Anatomy of Murder - The Landing (Heather Elvis)

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

A young woman goes missing and rumors swirl about a past relationship. But it's a call from a pay phone that actually sets investigators on the evidence track. For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

Before Murdahl, this was probably the biggest case in South Carolina. When they've got the phone records, they figure out somebody has called Heather from a payphone. That's really what broke it open. Did she make any payphone calls? Nope. I thought the information was a game changer. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anna Siga-Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murph.

Before we get started with today's show, we just want to remind you that you can follow Anna Siga and I on social media at Anna S Anastasia Nicolazzi and at Weinberger Media. There's a common misnomer in murder cases. If there's no body, no crime scene, then there's no way to prove that there's been a homicide. But as many prosecutors will tell you, that just isn't true. It does present a major hurdle. You're missing the most important piece of evidence, the victim's body, which helps you prove that a crime even occurred at all. It also means there is likely a lack of forensic evidence as well, and that is a tough hill to

climb. But as we'll find out today, digital forensics can be just as compelling. And in that regard, the perpetrator in this episode left quite the trail in their wake. Today's story takes place in 2013 in the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina. It's a coastal vacation spot with a huge summer season. The locale is known for its beaches, golf, and over a mile of boardwalk. But with all of those great attractions, it also means there's a lot of people. Myrtle Beach is a very transient area. We normally have a population over a million during the summer months. So a lot of people are coming and going throughout the year.

But this delightful tourist spot, like most places, isn't without its dark side. We have everything under the umbrella from a domestic violence that turns into a murder, armed robbery that turns into a murder. That's the specialty of Nancy Livesey, who we spoke to for this episode. She's a seasoned prosecutor with a Horry County solicitor's office in South Carolina. Everything I handle is going to be lost to life. So everything's going to be a murder. But we're getting ahead of ourselves because

this case doesn't start with a murder or even an obvious crime. It begins with a car. It was the early morning hours of December 18th, 2013. A police officer was doing a routine patrol by a river dock called Peachtree Landing when he noticed an abandoned Dodge Intrepid. An officer went down there and saw the car. Didn't think anything of it at the time. There was no signs that there had been a breaking and entering in the car. The windows were rolled up.

The car at that time was locked. Nobody was around. Authorities ran the plate and quickly found the vehicle's owner, a man named Terry Elvis. But when officers reached out to Terry, he told the police that wasn't actually his car. It was his daughter's, 20-year-old Heather Elvis. Heather was this outgoing, light-up-the-room young adult with a passion for cosmetology. After high school, she moved out of her parents' home and was living nearby with a roommate. She was working at a restaurant in part to save up for her studies. Heather was a

young lady that was definitely the hometown girl. She had lived here all her life and she always showed up for work. The restaurant she worked at was called the Tilted Kilt. It's a sports pub type of place, a part of a franchise where all of the waitstaff wore, you guessed it, kilts. Heather was a hostess at the restaurant's Myrtle Beach location. And it seems like the kind of spot that lots of young people worked.

So coworkers become friends and everyone gets in everyone else's business. Now, Scott, just a side step for a moment. I was definitely a waiter waitress when I was in my college years and in law school. And I remember thinking just that it was as much the social scene as it was the money. You can tell that these are the kind of places where the staff gets really, really close. There's downtime during the shifts to chat, plenty of fast paced collaboration, so to speak, when the place is really, really busy. And there's also an opportunity to hang out with your friends and staff members

when the bar closes down. Back to the car and Heather. By the time police contacted her dad, Heather hadn't been in touch with her parents in a day or two. So they'd been worried and already put a call in to the police. And now that Heather's car had been found, seemingly abandoned, they knew something was wrong. That's when the father said, look, I've not been able to get in touch with her. She would have never left the car. That's kind of her sole means of transportation. And at that time, nobody could get in touch with her. And the officer went to her place of work, waiting for her to show up. Once she didn't show up, things started building pretty quickly. Authorities initiated a search where the car was found, but there was no sign

of Heather. So both police and the Elvis family tried to figure out who might know where she was. Her parents had gotten a text from their daughter the night before her car was found. The text included a photo of Heather inside of a different car saying that she was learning to drive stick shift. So they knew that she'd been with someone that night who was apparently teaching her. Still, the question was who and Heather's friends would eventually fill in a lot more details. The driving lesson was actually a date with a former high school acquaintance. That young man, we interviewed him, we got his phone records. He was somebody she had gone to high school with, and they ended up reconnecting, and they went out to dinner earlier that night.

