Tiffany Valiante
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To enjoy this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On a summer night in 2015, New Jersey Transit Train 4693 struck and killed an 18-year-old named Tiffany Valiente.

Her death was ruled a suicide, but her family believes that the recent high school graduate and star athlete was actually murdered. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 231, The Suspicious Death of Tiffany Valiente. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.

As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases, conduct in-depth fact-based research, as well as produce and edit this weekly show. You can support my work in two simple ways. Become a valued patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales and leave a positive review. Before we get to this week's episode, we've got three new Patreon supporters to thank this week. Devin, Luis, and Chris B.,

Now, let's get to this week's episode. In July 2015, the parents of 18-year-old Tiffany Valiente from Mays Landing, New Jersey, thought that their daughter had a bright future ahead of her. She had just graduated from high school a few weeks earlier and already had a volleyball scholarship to attend Mercy College in New York. After college, she talked about pursuing a career in criminal justice to become a cop or join the Air Force.

But before Tiffany could even start her freshman year of college, her life was tragically cut short after being struck and killed by a train. On the night of July 12, 2015, four weeks after Tiffany's high school graduation, her partially clothed, barefoot, mangled body was found on a dark stretch of the Atlantic City rail line, approximately four miles from her house.

She had been hit by a New Jersey transit train, and within hours, her death was ruled a suicide. But her family suspects she was murdered. Let's dive into her story and see if the forensic evidence can help answer some of the many unanswered questions about her death.

Standing at 6'2", Tiffany Ida Mae Valiente was a star athlete in both volleyball and softball at Oak Crest High School in Mays Landing, a rural area of New Jersey about 20 miles west of Atlantic City. That's where she lived with her dad, Steve, mom, Diane, and two sisters, Crystal and Jessica. Steve worked as a maintenance worker for the state of New Jersey, and Diane was an administrative assistant for the local public school district.

Tiffany's two older half-sisters, Crystal and Jessica, were daughters from Diane's first marriage. Then came Tiffany. She was a surprise baby, but both Steve and Diane said that she completed their family from the moment she was born. In July 2015, Tiffany was 18 years old, and the day of July 12, 2015, started completely uneventful.

Tiffany spent the morning at home, leaving briefly to get a lemonade at a local Wawa. That afternoon, Tiffany and her parents walked across the street to Steve's brother's house for a party. His daughter, who was Tiffany's cousin, had just graduated from Holy Spirit High School, and they were celebrating with a large group of friends and family who came and went throughout the day and into the evening.

Throughout the night, Tiffany relaxed by the pool, took pictures, played volleyball, and made plans for decorating her new college dorm room. That evening, she invited some friends to come to the party. Tiffany's mood and behavior at the party seemed to be like it always was. No one thought that anything seemed off or was bothering her.

Tiffany even spoke enthusiastically about going off to college and was 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 birthday surprise. But something changed as the night went on. At around 9.15 p.m., Tiffany left the party and walked across the street back to her parents' house to shower and meet up with the friends she had invited to the party.

Around that same time, Tiffany's mom, Diane, got a phone call from one of Tiffany's friends saying that she was outside their house and needed to talk to her. Diane went back to grab Steve, and they both left the party to meet up with this friend. When they got to the driveway, Tiffany's friend was upset and told them how Tiffany had stolen her credit card and spent over $300 on clothes and food without her permission.

Initially, Diane defended her daughter, saying that she had no reason to use her friend's credit card because she could use her and Steve's card basically anytime that she wanted to. When Tiffany came outside the house, she denied using the credit card, even though a receipt for $86 using that card was later found in her room.

And the part about always being able to use her parents' credit card anytime she wanted to might not be exactly true. Just a couple months earlier, Tiffany got in major trouble for taking money from their bank account without their permission. So she had a habit of stealing money or at least buying things that she shouldn't. Still, Tiffany flatly denied taking the friend's credit card or spending any of her money.

