The remains of Indiana teen Valerie Tindall were found buried in her neighbor’s yard. She had been missing for six months and foul play was suspected all along. The 17-year-old’s neighbor was also her employer. Now that Patrick Scott has been busted, his defense is that she was blackmailing him.
Buried in the yard
On Tuesday, November 28, the “decomposing remains” of missing Arlington, Indiana, teen Valerie Tindall were found “buried in the yard of her next-door neighbor and family friend, leading to his arrest on murder charges.”
59-year-old Patrick Scott was wearing the murder weapon when they took him in. She was found “less than a hundred yards away” from her home.
Tindall worked for the lawn service run by Scott. After they had him in cuffs down at the station, he admitted to detectives “that he killed the teen by strangling her with his belt, which he then continued wearing.” Specifically, “I put it around her neck and I held onto it until she quit.”
It’s not clear from reports what word ended the sentence, screaming or breathing. Both probably. He soon buried her in the yard but built a box for her first. That required a quick trip to Home Depot for some lumber.
“He then allegedly built a box out of wooden planks he bought at Home Depot, placed Tindall’s body wrapped in plastic inside, screwed it shut and buried it in his yard.”
Then lied to everyone until they found her body. Especially his family. He was more afraid of his wife than police.
Just kind of happened
Scott confessed freely once they caught him. There wasn’t any need to hide anything any longer. He was mostly keeping what happened from his wife, daughter and granddaughter.
The killing, he claims, wasn’t something he planned in advance. It “just kind of happened.” She started it, he insists. She had to be buried to keep the place from stinking up and he thought he could bluff it out.
The murderer’s side of the story is that the opportunistic and attractive teen smelled a chance to get ahead in the business world without doing much in the way of actual work. First, she “seduced” him. Then, she tried to “blackmail him into buying her a car.”
We’ll never get to hear her side of who promised what to who, and when. He may just as easily have tempted her with a car and when she refused and threatened to tell his wife, he killed her to shut her up. Then buried her to cover that up. The world may never know.
When police asked him if he was “bothered” by the fact he killed his young neighbor, Scott replied, “well, I wasn’t too crazy about it.” He thought he had her wrapped up tight enough to beat the cadaver dogs and almost got away with it.
On October 11, the canines “indicated the smell of decomposition in a pond near Scott’s property.” That turned out to be a false positive. Before Scott could breath a heavy sigh of relief, one of the dog handlers mentioned that because water holds odors, it may have come from runoff. That’s how they eventually found the buried body.
