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E170: Tiffany Valiante
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Tiffany Valiante had just graduated from high school and was looking forward to attending Mercy College in the fall, where she had been awarded a volleyball scholarship. The night of July 12th, 2015, after a small disagreement with her parents, Tiffany wandered away from her parent’s home, leaving her cell phone behind. Immediately, her family began searching for her. In the early morning hours of July 13th, Tiffany’s uncle approached some police officers working a train accident. It was then that he learned there had been a victim of that accident–a young woman on the tracks who had been hit by the train. It was his niece, Tiffany. Her death was quickly ruled a suicide and the case was closed. However, Tiffany was found shoeless and only partially dressed; her shoes were later discovered some distance away yet her feet were clean. Could her death, instead, have been the result of foul play?
Please consider joining Tiffany’s family in fighting for further investigation into the case by urging the New Jersey Attorney General to reopen the investigation; to do so, please consider signing their change.org petition found here.
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Transcript
Post-High School Challenges
00:00:00
Speaker
Due to the graphic nature of this content, listener discretion is advised. There are so few moments in life where one feels like they are completely unsure of what's going to happen next. For me, high school graduation was one of those moments. Sure, most of us know if we're going to college or into the military or maybe straight into the workforce, but really,
00:00:21
Speaker
What does that mean? You're potentially moving away from home for the first time. You're on your own for the first time. No one's there to wake you up. No one's there to make sure you get to class on time. No one's there to make sure you get to your job on time. No one's there monitoring how you spend your money or what you spend your money on.
Who was Tiffany Valiante?
00:00:38
Speaker
Today's case centers around Tiffany Valiente and today I thought we would start with a portion of Tiffany's obituary.
00:00:45
Speaker
Tiffany was a 2015 Oak Crest High School graduate. She was going to attend Mercy College on a volleyball scholarship. Tiffany's love for sports included softball and volleyball. She played for Lady A's travel softball team and one year of Oak Crest softball until she touched a volleyball. Then Tiffany found her passion in volleyball. She was a middle hitter.
00:01:04
Speaker
She played for Oak Crest High School and East Coast Crush Club Volleyball. She was first team all-cow, as well as ranked eighth in the state for the number of volleyball kills. In one high school season, she had 274 kills and 34 blocks. There are many words to describe Tiffany, but here are just a few. Loving, caring, giving, full of life, always had a smile, athletic, beautiful, funny, energetic, smart, intelligent, talented, compassionate. Tiffany had so much passion and love for her family,
00:01:33
Speaker
and had a natural motherly instinct for her niece and nephews. Tiffany's life was actually cut suddenly short in a gruesome accident. A botched investigation and clues discovered by the family leave us wondering what really happened to her. This is the story of Tiffany Valiente.
Introducing 'Coffee and Cases' Podcast
00:02:23
Speaker
Welcome to Coffee and Cases where we like our coffee hot and our cases cold. My name is Allison Williams. And my name is Maggie Dameron.
00:02:32
Speaker
We will be telling stories each week in the hopes that someone out there with any information concerning the cases will take those tips to law enforcement. So justice and closure can be brought to these families. With each case, we encourage you to continue in the conversation on our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast, because as we all know, conversation helps to keep the missing person in the public consciousness, helping keep their memories alive. So sit back, sip your coffee, and listen to what's brewing this week.
00:03:00
Speaker
Okay. So you kind of have a brief background of Tiffany before we even get started. You know, just from that little obituary that she was recently a graduate of her high school. She was a volleyball store. Um, and I think that kind of came naturally to her. Oh yeah. It seems like it. Yeah. She was six foot two. So like made to be a, be a volleyball player. Yeah. Geez.
00:03:30
Speaker
And her family described her laugh and smile as contagious, and she seemed to always be just happy and smiling. Like most high school graduates, Tiffany was looking forward to the future and what that had in store for her. She was going to college, she was going there on a volleyball scholarship, and she was ultra excited because she was actually guaranteed a starting position on her college volleyball team as a freshman, which is pretty impressive. Wow, that's super impressive. That is not common.
00:03:59
Speaker
No, so she I mean the 200 and whatever kills in a game that is pretty good I I could barely hit it over the net. So I'm impressed by all of Volleyball skills And Allison, I don't know about you, but I feel like the summer after I graduated I
00:04:23
Speaker
I was going to a friend's graduation party like every weekend. It was a different friend's party. And that was also the case for Tiffany.
Family Graduation Party
00:04:33
Speaker
And we're starting Tiffany's story at one such graduation party for a cousin and her family. So she's going to this graduation party and it's in July. So it's a little bit later in the summer, but they probably had, you know, 10,000 of these to attend. Well, where is she from?
00:04:50
Speaker
She is from May's Landing, New Jersey. Okay, so school, I know this from having taught in New Jersey. But unlike here, where we usually get out of school at the end of May, they go through June. Because they start later. So they start in September and go through June. So the fact that it's in July might not have been that far.
00:05:17
Speaker
after graduation. They hadn't been into our vacation that long because we're almost wrapping up in July. We're about to go back. But she was going to her cousin's graduation party and from what I read Tiffany and this particular cousin and even her grandma, which her grandma was a little further away, all lived within walking distance of
00:05:43
Speaker
Tiffany's parents house like from what I read basically just across the street. That's nice. That's nice to have everybody close. Yeah, Anthony's parents live across the street ish, like across the common area in their subdivision from his uncle and I think that's really cool.
00:06:04
Speaker
So many of their friends, many of their family was at this party. And it was actually a relatively uneventful day. Tiffany and her parents had walked across the street to her dad Steve's brother's house because that was the graduation party. Yeah, where the party was.
00:06:25
Speaker
So it was July 12th 2015 and her family knew that this was pretty much going to be an all day affair but they really didn't mind because it appeared that they were all really close. So spending the day laughing and hanging out with uncles and aunts and cousins seemed like a good way to spend a hot July night. Heck yeah. And Tiffany actually spent the night playing volleyball. So it was just like you know
00:06:47
Speaker
A fun family outdoor night. I picture them, you know, just hanging around. Relaxed. Yeah. Yeah. Grilling out all that stuff.
00:06:56
Speaker
As I mentioned earlier, Tiffany had some exciting college plans and her family told the Daily Beast that Tiffany spoke enthusiastically about going off to college. And she was actually hatching a plan with one of her two half sisters to go with her to pick up a kitten for their mom a week or so later as a perfect surprise. So sweet. But all seemed normal right up until around nine o'clock that night. And Allison, that's when things start to go a little weird.
00:07:23
Speaker
Maybe this is weird to me, but I'll see how you react as well.
Confrontation Over Credit Card
00:07:28
Speaker
Shortly after 9 p.m., a close friend of Tiffany's called Tiffany's mom, Diane, saying that she needed to talk with her in person. Wait, needed to talk with Tiffany's mom? Yeah, in person. Can you come to your house? I need to talk to you. Okay.
00:07:46
Speaker
Not wanting to walk alone, Diane asked Steve, so Tiffany's dad, to accompany her, which he did, and the couple left the party approximately, like, right at nine and headed back to their house, which obviously didn't take a long time to get there because we're in the same neighborhood. Right. Now, I did initially find it a little odd that the friend would call Diane rather than Tiffany. Like, what do you need the mom for? Like, is she...