The whole conversation with this friend only lasted about 10 minutes, and at around 9.24 p.m., the friend and her mom drove off. By that point, Steve had gone back inside the house, and Diane went to go search Tiffany's car. While doing so, she said she saw Tiffany slipping her friend's credit card into her back pocket.

When Diane confronted Tiffany about it, Tiffany eventually admitted to stealing and using the card, which didn't exactly make her mom too happy. They got into a little bit of an argument and Diane went back inside the house to go grab Steve so that they all could talk about it.

About one minute later, at 9.28 p.m., they came back outside the house, but Tiffany was nowhere to be found, and that was the last time that anyone saw her alive. Steve and Diane immediately started looking for Tiffany. They called and texted her cell phone, but got no response. They also called the friend they were just talking to about the stolen credit card, who came back to the house with two other friends to help look for her.

At first, they thought Tiffany might be playing some joke on them, hiding in the woods behind the house and watching the search effort from behind a tree. But eventually, it became clear this wasn't the case, and a large group of family and friends split up into search parties. They searched the neighborhood by foot and car for the next two hours but saw no sign of her.

Tiffany's two older half-sisters, Jessica and Crystal, as well as their uncle, began searching the surrounding woods on quad bikes, but still nothing. With so many people in cars in the neighborhood attending the graduation party, it seemed a little strange that no one saw Tiffany walk off anywhere or get into someone's car.

Tiffany is pretty hard to miss. She's well over six feet tall, and everyone in the neighborhood knew her. So why didn't anyone see her run off that night? At around 11 o'clock, they finally found something. Steve spotted Tiffany's cell phone in the dirt near the end of their driveway about eight feet from the road. Right away, Steve knew this wasn't good.

Like almost every 18-year-old girl, his daughter wouldn't go anywhere without her cell phone. She was the type of girl with a waterproof phone case just so she could use it in the pool and in the shower. So why would she go anywhere without it? Without any sign of her, the family called off the search around midnight and called the police. They had no idea that by that time, Tiffany had already been dead for over 30 minutes.

Diane and Steve had a deer camera set up in their front yard. When they pulled the tapes from earlier that night, Tiffany was spotted walking away from the house at 9.28. One minute later, at 9.29, the camera captured her parents and the family dog walking out of the house to go talk to her about the stolen credit card. That means that within just 60 seconds, Tiffany was gone.

In the deer camera, Tiffany is wearing the same outfit she wore to the party. A pair of blue denim shorts, a black t-shirt, a white headband, and flat shoes that she just bought. No one else is with her as she leaves her parents' front yard. And nothing really stands out from the video. Once Tiffany walked out of the camera's view, she was gone.

At almost the same time that Tiffany's parents called the police, Tiffany's uncle Michael drove down South Pomona Road, which wasn't far from the house. When he got to the railroad tracks, he noticed several police cars parked on the transit access road. As he pulled up, a Galloway Township police officer told him that someone, possibly a female, had been struck by a train.

But he couldn't say anything beyond that because the New Jersey Transit Police Department was handling the investigation. Michael went up to one of the transit officers and asked him if he had seen anyone matching Tiffany's description. The officer said that he didn't, but told Michael that the person who was hit by the train might match her description.

At that point, Michael hoped and prayed that that person wasn't his niece Tiffany. But it was obvious that it was. Tiffany had been struck by a train headed from Philadelphia to Atlantic City along an isolated stretch of track four miles from where she lived. Less than 24 hours after Tiffany was found dead, the New Jersey Transit Police Department ruled it as a suicide and closed the case.

According to their investigation, she had intentionally thrown herself in front of the train that was traveling over 80 miles per hour. Now here's everything about what we know about Tiffany and that train. The train that hit her was train number 4693. It had left Philadelphia at 9.50 p.m. and headed east toward Atlantic City. About 60 people, including passengers and crew members, were on board.

The train had just passed underneath the bridge at Tilton Road in Galloway Township and was headed toward the crossing at Genoa Avenue when it hit Tiffany at 11.12 p.m. near mile marker 45. After she was struck, her body was dragged about a quarter mile until the train stopped. This all happened at a spot on the train tracks about 2.6 miles away from Tiffany's house.

