond related issues but in this case prosecutor Weiss made motive a central point as well she reminded the court that Amy and ross' dog grooming business had been in dire Financial Straits in

the months leading up to the murders also $887,000 in cash was found in their trailer wrapped and organized like Mike Scott's money and some of the Bill serial numbers matched bills that used to belong to him on the day the bodies were found the vardis miraculously had enough cash to solve most or all of their financial problems it could not have been clearer the only people who gained from those four deaths were Amy and Ross the prosecutor also said that Ross's time as a Marine might have helped explain why the killings were so brutally quick

Ross was trained in hand-to-hand combat while he was in the Marines and the prosecutor said that he kept the kbar knife he was given when he got out Shan Kent Ross's lawyer said that it was wrong to use Ross's service to his country against him and that all Marines had to go through hand-to-hand fighting training also there doesn't seem to be any proof that the kar knife was used to stab or cut the necks of the victims many of the victim's family members were able to speak for the first time at the second bond hearing

Pam Scott Barbara Scott's daughter told the court how the horrible crimes had changed her life and the lives of her family members forever Tammy Taylor Violet Taylor's granddaughter told the court that she and her family had been afraid for most of the past 8 years because they didn't know if the killer or Killers would come after them later Sheriff McBride agreed with the witnesses and the prosecutor that the vades should stay in custody even though most people thought Bond should be denied the defense attorney Murray said that the vadis weren't flight risks because they had

8 years to leave but they stayed in South Carolina even though they could have moved to a different state or a foreign country that didn't have an extradition agreement with the United States she said this was proof enough that they would not run away if Ross was released on bond his lawyer sha Kent said that the prosecution had put together a questionable case that was light on facts and full of unproven theories he said that as far as he could tell the state spent 8 years working on a crazy Theory but was never able to

find any evidence to support report it of course heated arguments happen at Bond hearings and trials all the time and only time will tell if the prosecution has more evidence that it's hiding the vardis were denied Bond at their most recent hearing and more hearings are coming up while they stay in jail there is always the chance that there won't be a trial and the valaris will be freed in the end but that doesn't look likely no matter what happens Pam Barbara Scott's daughter may have said it best when she said there are still a

lot of questions that haven't been answered thankfully many of those questions may be answered in the next few months as always we invite you to join the conversation by leaving a comment below in the meantime we'll keep an eye on things and make a follow-up video as soon as new information comes in if you found this case interesting please like the video comment below with your thoughts and please subscribe to the channel