And he had dropped her off around midnight or 1 a.m. Police then spoke with his mother, who confirmed exactly what he'd said. Since Heather's date didn't lead them to Heather or give them much helpful information, investigators turned to the group of people she spent most of her time with, the employees of the Tilted Kilt. And in doing so, they discovered another lead. They talked with the manager and the manager immediately said, you need to talk to Sidney Moore. So who was Sidney Moore? Sidney was kind of a maintenance guy that handled whatever issues were there in the restaurant.

A broken bathroom door, broken towels, anything that needed to be fixed. He came after the restaurant closed and handled those things. At the time, Sidney Moore was 37 years old. And Heather at the time was not even 21. In fact, she was working as a hostess because she could not serve alcohol. The age gap is significant here because Heather's co-workers at the Tilted Kilt also revealed that she and Sidney had been in a romantic relationship since June of that year. It was like a boyfriend-girlfriend open type relationship. He would bring her coffee. He would bring her breakfast.

He would come up there and see her. They had really gotten to a point where it was not even a secret. The openness of this relationship didn't mean that everyone was on board with it. In fact, some of Heather's co-workers didn't approve. Some of the women were very uncomfortable because they knew he was married. He was also a father. He and his wife, 40-year-old Tammy Moore, had three children. The family was very close-knit in that they lived beside Tammy's parents.

According to Heather's friends, Sidney's family was the reason his relationship with Heather ran its course. He'd apparently ended things in late October or early November after his wife found out about the affair. Heather's roommate was able to comment on the breakup's aftermath. She was the one that was really able to give a lot of details about the relationship. She said, you know, when they broke up, she was really destroyed.

She was in love with Sidney at the time. But it seemed like things eventually cooled off because Heather's friends noted that some weeks later, Heather had dropped all contact with Sidney. She was even open to dating new people. Tammy and Sidney appeared to be on the mend, too. Tammy and Sidney take this long trip to California, supposedly to get their relationship back together. And Heather is kind of here picking up the pieces and moving on with her life.

The affair had ended about six weeks before Heather's car was found. But Sidney was her last known romantic relationship. And considering the friction with his wife finding out about the affair, he was obviously a person that investigators wanted to talk to about Heather's whereabouts. A responding officer followed up on the lead from Tilted Kilt when they said go talk to Sidney. They literally left right out of there and went to Sidney's house. It was probably one or two o'clock in the morning. He was home when officers arrived. Sidney comes out, has this conversation with them, admits, yes, we were in a relationship. We've broken up and now I'm trying to make it work with my wife. He said, I have no idea where she's at. I don't know what's going on.

He hands the officer the phone saying, look through my phone. I haven't made any contact with her. Sidney didn't live far from Peachtree Landing, where Heather's car had been found. In fact, it was only a five-minute drive away. Sidney also eventually gave an alibi for the night that Heather went missing. He claims him and Tammy were working that night. And they had kind of gone up to Sticky Fingers, one of the restaurants he was working at, had done some work. They were riding around looking at Christmas lights. It was December. They had gone to Walmart. So he says, look, we're around town doing things. And then we come home.

