The Valiantes have been looking for answers in the decade since their teenage daughter died on the train tracks in Galloway Township.
An investigation by New Jersey Transit concluded that Tiffany Valiante committed suicide by walking onto the tracks, where she was fatally struck at about 11:40 p.m. July 12, 2015.
But her Mays Landing family and a growing number of supporters insist that story does not add up.
Now, the attorney who has been representing the family pro bono says they cannot even get an answer as to whether the investigation is closed.
"I have never been advised by the New Jersey Transit Police Department as to whether there is an ongoing investigation," Paul D'Amato told BreakingAC on Tuesday, after filing his latest motion in court.
The new filing comes after Stephen and Dianne Valiante's first-of-its-kind lawsuit in July alleged that New Jersey Transit, the state Medical Examiner's Office and other entities violated the state's Crime Victims' Bill of Rights by not properly investigating the incident and quickly labeling it a suicide.
The state responded with a motion to dismiss the case.
D'Amato's latest move not only opposes that, but asks that evidence be returned to the family.
The new cross-motion references evidence still being held, including DNA the family previously requested.
The crux of the argument is summed up in a letter the attorney wrote to the New Jersey Transit Police Department in March asking for clarification.
“If the Tiffany Valiante file is still considered an open investigation and that is the basis of why you will not provide us with the two SD cards and the USB that was given to you by the Valiante family, please advise me of the same,” D’Amato wrote in the letter. “If the file is, in fact, closed, why can we not have the items returned to the Viliante family?”
The new filing paints a tortuous path for the long-grieving parents who have had to file multiple lawsuits to get any correspondence at all about the circumstances surrounding their daughter's death and any kind of findings.
The latest ongoing raised for the first time the possibility that Tiffany's killing was a hate crime.
Even the nurse practitioner who pronounced the teen dead at the scene now has questions.
Michelle Amendolia recalled how all of the teen's limbs were cut from her body, almost as if amputated.
This was the first pedestrian train death aftermath Amendolia had seen. She since has been to about five, and now has a different perspective.
“If I were called to the scene today, I would tell law enforcement not to rush and pursue this as a homicide and instead as a crime," she said during a news conference in July.
D'Amato is expected to raise even more questions Tuesday at a planned news conference, addressing the latest filing.