00:08:11
Speaker
afraid for something about Tiffany, and so she wants to talk to the parents. Like, that's what's going through my mind. Like, she's concerned about her friend. Yeah. That's what I thought, too. You know, maybe Tiffany had texted her something or said something that was a little concerning, and she wanted to talk to her mom to make sure Tiffany was safe. Or, you know, maybe she was trying to pick out a graduation present. Oh, that's another good reason.
00:08:38
Speaker
But it was neither of those options. Instead, the friend who arrived at the family home got there at approximately 9.15 with her own mother in tow. So it's Tiffany's parents, friend and friend's mom. Okay. And she was there to tell Diane that Tiffany had used her credit card without permission and according to the friend's credit card without permission.
00:09:04
Speaker
And according to that friend had charged nearly $300 on her card without asking. And we later find out the truth, but Tiffany's history in this department didn't bode very well for her mom believing Tiffany didn't do this. So Diane is like, you know what?
00:09:27
Speaker
I'm gonna call Tiffany and get her to come home and we'll talk through this. And so she calls Tiffany up and Tiffany does walk over back to their house just a few minutes after she got off the phone with her parents. And according to a civil deposition transcript that was obtained by the Daily Beast, Diane at first defended Tiffany saying, why the heck would she wanna use your card? She has access to our debit card. Why would she need to steal money from you?
00:09:55
Speaker
And she is saying this is just not like Tiffany. But we know from that report that Tiffany was caught taking money from her parents bank account just a few months earlier. So that's why I was saying she had kind of done something similar to this before. But again, she's a teenager. They do stupid things. Right. So Tiffany comes over and her mom is like, Tiffany, did you take
00:10:21
Speaker
money from your friend. Did you use her credit card? And sometimes I said debit card, but whatever. And Tiffany's like, absolutely not. I would never do that. Why would I do that when I have your card? That's so stupid. No, I would never steal from you. And so their conversation lasted just about 10 minutes and the friend and the mother just drove off around nine 24. They were like, okay, any resolution or anything. Okay.
00:10:49
Speaker
And it was only after the friend left that Tiffany admitted ish to her mom that she had to use the card without permission. According to a timeline provided by their family lawyer, Diane began to search Tiffany's car with her daughter and she saw Tiffany try to slip that friend's card into her back pocket. And so then she's like, okay, why do you have their card and Tiffany
00:11:14
Speaker
Yes. Okay. I did use it. It wasn't for $300. It was like for $80, which they found the receipts for and backed that up. And Diane of course is livid. And so she's like, you wait right here. I'm going to get your dad. So she goes into the house to get Steve. And when they come back out, literally a minute later, Tiffany was gone. And that was a property.
00:11:41
Speaker
Was she worried that they were gonna yell and she went back to the party or? Well, I think we should talk about two important things before we proceed much further. Okay. Because
00:11:58
Speaker
Right now, she's literally nowhere to be seen. So they're thinking what you were thinking. Is she back at the party? Did she get so mad that she left and she just needs to kind of cool off? And a lot of sources that I read tended to make a much bigger issue of the credit card thing than I think what it really was.
00:12:21
Speaker
Because even I at first was, you know, like, Oh my God, Tiffany, how could you use your friend's card? How could you lie about that? How could you try to hide it from your mom? But then, like I said, Tiffany was a teenager and many teenagers have really no concept of
00:12:38
Speaker
things like that. Their line of good and bad is just, it's very wobbly. Yeah. Yeah. It's a little blurry. And I don't know how many teens would actually stop and think like, Hmm, this is theft. You know, especially if it's a friend card, right?
00:12:55
Speaker
And according to Diane, this quote unquote fight or argument between the two friends wasn't enough to cause a permanent rift in their friendship or something that would make Tiffany want to run away or leave. Okay. Well, I mean, the fact that they didn't stay to like continue arguing about it until they got to a resolution to me feels like, you know, they just wanted to make it known and how hurt they were by it. But yeah, yeah.
00:13:24
Speaker
And I almost feel like it was probably one of those things. Well, I know you stole from me, so you need to pay this back. And then they were, they were fine. The second thing we need to know about Tiffany is that she is incredibly scared of the dark. And according to her friends and family, she would not have left the safety of her
00:13:45
Speaker
family neighborhood in the dark for anything. And it was honestly a feat that she walked from her uncle's house to her home alone after dark. Like she was that scared of the dark.
00:13:57
Speaker
But as we know, when Steve and Diane came back outside, Tiffany was nowhere to be seen. So her parents immediately walked down the road, like you said, to see if she went back to the party and she wasn't there. They couldn't see her anywhere on the road. And like I said, it had only been moments. So Diane walked inside long enough to, this is me envisioning it, opening the door and say, Steve, you need to get out here. And then they went back outside like that short amount of time. Gosh.
00:14:28
Speaker
Yeah. So you think she can't get that far. Yes, exactly. I mean, it was literally like a minute or two. So where could she have gone? Surely she could still be seen from the road, but she couldn't. So her mom and dad immediately start texting her. They're calling her and all their attempts went unanswered. Wow. Soon they walked back to the uncle's house and gather her siblings and the uncle who was a former state trooper.
00:14:58
Speaker
And they're like, we need help. Tiffany has, you know, walked down the road. We don't know where she is. Can you guys try texting her or calling her to see if she responds back to you? Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. She's probably mad at her mom and dad at this point. Right. You know, how dare you not stick up for me or whatever.
00:15:17
Speaker
So they all start texting her. They're calling her and she doesn't respond to anyone. And so they in turn start helping Diane and Steve in the search for Tiffany. And the search party looked everywhere that they could think of. She had been gone for around an hour by this point. And the team had looked in the nearby woods. They looked through their neighborhood. They found nothing. Wow.
00:15:44
Speaker
And the family thought it was really strange that Tiffany wasn't returning any of their calls or texts. Because remember, she's young. Her phone is basically an extension of her arm. So why are you not at least texting your sister back or texting your uncle back? And if she's scared of the dark, and I know, again, we've talked about this, it's completely nonsensical. But what do I do that makes me feel safer? I call somebody on the phone and talk to them.
00:16:12
Speaker
Or use the flashlight feature. Yeah. I mean, so it, it would make sense to me if it's dark out that she would call somebody because she's involved, you know, she's on the volleyball team and all this stuff, you know, she has more than just the one friend. So call a cousin, call another friend or something like that to feel safe. That's what I would think. Yeah. And she didn't.
00:16:41
Speaker
And they actually ended up finding her phone around 11 p.m. right near the end of her parents' driveway. And this was an area that the family said they obviously walked up and down a lot looking for her, right? Because they're going back and forth from the uncle's house to their house. I even heard that they walked to her grandmother's house, which was around half a mile away to see if she was there. So, you know, they're checking all of that, which I know when you're in a hurry,
00:17:10
Speaker
You know, I'm trying to find my debit card because I didn't put it back on my wallet. I just stuck it in my purse and I'm in a hurry. I overlook it. But when I slow down and really take my time, then I see it.
Tiffany's Disappearance
00:17:21
Speaker
So I don't know if it was that, you know, they were just quickly looking. Right. Their adrenaline's pumping. They're not. But it's after dark. And if friends and family are texting her and calling you to stop. Yeah. So I think it would be like a little beacon.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, you would think. Her mom said, quote, all of a sudden her phone appears. So he comes up the driveway, meaning the dad, with it in his hand, and he's upset because he knows Tiffany goes nowhere without that phone, end quote. Wow. So the family in a stroke of brilliance remembers that they had set up a deer camera, like a hunting camera.
