Court documents reveal chilling details after an Indiana couple was charged with murdering two of their children

WEATFIELD, Ind. – New disturbing details were revealed Thursday in the case against an Indiana couple accused of killing two of their children.

Steven Valle, 31, and Samantha Sebella, 25, were arrested earlier this month after a gruesome investigation that began with a confession and led to the discovery of bone fragments at their Wheatfield property.

Court documents show that Valle told a friend in September that he had killed his two children and burned their bodies.

Valle is said to have confessed while staying at the friend’s house and drinking vodka: “I killed two of my children” and “I burned them in the fireplace of my house.” He went on to say that he “suffocated their firstborn” and the second-born drowned before he burned their bodies.

The friend reported the confession to the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office, which sparked an investigation that led to the couple’s arrest.

While searching their property, investigators found bone fragments in a fireplace. Valle later told investigators that both children had been buried for up to five years before he dug them up and burned their remains.

According to court documents, Sebella’s text messages indicated she was aware of the killings.

On September 17, Sebella texted Valle’s boyfriend (the same friend who reported Valle’s confession) and said, “Steven burned my babies.” On another occasion, she texted Valle and called him a “baby murderer.”

Text messages from Sebella on Sept. 18 showed her confronting Valle about the deaths, including messages like “Lol okay fire burner” and “I have all the pictures from 2017, you holding my stomach with bones.”

Other texts sent by Sebella included:

• “You killed my children because you are an idiot, you never loved me”
• “Make sure he doesn’t kill other baby girls.”
• “You will know everything that in 2017 you took me to the doctor to prove that I was pregnant. YOU WILL KNOW”
• “You killed our babies. I have DNA in my body forever.”

When Valle was confronted by investigators with their findings, he allegedly claimed the following:

• Valle acknowledged that Sebella gave birth to a boy in 2018, but said the baby was born on the way home. When he got home, he said he saw Sebella had passed out and the child was lying between her legs. Valle said the child was neither breathing nor opening his eyes. Valle said he cleaned the baby to make it look “pretty,” wrapped it in a blanket with its face visible and put it in a box. After three days, Valle said he knew the child would not come back to life, so he buried him in the backyard near a shed.
• He said the second child, a girl, was born prematurely and he buried her next to her brother. Valle later dug up her remains and burned them. Supposedly he sifted through the ashes to collect bone fragments for a souvenir necklace.

Investigators also discovered a chat message from Sebella to Valle, sent on September 19, in which she stated: “Were you idiots following her thinking they were going to kill me? It’s a shame the FBI knows we killed children.”

Both Valle and Sebella were charged with multiple crimes, including murder, neglect of a dependent resulting in death and abuse of a corpse.

Additionally, the Indiana Department of Child Services took the couple’s other young child into protective custody.