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Pendleton, South Carolina is a very small town in the northwestern portion of the state where violent crime is a rarity. With a population of about 3,000 in 2015, residents of the town knew one another & felt safe in their homes.
However, that sense of safety shattered on Monday, November 2, 2015. At about 12:30 pm, 32-year-old Amy Vilardi placed a frantic 911 call. She told the dispatcher that she’d just gone over to her mom’s house & found four members of her family dead inside.
Amy & her husband of only one week, 28-year-old Rosmore “Ross” Vilardi, were living in one of the two mobile homes on a property just outside of Pendleton, South Carolina. The other mobile home at 2217 Refuge Road was where four members of her family lived, her 60-year-old mother, Cathy Scott, her 58-year-old stepfather, Terry Michael “Mike” Scott, his 80-year-old mother, Barbara Scott & Amy’s 82-year-old grandmother, Violet Taylor.
Ross & Amy’s house was situated less than 50 yards from her mom & step-dad’s in a very rural area about a two-hour drive smack-dab in between Atlanta, Georgia & Charlotte, North Carolina.
According to Staff Sergeant Scotty Hill, who had been on duty as a detective with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office when Amy’s call came in, the home where the Scott family lived was actually outside of town in an especially rural area that sees very little car & foot traffic as there are few homes there.
When Detective Hill got the call, it was unclear if the killer was still at the scene, but by the time he pulled up, there was a flurry of activity with other detectives arriving as well as forensics. He could see that there were two mobile homes situated on at least a few acres of land, one was a double-wide, the other a single-wide.
According to their family, 58-year-old Mike Scott was a very hardworking man who dedicated his life to doing good for his family, friends & neighbors. His 80-year-old mother, Barbara Scott, was a wonderful cook, who also loved to do kind things for others. She often babysat for people in her community & loved being with the babies.
60-year-old Cathy Scott was a bubbly people person who loved making others laugh. For much of her life, she worked as a waitress in various restaurants, something she loved since it allowed her to socialize while working. Her 82-year-old mom, Violet Taylor, was a peaceful, quiet woman with a pure, sweet heart who never had a bad word to say about anyone.
As police arrived, they found Mike, Barbara & Violet deceased in the living room while Cathy’s body was in the bedroom. It was an unbelievably violent scene where each victim had been both stabbed to death & then shot postmortem. There was no sign of forced entry into the home & it appeared that everything happened very quickly since there was no signs of a struggle & the victims likely had little chance of fighting back.
Other than the violent scene of the four bloodied victims lying on the floor, the house was otherwise orderly & had not been ransacked.
At first glance of the crime scene, to Detective Hill, it could have been a classic murder-suicide since Cathy was found in the bedroom, away from the other three victims. He wondered if she possibly shot her husband, mother & mother-in-law before retreating to the bedroom to kill herself.
However, this theory quickly dissolved as not only did Cathy not have a gun in her possession, but he soon learned that she died from a stab wound to the chest, rather than the two gunshot wounds to her head. Neither murder weapon was found at the scene.
Amy told detectives that she & Ross had been out of town for the weekend & when they got home, she approached the back door of her mom’s house that Monday afternoon & noticed that the door just pushed open. When she stepped inside, she flipped on the light because it was dark inside & this was when she found her family.
Cathy & Mike had been married for nine years & according to Mike’s sister, Pam Isbell, although they dated in junior high, they broke up after going to different high schools. It wasn’t until later in life when they reconnected & fell back in love.
Each of their mothers were living with them & while Cathy stayed home to take care of their elderly mothers, Mike worked for the South Carolina Department of Transportation. According to Pam, since he was on a road crew, he was outside a lot, something he loved most about his job.
After the couple were married, Cathy’s mom Violet moved in when she began dealing with some health issues & Mike’s mom, Barbara, moved in sometime after. While Cathy, Mike, Violet & Barbara lived in the double-wide trailer, Amy & Ross lived in the single-wide trailer parallel to theirs along with Amy’s son & daughter.
Over the weekend of the murders, Amy’s children had been out of town visiting with Ross’ parents in Columbia, South Carolina where they’d gotten married on October 24 on their property. Amy indicated that after a couple of days of not seeing her family, she decided to walk over & check on them, which is when she found their bodies. She tearfully told the media that she felt like she was stuck in a terrible dream that she was unable to wake up from.
Pam last spoke with her brother Mike on Saturday, the evening of Halloween & he & Cathy had been looking forward to spending time with their grandchildren the following day. She hadn’t heard from him on Sunday which wasn’t unusual since he normally called her each weekday. When his call didn’t come through as usual on Monday, she called him & left him a message. She didn’t learn about her brother & mother’s deaths until a cousin contacted her.