00:18:05
Speaker
Yeah and so they're like let's check that maybe it'll catch Tiffany walking back and forward you know she's or at least which direction she was headed so they check the camera and I posted the picture there for you Allison that they got from that camera reel so you'll see Tiffany's in like
00:18:24
Speaker
white, short. She looks barefoot, but she actually has on almost hey dude top shoes. Okay. And she has on just like a little t shirt and a headband because her hair's just up in a bun. She's like looking away from the camera almost like she heard a noise in those trees.
00:18:44
Speaker
Yeah. And there are, so she appears and then like I said, within the next two minutes, her mom and dad are in that frame. So that's the amount of time. Wow. Oh my gosh. And there are some people who think in some of the pictures from that deer camera that there's car lights in the background and you can kind of see them. I don't know if those are the ones that they're referring to.
00:19:08
Speaker
Or at least reflectors on something. If Tiffany maybe got into the car with someone, which I think makes sense because where else could she have gone so quickly, you know? But then who would she have called and wouldn't they have seen her call somebody because they were with her?
00:19:24
Speaker
You know, and whoever's coming to pick her up couldn't have, she couldn't have called somebody and then they pick her up in like a two minute span. Yeah, but she was awful. I mean, unless it could have just been somebody driving by. It's true. Or she could have been texting them earlier in the night. Like maybe she already planned to hang out with them. I mean, who knows? I guess it could be anything like that.
00:19:44
Speaker
But now that Tiffany's phone had been found, the family had this renewed sense of urgency to find her, right? Because now we feel like something is wrong. She wouldn't go anywhere without this phone. I saw the search continued. Diane would later tell investigators that she initially hoped, and I think this would be every parent's hope, was that Tiffany was just,
00:20:05
Speaker
Hiding in the woods somewhere watching all this like thinking this is hilarious She's pulled the biggest joke of all time and that at any moment She was just hop out from behind one of those trees and surprise all of them and then you know They'd be minutes and then they'd be relieved. Mm-hmm But that never happened and their search continued well into the night looking for any signs of her before anyone found any answers so they've gone well into the night and they still
00:20:34
Speaker
have no more answers other than the phone at the end of the driveway jeez the search was now into the early morning of july 13th and at this point the family knew they needed more help locating their daughter right so she goes missing right around you know non-30 ish it's now a little after midnight and the family calls the police
00:20:57
Speaker
The police, however, were busy responding to a train crash. OK. Well, I mean, that's a big catastrophe to respond to. And if this is a small town, then I get that they would be caught up. Yeah. There's not enough of them to spread out. Yeah. What was more gruesome was it appeared that someone had actually been hit by this train.
The Train Incident: Suicide or Not?
00:21:25
Speaker
There has been a death. Someone's been struck by the train. And they have no idea who this person is. At this point, they're like a Jane Doe. No one knows who they are. Oh, so it's a woman?
00:21:39
Speaker
And at nearly the same time, the 911 call was placed by Tiffany's parents, her uncle. So remember the ex-state trooper and all this is out in his car, just driving like a little radius, looking for Tiffany when he pulled up on the railroad accident. And from everything that I've looked at, there's like a access road or like a maintenance road. It's just a gravel road.
00:22:03
Speaker
that ran parallel to this railroad track. And I think he was on that road. You know, what if Tiffany just decided to take a walk down the tracks or something like that? So I think he was taking that area. So he sees all the police officers and he thought, you know what? I'm just going to stop and ask one of these officers that's responded to the scene. If they have seen a six foot tall girl with an athletic build walk by, because you know, if she was walking,
00:22:33
Speaker
They probably said, hey, this is a crime scene. You need to walk on, go on. What are you doing out here so late? That kind of stuff. So he stopped the car, got out and approached the scene. And he, of course, was met with the usual, there's been an accident. Please get back in your car.
00:22:51
Speaker
investigating what's happened, blah, blah, blah. But he managed to tell the officer that his niece was missing. And he described her and that, you know, they hadn't been able to get up with her. No one knew where she was. And he heard what no one ever wants to hear. The police officer told him
00:23:10
Speaker
that he thought Tiffany was the person who was struck by the train and asked if he could identify her body. Oh my goodness. I know. I think this is so traumatizing. Yeah. And he talks about in a lot of his interviews that he was glad he was the person that was able to identify her body because he said if it had been his brother, his brother never would have recovered from seeing what he had to see.
00:23:41
Speaker
When I think like those who work in emergency management, like who work in law enforcement or fire department, the kind of scenes that they see
00:23:55
Speaker
I mean, even though I'm sure he's right, I'm sure he was better equipped because of his law enforcement background to seeing a site like that. I mean, obviously he could never get over that. That's his niece. But Rodney told me one of the first accidents that he ever responded to on the fire department was a suicide from a woman who had jumped in front of a train.
00:24:24
Speaker
You know, this woman was no relation to him and he's like, I could describe everything about what that day looked like. I could describe everything, you know, because it just, it's ingrained. I think that's a mind altering thing. I think so.
00:24:42
Speaker
But the girl at train track mile marker 45 was Tiffany. She was killed by speeding train headed from Philadelphia to Atlantic city along an isolated stretch of track just about four miles from where she lived. And the train at the time it hit her was going about 80 miles per hour. Oh my gosh, that's so fast.
00:25:03
Speaker
Before the family had time to process anything and before the responding agency, which was the New Jersey Transit Police because I guess where it happened on a railway. So before police really even had time to respond to
00:25:19
Speaker
Tiffany's parents call the uncle already knows what happened to her So he goes back to their house with the police to inform his brother that Tiffany was dead And of course the family is completely shattered dated. Yeah
00:25:34
Speaker
And before they had time to process anything and before the responding agency, the New Jersey transit police had time to properly process the scene. Tiffany's death was already in the newspaper the following morning and was called a suicide. This is like the Brown case where like news media swoops in and starts publishing things that first of all,
00:25:56
Speaker
You know they don't even know if it's true or not and they're publishing things before appropriate appropriate people have been notified like I'm sure her parents would have preferred to call friends and extended family before everybody knows about it.
00:26:13
Speaker
That's one of my pet peeves on social media. I hate when there's been like a fatality and people are driving by the accident and they take pictures of it and put the vehicles up. I'm like, how would you like to find out by scrolling through your friend's Facebook and seeing their car smashed in? Yup. Yup. I can't remember anymore. It absolutely is.
00:26:38
Speaker
Diane said in the Netflix interview, quote, I was devastated. I couldn't understand how they could come up with that. My daughter wasn't depressed. She wasn't suicidal. Tiffany was happy. She was making plans to go to college. She was making plans with her roommate. She was making plans to play softball that Wednesday. She had plans to go to great adventure the next morning with friends, end quote. But for all intents and purposes, Tiffany's case was closed because according to investigators, Tiffany had thrown herself in front of a moving train and committed suicide.
00:27:08
Speaker
I mean, we talked about that with the Ray Rivera case. They always say like the quickest way to kill a story to where people stop not only investigating it, but even talking about it is to rule it a suicide. Yeah, because then everybody's like, Oh, well, case closed. First of all, first of all, if she left on foot,
00:27:31
Speaker
on this video, right, which she clearly is, and they know that she's not jumping into her own car or a family car, then that means somebody else drove her there, which means even if she did get in front of this train, where's the person who drove her there? Well, I mean, I guess she technically could have walked there, assuming she was able to walk fast enough to get out of their line of sight before Diane and Steve got to that deer camera spot.