So at the time Heather goes missing, he claims to be at home. And honestly, the officers at that time, because he seemed so forthcoming, that they kind of marked him off and said, look, I don't know. Let's keep looking around. Even if Sidney didn't turn out to be a suspect, getting that footage could be useful to the investigation, especially since the house was so close to Peachtree Landing. So officers came back the next day, and when they did, there was a surprise in store for them when it came to that surveillance system. They found out that the old one had been removed and a new one had been put in. The new one did not cover the time frame when Heather had gone missing. Heather's family was not sitting idle as the hours ticked by. They searched for her and they went on to make a Facebook page to help find her,

offering a $1,000 reward for any information. By December 23rd, that reward had increased a $1,000 reward for any information. By December 23rd, that reward had increased to $10,000. At this point, Heather had been missing about five days, and the Elvis family had to be desperate to find out what happened to her. Search efforts ramped up, and the Q, Center for Missing Persons, got involved. They put up helicopters to scope the area where Heather's car was found. No Heather, no clues. While the search for Heather continued, police were busy poring over her phone records, hoping to find information about who she'd been communicating with before she disappeared. Those records quickly revealed when Heather's phone was last used. It was December 18th at 3.41 a.m., the early morning hours of the same day her car was found. And after that, it seemed like her

phone was turned off or in some sort of way just stopped working because it did not produce any more data. Investigators also found something else that would prove to be a game changer. When they've got the phone records, they figure out somebody has called Heather from a pay phone. Now, that's really what broke it open. At 1.35 a.m. on December 18th, someone called Heather Elves from a pay phone at a gas station only a few miles from where she lived. According to her phone records, this call lasted four minutes and 50 seconds.

It's immediately suspicious to investigators. Clearly, you're trying to hide this contact to use a payphone. Investigators jump on the lead by pulling the gas station's surveillance footage. Of course, like in every case, the video is grainy. You can't exactly tell who it is, but you can tell that it's somebody walking up to the payphone with a dark colored shirt and khakis. Luckily, the officers who first interviewed Sidney had done their homework checking out the alibi he provided, part of which was a stop at the local Walmart. Investigators had already pulled that video and this footage was a little clearer. It shows the truck coming to Walmart. Sidney gets out of the truck, goes straight in,

and he leaves, I believe, around 120, 130, somewhere around there. While the video itself felt a little mundane and not especially incriminating, the devil is in the details. And in this case, it's specifically in Sidney's outfit. The clothing he's wearing in the Walmart matches the clothing you see on the surveillance footage. The grainy man at the gas station payphone appears to be Sidney, who was at the Walmart just minutes earlier. Timing was tight, but possible. There's only enough time to go from the Walmart straight to the phone booth.

With this piece of information, there's a timeline starting to emerge. The date drops her off around 1 a.m. and Sydney contacts her from the payphone around 1.30, 1.40 in the morning. And, you know, it was so strikingly strange. As soon as the young man leaves, you know, just minutes later, Sidney Moore is calling. From the time that first call is made from the pay phone from Sydney to Heather. She is missing two hours later. After her date, Heather went home to an empty apartment. Her roommate was out of town that night. Heather got a call from a pay phone and right after she called her roommate.

She tells the roommate, Sydney has called, she's crying, and she tells the roommate he's saying he wants to see me again. He's left Tammy and he wants to be with me. The roommate tells her, look, it's early morning hours. Stay home. Think on it and then make a decision tomorrow. Let's talk about Heather's headspace for a moment. She just started dating again after what seemed to be a damaging breakup with someone that she loved. And now this guy calls, offering her a chance to try again. Keep in mind, Heather's only 20 years old. This had to be incredibly confusing and hard to navigate on her own.

Here she is, reaching out to her roommate, trying to get some advice about what to do. But even if Heather initially listened to her friend's pleas to stay at home, she eventually changed her mind. Police were able to piece together the following. Heather put on her favorite outfit and left the apartment at 2.31 a.m. for a local bar. There, she called the pay phone nine more times. There was no answer. Heather returned to her apartment and called Sidney's cell phone at 3.17 a.m. That call lasted four minutes. After that, Heather went to Peachtree Landing,

where she called Sidney four more times before her cell stopped all activity at 3.41 a.m. It was becoming increasingly clear that Sidney was the last person to speak to Heather. When Sidney spoke with police, that statement was recorded. And in the audio, he admitted speaking to Heather that night. But he claimed that she, in fact, had called him. Here's a portion of that recording. She said, can you come meet me? I said, no. I said, I've told you, I'm trying to fix my marriage. I'm married. I'm happily married, and I want to stay that way. But she said, fine. She hung up. And that's when I turned the volume down, set the phone off, and she called four other times.