As investigators began to piece together a timeline of events, although they weren’t sure of the exact time of the murders, they determined that the foursome had likely been killed two days earlier on Halloween, Saturday, October 31, 2015.
Detectives were able to narrow the timeframe down since Cathy’s brother, Roger, usually stopped by the Scott’s home on Sunday afternoons just to say hi. On this particular Sunday, November 1, there was no answer at the door when he knocked so he left without seeing them. Detective Hill believed they were already deceased by this point.
Although the coroner’s office ruled their deaths as being on November 1, Detective Hill believes they were killed on Halloween night. The last activity in their bank accounts were from that night when Mike & Cathy went out to dinner. There was still a bowl of Halloween candy sitting next to the front door. Since it was a very rural area, it’s unclear if they were expecting trick-or-treaters, but they did have candy sitting there.
Ross & Amy indicated that they had seen Mike mowing the lawn at about 5:30-6 pm on Halloween. She said they had a quiet evening, cooked dinner & went to bed at about 9 pm. According to Ross, they left for Columbia at about 4:30-5 am on Sunday morning to head to his parents house to get the kids. When they got back on Monday, Ross left to run errands while Amy noticed that her mom’s dogs hadn’t been taken out. This was when she walked over & found their bodies.
Ross went on to say that he had gotten a frantic call from Amy, who told him to come back home immediately & to stay in their trailer with the kids so they didn’t become aware of what was going on. He said he never went into Mike & Cathy’s trailer after they were found murdered.
Not only had each victim been shot in the head, but each of their throats had also been cut making it the bloodiest crime scene Anderson County detectives had ever witnessed. Not only were quadruple homicides rare, but the fact that the killer or killers had utilized multiple weapons was also puzzling, but led investigators to believe that there had been more than one killer. Because the murders had been so aggressive, it suggested that there had been a lot of rage & hate behind it.
A forensic pathologist determined that most of the victim’s gunshot wounds appeared to be postmortem while the stab wounds were focused to the victim’s neck & upper chest. Each victim, other than Mike, had defensive wounds to their hands as they tried to protect themselves from their attacker.
Mike was found face-down in the living room with a massive pooling of blood surrounding his body. Because he lacked defensive wounds, it’s likely he was murdered first. This had no doubt been done intentionally since he was the strongest of the four victims in the home.
Since there was no sign of forced entry, it’s likely that the family had been gathered in the living room, watching TV when they were attacked. Odds are, their guard had been down which suggested that they had probably known their killer or killers since the house hadn’t been found in disarray & didn’t paint the picture of a random killer busting through the front door & attacking them.
Mike had been stabbed in the neck six times with one wound that was over six inches long. There was a gunshot wound behind his left ear & because of the lack of hemorrhaging to the surrounding soft tissue, it was likely he was already deceased at the time he was shot.
82-year-old Violet & 80-year-old Barbara were lying on the living room floor side-by-side. Violet’s neck had been slashed so severely that she had been nearly decapitated. She had also been shot twice in the head & she had defensive wounds to her left hand.
Of the four victims, Barbara had the most extensive injuries. She had not only been stabbed about six times in the neck, chest & left shoulder, but there was also a gunshot wound behind her right ear that had been fired at very close range.
Cathy, who had been found in the bedroom, had two gunshot wounds to the head as well as a single stab wound to the chest that punctured her right lung causing extensive internal bleeding. There was bruising present from the force of the knife’s handle striking her skin that suggested a combat-type knife was utilized which would have had a guard at the base of the blade.
Detective Hill felt that the person who held the knife had been very skilled & comfortable with knives & it hadn’t been someone who just picked up a butcher knife & began stabbing in a fit of rage. It was likely someone that had been trained on how to use a knife. The wounds didn’t appear to be from a typical kitchen knife & it’s likely that the killer brought the weapon to the home with them.
It just so happened that Ross was a Marine who had security-guard training & would have used these types of knives. When asked, he indicated that he didn’t know where his knife was or if he even had one.
The hallway that led to the bedroom where Cathy was found was tracked with bloody footprints. This suggests that she was stabbed in the chest while she had been in the living room & then fled to the bedroom before collapsing. The stab wounds themselves had been fatal even before she had been shot twice.
There was an empty holster under the bed near Cathy’s body that may have contained a .38-caliber revolver, the same caliber of gun that was used to kill the family. Investigators theorized that she’d ran to the bedroom to retrieve the gun in order to protect herself & her family, but ended up getting it taken from her & it was then used in the murders. The holster had a small droplet of blood on it that suggested that Cathy had been standing over it after she’d been stabbed.