00:27:59
Speaker
because it's only four miles away and it's been several hours and she would have had time to walk through. And she doesn't have her phone. And there's a bunch of other things that it's like really and I also don't know how we can properly investigate a scene
00:28:20
Speaker
Because I feel like you can't even call this a crime scene, really, because they've already made up their mind. It's a suicide. And how did they do that that quickly? Have you looked through the whole area? It was like midnight when this happened. So it was after dark. Did you check during the daytime to see if there were anything around the tracks that made it look suspicious? Well, I just think it was a very quick jump to make.
00:28:50
Speaker
But Allison, as you and our sleuthounds will learn, there are a lot of clues that were overlooked that would point to her, quote unquote, suicide being a probable homicide. I at least think, and a medical examiner that reviewed her case said that it should have just been ruled they couldn't determine the cause of death. At least in the beginning. Because there's so many strange things, and we're gonna talk about all of those now.
00:29:18
Speaker
So the first strange thing is that obviously the engineer aboard the train realizes they have struck a human. So the train stops and there are actually two engineers on board. So like the senior engineer and an apprentice, so like a dude in training.
00:29:36
Speaker
Both initially, both of them initially said to police, they saw someone standing on the tracks and that person jumped into the path of the locomotive. So they're staying, she's standing and she jumps into the path of the locomotive is their initial story, but it changes. Hmm.
00:30:00
Speaker
So the Daily Beast reported that the apprentice engineer, Marvin, who had been on the job for a little over a year was at the controls of the train that night. So again, remember he's accelerating at 80 miles per hour on this stretch of train and he's being supervised by Wayne Daniels. And Wayne briefly stepped out of the cab to review something with the lead conductor.
00:30:27
Speaker
So really there's only the one guy still in there. Yes. And that is a lot of what people
00:30:36
Speaker
side at the beginning, why would they both say they saw her? And the testimony of Marvin changes a couple different times. So initially they say they blew the horn, they put the train into the emergency brake, and they say that the girl jumped out in front of them. So that's like their original together story.
00:31:03
Speaker
the train hit Tiffany at 1107 because I didn't know this but trains apparently come you know how airplanes have like little black boxes mm-hmm trains come with those too and it'll tell you like the speed they were going when a whistle was blown like all this stuff so we know a lot of that from the little the little black box hmm
00:31:24
Speaker
If he was struck by the train at eleven oh seven and obviously this is very gruesome but dragging and cutting her body for up to a quarter of a mile before the train came to a complete stop remember it's going really fast rate. And right at midnight the nurse practitioner arrived on the scene and pronounced Tiffany dead.
00:31:46
Speaker
So in 2019, her family enlisted the help of a law firm to bring a civil suit against the transit police. And in the Unsolved Mysteries episode, their lawyer said that he took on the case fully believing he was going to review all the files and then go back to the family and say, you know, I reviewed everything and Tiffany really did commit suicide.
00:32:12
Speaker
But that didn't happen. And part of that hinged on the changing testimonies of these engineers. So in one interview, Marvin said that Tiffany had quote unquote, darted out from the woods and ran onto the tracks that's being hit by the train. And another Marvin said he didn't see Tiffany until he was right on top of her. Then he honked the horn and she didn't move and the train hit her. Yeah, there's a big difference between jumping in front and her just not moving.
00:32:40
Speaker
And in the third interview conducted under oath, six days later, Marvin said that he first spotted Tiffany about half a mile away, crouched alongside the tracks. Okay, first off, I would have blew the horn. If she didn't move, I would have pulled the e-brake. That's just me. Maybe your training is different. Can you really see, and maybe I just have bad eyesight, but can you really see
00:33:07
Speaker
in a train, a person crouching along the tracks half a mile away. Like, can you really tell if they're crouching that it's a person and not like an animal? So it's not like they're doing this at three o'clock in the afternoon. Right. This was 11.
00:33:25
Speaker
But he says he can and then she stood up and dove in front of the train And so all of that was obtained through records that the Daily Beast got so three separate Interesting incident and I am more inclined to believe the Ladder in a sense and I'll explain why later wrong. Okay, I
00:33:51
Speaker
So remember Wayne Daniels was the experienced engineer on board and he was conflicting accounts of that night as well. So he said that he instructed the apprentice engineer to blow the horn and ring the bell as he put the train into the emergency brake application. But then he later admitted that he wasn't even there. And then we find that to be true.
00:34:17
Speaker
later on and we also know that neither of them ever ring the bell because at the time she was hit there was no record of blowing the horn on the little black box thing. Wow. Why would you lie about something like that? I mean it's just say you know if she did jump in front just say it happened so quickly I didn't have time to
00:34:39
Speaker
you know, to react or whatever. But if, if he did see her half a mile away, you'd think there'd be some- Well, he would have had time to stop. Yeah. Exactly.
00:34:51
Speaker
Well, the medical examiner that they interviewed on Unsolved Mysteries said that it could just be they were kind of in shock, you know, and hadn't had time to process it and really didn't know exactly what happened until they kind of had to come off that endorphin high, which again, I think I would have been like, you know what, like, I need time to process this police officer. I couldn't tell you what happened. I'm in shock. Yeah. Yeah. Again, be honest about it.
00:35:20
Speaker
And the next odd thing that we're going to talk about is this medical examiner's report. And literally this has got to be the smallest report I have ever seen in my entire life. It was no exaggeration. If you single spaced everything and didn't have big gaps, it probably could have fit on a page and a half. Oh,
00:35:44
Speaker
I mean, it is tiny, tiny. And I want to read you guys a portion of what the report said. The brain is lost. It extruded from the cranial cavity. There was a large wound in the brain tissue. So I think recognizing her face would have been very hard to do from.
00:36:12
Speaker
what this has said. There are extensive injuries of the face. The face is completely crushed. The left ear is partially cut off and there are extensive injuries on the back of the head. The height is reported to be six foot three inches on the Oak Crest High School website. She's a volleyball player but because of extensive injuries of her body her height cannot be evaluated at this point.
00:36:32
Speaker
The body torso is approximately five foot six inches only. The lower extremities are cut off and separated from the body with extensive crushing injuries to the lower abdomen. Portions of the internal organs also exploded from the body and were found on the scene. Also the lower extremity left foot is crushed with the bone sticking out from the crushed left foot.
00:36:54
Speaker
The right leg also shows extensive injuries, cutting injuries and is also cut from the body at the hip joint. The right forearm is cut off at the upper arm and separated from the body. The abdominal cavity and internal organs are erupted from the body because of the crushing injuries to the chest and abdomen. There are excessive injuries noted in the abdomen and the chest area. The eyes cannot be evaluated.
00:37:19
Speaker
the face is completely crushed. Extensive injuries are noted in the face and neck area. Also sent in a container is a portion of all of the organs, which are fragments and in pieces. A portion of the liver is also sent separately and a portion of the kidney also can be identified.
Medical Examiner's Report
00:37:38
Speaker
Cause of death is multiple traumatic injuries, manner of death is suicide. Okay, first of all, and I haven't read, you know,
00:37:49
Speaker
thousands of medical examiner's reports in my life. This one almost feels sensationalized instead of methodical and scientific. If that makes sense, saying things like the brain is lost and
00:38:11
Speaker
You know, exploded from the body. I'm not sure what the normal jargon is. You know, I don't know if those are normal. If I'm a parent and I'm reading this, that's traumatizing all over again. Yeah. And I think part of it sounds very much.
00:38:31
Speaker
train accident right her organs her face has been crushed you know that kind of thing i think it's really weird that they say the left ear is partially cut off like her leg was cut from the body at the hip joint her right forearm is cut off at the upper arm and separate from her body i don't know
00:38:59
Speaker
And a lot of people point to this. Because to me, cut would be very much like, you know, boom. It's clean.
