The Night the Clock Stopped

Valeri Brooks was only 22 and a half years old when her life was stolen. It was late December in 1990, a time when most people were preparing for the new year, but Valeri was working a double shift as a cashier at the Thornton’s gas station in Versailles, Kentucky. She was a devoted mother to two young boys and was planning to take accounting classes to build a better future for them. Around 2:00 AM, she was abducted from her post, and her body was discovered just hours later on a secluded private drive.

“I was the one that had to call my mother and say she’s been missing, she’s been taken. And then I was also the one that had to call her and tell her that she’d been found.”

Decades of Roadblocks

For the past 35 years, Valeri’s siblings, Mike and Tracy, have been searching for the truth in a case they feel was mishandled from the very beginning. They describe a series of investigative errors, including a contaminated crime scene where police cruisers were allegedly driven right next to the evidence. While DNA technology has advanced significantly since the 1990s, the family remains in the dark about what samples exist and why there has been so little progress toward an arrest. They believe that someone in the community knows exactly what happened on that private lane that night.

“You might get the same training, you don’t have the same experience of it. I can read a book about taking x-ray all I want to, but unless you go out and do it you don’t learn the nuance of it.”

A Legacy That Never Fades

To Tracy, Valeri was more than just a sister, she was a mother figure who filled their home with life. Today, the family sees Valeri’s face in every child and grandchild born since she passed. Despite the exhausting nature of fighting for justice for over three decades, Mike and Tracy refuse to let Valeri be forgotten. They continue to share her story not just to find a killer, but to honor the vibrant, hardworking woman who was taken far too soon.

“Seeing her face literally in every child in our family that’s been born since she passed. They all look alike and they all have very similar features to her.”

Want to hear the full story from the people who knew Valeri best? Dive into the original video for a deep look into the investigation and the memories that keep her spirit alive.