For nearly 12 years, Trukita Scott‘s family lived in a fog of unanswered questions. The 24-year-old mother of two had vanished after a shift at a West Park U-Haul in June 2014.
Her car turned up abandoned and set on fire in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood. Her ex-boyfriend denied everything.
No body. No confession. No closure.
That changed not because of a breakthrough in Scott’s case, but because the same man long suspected in her disappearance, Carl Watts, was convicted of an entirely different murder and began to talk.
On Tuesday, May 19, 2026, police and family members announced that Scott’s remains had been found buried at an abandoned home in Miami’s Little Haiti area, thanks to admissions Watts made during recent court proceedings related to the 2022 killing of his wife.
A Mother Who Never Came Home
Scott was last seen alive on June 25, 2014. Family members grew alarmed when she failed to pick up her two children from daycare and never returned home. Surveillance footage captured her working her final shift at a U-Haul in West Park. Then she vanished.
Her car was found abandoned in July 2014 in Liberty City, intentionally set on fire in what authorities now say was an attempt to destroy evidence.
From the beginning, Scott’s family suspected Watts, her ex-boyfriend and the father of one of her children. Police interviewed him multiple times. Each time, Watts maintained his innocence.
“I don’t know where she is,” he told investigators. “I had nothing to do with it.”
The Breakthrough That Came From Another Crime
The case grew cold until April 3, 2022, when Watts was arrested for fatally shooting his wife, 30-year-old Shandell Harris, at a Jewish Community Center in northeast Miami-Dade. He was later convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison.
But it was during recent court proceedings in that case that Watts began to make admissions about Scott’s disappearance.
Steve Novak, a former Fort Lauderdale Police homicide detective now working with the Broward Sheriff’s Office, explained that Watts ultimately provided specific information that led investigators to an abandoned home in the 7500 block of Northeast 1st Court in Miami.
The tip was not random. Novak revealed that a witness had previously come forward with details only law enforcement would know—including that Scott had been killed at a Budget Inn on South Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale, where she had met Watts, and that her body was possibly buried in the Little Haiti area.
Cellphone records later confirmed that all activity on Scott’s phone stopped after that meeting at the Budget Inn.
But without a body, the case could not move forward. Watts’s 2026 admissions changed that.
The Recovery
On May 12, 2026, a multi-agency operation involving Fort Lauderdale Police, the Broward Sheriff’s Office, Miami Police, and other agencies conducted an all-day recovery operation at the abandoned Little Haiti home. Investigators exhumed human remains from the property.
Dental records confirmed the remains belonged to Trukita Scott.
“It’s been a long 12 years, every day thinking about her, trying to put this together, what it really means, until a week ago when they told us they exhumed the body,” Scott’s father, Charles Scott, said at Tuesday’s news conference. “It’s not gonna give us 100% closure, but now we know what happened, where the body’s at and everything that’s going on there, so we can move forward a little bit.”
Justice Pending
Watts, already serving 45 years for the murder of his wife Shandell Harris, now faces the possibility of additional charges in connection with Scott’s disappearance and death.
Novak confirmed that a decision on whether to charge Watts will be handled by the Florida Attorney General’s office. The investigation remains ongoing.
“While nothing can undo the pain her family has endured over nearly 12 years, today we finally have answers,” Novak said. “And more importantly, they can bring Trukita home, properly lay her to rest and begin closing this chapter of the story.”
For the Scott family, the journey from disappearance to discovery has been measured not in miles but in decades. Now, at last, they know where to say goodbye.