When the interviewing officer asked if that was the first time Sidney spoke to her that night, he said yes. They kept pressing, eventually asking him this. Did you make any payphone calls? Nope. I still have payphones. There was a phone call made to Heather that night from a payphone at the gas station on 10th Avenue.

Okay. We have video from that. Okay. Did you try calling her? When Sidney heard that there was a video surveillance, he finally buckled. Well, no, I did call her on the payphone. The investigators then are saying all of this looks very suspicious. They confront him with the fact all of Heather's phone calls, except the one to the roommate, are either to the pay phone or to Sidney's cell phone.

Nobody else. She left her apartment, drove all the way across town to Peachtree Landing, which happens to be just right down the street from Sidney Moore's house. But even when confronted with all of that, Sidney was adamant that after he and Tammy got home that night, he stayed there. And we got home and she took a shower and all that stuff. And by the time I cooked her food, heck, it was probably quarter to four, four o'clock. Throughout that interview, Sidney consistently kept trying to turn the tables, claiming that it was he and his family who were the ones being damaged by all of this. Sidney, the much older man, said that it was he who was trying to get away from Heather, the 20-year-old who, according to him, was wreaking all sorts of havoc in his life. What's interesting, a lot of times the suspect or the defendant, I feel like, tries to change the role and they want to be the victim. And that very much happened in this case.

It was, look, I don't know where she is. We've moved on with our lives. We're trying to have another child. And all these people are harassing us. We are the victims and we've done nothing wrong. But it wasn't just Sidney that investigators spoke with. Tammy never had an official interview in regards to the case. But she did go to the police station in January of 2014 to file a report about threats that she and her family had been receiving.

Here is Tammy speaking. I want the people who are making the threats to our family to go to jail for that. They already had strike 6, 7, 8, 12, 15. And no one's done anything. While an officer recorded her complaints, they also took the opportunity to ask about Heather Elvis, in particular, her relationship with Sidney. Tammy seemingly shrugged it off.

We had an open marriage. That's okay. I could care less if we had sex with 100 people. I mean, that doesn't really, it doesn't bother me. I'm sorry I'm not traditional. I can't tell that. I can't change that. But when investigators looked at the evidence, Tammy's nonchalance about the affair seemed to be anything but true. Authorities heard from Heather's roommate that after the breakup, Tammy was constantly calling her. And a look at Heather's texts revealed it got worse from there. These exchange of texts between Tammy and Heather were rough. Tammy is threatening her,

clearly saying, stay away from my husband. Heather finally says, look, I don't want to be a part of this. Don't worry about me. I won't be bothering him ever again. So the breakup wasn't like Heather and Sydney were mad at each other. It was more of Tammy found out. The harassment escalated with Tammy sending Heather messages and posting about her on social media. It was a constant barrage of threats, including a warning from Tammy about eventually confronting Heather in person. Heather was scared to death of her. In fact, some of the girls at work prank called Heather,

saying that they were Tammy and they were coming up to the restaurant. And she immediately got up and left. And let's all remember Sidney's alibi. He said he and Tammy were together when he stopped at the Walmart. Tammy is in the truck. We know this from her own admission. They were also together when he made that call from the payphone. So it's not just Sidney who's a suspect. Now it's Tammy Too. After connecting the moors to the payphone, authorities went back to Peachtree Landing to eke out more leads.

The police scoured the road down to the dock for resident security cameras that just might have recorded activity in the early morning hours of December 18th. They were able to pull footage from two places. From Sidney's house to Peachtree Landing, there are two roads. One goes straight down from his house to a stop sign. You take a right, you go down that road, and you're right at Peachtree Landing. That first road, which is 814, had a camera on it. One of the residents had a camera. And then when you take the right at the stop sign, there was a business there that had a camera. Both cameras caught what appeared to be a dark and colored truck coming from the area of Sydney's house to Peachtree Landing and then coming back. Everyone thought the truck was potentially

a crime scene or wherever he went with the truck could potentially be a crime scene. A forensic video analyst ran a series of tests to help identify the truck and the footage. One of these tests was called headlight spread pattern analysis, which is the idea that cars can be identified through the pattern that headlights make on the road. And the analyst eventually concluded that the truck was a Ford F-150, the same truck that Sidney was seen driving up to the Walmart. Records also showed that he was the only resident in the county who had that kind of vehicle. That's pretty good. This joined a growing list of evidence that authorities were compiling over the first few weeks of 2014.

