For years, Amy Vilardi was the grieving daughter on television.

She sat under studio lights, her voice steady but strained, pleading for answers in the brutal slayings of four members of her own family. She urged anyone with information to come forward. She asked the killer to do the right thing.

Now, nearly a decade after the massacre that shocked Anderson County, South Carolina, Vilardi is sitting at the defense table instead.

Amy Vilardi, along with her husband Rosmore “Ross” Vilardi — who will be tried separately — was arrested in 2023 and charged with four counts of murder in connection with the 2015 killings of her mother, Cathy Scott, 60; her stepfather, Terry Michael Scott, 59; her grandmother, Violet Taylor, 82; and her step-grandmother, Barbara Scott, 80.

Vilardi has entered a not guilty plea. If convicted, she faces life in prison.

Opening statements began Monday in a case that investigators have described as one of the most horrific crime scenes they have ever encountered.

According to Anderson County Sheriff’s Office Detective Scotty Hill, three of the victims had their throats slit and were then shot after death. Amy’s mother, Cathy Scott, was stabbed in the chest and shot while still alive, Hill has said.

“Once we found out the extent of their injuries and the fact that their throats were cut, and then they were shot post-mortem, it seemed very, very aggressive and personal, and somebody full of rage and hate,” Hill said on an episode of the Unsolved Mysteries podcast. “I’ve never seen anything like it before or since.”

Sheriff Chad McBride described the crime scene as one of the “most horrific” of his career.

When deputies first arrived at the property in 2015, they briefly considered whether the deaths might have been a murder-suicide. That theory quickly collapsed under the weight of the injuries.

It was Amy Vilardi who alerted authorities that her family members were dead.

As investigators processed the scene, something else stood out: there were no signs of forced entry. Nothing appeared to have been stolen.

But detectives soon learned something few people outside the family allegedly knew — Amy’s stepfather, Terry Michael Scott, frequently dealt in cash-for-gold exchanges and sometimes kept large sums of money on hand.

The case stalled for years.

At the same time police were investigating, Amy appeared on local news programs, pleading for the public’s help. The image of a devastated daughter asking for justice became part of the story.

Behind the scenes, investigators were looking at finances.

According to Detective Hill, authorities discovered that Amy and her husband were experiencing serious financial problems at the time of the killings. Their vehicles were reportedly close to repossession. They were on the verge of being evicted from a building tied to their business.

The couple lived in a trailer on the same property as the double-wide where the four victims were found.

After securing a warrant, deputies searched the trailer and found more than $65,000 in cash inside a safe, Hill said.

Investigators also seized multiple firearms from the residence. However, none of the guns matched the weapon used in the killings. Without a ballistic link or other direct evidence, authorities said they did not have enough to secure arrest warrants.

The case lingered — unsolved, but not forgotten.

It wasn’t until 2023, eight years after the killings, that arrests were made. The timing came just weeks after the Unsolved Mysteries podcast aired an episode about the case, bringing renewed public attention to the slayings.

Prosecutors now contend that the killings were not random, but calculated — fueled by financial strain and carried out against family members in a crime they say was both intimate and deliberate.

The defense, meanwhile, is expected to challenge the state’s timeline and evidence, arguing that suspicion and proximity are not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Vilardi’s husband, Ross, will face his own trial at a later date.

For the jury, the task ahead is sobering: untangling years of grief, suspicion and delayed charges in a case where the public face of mourning now stands accused of orchestrating unimaginable violence.

In a quiet South Carolina courtroom, the woman who once asked for justice must now answer for whether she destroyed her own family.

And after eight long years, the community is finally about to hear the full story — one way or another.