South Carolina woman Amy Vilardi, who gave emotional interviews after discovering gruesome murder scene of four loved ones, is arrested EIGHT YEARS later over quadruple slaying
- Amy Vilardi asked the killer ‘how can you live with yourself’ in emotional TV interview after four of her family were murdered in 2015
- Eight she and husband Rosmore have been arrested and charged with the killings that shook the rural South Carolina community
- ‘I think we knew this day would come,’ said Anderson County Sheriff Chad McBride as he announced the arrests
By Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com[1]
Published: 16:25, 19 December 2023 | Updated: 21:28, 19 December 2023
A South Carolina mother who demanded ‘answers’ from police investigating the 2015 killing of her family has now been charged with their murders.
Amy Vilardi wept in TV interviews and asked how the killer could ‘live with yourself’ after her mother, stepfather and two grandmothers were found shot and stabbed to death at their home outside Pendleton.
Now she has been charged over the killings alongside the husband she had married eight weeks earlier.
‘I think we knew this day would come,’ said Anderson County Sheriff Chad McBride.
‘I think we knew in the back of our mind, it was just you know, there’s a lot of pieces to have to put together and just a lot of hard work and effort.’
Vilardi’s grandmother Barbara Scott, 80, (left) was slaughtered along with the Violet Taylor, 82, (right) the mother of her stepfather
Amy Vilardi’s mother Cathy Scott was killed seconds after her husband Mike.
Friends had described them as a devoted couple and former childhood sweethearts
Amy and Rosmore Vilardi were arrested and charged with four counts of murder at 4pm on Friday, and denied bond when they appeared in court on Saturday
Mike Scott, 58, and his wife Cathy, 60, were slaughtered alongside his mother Barbara Scott, 80, and her mother Violet Taylor, 82, in November 2015.
Mike worked for South Carolina Department of Transportation, and shortly before he was executed, he had texted his boss saying he would be back at work that morning.
Police found no sign of forced entry or theft, and a coroner concluded that all four ‘had no time to defend themselves’.
Amy made the 911 call after claiming to have discovered the bodies when she returned with her husband from a trip to his family in Columbia, a 90-minute drive away.
‘I don’t understand why any of it has happened and I just keep thinking it’s a dream I’m going to wake up from,’ Vilardi told WSPA-7[2] in a series of interviews alongside her husband.
‘It’s not supposed to be real life.
‘Whoever did this, I don’t see how you can live with yourself.’
And she demanded to know why police were not making more progress in their investigation.
‘I understand that they have got a job to do but sometimes as family members we want answers,’ she complained.
Six months later they sued police in an bid to recover property seized during the investigation, including two cars, 18 firearms and £60,000 in cash.
Vilardi lived with husband Rosmore Vilardi and her two young children in a mobile home outside the three-bedroom bungalow from which she ran a mobile pet grooming business called ‘Styles For Miles’.
‘I don’t understand why any of it has happened and I just keep thinking it’s a dream I’m going to wake up from,’ Vilardi told interviewers
The three-bedroom home outside Pendleton where all four family members were slaughtered
Amy Vilardi, who had married Rosmore eight weeks before the murders, lived in a mobile home next to the family home
Vilardi had demanded to know why police were not making more progress in the investigation
She described hearing the televisions on inside the house and knocking on the door. When she received no answer, she walked in and flicked on the light to reveal the gruesome scene
Dailymail.com revealed at the time that Vilardi had been arguing with her mother[3] and had not allowed her to see her four and six-year-old grandchildren between the start of July and the end of October.
But Vilardi told investigators that any disagreements there had been, were not serious and similar to any other that families might have.
She had worn a crimson dress when she married Rosmore weeks earlier and, the day before the murders, she posted a Facebook message suggesting the family dispute was over.
‘Everything looking better.
Prayers answered,’ she wrote.
And her husband had posted a glowing tribute to his mother-in-law a day earlier.
‘Love you Cathy…my wife is one of the greatest blessings from God,’ he wrote.
‘Her love is a gift that I am thankful for everyday.’
A relative said Cathy and Mike had originally dated each other back in high school.
‘But they went their separate ways and met up again after Cathy’s husband had died from cancer,’ they added.
Anderson County Detective Scotty Hill
‘They married nine years ago and their anniversary would have been this week. They were devoted to each other.
‘Mike was the kind of guy who would give you the shirt off his back. He was so nice and it is an example of that when you see that he took his own mother and Cathy’s mother too in to live with them.
‘He said his mother couldn’t fend for herself anymore as she was getting old and he felt the same about his mother-in-law.
‘This is such a tragic ending for Cathy and Mike.’
The two elderly women were shot when they emerged from their bedrooms after Scott had been blasted in the head while in the lounge.
His wife managed to escape to the master bedroom where the killer followed her to complete the massacre, shooting her in the head twice.
There were two guns beside her next to the bed, a pellet gun and a shotgun, which belonged to her husband, but were not used.
‘Mike, Barbara and Violet were all killed by their throats being slashed, and Cathy was killed by a stab wound to the chest,’ Anderson County Sheriff’s Office Detective Scotty Hill told the Unsolved Mysteries podcast earlier this year.
‘Mike, Barbara, and Violet were all shot post-mortem.
Cathy was shot while still alive, but that wasn’t what killed her.
It was the knife wound to the chest that killed her.
‘Once we found out the extent of their injuries and the fact that their throats were cut, and then they were shot post-mortem, it seemed very, very aggressive and personal, and somebody full of rage and hate.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.’
Vilardi told interviewers how she found had allegedly found the bodies after returning with her husband shortly before 12.30pm.
She described hearing the televisions on inside the house and knocked on the door.
When she received no answer, she walked in and flicked on the light to reveal the gruesome scene.
‘When I went to knock on the back door, the door just pushed open so I walked in and it was dark and I just flipped the light on and there they were,’ she explained.
‘They were just, they were there.’
The couple re-modelled and moved into the murdered family’s home after the killings, and were named as ‘persons of interest’ in the investigation in March this year.
Police said the unsolved murders outside Pendleton ‘shook the community to its core’
The trailer Amy Vilardi used for her mobile pet grooming business
‘I think we knew this day would come,’ said Anderson County Sheriff Chad McBride
They were arrested and charged with four counts of murder at 4pm on Friday, and denied bond when they appeared in court on Saturday.
They have been booked into the Anderson County Detention Center ahead of their next court appearance on February 20.
Police have not revealed why they believe they have a breakthrough after so long in a case that ‘shook the community to its core’.
‘We’re thankful to share new developments that could potentially lead to a long-anticipated road toward justice,’ the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
References
- ^ Dominic Yeatman For Dailymail.Com (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ WSPA-7 (www.wspa.com)
- ^ arguing with her mother (www.dailymail.co.uk)
- ^ South Carolina (www.dailymail.co.uk)