Father questions police after daughter found dead

Tech CEO had been missing nearly a week before her body was found

As a family and a community grapple with how the body of a 33-year-old tech CEO was unnoticed on a residential street — possibly for days — her father is accusing San Jose police of botching the search for her.

A day after Erin Valenti was found dead in the back seat of her rental car on a street in San Jose’s quiet Almaden neighborhood, questions are emerging about how authorities handled her missing person case.

Valenti, chief executive of Salt Lake City-based app development company Tinker Ventures, was last heard from Oct. 7, when she missed the flight she was supposed to catch from San Jose back to Utah. Her family called off their search for her Saturday, after police reported a body found in the 6500 block of Bose Lane in San Jose — a half-mile from her last known location. The coroner’s office has not officially identified the body, but Valenti’s family confirmed it was her.

Along with the shock and grief the discovery brought Valenti’s family, it also raised painful questions. How did she die? How long had her body been there before it was found? How had no one noticed her? And was there more that could have been done to find Valenti before it was too late?

“The beginning of it was a charade,” Valenti’s father, Joseph Valenti, said of the San Jose Police Department’s search for his daughter. “And I am totally frustrated and pissed off with how that was conducted.”

Public information officers for the Police Department did not address those questions Sunday.

“We’re not sharing additional details at this time since the investigation is open and ongoing,” Sgt. Enrique Garcia wrote in an email.

Erin Valenti, who would have turned 34 on Wednesday, had been in Southern California and then the Bay Area for a workshop and a

tech conference, and to visit old friends and colleagues. “Heading to SF and LA soon … whose (sic) around? DM me!!” she posted on Facebook Sept. 25. It would be her last post.

When Valenti called her parents in New York on Oct. 7, after meeting former colleagues on Sand Hill Road, she was talking a mile a minute and not making sense. Valenti missed her flight home that night, and her family never heard from her again.

Valenti’s family went to the police, who spoke to her by phone and went looking for her but were not able to locate her, her family said.

But Joseph Valenti said that despite all the information his family gave the police — the make, model and license plate of her rental car, descriptions of her erratic behavior on the phone, and data tracking her last phone call to the Almaden neighborhood — police didn’t file an official missing person report for Erin Valenti until Thursday. And when they did, they described her as voluntarily missing, Joseph Valenti said. The police told the family that she was an adult and that she could have just taken off for a few days, her father said. The result, he said, was that the department didn’t make searching for her a priority.

“That’s bullshit,” Joseph Valenti said, “because she was due for a flight out of San Jose airport back to Salt Lake City.”

Disappointed with the Police Department’s response, the family set up a “Help Find Erin Valenti” Facebook page and received an outpouring of love, support and Bay Area locals who volunteered to search. It was one of those Facebook volunteers who finally found Erin Valenti’s gray SUV parked at the curb of a suburban San Jose street, looked inside and discovered her body in the back seat, Joseph Valenti said.

The family still doesn’t know how Erin Valenti died, her father said. Her husband, Harrison Weinstein, previously said she had no history of mental illness. Officials have not released a time of death or commented on how long she was in the car before being found.

The spot where Erin Valenti was found was marked with a piece of yellow police tape Sunday morning, and there was shattered glass scattered on the road nearby — possibly from a car window. A boy who lives down the street drew three hearts on a piece of paper above Erin Valenti’s name and left it on the curb with a small bouquet of roses.

Residents of the peaceful, upscale neighborhood, where pumpkins, plastic skulls and other festive Halloween decorations adorn large houses, were trying to figure out how the young woman’s body had been right there — almost in plain sight — for what could have been days.

“It’s really strange, bizarre, foggy to me. Because this kind of stuff just doesn’t usually go down in Almaden,” said 56-year-old Ralph Elongo, who lives around the corner from where the car was found. “What else seems weird is that none of us noticed. And we’re a pretty tight neighborhood. So I’m pretty tripped out.”

After Valenti’s body was found Saturday, Elongo saw her family standing on the street nearby, grieving and waiting for the coroner. He brought them some water and folding chairs so that they could sit down.

“Watching that family break down over there yesterday was heartbreaking,” Elongo said, adding that it made him think of his 25-year-old son.

“What a nightmare.”