1973

At 63 years of age, I have read about many crimes through the years. However, to this day, there is one crime that still lingers in my memory, haunting me since the impressionable age of fourteen.

It was late May in the year of 1973, and I was nearly fifteen years old and living on the outskirts of Charleston, SC. Two teenage girls, who were close to my age (13 and 14 years old), had gone missing from a barrier island, Folly Beach, which is about twenty minutes away from downtown Charleston. I vividly remember my mother, aunt, and grandmother talking about the girls' disappearance, horrified by the possibilities of what might have happened to them. I recall that my aunt was friends with a woman who lived in the West Ashley area, who knew the family, the Bunches, of a third girl (the daughter of the Sheriff of Folly Beach, 16 years of age) who went missing nine months after the first two. For some reason, my aunt's acquaintance seemed to make the girls' disappearance more real and relatable, instilling even greater fear than I already had from the thought.

As a young teenager who was about the same age as that of the missing girls, fear was a very real, palpable thing. I was a worrier to begin with, so I lived in constant fear that the same thing would happen to me even though I did not frequent Folly Beach and lived about 20 miles north of that area. Still, the missing girls were in all the news outlets and the constant talk of many. Everyone in the vicinity was panicked, and it seemed to be the only thing talked about for months on end. My mind ran rampant with thoughts of what might have happened to those poor, young young girls.

It was not until April 12th of 1974 that a Folly Beach policeman, responding to a nearby complaint, discovered three girls bound and gagged beneath a house just one street over from the beach. One of the girl’s gags had slipped loose, and she had been able to scream for help, attracting the attention of the policeman. The girls were from the neighboring county/town of Summerville and reported they had skipped school to come to the beach where they had been abducted, threatened they'd be killed if they did not comply, been bound and gagged, and left by their abductor in the shower room beneath the house where they were found. The three girls were able to provide detailed information about the man who had kidnapped them and a composite drawing was released in the media immediately following their rescue to alert everyone of the possible suspect.

With this new development, another resident of Folly Beach began to wonder more about an odd incident involving his dog near the house where the three girls had been discovered. On April 16th, the man called police to report the incident, telling them that his dog had sniffed out a certain spot on the beach, wanting to dig repeatedly despite his attempts to distract the dog; the spot in question was near the house where the three girls had been found. The police responded and investigated the area in question where they began a search that included digging deeper until a young female’s clothing was discovered. It was over the course of several days and bulldozing, that the bodies of three missing teenage females were discovered, buried in two different areas; one a few hundred feet from the house and the other in the backyard of the house where the three girls had been rescued. With this discovery, a full blown pursuit for a suspect was instigated, including roadblocks, navy jets surveying the area with infrared sensors, and house-to-house investigations gathering detailed information.

Only a short while following the composite drawing's release in the news, a young woman in North Charleston, who had only recently survived a brutal beating by a sailor she had picked up from a local Naval Base Bar in early April of the same year, began to put pieces of her story together. After the discovery of the girls’ bodies and the composite drawing of their abductor was released, this victim was able to identify the man who had beat her as the man in both the drawing and military photos in the news. It was confirmed that this man, Richard Valenti, rented a home on Folly Beach. He was a 31-year old who had recently shaved his head and grown a mustache, most likely in an attempt to disguise himself, but he was still identified and arrested as a suspect in the brutal murders. His neighbors reported he had lingered during onsite investigations and made several comforting comments following the discovery of the deceased girls. Police also recognized Valenti as an onsite spectator who offered them food and drink during the search and recovery of the bodies. This is often a prevalent fact in many crimes. The perpetrator will assist with the police efforts of a victim or victims for which he is ultimately responsible, often being in the direct midst of the concentrated investigative efforts. This may be largely due to the fact that some criminals think they are much smarter than the authorities or because some actually wish to be caught, seeing no end in sight to their atrocious behavior.

Valenti was arrested shortly thereafter and charged with three counts of murder, four counts of assault and battery with intent to kill, and one count of assault and battery with intent to ravish. He was held without bail until his trial ensued.

