When Amy Vilardi spoke publicly about brutal slayings of four family members found slain inside their South Carolina home on Halloween seven years ago, she thanked the community for their prayers and shamed the killer for their "vicious'" deaths.
“I would like to point out how wonderful everyone in this community has been," she told The Independent Mail, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK after the killings. "All of our great friends and the amazing family we love so very much, praying for us.”
“I don’t understand why any of it has happened and I just keep thinking it’s a dream I’m going to wake up from,” Vilardi told local WYFF-TV several days after the 2015 killings. “Whoever did this, I don’t see how you can live with yourself.”In a twist, Anderson County Sheriff Chad McBride announced Friday Vilardi and her husband, Rosmore "Ross" Vilardi, had been charged with multiple counts of murder in connection to the 2015 quadruple "senseless and brutal" killing he said rocked the county "to its core."
During a press conference, the sheriff told reporters the couple was arrested at their home in Columbia, S.C. and transported back to Anderson County where online jail records show they remained held without bond Wednesday − each charged with four counts of murder.
Cathy Scott, 60, and her husband Mike Scott, 59, and their mothers Barbara Scott, 80, and Violet Taylor, 82 were all violently killed on Oct. 31, 2015 in their rural home in the small town of Pendleton, located upstate near Clemson University.
According to the last U.S. Census, its population at the time consisted of less than 3,500 residents and the town is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.The sheriff has not said what led investigators to the suspects or why it took so to charge them. More information will likely be revealed in court during the couple's preliminary hearing, which Anderson County court records show is set early next year.
"I think we knew this day would come," McBride said. "We were praying this day would come.... We've had some really good prayers answered.”
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