00:39:12
Speaker
Right. And would that be like this? So, you know, I just told you that one of the first accidents that Rodney worked as a firefighter was the woman who had jumped in front of a train. And his memory of it, the one that's ingrained in his mind, is them searching literally, I mean, hundreds of yards away from the tracks for
00:39:40
Speaker
pieces of the woman's body and him seeing one of his officers just hold up a leg that was found hundreds of yards away. And he said, you know, it was almost like a movie scene. You know, I guess your brain can't process it. So I do think that there could have been lots of, there could have been the dismemberment. It could have been scattered.
00:40:10
Speaker
But then I would understand it being described as exploded, because I think that's just more random. Whereas cut seems very methodical to me. But again, I don't know if that's normal words that they use in medical exam report.
00:40:34
Speaker
Something I didn't mention and something that the medical report didn't touch on was what Tiffany was wearing when her body was recovered.
00:40:42
Speaker
Oh yeah, you'd think they would mention that. Remember when she left her parents' house after the credit card incident? She had on light, almost white denim shorts. Her mom says that they're like blue jean, like the white jean shorts. She had on that t-shirt. She had on brand new shoes, which looked similar to Hey Dudes. And her hair was up in that bun held back by the white headband. Right.
00:41:06
Speaker
When her body is recovered from this accident scene or the scene of the crime, whichever you believe, she is in her sports bra. Some reports say sports bra. Some said she still had her shirt on and panties. She has no shoes, no shorts, and her headband is gone. And this to me is like a major red flag. Right. Now I will give you that. I mean, there shouldn't have been a change in clothes. Yeah.
00:41:35
Speaker
Especially if you're going to say that this is a suicide. I'm really doubting that she would have stripped down. And then if she did, they would have found her clothing somewhere between her house and the train tracks. Exactly. So why did, if this is a suicide, what you said, why did she have to get nearly naked to commit suicide? I don't think she would.
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Speaker
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00:44:03
Speaker
but they did not do any type of rape kit on her. Well, yeah. And they say, well, they ruled it a suicide. And then she was actually cremated. So we would have no way of. So there's no activation. Yeah. That can happen to test later. They did run a toxicology report and she was squeaky clean. There was not a thing in her system. Hmm.
00:44:31
Speaker
So not a lot happens obviously because in the eyes of law enforcement, this case is shut. Then roughly two weeks after Tiffany died, Diane went out for a walk just to clear her head.
The Mystery of Found Items
00:44:43
Speaker
And she walked the route that she had walked many times because it connected her road to where Tiffany was killed by the train. And she told the Daily Beast that about a mile away from her home, she saw something under a tree and she walked to take a closer look.
00:45:00
Speaker
Okay and there under the tree among the dirt and the leaves was Tiffany's headband and her brand new shoes which she had worn for the first time to her cousin's graduation party the day she disappeared. And obviously they didn't see any of this stuff before and if her mom
00:45:22
Speaker
has been frequently walking this path after Tiffany's death, and then she doesn't find it until two weeks later, but sees it there this time, then it's hard to believe that it wasn't recently placed there.
00:45:39
Speaker
She said in a lot of her interviews that if the shoes had been there Previously she would have seen them because just like you said they've walked that Many many times. She said that the shoes were in line as if Tiffany was standing shoulder-width apart and Was just like lifted out of her shoes
00:46:02
Speaker
They were just neatly placed there and she says as if someone had put them there purposefully. There was also and this was not in the any documentaries that I watched but was in a lot of the research a keychain nearby and Diane didn't recognize it and there was also a sweatshirt about 15 feet away from where Tiffany's shoes were. The police were notified of the objects and they were collected
00:46:29
Speaker
Wait, was the sweatshirt Tiffany's? Nope. So the keychain and the sweatshirt, neither one are Tiffany's. Interesting. They collect the objects.
00:46:42
Speaker
The family I read ended up having to pay for DNA testing to be done on the shoes and the headband. But apparently the chain of custody was broken. So whatever the DNA said, they couldn't use the key chain. And I'm pretty sure I read the sweatshirt were lost before any testing could be done on them. Oh my goodness. First of all, this family is devastated because of loss of their child. And then my anger, I can only imagine. Oh,
00:47:13
Speaker
I can only imagine. Yeah, I think they would end up having to arrest me because I would be so mad. Astonishingly your anger is going to grow because there were rumors and again I read this in a couple different places that there was an axe with red markings found at the crime scene. And many wonder could this have been a murder weapon because if you remember in the medical examiner's report it said many of her limbs had been cut away.
00:47:43
Speaker
Tiffany's family were hoping forensic analysis would lead them to more answers about her death. But this acts also went missing in storage before it could be
Investigative Oversights
00:47:52
Speaker
tested. OK. This is almost sounding conspiratorial. Like this is sounding like a conspiracy because it's one misstep and problem after another.
00:48:05
Speaker
And I wonder if part of that is because this transit police force was in charge of the investigation and maybe they just weren't trained to do things like this. Still still steady keeping track of evidence. Oh yeah. And those are pretty basic. Oh no. You know I think we can all agree.
00:48:30
Speaker
The crime scene was not handled properly. I mean we're losing things. I don't think it was actually ever handled as a crime scene. So the area I read was never taped off. People were just coming and going. Tiffany's uncle said in the Unsolved Mysteries interview that he would walk the area in the days after her accident and pick up pieces of her along the tracks. So sad.
00:48:56
Speaker
And that he found her bracelet that she had like sort of one of those live strong ones but it was orange I think like her volleyball team or something along the track and gave it to her mother. So I mean we just have potential evidence just days after she's been killed just lying out there in the elements.
00:49:18
Speaker
The shirt that she was wearing that night was found near the crime scene. Like I said, some said it was found on her. Some said it was near her. Sadly, it too was stuffed into a plastic bag, tied into a knot, just left and was literally covered with mold and scientifically useless when they got around to it. My goodness.
00:49:42
Speaker
And one final issue I wanna bring up is the location where Tiffany was hit. Mall marker 45 wasn't right at an intersection of a road and a train track. It was in a heavily secluded, partially wooded area, which given the fact that she was potentially barefoot and suicidal, my mind just cannot make this location make sense for suicide.
00:50:12
Speaker
Because You know, this is a good distance back from the road. It was very dark. There were no lights The road that she was on was really rough if you've ever walked on train tracks, you know that the
00:50:27
Speaker
Rocks they use or those just big clunky sharp Rocks would have been really difficult to walk on barefoot if she was walking on the beams Those probably would have given her splinters and her feet were reported to be clean on the bottoms I mean not you know super clean because of the accident, but there weren't like cuts and splinters and things like that So
00:50:53
Speaker
Yeah. Because if she were going to commit suicide and she's coming in at an intersection, why wouldn't she have just waited until the train got there versus walking deeper into? Yeah. Because I think suicide at that point, I think it would be more about convenience. It would be more convenient at the intersection versus walking right in the woods. Absolutely.
00:51:25
Speaker
And I actually placed a picture for you, Allison, and we'll post this for you guys as well. So you can see that bottom left arrow is Tiffany's house. And then that yellow line is the route that she would have taken. And that circle at the top is where she was struck by the train. So you can see into the woods. I mean, there's trees on either side of the train track.
00:51:55
Speaker
But when you look at this map, first of all, it really puts into perspective how long this walk was. But the other thing is that...