During the trial, The Charleston County Medical Examiner testified that the two teen-age girls (Clark and Latimer) found buried on Folly Beach died as a result of hanging. Valenti described to police how he had approached the girls on the beach with a gun and told them if they did not comply with his orders, he would shoot them. He then took them to a vacant house where, in an outside shower stall, he had them partially disrobe and tied their hands and feet, and made them pose in various positions. After having them stand on a chair, he had placed nooses around their necks that were tied to the water pipes above before he kicked the chairs from beneath them and watched as they died, finding gratification in doing so.

A great deal of background information was presented at the trial, including the fact that Valenti had grown up in a dysfunctional home with a domineering, all-controlling mother. He was a sexual deviant who desired to reverse the domination he had experienced all of his life, which was the only way he could achieve sexual gratification and control. His wife admitted that he had controlled her in such a perverted manner, but further reported that when the couple had moved to Charleston, they had become Christians, so she thought that Valenti’s crisis had passed and that he was a changed man.

The trial lasted for four days, and the jury took less than an hour to find Valenti guilty on two counts of murder; he was given two life sentences to be served consecutively. Following the trial and with an attempt to be positive and move forward, dogwood trees were planted at the school the three victims had attended as a memorial. The dogwood trees still bloom each spring on the grounds of this school. As a side note, Valenti was never officially tried for the murder of the last girl to go missing (Bunch).

Years later, once I had graduated from college, I secured a job working in the Charleston County Solicitor’s Office. With the job, I became privy to much about the Valenti case. I can tell you that the things Valenti did to those girls he killed were completely unforgiveable. He stood them on chairs, stuffed their mouths with undesirable, disgusting articles, and placed nooses around their neck while he gratified himself sexually as he kicked the chairs from beneath them, watching them struggle and die. There were other things he also did to torture the girls of which I will not speak. Those things remain well hidden in long buried court documents as they should, but I can tell you that no one should ever have to endure such horrible things, most especially not children.

During my time in the Solicitor’s Office, I also learned that because of the way the law was written when Valenti was convicted, he became eligible for probation after serving only ten years. Fortunately, Valenti did not achieve parole after serving the ten years; however, due to the same law by which he had been convicted, he then became eligible for parole every two years thereafter. This was was a horrible part of the legal justice system for the victims' families.

Thereafter, because this law existed, the victims' families had to make the long one hundred-mile trek to Columbia, SC every two years where Valenti was housed in a prison and relive the deaths of their precious children, begging the parole board not to release this monster of a man. By the time Valenti died in December of 2020 at the age of 77, he had been up for parole twenty-one times. Numerous petitions and letters from people who had been affected by and opposed Valenti’s atrocious crimes, including me, accompanied the families each time they pleaded with the parole board to retain the violent man Valenti embodied. Fortunately, the victims' families were always successful and Valenti was repeatedly denied parole; he was never released prior to his death.

While it is true there are many horrific facts and detailed information on this case to which I was privy while working in the Solicitor’s Office, and many quite graphic and unforgettable, this is the one case that hit closest to home for me, leaving its mark. I shall, much to my dismay, never forget it or the horrible, violent man who took the lives of such young souls.

In some odd way, it nearly feels like sacrilege to write this piece and give Valenti the least bit of memory on paper or otherwise. So instead, I am choosing to concentrate upon and honor his victims by posting the picture of the dogwoods as a heading, just as the school the girls attended chose to plant the beautiful, blooming trees in their honor and memory. Dogwoods are a symbol of hope, life, and peace. May Alexis Ann Latimer (13 years old), Sheri Jan Clark (14 years old), and Mary Earline Bunch (16 years old) rest in peace. I am sure Richard Valenti does not.

RESOURCES:

https://murderpedia.org/male.V/v/valenti-richard.htm

https://law.justia.com/cases/south-carolina/supreme-court/1975/20100-1.html