Had this been the case, the killer or killers came to the house with a combat-style knife & after stabbing each of the four victims, they chased Cathy to her bedroom & pulled the gun out of her hand. They then went through the house, shooting each victim to be sure they were each dead. The fact that two weapons had been used suggested that two people were involved, one who held a knife while the other held the gun.
The lack of forced entry suggested that the killer or killers had been let into the home. In speaking with other family members, investigators came to learn that in addition to his full-time job, Mike also bought & sold gold. Since he didn’t trust banks, he preferred to work with cash rather than debit or credit cards. Several family members were aware that he kept as much as $80,000 in cash as well as gold in the home, but they weren’t sure where.
Although they may have had large amounts of cash in their home, Mike & Cathy were working class people who drove modest cars & didn’t live a flashy life. They weren’t people that someone would potentially see out on random & think to target, hoping to get away with a lot of money. Because their home was in such a rural location, odds were, whoever killed them wasn’t just someone driving or walking by.
Detectives noted a shelf inside the main bedroom closet that appeared to have fallen down that may have been previously holding a heavy item, likely a safe full of cash. Detective Hill did find a small safe stuffed with $20,000 of cash in the bathroom that was pretty well hidden that the killer likely overlooked.
Since Mike utilized Facebook & eBay to sell gold jewelry, coins & guns, investigators wondered if this could have connected him to an unsavory person. However, according to Cathy’s brothers, when Mike was selling items for his side business, Cathy often went with him & to their knowledge, they never had buyers come to their home for safety purposes.
Investigators came to learn that Amy had a volatile relationship with the victims & was known to use her children against her doting mom & grandparents. Family members indicated that Amy’s relationship with her mom crumbled after Cathy took Amy’s biological father off life support following a tragic accident when he was crushed by a car that he’d been working on. She often referred to her mom as a narcissist.
Before marrying Ross only one week earlier, Amy had been married a handful of times before. Although her family had been invited to each of her previous weddings, they hadn’t been invited to her most recent one after a falling out with Mike & Cathy.
When Amy first began dating Ross, all seemed well; Mike got along with him & felt that he was a very likeable guy. However, on the 4th of July, Cathy & Mike took the kids to a celebration at the church. When they came home, the couple was having a party with friends at the house that involved alcohol. Wanting to protect the kids, they took them into their house & a fight ensued.
Not only did Cathy & Mike not agree with how they were raising the children, but Cathy & Amy also constantly argued about money.
After investigators obtained a search warrant for the couple’s trailer, they came across a vast array of guns, including one that was registered to Mike, but the murder weapon wasn’t found. They also found $67,000 in cash, something they claimed was from their life savings as well as money they earned from their pet grooming business.
However, according to Hannah Taylor, Amy’s cousin & former employee at the Pendleton-based grooming business, Styles for Miles, the couple had been struggling terribly with their finances. Things were so dire that Hannah’s paychecks often came up short & as she began her shift checking voicemails, there were often bill collectors leaving messages.
Only a month or two before the murders, Hannah had been fired after she confronted Amy & Ross about not paying her. She also claimed to have seen a large military-style knife in Amy’s car.
According to Mike’s sister Pam, Cathy had basically raised Amy’s two children. She bought them all of their clothing, took them to school, church, fed them & changed their diapers. She described Amy as a wild-child who was off living her life while her mom picked up the responsibilities.
After Amy took her kids back from Mike & her mom on the 4th of July, they were no longer allowed to see their grandchildren moving forward. However, Mike went over to their trailer on the week that Ross & Amy got married, hoping to smooth things over which seemed to help. Amy stopped by their home & told her mom that when she got the kids back from her in-laws the following weekend, they would be able to see them.
When investigators spoke with the family’s neighbors, they said that they hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual on the night of the murders. While they described the Scott family as the sweetest people who everyone loved, they indicated that Amy often spoke terribly about her family & often made comments that she wished they were dead. There was even a video that had been recorded that depicted Ross arguing with Barbara outside when he made the comment, hope you die!
Cathy’s brothers described their niece as odd & indicated that Amy & Cathy had a toxic relationship with fights that had even turned physical. She used her children as a weapon against her mother as a way to get money from her as many of their arguments were based on Amy’s financial issues. During her falling out with her mom, Amy took to Facebook to disparage Cathy & air their issues.
