Valerie Coates, 22, was last seen on April 8, 1988, at the Houston Mall on North Houston Road in Warner Robins, Georgia. A mother and a cadet with the Warner Robins Police Department, she was reported missing the next day by her boyfriend, Terrence Eugene Mobley. Valerie was described as Black, 5 feet 6 inches, about 125 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes; she was last seen wearing a light blue t-shirt, brown checkered shorts, and tennis shoes.

In January 2010 investigators announced they believed Valerie had been murdered. Mobley, then serving a life sentence for an unrelated murder, confessed that Valerie was killed in the kitchen of a house they once shared in Hawkinsville, Georgia, implicated an ex-girlfriend, and said he buried Valerie himself. Officers found bloodstains under the Hawkinsville kitchen floor consistent with that account. Mobley led investigators to a Pulaski County wooded site, a former pig farm, where searches produced no remains; authorities noted significant flooding in the area in 1994 that could have affected recovery efforts. No charges have been filed and the case remains an unsolved, endangered missing person case.