00:52:08
Speaker
There are two other places where she would or could have crossed the train tracks. One would have been had she continued going straight up that five. And some people do think that is how she went. Oh, and then walked back some. And then walked back. But then why walk back? Or if she were going to turn where she does turn right,
00:52:34
Speaker
She ends up right at the train tracks. So why continue walking? Yeah. And then if you look about halfway up that 563, the yellow part is where her shoe was found. So that arrow is her shoe. So why walk halfway, leave your shoes and then keep going. And then your feet definitely aren't going to be in pristine condition. Right. That's way too far to walk.
00:53:06
Speaker
This area also had an abandoned building of sorts and it's on below that picture that I've put in there for you. And this just looks like the place to me that you would take someone to like murder them or rape them. This is very dilapidated like trees growing through the roof. Yeah. Scary.
00:53:30
Speaker
And this was the perfect place to commit a crime because on one side of that, you would have trains passing by and then on the other side and on the other side was that major roadway. So again, blocking the noise. So the perfect spot to do something you didn't want to be caught doing. So it could be the case that there was somebody there as she's walking by, they see her.
00:54:00
Speaker
You know what I mean? And then, you know, jump out and do whatever.
Suicide or Homicide: The Debate
00:54:06
Speaker
So we've covered some of the strange things that were left out of the initial investigation. So we're going to talk about, you know, the two theories that we have, which is either you believe Tiffany took her own life or you think that Tiffany was a victim of foul play. Mm hmm.
00:54:23
Speaker
So since suicide is the official cause of death, we're gonna talk about that first. A lot of people say while Tiffany may have seemed like the ever happy teen, she actually had a lot of personal issues that she was juggling. In a lot of interviews that I read, like on the Daily Beast, there were some in some other newspaper articles. Diane said that she and Tiffany had been having some issues beginning the year before Tiffany's death. So like her senior year of high school.
00:54:54
Speaker
From what I gather, Diane said that these appeared to be normal teenage daughter and mother disagreements for the most part. Maybe just having an attitude and Diane is fed up with it, things like that, just typical mom-daughter thing.
00:55:12
Speaker
But social services actually have been called and paid three separate visits to the home after a teacher reported seeing bruises on Tiffany's arm. And Diane did admit to causing the bruise on Tiffany. She said she pinched her and the caseworker didn't find anything else of concern but was like, you know what, it could be beneficial for you guys to seek counseling. And Diane and Tiffany were both like, OK, yeah, we'll do that. So they agree to go to counseling. OK.
00:55:40
Speaker
And during their first and only session, which took place on November 17th, 2004, according to the Daily Beast, Diane told the therapist that she had been especially short tempered as of late. She blamed it on menopausal changes. And, you know, Tiffany's grandmother had recently passed away. She had been skipping class. She'd been smoking a little bit of pot. You know, she'd stolen that money from
00:56:07
Speaker
Diane's bank account shortly before Christmas. So, you know, just typical trouble communicating and that kind of thing. But the therapist's official assessment was that the pair enjoyed a quote unquote stable family relationship. So a therapist is saying it seems like just, you know, normal family things. Yeah. This isn't anything crazy concerning. Yeah.
00:56:36
Speaker
Tiffany told the therapist that she was neither depressed nor suicidal. She said that she was happy. She told the therapist. Diane, quote, acknowledged not being able to move on from the incidents due to her own anxiety and said she would seek independent support if needed. And so then their case was closed. Hmm.
00:57:00
Speaker
In early 2015, so roughly six months before her death, Tiffany came out as gay. But from all I read, all the interviews that I watched, it seemed that this was a choice that Tiffany's parents supported. I think initially they were a little concerned, but then they were supportive because she was happy. She was dating or had been dating a young woman in Philadelphia. They broke up shortly before Tiffany died, but it was mutual.
00:57:27
Speaker
They were both fine tiffany was actually talking to another girl that she had met online um But their lawyer told the daily beast that tiffany's new lifestyle choice May not have been as accepted as what she had hoped it would that some of the other girls in school wanted to quote unquote experiment with her
00:57:52
Speaker
And that this choice may have upset a lot of her friends. It could have upset some guys, he said. So I think she had maybe some stuff that she was dealing with there of some bullying incidents and people not being as supportive as what she thought they were going to be.
00:58:12
Speaker
Several Tiffany's classmates reported that Tiffany had been acting differently in the mutts leading up to her death. They reported that she appeared to be lonely. She was kind of sticking to herself. And even though she was popular, they say most of the time she just put on a brave face and that Tiffany had expressed to them that she never felt like she fit in. Hmm. A couple of Tiffany's friends told investigators that she had harmed herself intentionally cutting her wrist and her leg on two separate occasions.
00:58:40
Speaker
And they claimed that Tiffany had been depressed and suggested that she had an untreated mental illness. Steve and Diane, though, told investigators that all those claims were untrue. Also, I think if, you know, and just some kids, it's harder to build a relationship with as teachers, you know, than it is other kids. Right.
00:59:04
Speaker
But I would think if Tiffany went from, you know, a happy student who was actively participating in class and had a big group of friends that she was always with and she was laughing and smiling and then, you know, suddenly went to, she's very lonely. She's staying by herself. I would hope that a teacher would report that to a guidance counselor. I would hope that they would notice that in her. Right. I mean, I know I would notice things like that and I would say, Hey, what's going on?
00:59:33
Speaker
Is everything okay? And you can tell when a kid's lying. Yeah. And even if it's good, you're not super close to, like you said, you can tell when there's a shift. You can tell when they're lying. And another friend said that she heard that Tiffany texted a friend the night of the party with a very scary message and said, just answer yes or no. Should I do it?
00:59:59
Speaker
But that could be about anything. Yeah, that could be. Should I buy this new shirt? That could, like you said, literally be anything. And I did not find anywhere where the investigating team said that this message actually existed in the context in which this friend is saying that it did. Mm hmm.
01:00:20
Speaker
For me, I personally think that if this theory is correct, that it had to have been potentially something she was thinking about, but a spur of the moment decision on her part in that moment.
01:00:35
Speaker
You know, she could have been planning it, but the moment that something clicked in her and she ran away from home, I think if this is the theory that you believe, that's the moment she decided to do it, to kill herself. Yeah, I agree. Not texting a friend about it ahead of time, because if that were her plan all along, then when her parents said, come home right now, she wouldn't have.
01:00:58
Speaker
Yeah. I also don't think she would have been making plans to go, you know, to this great adventure park to do all these things. If this was something she was planning to do in the future. That's why I think if we are saying it suicide, she decided in that moment after that argument that she was going to commit suicide.
01:01:21
Speaker
And I think the train would have just been a moment of opportunity that she seized. Right. Which again, I think would be at the intersection of the road and the railroad track, not down in the woods. Yeah, I agree.
01:01:42
Speaker
So my issues with this theory are the, you know, medical examiner reports describing her limbs as being cut. And again, if you have more experience with this, please let us know. Maybe this is just how they're normally worded and we're looking more into this than what we should. The fact that her shoes are gone and her pants are gone. Yeah. That's a big red flag. Definitely. And the fact that she told the counselor she was fine. I mean, surely
01:02:11
Speaker
She I mean, I guess not, though, I'm just would hope that she would have been honest with that counselor in that safe spot. Maybe unless her mother was in the interview with her, which I don't think she would have been. But when I feel like with this theory. I mean, you know, even even them bringing up like oh
01:02:29
Speaker
You know, things might not have been as, you know, calm and happy as she made it seem that they were there. She was being bullied or there were people who are mad. Well, the fact that she's being bullied and there are people who could be mad points to foul play. Just as, you know what I mean? Just as easily as it could point to suicide as the motive. So, I don't know yet. I'll have to hear about
01:02:57
Speaker
your specifics for the other theory.