Mike’s niece, Jennifer & her husband, Shafford, recalled the horrific phone call they received about the murders. When they arrived at the home, they couldn’t help but notice that Amy seemed unfazed while everyone else was griefstricken. This demeanor carried on to the funeral where she oddly wore a red dress with a Kentucky Derby-style hat, a time when she approached Jennifer & Shafford & told them, I didn’t do it.
On the very day of the funeral, Ross & his family ripped everything out of Mike & Cathy’s home & threw each item into the front yard. Amy & Ross immediately got busy selling their belongings, including Mike’s gold.
Sadly, more than eight years passed & no charges had been filed, a time when the investigative true crime series, Cold Justice, featured this case. Their team worked with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office & utilized a digital forensic expert to dig into Amy & Ross’ financial records.
They found that two years before the murders in 2013, Ross received a $25,000 military disability settlement & the couple also collected $17,000 from their pet grooming business as well as another $5,000 from a tax refund, totaling about $47,000.
However, by early 2014, they were quickly blowing through this money, spending $14,000 on a truck, $5,800 on a Ford Mustang & about $15,000 on two Harley Davidson motorcycles, totaling $34,800, which would have left about $12,200. That same year, their pet grooming business brought in only $2,700.
Although Amy claimed that their pet grooming business was very profitable, in 2015, the year that her family was murdered, the couple made about $27,000 which was in stark contrast to the $67,000 in cash that investigators found in their home.
Not only that, but serial numbers from the bills they found inside also matched the bills that Mike had in his home before he was murdered. This was proven from a photo he sent to a friend in a Facebook message of 5 $100 bills two days before the murders.
Not only was money a motive for Ross & Amy to kill her family, but cell phone data was also highly damning. On September 4, 2015, Ross texted Amy, Hunny, please don’t spend any more money, we only have $40 left in the business account.
On October 15, 2015, Amy texted Ross that people were at their shop raising hell about the rent payment. He responded, What would you like me to say to them, babe? I mean, at the moment, we don’t have any money.
On October 22, only nine days before the murders, they discussed that they needed to pay someone $7,000 by November 1. This, paired with the fact that Amy’s two children were out of town when the family was murdered, suggested premeditation.
Their cell phones placed them each at home on the night of the murders. Although they initially told investigators that they’d gone to bed by 9 pm on Halloween night, Amy texted Ross at 8:36 pm, Everyone is up now & talking hahaha take my car & grab a six-pack. Detectives wondered if she was referring to her family who lived in the trailer next door. Days later on November 5, she texted, Hey babe, we need to go ahead & run.
When investigators reviewed surveillance footage from a local convenience store, they saw Ross buying beer on the night of the murders at 9:38 pm. He was wearing red ASICS Speedstar gym shoes, the exact same style shoe that experts determined had left prints in the blood at the crime scene. These shoes have never been found.
Because there were drops of blood on top of the bloodied shoe prints, it was clear that they hadn’t been from someone walking through the crime scene after the fact. The sweatshirt Ross wore in the surveillance video has also never been recovered.
When the Cold Justice team reenacted the crime scene, they believed that it was Amy who gathered the family together in the living room on the night of Halloween. Ross followed shortly thereafter, approaching Mike from behind as he unsuspectingly sat in a chair in the living room. He began stabbing him in the chest & slashing his neck. Barbara then stood up to flee when Ross began stabbing her while Cathy ran toward the bedroom.
Meanwhile, when Violet stood to flee, Amy blocked her path while Ross slashed her throat to the point of near-decapitation. By this time, Cathy came back into the living room with the gun as Ross stabbed her in the chest while Amy pulled the gun from her mother’s hand. Cathy then ran back to the bedroom where she collapsed before Amy shot her twice at close range.
Once back in the living room, Amy shot each of the three remaining victims to be sure they were all deceased. Although some of the team believe that Ross did both the stabbings & shootings while Amy’s job was to corral everyone.
In the years that followed the murders, Amy & Ross remodeled the double-wide where the murders happened & later moved into it. They were involved in a civil litigation over the property & during the investigation, funds were seized. Eventually, they relocated to West Columbia where they opened a mobile dog grooming business, Right Way Mobile Pet Grooming. As recently as September 2, 2022, she & Ross provided complimentary services for the K9s of the Cayce, South Carolina police department.
According to business filings on record with the South Carolina Secretary of State’s office, Ross Vilardi was the registered agent for two corporations headquartered at their home address in West Columbia, including the pet grooming business as well as another business, Bikers Only Customs.
When detectives spoke with Ross in December 2023 along with the Cold Justice team, he described his relationship with Cathy & especially Mike as good, but admitted that things turned sideways after their 4th of July 2015 fallout.