It was also about one mile away from the closest intersection. So it was a really dark part of the tracks without a single light around. This also meant that Tiffany walked over two and a half miles to get there, basically in the complete dark. Now, a little bit of a warning here. This next part is very disturbing. According to the medical examiner's report, all four of Tiffany's limbs had been ripped from her torso.

her face and head were completely crushed and her brain, quote, extruded from the cranial cavity, end quote. She was wearing nothing but her underwear and a sports bra. So that means her denim shorts, white headband, and black t-shirt were all missing and nowhere near her body. And her feet, which were severed completely from her body, were found without the shoes.

When the New Jersey Transit Police examined the train, they reported that the impact happened on the lower left-hand side of the train closest to the tracks, which they believed was consistent with the train hitting Tiffany if she had thrown herself in front of it. Two engineers were on board the train that night. One senior engineer, Wayne Daniels, and one student, Marvin Olivares.

That night, they both signed off on police reports saying that they saw Tiffany jump in front of the train. The senior engineer, Wayne Daniels, told investigators that he was the one to instruct the student engineer to blow the horn and ring the bell. Based on all of this, the police were pretty quick to rule this off as a suicide.

Tiffany got into a fight with her parents about the stolen credit card. She walked a little over two miles to mile marker 45 and then jumped in front of the train. They even had two eyewitnesses who basically said that they saw the entire thing. So case closed. But Tiffany's family disagrees. And here's why. Do you know what I don't miss at all? That vicious week before my period each month.

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That's happy mammoth.com and use code tails for 15% off today. According to Paul D'Amato, an attorney for Tiffany's family, both engineers on board made inconsistent statements to the police about what they saw. When the senior engineer was questioned by the police right after all of this happened, he reportedly said that he saw Tiffany jump in front of the train.

However, when he was asked that same question several days later while under oath, he allegedly changed his story and said that he didn't see her because his back was turned to the tracks. There are also supposedly inconsistencies in the student's story as well. According to the family's attorney, when he was first asked the question, when did you first see Tiffany?,

He answered, I didn't see her until I was right on top of her, end quote. But 10 days later, when he was questioned, also under oath, he said that he saw her crouched down next to the train tracks when he was about half a mile away. Then he said he saw her stand up and dive in front of the train.

In another interview, he said that Tiffany, quote, darted out from the woods and ran onto the tracks right before she was hit. So which one is it? Did they both see her like they originally said the night that it happened? Did only one of them see it happen, which is what they later on said? Did she run toward the tracks or was she crouched down next to them? Maybe these details don't really mean that much.

But according to Tiffany's family, they do. Essentially, since that these engineers' statements to the police played a really big role in their decision to rule this a suicide. On board the train was a major event incident recorder. This was essentially the train's black box recording everything that the train did. So how fast it was going to when the brakes were applied.

Now, based on the black boxes data, we know that it took the student engineer 4.1 seconds to sound the horn, hit Tiffany, and apply the emergency brake. Tiffany's family doesn't think that he would have been able to see her jump in front of the train during that time frame. Instead, he probably only saw parts of her body flying in front of the train.

They also think that maybe shock and trauma of seeing someone get hit by a train probably affected his memory about what he thinks he saw. He could have thought he saw her jump in front of the train, but his memory might not be 100% accurate because everything happened so fast. So one of Steve and Diane's biggest beliefs is that someone in a car picked up Tiffany that night and drove her to the train tracks.

They don't think that she walked all that way on her own by foot. So three days after the crash on July 15th, the Atlantic County Sheriff's Office sent out a canine handler with a bloodhound to quote, "...conduct a track from the house she left to, to attempt to ascertain her direction of travel." End quote.

The police were essentially interested in finding out how she got to mile marker 45. Did she walk there by herself or did someone pick her up? Because if she walked there, then suicide is totally possible. But if someone drove her there, then of course we're talking about something entirely different. The dog would likely lose her scent somewhere between her parents' house and the train tracks if someone in a car picked her up.

