Valerie Sanders (Lauren Plaxco) was the hidden main villainess from the 2018 Lifetime film, Mistress Hunter (airdate March 16, 2018).
Events[]
Valerie Sanders was a realtor and one of the best friends of main protagonist Jackie Blancher; so much so that she is an honorary aunt to Jackie's ten-year-old daughter, Mikayla. However, Valerie also had an affair with Jackie's husband, Karl, but became distraught when he ended their illicit relationship. When she learned that Karl had another mistress, a woman named Beth Robinson, Valerie's heartbreak turned to anger. After Jackie found out about Karl and Beth, Valerie posed as a supportive friend for Jackie and suggested acquiring the services of a "mistress hunter."
Jackie took Valerie's advice and hired the Mistress Hunter, Hannah Armington, to track Karl and Beth. Hannah took various photos of the couple, and even took a necklace that Karl bought for his current mistress and showed it to Jackie. Valerie hoped that Jackie and Hannah's efforts would result in Karl breaking up with Beth, allowing the former and Karl to be together again. After she saw Beth's necklace, however, Valerie turned heel and planned to kill her former lover, doing so out of extreme anger and jealousy. The enraged villainess broke into Karl's hotel room (which he shared with Beth), where he decided to spend the night after coming clean to Jackie and planning to end things with Beth, and stabbed him to death. She originally planned to set up Beth as a scorned woman who killed her lover once she found out he was married, but after seeing that Beth returned early, the evil Valerie shot and killed her as well. After the murders, Valerie faked her disappearance, placing blood at her home to make it appear that she had been killed.
Reveal & Death[]
Valerie in her villainous disguise outside Jackie's home
Upon learning about the murders of Karl and Beth, Jackie feared that Hannah went off the deep end and committed the murders herself. Later in the film though, Hannah appeared to Jackie at her home and, while armed with a gun, explained that not only was she not the killer, but she had evidence that Beth wasn't Karl's only mistress. Jackie was shown various photos of Karl with different women, with one of them being Valerie, who was spying on them from Jackie's window, armed with a gun and wearing a hooded disguise. Valerie's intent was to kill Jackie and (assumingly) Hannah, but she put away her gun and planted the bloody knife in Jackie's dumpster in an effort to frame Jackie for the murders. With the help of Melanie, Jackie figured out that Valerie was the villainess, and she remembered Valerie mentioning a mansion out of town and figured that she was hiding out there.
The film's climax saw Jackie head to the mansion and call the police through Melanie regarding the fact that Valerie was alive, only for the villainess to appear at the door. Distressed that Jackie found her, Valerie pointed a gun at her former friend and took away her phone. She confessed to her affair and to the murders, insisting she had no choice but to frame Jackie, and staged her disappearance so she could flee from the authorities. Valerie was set on shooting Jackie, promising she would make sure Mikayla was okay her absence, only for Jackie to knock the gun out of her hands and wrestle it away from her. Even with that and Jackie's warning that the police were on their way, Valerie frantically threatened that she would just set up Jackie as the killer, with the claim that she was hiding from her out of fear, and even accused Karl of stalking her to explain the calls.
Jackie called out Valerie for not only lying to the former and Mikayla, but committing all of her evil deeds over a man who didn't even love her. She accused Valerie of not understanding what love is and ultimately denounced her as pathetic, causing Valerie to break down in tears, realizing that Jackie was completely right. Valerie again wrestled the gun away from Jackie, just as the police arrived and ordered her to drop her weapon, only for the defeated and broken villainess to point the gun at herself and ultimately commit suicide.
Quotes[]
- Valerie professing to Jackie her love for Karl, as well as admitting to killing Karl and Beth:
- Jackie: Did you hate me that much?
- Valerie: No. I loved him that much. It wasn't easy to accept, but you can't control who you love. And when he broke up with me, I tried to accept that he had chosen family over love. But then I found out about Beth.
- Jackie: So you set me up with the Mistress Hunter to track her down? Did you plan on killing them the whole time?!
- Valerie: No! I just wanted them broken up. But then, you showed me that necklace he bought her...Karl never did anything like that for me! I couldn't let him love someone like that; leave me for someone like her. So I decided to punish him, make it look like a murder, blame it on Beth. But Beth got there too early, so I had to kill her, too.
Gallery[]
