On the night of July 12, 2015, Tiffany Valiante disappeared without a trace. No one could have known that she would be killed by a train.
But, as shown in Netflix’s “Unsolved Mysteries: Mystery at Mile Marker 45,” it’s still not clear if Tiffany was brutally killed or if she killed herself, as officials believe. But for now, if you just want to know more about her loving parents, who are making the most noise about what they think is justice in this case, we’ve got you covered.
Who are the parents of Tiffany Valiante?
In 1989, Dianne Schmidtke, a single mother of two girls named Jessica and Krystal, met Stephen Valiante for the first time. They quickly became close and had a connection like no other. So, they quickly got married, moved to New Jersey’s wonderful rural-suburban Mays Landing as a happy big family, and then, in 1997, Tiffany came into their lives. In the Netflix original, Dianne said, “We did not expect to get pregnant.” “But when we saw her for the first time, it was like, you know, heaven. She was stunningly beautiful.”
Tiffany is said to have grown up in a very caring and supportive environment, at least until 2014, when she and Dianne got into a lot of trouble and fought a lot. After an argument, the second woman punched her daughter hard enough to leave bruises, and Child Protection Services visited them three times in the same year before telling them to go to counseling. The therapist then decided that the mother and daughter had “difficulty communicating,” but that they were a “stable” family. This made it possible for Tiffany to come out as gay in early 2015.
But in July 2015, everything changed again, especially when Tiffany just disappeared after she and Dianne got into a small fight while she was going to get Stephen. Her family looked for the 18-year-old college volleyball player right away, but hours later, only her bloody, torn-up body was found on the train tracks. Tiffany’s death was ruled a suicide pretty quickly by the team in charge of investigating it at New Jersey Transit, but neither her parents nor anyone else in her family believed it for a second.
After all, according to what they said, Tiffany was a happy teen who was looking forward to college, independence, and her life in general, so it was never even a question that she would kill herself. This belief grew stronger when, two weeks later, Dianne found her daughter’s headband and shoes a mile from their home, which seemed to show that she did not walk to the train tracks on her own. So, the Valiantes began their fight to get justice for their daughter by going to court, hiring private detectives, and keeping the public’s attention on the case, which they still do.
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Where are the parents of Tiffany Valiante now?
From what we can tell, Dianne and Stephan are still living in their family home in Mays Landing, New Jersey. There, they try their best to keep their daughter’s memory alive. In their back yard, the patriarch has built both a memorial garden and the volleyball court he promised Tiffany as a college gift. The couple also goes every day to the shrine set up along the railroad tracks as a tribute to her. Now, all they want is for the people who had anything to do with their daughter’s death to be held responsible.
Stephan said in “Unsolved Mysteries”: “We need justice. Is it hard every day? Sure. Every day, getting up is a job. Every night, to go to bed. But I have to do it until I find out who did this to our baby. On the other hand, his wife once said, “People should know what we’ve been through and what we’re still going through. We just want the authorities to do what they are supposed to do. You should do an investigation, and you should do it right.”
The Administrative Secretary at Hamilton Township Public Schools also said, “The proof is there, but they don’t want to admit they made a mistake. My daughter was let down. They let my family down.” Dianne and Stephan Valiante know they have to speak up for their daughter, and they won’t back down. So, they are now offering a $40,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person who may have killed her. If you have any information, please call 609-927-0001 right away.
In 2015, on a summer night, New Jersey Transit train 4693 hit 18-year-old Tiffany Valiante near her home in Mays Landing and killed her. After her death, it was decided that she had killed herself. But her family says that the recent high school graduate was actually killed.
Even though Tiffany Valiante had been through a rough year, her parents say she wasn’t suicidal. They think that New Jersey Transit said she stepped on the tracks to avoid being blamed for being careless, and they insist that the authorities botched the way they looked into her death.
Also, after the girl died, the town where she lived was full of scary rumors. One local store manager even said that his teenage employees had been talking about how Valiante had been taken and forced onto the train tracks.
Then, what did happen to Tiffany Valiante?
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In an old photo, Tiffany Valiante is with her parents, Dianne and Steve.
In the days, weeks, and months before her death on July 12, 2015, 18-year-old Tiffany Valiante went through a lot of hard times. According to the Daily Beast, she and her mother, Dianne, fought so much in 2014 that child protective services went to their house three times.
Then Dianne said that she had punched her in the arm when they were fighting. They both agreed to go to counseling, where Valiante told the therapist that she wasn’t sad or thinking about killing herself. In the end, the therapist found that she had a “stable” relationship with her family.