When the dog was brought out, they did what is called a blind search. The dog's handler didn't know where the crash happened so that he wouldn't be able to sway the dog. He just wanted to follow his dog, which would hopefully follow Tiffany's scent.

Now, it took the dog over an hour, but he was able to track Tiffany's every movement from her driveway to the general area of the crash site, suggesting to the police that she didn't get into a car, but probably walked there instead. However, Tiffany's family also has a problem with this because it rained the day after Tiffany died, which may or may not have affected the dog's tracking abilities.

One of Tiffany's parents' biggest arguments was that they didn't think she was suicidal or depressed. The Tiffany they knew wouldn't jump in front of a train like that, especially since everyone who interacted with her earlier that night said that she seemed completely fine.

She had no history of any medical problems, no drug or alcohol issues, and her toxicology report came back crystal clear. She didn't have anything in her system when she died. But the biggest question here is, at least for me, was Tiffany as happy as she claimed to be or as happy as her parents thought? If you ask the police, the answer is probably not.

One thing that might have been going on with Tiffany was her relationship with her parents. According to medical records obtained by the Daily Beast, Child Protective Services visited the home at least three separate times in 2014. This happened after one of Tiffany's teachers noticed bruising on her arm that seemed inconsistent with a sports-related injury.

After the visit with CPS, Diane admitted to having caused the bruise by punching Tiffany after an argument. So a caseworker recommended that they go to counseling, which both Tiffany and Diane agreed to do. During their first and only therapy session on November 17, 2014, Diane told the therapist that she had been especially short-tempered lately and blamed it on menopause.

In the therapist's report, she wrote that Diane and Tiffany had, quote, trouble communicating, but her official assessment was that the two enjoyed a, quote, stable family relationship, end quote. Tiffany never once told the therapist that she felt depressed or suicidal, so their case was officially closed by CPS.

Just two days after this meeting with a therapist, Tiffany's grandfather died on November 19th. And around that same time, she started skipping class and smoking pot. She also got caught stealing money from her mom's bank account right before Christmas. In early 2015, about six months before her death, Tiffany came out to her friends and family as gay.

She started dating a woman from Philadelphia who she met online, but they broke up just a couple days before Tiffany died. Now the family says that their breakup was mutual, and Tiffany seemed to be fine with it. She was even talking to another woman when she died. And in her last social media post, she talked about how content she felt with her life. So this breakup may or may not have had anything to do with it, but this next part might.

One of Tiffany's friends from high school told the police that she thought Tiffany was acting differently in the months leading up to her death. She said she seemed distant and apparently Tiffany told her that she felt lonely. Another friend said that she heard that Tiffany sent a text message to a friend on the night of her death, basically saying, just answer yes or no. Should I do it?

But no one really knows what Tiffany was actually talking about in that text. Other friends told investigators that she had harmed herself by cutting her wrist and leg on at least two separate occasions. One claimed that Tiffany had been depressed and suggested untreated mental illness may have played a role. But Steve and Diane deny all of that, saying that they've never heard Tiffany say any of those things.

They said she was really looking forward to college and had plans for the future. So I don't know who to believe, the friends or the parents. Three weeks after Tiffany died on August 3rd, her mom Diane told the Daily Beast that she went for a walk to try and clear her head. While walking, she spotted something under a tree about one mile from her house. It was Tiffany's missing pair of shoes and her white headband.

Diane told the police the shoes were neatly lined up next to each other, like someone had just gently placed them there. About 15 feet away from that, there was also a keychain and a sweatshirt. The police came and collected the shoes and headband, which they put into evidence. But they were never tested for DNA. They weren't tested until five years later when the family got a court order to pay for the forensic testing on their own.

But by that point, again five years later, the chain of custody had already been broken, so they couldn't find any usable DNA. The police also lost the keychain before it could be tested. Now, the location of Tiffany's shoes and headband is really, really strange. They were found about 1.75 miles away from where she was hit by the train, and about one mile away from her parents' house.