01:03:01
Speaker
So then the other theory is that Tiffany was the victim of foul play and she was murdered. There are several people who believe this theory and they saw it a different or many different reasons why. So one reason is the amount of blood that was found on
Blood Distribution Analysis
01:03:16
Speaker
the scene. Now don't get me wrong. I know obviously this would be a bloody scene just from the manner of death. So not really the amount of blood, but I guess the placement of blood.
01:03:28
Speaker
Okay, is the issue that they have so I feel that the blood would be heavily concentrated on the train where she was hit and kind of just thrown Randomly because you know they use words like exploded when they're describing her body part So I feel like blood would kind of be everywhere, you know
01:03:48
Speaker
But there was a large amount of blood that appeared to have been pulled right along the track. So I did try to find a picture of this and I couldn't find one, but there was a lot of blood that was staining like the railroad ties.
01:04:08
Speaker
Almost as if she was bleeding and her body was placed across the tracks before she was hit by the train, which makes me think of the crouched. She was crouching down by the train. I think potentially she could have just been placed there already dead or near dead. That makes me think of the Don Henry and Kevin Ives case with the train tracks.
01:04:34
Speaker
Experts say that because of the amount of blood in that particular spot Tiffany would have needed to be lying in that spot bleeding for some time before the train struck her for that amount of blood to be where it was.
01:04:49
Speaker
Tiffany's parents believe that someone snatched her or that she maybe got into the car willingly with someone near her home. So we have the father's deer camera. We clearly see Tiffany. And then the next minute we see her parents. And they wonder if someone stopped and picked her up. We talked about the potential lights in the background. And a lot of people think that there are some lights and other footage of that camera.
01:05:18
Speaker
And I'm wondering if maybe she was just down the road far enough, you know, that she was able to make it that far. How far could she have walked in a minute or two? That's my question. And then again, she's right in that subdivision with her family, her uncles across the street. You know, this is a big graduation party. There were cars lined up and down the street. Could it have been somebody that was at the party that she got into the car with?
01:05:46
Speaker
you know, they're leaving and she's in the car with them. Some claim that, you know, she just left on her own two feet and then some say that she did get into the car. Her parents in their theory go on to say they think whoever took Tiffany was someone that she knew or at least slightly knew of or she wouldn't have gotten the car with them. Right.
01:06:12
Speaker
they also think that Tiffany was you know upset in the moment she got in the car thinking that this friend or whoever was there to be helpful and they hypothesized you know when the phone was tossed out of the window of the car that's how it ended up near the driveway that then she realizes I'm in trouble
01:06:36
Speaker
Furthermore, many people speculate that perhaps Tiffany was taken to that secluded area and humiliated and potentially sexually assaulted. Well, since I didn't do a rape kit, that's a potential. Yeah, we'll never know.
01:06:51
Speaker
Diane believes that Tiffany was able to run away from her killers and she thinks that her shoes were in the location that they were found in because her killer caught up with her there and almost snatched her out of her shoes. So could it have been that she was in that secluded area? Well, I think she maybe could have been running
01:07:19
Speaker
And stepped out of the shoes as she's running, but I think like we said earlier, they would have noticed them beforehand. I think if we're going with this theory, they just wanted to get rid of evidence. I just dumped the shoes. Right. The shoes are interesting. That's what's throwing me off. Yeah, because I don't think she would have went halfway and then taken her shoes off. And even if somebody's going to dump them, it seems odd to
01:07:48
Speaker
place them, you know, pointed in the same direction versus like tossing them in a window. Yeah, that's either way it's bizarre.
01:08:00
Speaker
One man did come forward to investigators because he overheard some kids that were working at his store talking about Tiffany and they said that they knew for a fact in this conversation that they were having together that Tiffany was taken to that abandoned building area and was humiliated. That was the word that they used in that area. So I don't know if they, you know, were being really mean and made her stripped down and then she's running from them and she accidentally
01:08:30
Speaker
you know, is like, Oh, I can beat this train. And then that'll put something in between me and these people that are chasing me. Now that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot that is kind of what I feel like, because happened. I'm thinking, you know, it could have been the case.
01:08:57
Speaker
And I'm just talking off the top of my head. I don't know this person who she met online. I don't know if they had met before or if this was something new, if this girl was out of town or whatever, but I mean the, should I do it could have even been, you know, should I meet up with this person who I don't know personally, who I've been talking to online. And you know, that could have been somebody coming to pick her up.
01:09:26
Speaker
or whatever, or if these kids are right. It could have been that girl she was talking to. Yeah, or if these kids are right. I mean, it could be the case, and this goes back to what the lawyer said about girls wanting to experiment or the guys getting mad. It could even be the case that maybe there was a girl who Tiffany had a crush on.
01:09:49
Speaker
who kind of made a pass at her acting like she was interested and gets Tiffany to strip down and that girl wasn't truly interested in Tiffany and was only doing that to humiliate her because, you know, if Tiffany herself is taking her shoes off there, then she might place them carefully down. That explains the shoes.
01:10:16
Speaker
to me, it would then explain why she doesn't have all of her clothes on. And I think your point that maybe she thought she could beat the train is at least a theory that makes logical sense to me.
01:10:36
Speaker
And then it would explain, you know, one of the who's testimonies that the engineers gave where she ran out from the woods. Or maybe she's running away. Yeah, if she runs out or even if she's crouching, maybe she's crouching because she's trying to hide from them and make herself smaller because she's very tall. Or she's even embarrassed because she doesn't have her clothing on.
01:11:05
Speaker
That's true of crouching down. What's frustrating is all three of those kids that this man told investigators about were called in for questioning and every single one of them denied ever saying anything like that in the presence of this employer. They're like, nope, I didn't say that. I've never heard that in my life.
01:11:27
Speaker
And another weird thing, I mean, maybe I'm looking too far into this, is that none of Tiffany's friends have ever agreed to be interviewed, not in the Netflix documentary, not by any newspaper outlets, not by any magazines. They've all denied interview requests. That does stand out to me as odd also, because usually it's the close friends who are saying, no, I'm going to fight with this family for justice and I'm not going to stop until
01:11:57
Speaker
You know, the, the case has been opened back up or I don't know if that's their lawyer just saying air on the side of caution. You can still support the family, you know, things like that, but we don't need you to be interviewed because things can be misconstrued. I don't know. Maybe they're taking legal advice or whatever.
01:12:14
Speaker
Tiffany's case was reviewed in 2018, but the suicide ruling was upheld. There's currently a petition to have that ruling overturned, and the family is offering a $40,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and conviction for those responsible for Tiffany's death. So, Allison, what are your thoughts? I think I'm with you. I think that
01:12:41
Speaker
Now, listen, I can't completely rule out the idea that it could have been suicide. And I do know from Rodney's experience that some of her injuries kind of match what he had experienced. But there are certain details I'm with you that like her path, the shoes, her being partially clothed,
01:13:11
Speaker
other oddities that make me feel at least that this case deserves much further investigation. And I know we don't have a lot of the physical evidence, but you do still have people. And I'm hoping at least that if it was foul play, that one of those people has a guilty conscience and it's been eating at them all these years.