When he was asked what he thought happened, he pointed a finger at Mike’s sister Pam, claiming she had a lot more to gain financially from her brother’s death. He told the investigators that before the murders, he’d made just shy of $100,000 from his mobile grooming business while records prove he made only $27,000. He also said they left for his parent’s house on Halloween night even though on his initial statement, he said they left early the following morning.
When confronted about the pair of red Asics he was seen wearing in the surveillance footage on the night of the murders which matched prints found at the crime scene, Ross claimed he had no idea what happened to them.
When it was Amy’s turn to speak with investigators, she refused to get into the car & chose to stand in front of her house, smoking. Like Ross, she also said she believed that they headed over to Columbia on Friday night, one day before the murders which was two days before she told investigators they left in her initial statements. During much of her conversation, she focused on the trauma she suffered at finding the four deceased members of her family & the therapy she later received to cope.
Only days later, Ross & Amy Vilardi were arrested on December 15, 2023 & charged with four counts of murder a little over eight years after Mike, Cathy, Barbara & Violet were brutally murdered.
In February 2024, an Anderson County judge denied their bond.
Although prosecutors pushed for the couple to have a joint trial, accusing Ross & Amy of being co-conspirators, on February 11, 2026, the judge ruled for them to have separate trials, Amy going to trial first.
Her trial began on February 23, 2026 in Anderson County, South Carolina & athough not a single piece of evidence presented during the trial tied Amy directly to the crime scene, prosecutors told the jurors that money had been the motive.
Assistant attorney general Joel Kozak told jurors that evidence would show that Amy & Ross had acted together in the murders. He went on to say, In South Carolina, the hand of one is the hand of all. Under the legal doctrine, a person can be convicted if they participated in a common plan, even if they didn’t personally inflict every fatal injury.
Despite the fact that Mike Scott had been described by his family & friends as a frugal man, they all knew he kept cash in their home. Amy & Ross had been struggling financially & after the murders, they quickly paid off numerous outstanding debts in cash despite the fact they previously had no money in their accounts. The money found in their trailer could be directly tied to the family thanks to the Facebook message Mike sent to his friend depicting the cash with the serial numbers in plain view.
After the family was killed, the couple quickly left for Columbia in hopes of proving they had been elsewhere at the time of the murders. However, the problem was that they needed the bodies to be discovered by police & when they were home on Monday morning, this still hadn’t happened. It then fell on Amy to pretend she had discovered the bodies herself.
On the fourth day of testimony, Amy’s former cellmate told jurors that during one of their conversations they had inside their cell, Amy told her that she’d gathered the victims in the living room & then her husband did the deed. However, the defense argued that this woman was simply looking for a way to get out of jail, pointing out inconsistencies in her testimony.
After a week-long trial & ninety minutes of deliberation, 42-year-old Amy Vilardi was found guilty of murdering her mother, step-father, grandmother & step-grandmother over ten years earlier. Judge R. Scott Sprouse handed down four consecutive life sentences, one for each victim: 60-year-old Cathy Scott, 58-year-old Terry Michael Scott, 80-year-old Barbara Scott & 82-year-old Violet Taylor.
38-year-old Ross Vilardi’s trial has yet to be scheduled.
For more than a decade, the quiet town of Pendleton as well as the victims’ family members waited for justice. Mike, Cathy, Barbara & Violet weren’t just victims of a violent murder, they were also family members, neighbors & people who were loved. Their deaths left an entire community stunned & searching for answers.
While we wait for Ross’ trial to begin, we know that Amy will spend the rest of her life behind bars for her role in the murders.
Long before their names were ever spoken inside a courtroom, Mike & Cathy had built a life in Pendleton & welcomed Barbara & Violet into their homes to help with their care. In a single night, all of it was taken away, leaving an emptiness that can never be filled.
References:
- 4 WYFF: No arrests made after 4 people are shot to death inside home
- Oxygen True Crime: Married couple & their elderly mothers victims of a “particularly brutal” quadruple murder
- Oxygen True Crime: Cold Justice aids in arrest of S.C. couple suspected of 2015 Halloween quadruple murder
- Fits News: Amy Vilardi: Guilty on all counts
- Fits News: Ten years after a shocking quadruple murder, Amy Vilardi finally faces a jury
- Independent Mail: Anderson County quadruple homicide unsolved a year later
- Fox Carolina: Sentence passed for Upstate woman found guilty of killing 4 family members
- WYFF 4: Separate trials granted for husband & wife in decade-old quadruple murder case in South Carolina
- Microsoft Word – The Scott family massacre
- IMDB: House of Horrors: Part 1, S7.E10
- IMDB: House of Horrors: Part 2, S7.E11