So that meant she walked almost two miles without her shoes on. And why would she take off her headband? Let's not forget, Tiffany had nothing on but her underwear and sports bra when she was hit by the train. So why would her shoes be almost two miles away from her body? Beyond the why, Tiffany's family also questions whether she could have walked that far without shoes.

The route she took along the railroad tracks had a lot of sharp rocks, debris, and glass on the ground. It would have hurt anyone's feet to walk barefoot. But when Tiffany's body arrived at the morgue, she didn't have a single cut or scrape on the bottom of her feet. Her feet were completely clean. So did she actually walk there or not?

Plus, Tiffany is over six feet tall. How could no one have seen her walk all those miles, especially without shoes on? You would think that a girl that tall walking along the side of the road without shoes on would probably stick out like a sore thumb. But no one saw anything. So this only furthers the family's belief that Tiffany didn't walk to those train tracks by herself.

Like we talked about earlier, the lead agency that investigated Tiffany's death was the New Jersey Transit Police Department, not the local PD, not the sheriff's department. So this is something that Tiffany's parents, as well as their attorney, really have a problem with. They just don't think that a transit police department has enough experience to investigate a case like this.

Typically, when someone dies under what many people might believe are suspicious circumstances, those cases are typically handled by the local PD or the sheriff's department, not a transit police department.

But this particular case is unique because Tiffany was hit by a public train on public train tracks, which meant that her death, whether it was homicide or suicide, that meant the case was under their jurisdiction. So this possible lack of experience is what the family believes caused them to rule this off as a suicide so quickly.

Let's not forget that less than 24 hours after this happened, they reported it as a suicide, which maybe means that they didn't really treat this like a crime scene. They treated it like a suicide right from the get-go, and whatever evidence they collected, they used it to support the suicide finding. It was like the police had tunnel vision and only looked at certain pieces of evidence that supported their original finding.

Now, of course, this is what the family says, not what the police are going to say. But the family believes that the police were really sloppy when it came to evidence collection. Tiffany's uncle went out to the train tracks the day after she died. And according to him, they found parts of Tiffany's body, like her jawbone was just lying on the ground.

They also found bloody gloves from what they believe came from first responders. Since Tiffany's death was ruled a suicide so quickly, there was a pretty basic autopsy. No rape kit was ever done, and her body was never tested for foreign DNA. She was also cremated a couple days later, so it can't be exhumed. So if Tiffany didn't commit suicide, then what does her family think happened?

Well, they think she was murdered. One possible theory the family likes is that Tiffany got away from her attackers and was chased directly onto the train tracks where she was hit. Another theory is that she was already lying injured on the tracks before the train got there.

According to the family's attorney, Paul D'Amato, the crime scene photos show what appears to be a large pool of blood at the point where the train hit her. He thinks this might suggest she was lying there bleeding before the train hit her. He says the police never tested the blood because they claimed they had enough evidence to say it was a suicide. So it's never been determined if that was Tiffany's blood or not on the train tracks.

Another strange thing is that in the medical examiner's report, they said Tiffany's arms and legs were, quote, cut from her torso. That is a strange word to describe them because instead of saying something like they were ripped away from her body, which is how you might think of it, they use the words cut, right?

So the family believes that she might have laid on the tracks with her arms off one side and her legs off the other. Diane herself believes the fact that Tiffany's feet and hands were intact indicates she wasn't standing on the track when she was hit. Instead, she was lying there, probably already injured. Another theory is that she voluntarily got into a car with someone she knew that night.

Once she got inside the car, they took her cell phone and threw it out the window, and that's probably when she knew she was in trouble. These people then drove her to a remote part of the train tracks, which would be a pretty good spot to get rid of someone. It was also a good spot to commit murder because no one would hear her scream.

Almost right after Tiffany's death, the family set up a tip line hoping for anonymous tips from the public. And in November 2016, they got one. They got a call from a grocery store manager who said he overheard three of his teenage co-workers talking about Tiffany's case. In his interview with the police, this manager said he overheard his co-workers saying that her death was a homicide.

