Editor's Note: Much of the information in this story comes from an article written by Mike Donoghue originally appearing in the Vermont publication Burlington Free Press.

August 31, 2011: Former Bronxville resident Victoria Scripps-Carmody, 21, of Burlington, Vermont, has been accused of having 193 bags of heroin in her BMW when it was pulled over in Brattleboro, Vermont, on August 10, according to the Vermont Drug Task Force. She was returning with two men from Holyoke, Massachusetts, where police say she and the two men had gone to buy heroin.

Victoria, a Scripps-family newspaper heiress known at "Tori," was three years old when she saw her father, Scott S. Douglas, brutally beat her mother, Anne Scripps Douglas, with a claw hammer as her mother was sleeping in their Avon Road home in Bronxville on New Year's Eve in 1993.

Her father immediately thereafter drove his BMW to the Tappan Zee Bridge and, leaving the motor running, jumped to his death into the Hudson River. Her mother was found unconscious and died six days later.

Tori was subsequently adopted by her mother's sister, Mary Gibbs Scripps, and her husband, Robert Carmody, of Charlotte, North Carolina. They hoped that Tori would benefit from starting life anew. The New York Times reported in 1994 that a Scripps family lawyer had said, " 'The collective wisdom was that it would be in the best interest of Victoria to be removed from the immediate environment of tragedy and be up in a rural setting and begin a new life.' "

The state trooper who stopped Tori's car noticed that she had track marks on her arm, a court affidavit said. It said that Tori later told a detective that she had a six-bag-a-day heroin habit.

According to the article in the Burlington Free Press, "In the past 2 1/2 years, Scripps-Carmody has had four drug arrests along with two pending burglary charges, police say and court records show. One of the prior cases, involving the possession of OxyContin, resulted in her agreeing to enroll in court diversion. In another, she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor drug charge and paid a fine, records show. And in a third, an accessory to robbery count was dismissed. The recent traffic stop and the two burglary counts remain unresolved in court."

Tori is the great-great-great granddaughter of James Edmund Scripps, who founded the Detroit News in 1873. He built the Evening News Association, which was sold in 1985 to Gannett Co., Inc., for $717 million. His younger half-brother, E. W. Scripps, founded E. W. Scripps Co., the media empire that owns newspapers, television stations, and the Scripps Howard News Service.

Tori was taken to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, where she remains, because her parents decided not to post the $10,000 bail, hoping that she can "dry out" while in jail. The Burlington Free Press quotes her father as saying, " ' It's about a 15- to 30-day withdrawal with the kind of stuff she has been using before she is clean, so to speak. So partly we are thinking that is being accomplished where she is at. I think her attorney has told her that. We are keeping her there to dry her out.' "

Her mother told the Burlington Free Press last week, " 'We're supporting her every way we can. We love her and will never stop loving her and will never stop trying to help her.' "

The day Tori was arrested, her parents thought that she was at a private hospital they had brought her to a week earlier. They did not know how she got out of the hospital or how she got hold of her car.

Her parents told the Burlington Free Press that Tori's "childhood was idyllic . . . with overnights, birthday parties and membership in a Brownie troop. 'She had lots of friends. She was very social,' Scripps said." However, doctors and counselors warned them that Tori could start asking questions about her past when she reached her teenage years.

It was during just those years that two events described by Mary Scripps had a profound effect on Tori's ability to cope with her past. One was the re-airing when Tori was in eighth grade of a Lifetime network movie made in 1997 purportedly portraying the story of her mother's murder, although much of the story was fictionalized. Her classmates began tormenting Tori, including teasing her about being adopted.

Tori's performance in school began to decline, and she stopped doing homework. It was difficult for her parents to find a high school where Tori would thrive. She was never really happy in high school and attended four different high schools, one of which was a residential treatment center in Utah.

Tori was scheduled to receive her inheritance when she was 18. Her parents said they tried to delay Tori's receipt of her inheritance, since they knew Tori was not able to handle a large amount of money at one time, but their legal attempts were unsuccessful. The New York Times reported in 1994 that her biological mother, Anne Scripps Douglas, had left a $1.3 million estate, "not strikingly large."

The second troubling event was the suicide of one of her two older half-sisters in 2009. Her half-sister Anne Morell Petrillo took her own life in circumstances that hauntingly echoed the circumstances surrounding the suicide of Tori's father, Scott Douglas. Just as Tori's father did, her half-sister drove her BMW to the Tappan Zee Bridge and jumped to her death into the Hudson River. And her half-sister was 38 when she took her life, the same age Tori's father was when he took his life.

Pictured here: High school graduation picture of Victoria Scripps-Carmody.