 In 1966, Valerie Percy was just 21 years old when she went to bed one night and never woke up. Late into the evening, someone snuck into her home, stabbed her multiple times, and severely beat her. Her stepmother witnessed the killer as he escaped, but the unidentified man has never been caught and the case remains unsolved. Investigators who attended the crime scene claimed that the scene had been cleaned up by the time they arrived, leading many to believe there may have been some type of cover-up. Welcome to True Crime Stories. My name is Ty Nott. If you like true crime documentaries like this and want to see more of them, be sure to hit the subscribe button so that you'll be notified for all of my future uploads. It's free and will keep you up to date with all of the latest true crime stories. It was September 18, 1966. Valerie Percy had recently graduated from Cornell University and had come back home to help her father with his election campaign. Her father, Charles Percy, was a candidate for the U.S. Senate and was in the middle of his campaign when his career would suddenly be cast aside after his daughter was caught up in a real-life horror story unlike anything he had ever seen. In the early morning hours of a quiet Sunday morning, the entire Percy family had been asleep in their lakefront mansion near Chicago, Illinois. Lorraine Percy, Charles' wife and Valerie's stepmother was awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of someone moaning. She got out of bed and wandered around the house, making sure everyone was all right. As she drew closer to Valerie's room, she noticed a dim light shining through the doorway. When she stepped closer, there was an unidentified man hovering over Valerie's bed. It was then that she realized Valerie was covered in blood, causing Lorraine to let go of an audible gasp. As she did this, the killer who'd been shining a flashlight on Valerie's body turned and aimed the light directly in Lorraine's eyes, causing her to temporarily go blind. The killer then ran past her and down the stairs of the home, straight out the front door. Lorraine immediately ran back to the bedroom and woke up her husband and they set off the alarm in the family's home. Multiple neighbors woke up to the sound of the alarm, but no one saw the criminal flee from the home. Lorraine was the only person who managed to get a good look at the intruder. Though, because she'd been blinded at the most important moment of the crime, she could only provide vague details of what the man looked like. She knew that he was wearing a checkered shirt, had dark hair and was around 5'8", but beyond this, she couldn't give crime scene investigators any further clues about the man's description. From the very beginning of the investigation, crime scene investigators couldn't understand why the crime had even been committed. Nothing had been stolen from the home, nothing had been broken or tampered with, and the position of Valerie's body didn't indicate that she'd woken up in the midst of a robbery either. It appeared as though the attack was targeted specifically at Valerie, as she'd been the only one harmed and the killer had run directly past her stepmother without so much as laying a hand on her. Judging from the wounds that Valerie had received, investigators determined that she'd been attacked while she was sound asleep. She had then been repeatedly stabbed to finish the job. The crime would have taken just a matter of seconds. About five minutes after the Piercy family had sounded the alarm, one of the family's neighbors received a knock at the door. Robert Hof was a well-known surgeon who lived across the street from the family at the time of the murder. Charles had called Robert to ask him to come over, and within a matter of minutes, a police officer had shown up at his door to escort him to the home. As soon as Robert arrived at the home, he said he felt as though something was off. He said that it appeared as though a great deal of time had passed between when Valerie had been murdered and when he was called to the scene. He couldn't explain why, but he said it seemed as though the crime scene had been cleaned or altered before he got there, even though the siren had rang out less than five minutes earlier. Specific aspects of the crime scene just didn't seem to align with the timeline that he had witnessed, but he refused to go into detail about this so we don't really know what this could mean. The doctor said that he felt as though it were a crime of passion, saying that Valerie had been horribly disfigured. Both Robert and his wife found the crime incredibly unsettling, and rightfully so. They both spoke about how disturbing it was that such a horrible crime could take place just across the street, but Robert was uneasy for a slightly different reason. He was very shaken by the fact that he was never questioned as a witness in the crime. Though he and his wife would have been two of the first people to have witnessed the alarm ring and potentially seen the suspect flee the scene of the crime, neither of them were ever approached by officers for a witness statement. In a handwritten letter to the police, Dr. Robert mentioned how strange this was and suggested that it be looked into further, but still no one ever showed up to question either of the two of them. Police would later pursue over 1,000 leads in this investigation, but every lead led them to a dead end. There were only a handful of clues found inside the family's mansion, such as broken glass on a French door, a few fingerprints scattered around the home, and a military knife that was found in the lake just outside of the family's mansion, but none of this evidence would push the case forward. Another major issue with this investigation, and likely the main reason that it's become a cold case years later, is that police have never released any information to the public, and I do literally mean that they've released nothing. All of the information that we have was either handed down by family members, witnesses, or others who happen to be close to the scene of the crime. As far as police and detectives are concerned, their lips are sealed and so are the case files. The case has been kept under such tight wraps that 50 years later the local authorities have found themselves in the midst of a small-scale lawsuit. An out-of-state attorney filed an appeal with the courts to request that the case files be made public after such a long period of time. However, a Cook County judge explained that there's no reason that these files should ever see the light of day, claiming that revealing any of the additional information would jeopardize the investigation and thwart the efforts of authorities, even though it's been 50 years and they've yet to put anyone behind bars. The judge did reveal that police have tens of thousands of case files compiled from the years spent researching this case, but nothing has brought them any closer to solving the crime. One detail that seems particularly interesting is that Valerie's twin sister Sharon has also been outspoken against the release of the cold case files as recently as 2016. She says that releasing the details of the investigation would compromise the privacy of her family. Now, all of this may sound incredibly odd and know that it sounded odd to me and when I was first researching this case, I'll admit it seemed like there may have been some sort of cover-up going on, but the deeper you dig into this case, the easier it is to realize that even 50 years later, the police really are doing all that they can to see this case solved because in 2014, Cook County set up a dedicated task force to specifically solve this case. They were also able to get the help of FBI special agents to keep the case moving forward. A forensic expert was also assigned to the case back in 2000 to conduct further research on some of the evidence that detectives pulled from the crime scene. One thing we have to keep in mind is that at the time of the crime, the small community of North Shore, the area where the crime took place only had around 3,000 residents living there. The police task force simply wasn't equipped to handle such a large-scale investigation. Because of this just 11 days after the murder took place, the case was handed off to the Illinois State Police, who worked on the case daily from 1966 to 1969. From that point on, it was considered somewhat of a cold case as the team had exhausted all of their leads and only a few new tips rolled in each year. It would be 2002 when the case was given back to the North Shore community, and virtually no progress has been made since then. We don't specifically know why officers are having such a difficult time solving this case. After all, they managed to find fingerprints of the killer, and they may have even found the murder weapon near the family's home in the lake. But still, for some reason, the killer has evaded justice for all this time, and as time rolls on, it's becoming more and more likely that the perpetrator may never be caught. In all reality, the killer may be dead by now, but that doesn't mean that the family doesn't still deserve justice for what happened to Valerie Percy. But that's the video for today, guys. If you want to see more true crime documentaries just like this one, be sure to hit that like button and subscribe. You can even ring the notification bell to get updated about all of my future videos. But my name is Ty Nott, you guys have been lovely, and I'll catch you in the next video.