According to the store manager, the co-workers didn't have anything to do with it, but they were just retelling something that they heard. One even claimed to be at that same graduation party with Tiffany that night. The teenagers mentioned an argument between Tiffany and her friend about the stolen credit card and that Tiffany left.

They said the friend was still mad about it, and they reportedly called someone, another female, who came by and picked her up in a truck with another unidentified male. They then went and picked up Tiffany. According to the teens, the three people in the truck took Tiffany to an area near the train tracks, stripped her naked, held her at gunpoint, and humiliated her.

The police went to interview these co-workers, but when they did, they basically denied ever saying anything about Tiffany's death. They also claimed to have not heard any rumors about it. Plus, all three of them had airtight alibis for that night, so they definitely had nothing to do with it. In the end, the police thought the grocery store manager's story was third-hand and was, quote, full of holes.

He incorrectly said that the fight between Tiffany and her friend happened at the graduation party in front of a lot of people, but that's not true. It happened in front of her house in the driveway. He also said that the particular friend that Tiffany got into the fight with about the stolen credit card never reached out to Tiffany's parents after her death, but that's also not true. The friend did reach out to her parents and even wrote a speech for Tiffany's funeral.

As recently as March 2022, a forensic examiner hired by Tiffany's parents found that a lot of evidence in the case had been mishandled by the police, essentially making it useless for DNA testing. The first was an axe. An axe was found with red markings on it right near the site where Tiffany's body was found.

Her family hoped that forensic testing might be able to prove that the red markings on the axe were blood and that the blood might match Tiffany's. But somehow, this mysterious axe, again found right near Tiffany's body, went missing in police custody and therefore could never be tested. A knife was also found missing.

A towel was also found near the crime scene that did have blood on it, and the blood did belong to an unknown male. However, the blood couldn't be tested for DNA because the sample had been contaminated. An unidentified male DNA profile was found on another piece of evidence as well.

but it's unknown if it belongs to a suspect or someone involved simply in the collection process. We just don't know because, again, it's been contaminated. Then there was her shirt. The shirt Tiffany was wearing had been stored in a plastic bag tied in a knot where it had become, quote, covered with mold and could no longer be forensically tested.

This also happened to several other items the family said were collected weeks after Tiffany died. To date, the shorts that she was wearing that night have never been found. Last but not least was Tiffany's blood card.

According to the family, the blood card containing Tiffany's DNA had been so poorly mishandled that the analyst reevaluating it couldn't even figure out if it was her DNA. They basically had to take DNA from her parents, Steve and Diane, just to make sure that the blood on her blood card actually belonged to her.

So essentially what the family is arguing here is that the transit police did such a bad job handling all of the forensic evidence in the case that in the end, it's essentially useless. As of today, Tiffany's death remains officially listed as a suicide. The New Jersey Medical Examiner's Office reviewed her case in 2018, but the finding of suicide was upheld.

But her family and their supporters refused to believe that she dropped her cell phone, walked four miles without her shoes on, and threw herself in front of a moving train.

They hope that new evidence will eventually surface or that the renewed attention the case has received from podcasts and television, including Netflix's Unsolved Mysteries, will help persuade authorities to change her death from suicide to undetermined. Her family also hopes to identify the person or persons they believe killed her and left her on the tracks.

Over the years, they have filed multiple lawsuits against several unnamed people, alleging their involvement in Tiffany's alleged kidnapping, assault, and murder. Today, a $40,000 reward is being offered for any information. So let me ask you, what do you think could have happened to Tiffany? Did she take her own life, like what the official report says? Or do you think she could have been a victim of foul play?

How do you think her shoes and headband got so far away from her body? Did she actually walk all that way barefoot? And why was she only wearing underwear and a sports bra? Would she have walked all that way without her cell phone? To share your thoughts on this story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. You'll want to listen to this one because I'm going to share what I think happened. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon.

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