Family's Pursuit of Justice
01:13:38
Speaker
To close today's episode, I want you to take a step back in today's case and really weigh the facts. We've talked about some crazy things on this show, ball lightning, sand dunes collapsing and killing people. Is it really out of the realm of possibility to think that perhaps something more happened to Tiffany than the initial investigation told? If you feel passionately that Tiffany was indeed a victim of foul play, we will post the petition that you can sign to have Tiffany's case reopened.
01:14:06
Speaker
There is a link to Change.org in the show notes, and here is what Change.org says about that petition. Quote, Tiffany Valiente was 18 when on July 12, 2015, she was struck by a New Jersey Transit Atlantic City rail line train bound to Atlantic City from Philadelphia.
01:14:24
Speaker
Shocking to this day is that police and the New Jersey medical examiner, without conducting a complete investigation, a full autopsy was never conducted, a rape kit was never administered, her parents years later had to pay the cost to an independent lab to analyze what DNA evidence wasn't contaminated. Almost immediately said, Tiff took her own life. To them, it was case closed before her casket was ordered.
01:14:48
Speaker
Several experts agree there was a rush to judgment that led to a rapid and supported medical examiner office ruling of death by suicide, though independent investigators would later lean towards homicide as the cause. The facts didn't add up in 2015 and they don't today. That is why there's an appeal to the New Jersey Attorney General
01:15:10
Speaker
Matthew and his criminal division to order the case reopened. Classifying her death, a suicide was in itself an injustice. Tiffany's family and friends refused to write her death off as an unsolved mystery, let alone give up. They persist until there's justice for Tiffany. Remember Sleuthhounds, Tiffany was the world to one family and they deserve to have a proper investigation into what happened to their daughter.
01:15:35
Speaker
Again, please like and join our Facebook page, Coffee and Cases podcast to continue the conversation and see images related to this episode. As always, follow us on Twitter, at casescoffee, on Instagram, at coffee cases podcast, or you can always email us suggestions to coffeeandcasespodcastatgmail.com. Please tell your friends about our podcast so more people can be reached to possibly help bring some closure to these families. Don't forget to rate our show and leave us a comment as well. We hope to hear from you soon.
01:16:05
Speaker
Stay together. Stay safe. We'll see you next week. It's love notes for Maggie and Allison.
01:16:33
Speaker
I giggle every time. Before the love notes, I have to take a quick minute to remind everyone of our giveaway that's quickly approaching and is open to all listeners, so the OG listeners and all of our newbies alike. And the prize? It's your choice of an item from our Etsy shop, which is pretty cool. Which is a pretty good prize.
01:17:03
Speaker
Remember that there are multiple ways to earn entries. As proof of your entries, you'll just need to snap a screenshot and email them to us at coffeeandcasespodcast.com. If you've already done any of these like ways to earn your entry, they'll still count as long as you can send us a picture of proof. And so here are the ways that you can earn entries. So one, you can recommend us on social media and tag at least two friends who you think would enjoy the show. So you just use the at symbol,
01:17:32
Speaker
to add your friends and then add coffee and cases in that tag as well.
01:17:37
Speaker
you can earn entries by or earn an entry by writing us a five-star written review because those are our faves. Those are really our faves. Earn a ticket by joining Patreon and for this giveaway you'll get one entry if you join at the two dollar level, two entries for the five or seven dollar level because remember those totals changed. That's right. Like around the new year. Three entries for the twelve dollar level
01:18:03
Speaker
4 for the $15 level and 5 total entries if you join at the $20 level and the link to Patreon is in our show notes if that's something you're interested in doing.
01:18:14
Speaker
And then the fourth way that you can earn an entry is to purchase something from the Etsy shop and the link is also in the show notes. Right. See, we make it easy. We just put all those links there for you. When you email us proof of your entries, please also let us know what item from our Etsy shop you would like to win and if it's clothing, what size and that's it.
01:18:38
Speaker
We will give you until March 6th to enter, and that's only a couple of weeks away. And then we will announce the winner on our March 9th episode. So now that we have that out of the way, it is my favorite time, which is Love Notes time.
01:18:53
Speaker
Mm-hmm, and we want to send love to Suzanne Dana Tara amorous histories podcast Jerry Meredith Aaron another Suzanne For reaching out to us on social media or emailing us or recommending our podcasts to others We think you guys are just the biggest blessings. There are yes, we do plus I have so much love to Elise and Winston from true crime cat lawyer
01:19:23
Speaker
for sending us, she sent one for Maggie and one for me, the sweet cards and stickers from her podcast. And she's just the best. So if you haven't checked out True Crime Cat lawyer, make sure you do.
01:19:39
Speaker
And, you know, if you would like to send us mail, because we love hearing from you, whether it's a written card and email, whatever, you can send it to P.O. Box 115, Keene, K-E-E-N-E, Kentucky 40339. And,
01:19:57
Speaker
We, again, this week, got several five-star written reviews. So there's a major love going out to M.F. Cohen, who wrote, quote, I love listening to these stories because they're fresh and new. Thank you so much. I love this podcast, end quote. And we love you too.
01:20:20
Speaker
And we also love Meredith and I love that name who wrote quote Coffee and cases is my favorite true crime podcast by far each week I feel like I've spent some much needed time with my favorite southern friends I enjoy that the podcast is never vulgar and I really believe there is a passion for truly finding justice and peace for the victims and their families in quote loved that one so good and
01:20:48
Speaker
And Amber also left us a review and she said, quote, I love that you can tell the story without using bad language. Thank you. And thank you, Amber, because some people just don't find that a good quality. Right. They say we're childish. I know. I say we're classy. I agree.
01:21:06
Speaker
And I would be remiss if I didn't also send love to Susie Joy, who wrote, quote, part of what I love about this podcast is that it focuses on unsolved cases. It seeks to help bring closure with compassion to the families left behind, end quote. And that is exactly why we do what we do. That's why that review meant so much to me. Plus, we got a new Patreon member who also gets our whole heart this week.
01:21:35
Speaker
Nicole, thank you and we love you.
01:21:42
Speaker
If you are not a Patreon member yet, what are you waiting for? If you are a Patreon member, know that February's minis are done, but morning sickness is kicking my high knee, so I haven't got a chance to edit them all, but they will be up here in just a few days. So be patient, we still have time. But you can get all kinds of bonus episodes over there that are solved cases and mini episodes that we've done for only $7 a month.
01:22:12
Speaker
Plus, as Allison alludes to, if you join at the $12, $15, or $20 monthly level, then you will get a quarterly swag box, and your level will determine the number of items that go into the box. So you do have incentive to join at the higher level. But regardless, all the items in the swag box at the $12, $15, or $20 level are really great. I think that they are. Me too. I think we're clever. I guess. But this last one,
01:22:42
Speaker
There were a couple people who were like, love it, but I'll let you give their shout outs. And if you want to be part of that next round, then just make sure that you are in those tiers for March through May. So you can get that. And here's a hint for the next round. We will need your shirt size for the March through May swag box. So wink, wink.
01:23:12
Speaker
And those patrons that Allison was talking about are Anna Noel and Lindy who said that they absolutely loved the last swag box and it was a really good box. So we're glad that you guys enjoyed it because we loved putting them together for you. Yes we did. Yes we did.
01:23:31
Speaker
So if you want to get some gifts or just the gift of bonus content, then head on over to patreon.com slash coffee and cases, or you can click the link that's going to be in our show notes with all the other links that we're going to post for you guys. And with that, all of our love is going out to each and every one of you until next week.