Tiffany Valiante had a stable family life, but her life outside the home was anything but. The Daily Beast says that after her grandfather died, she smoked pot, stole money, and didn’t go to class. Early in 2015, she told people she was gay and started going out with women. And Valiante told her friends that she felt lonely, and they told investigators that she had hurt herself.
Still, Valiante seemed to be optimistic about the future. She was going to go to Mercy College in New York State because she had won a volleyball scholarship. WHYY said that she was thinking about becoming a lawyer or even joining the Air Force.
But before her freshman year could start, Tiffany Valiante died in a horrible way.
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On July 12, 2015, what happened?
This grainy still is the last known picture of Tiffany Valiante. It was taken on the night she died by a deer cam owned by a neighbor.
Even though no one knows for sure what happened to Tiffany Valiante on July 12, 2015, we do know a few things. On that date, she and her parents, Dianne and Steve, went to a party for her graduation. At about 9 p.m., one of her friends asked to talk to Dianne and Steve and told them that Valiante had been using her debit card. This happened back at Valiante’s house.
The Daily Beast says that the conversation lasted less than 10 minutes and that Valiante denied the accusation (though a receipt from the card was later found in her room). WHYY says that after her friend left, she and her parents talked about what happened. Her mother said that it was more of a squabble than a big fight.
Dianne was looking through Valiante’s car when she saw her daughter put the debit card in her pocket. When she went inside to get Steve, their daughter was gone when they came back out.
Dianne told WHYY, “She was outside by the car.” “I walked inside to get my husband. I was only gone for a minute. When I got back outside, she wasn’t there.
After that, what happened to Tiffany Valiante? No one is sure. As time went on and she didn’t come back, her parents went looking for her. They found Valiante’s cell phone at the end of their driveway.
“Tiffany never left home without her cell phone,” Dianne told WHYY, adding that her daughter had even bought a waterproof case for her phone so she could use it in the shower.
By 11:30 p.m. Because they were so worried, her parents called the police. It was too late, though. Twenty-seven minutes earlier, a New Jersey Transit train going south at 80 miles per hour hit Valiante about four miles from her home with such force that all four of her limbs were ripped off her body.
When they first came to our house to tell us, Dianne told WHYY, “I was so shocked that I made them repeat themselves.” “They just said that a train hit her. We thought she was in a car with someone and that the car got hit, but they didn’t tell us anything else. At first, that’s what we thought. We thought, “Oh, no! Who else was in the car?” ‘”
WHYY says that the case was officially closed by the end of the next day. They said that Tiffany Valiante killed herself by throwing herself in front of the train tracks. But as time went on, more clues showed that the truth might be more complicated than that.
From the start, a few things about Tiffany Valiante’s death seemed strange. First of all, she was found without shoes and only in her underwear. But at first, her family agreed with what the investigator said and had her body cremated.
” Dianne told WHYY while she was crying. “I just thought [the investigators] did what they were supposed to do.”
About two weeks after her daughter died, Dianne started to doubt the official conclusion about how Valiante died. Then, as Dianne walked around in the woods near her house feeling sad, she found her daughter’s missing shoes and headband in a neat pile.
They were more than a mile away from where she had died on the train tracks, where bloodhounds had found her scent. This seemed strange to Valiante’s parents, since an autopsy of her feet showed no signs that she had walked a mile without shoes.
Paul D’Amato, a lawyer for the Valiante family, told WHYY that when he looked at Tiffany’s feet, they were as clean as those of his little granddaughter. “There are no cuts, scrapes, or anything else. There is nothing.”
From there, other problems with the girl’s death investigation came to light. The Daily Beast says that a lot of the evidence collected by investigators, including Valiante’s shirt, was not stored properly and got dirty. And NJ Transit found an ax at the scene that had “red marks” on it, which they then lost.
D’Amato also said that Marvin Olivares, who was driving the train the night Valiante died, kept changing his story. Olivares first said that she had “darted” in front of the train, then said that he didn’t see her until it was too late, and then said that the girl had been crouching by the tracks. D’Amato and other people think that NJ Transit spread the idea that she killed herself to avoid taking responsibility for her death.
Also, strange rumors started to spread around town about what had happened to Valiante. According to the Daily Beast, a Wawa manager told investigators that he had heard one of his teenage employees talk about how she had been kidnapped at gunpoint, forced to strip, and chased onto the train tracks. He made it sound like the friend who said Valiante used her debit card was somehow involved in her disappearance.
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