A picture of foul play was beginning to emerge, up to the point that it was enough for an arrest. I think we had enough from the fact that he lied about the payphone, the fact that there was video footage showing a truck consistent with the truck he drove going down. And, you know, during the time that the video surveillance picked up his truck going down to the landing, she was at the landing calling his phone, which is certainly indicative that there was a meeting of the minds. In February of 2014, authorities moved in with an arrest. Nancy was not the prosecutor who worked on this case initially, but it didn't take long before the file landed on her desk. I knew about it just from being in the office, but originally another attorney was on the case who was working it when it first happened.

Then they were arrested, and shortly after that, that attorney went to another office, and I took the case over. As soon as she read the file, Nancy realized this would be a complex case. The good news? There was quite a bit of evidence and surveillance footage and interviews. The not-so-good news? Going through this type of voluminous evidence would take lots and lots of time. When I first took it over, we were working myself, another attorney in the office and the investigator, seven days a week. There was so much information to collect, both from witness statements and the digital evidence of videos, phone records, just everything imaginable. The police department did a good job of laying the foundation and then we spent an immense amount of time after that taking that information and

elaborating to really see the full picture. We had to go kind of all the way back and tell the story from the beginning of the relationship right up until the time she went missing. As Nancy poured over the details of the case, she kept puzzling over one thing, the timing. They had been broken up for almost two months. There was no contact. Why now? Once we looked at the phone records and once we started looking at Tammy's phone, then more things started coming to light. 95% of the messages were about Heather, about how upset she was with Sydney.

And all that was right up until a couple days when Heather went missing. When we thought everybody kind of parted ways, Tammy was just absolutely obsessed with Heather and could not let it go. What Nancy was piecing together opened up the possibility of an even more sinister plan. Tammy and Sidney Moore might not only have had something to do with Heather Elvis' disappearance, they might have been planning it for some time. Tammy and Sidney's phone go by Heather's apartment prior to the payphone. So I do think they had been watching her.

The phone records indicate they had been watching her for weeks. It seems as though they finally found that one time when she was there, her roommate was out of town, and they could make this phone call hoping nobody would ever know it was them. And there were other signs that the Moores had gone to great lengths to cover up their footsteps. During the search of their home to include cell phones located inside, investigators had found evidence that someone had run a software program on those phones

to permanently delete any of the threatening texts that Tammy had sent to Heather. And on Sidney's phone, all of the GPS data had been deleted. And his account had been closed on December 25th of 2013, just days after Heather had disappeared. But that wasn't the only avenue investigators had to explore. They next looked at the Ford F-150's GPS navigation system. There's a little card that goes in the truck and it's right there in the center console. And that card is what allows when you ask, you know, directions to Walmart or wherever, it knows where you're at. So we immediately try to download all the locations from the truck.

We are able to pick up the locations from before when Heather goes missing. And we are able to pick up locations after Heather went missing. But no locations during the what you would call witching hours. The card had been popped out. This is my BRF or big red flag in this case. That card was removed on December 14th, only a few days before Heather went missing. They popped the card out right before all of this went on. And then once all of this is over, the card is put back in. They had figured out, look, we need to pop this card out to ensure that the truck doesn't retain any of the locations. So I think it shows how in-depth and

at length they looked into everything in an effort to commit the crime and get away with the crime. After the arrests, investigators continued to comb the house of Sidney and Tammy looking for evidence. When arrested, the Moores immediately retained counsel and didn't speak with police, but two of their children briefly did. The oldest boy was, I think, 15. The girl was 12, and the youngest child was a boy, and he was about eight or nine. The 12-year-old and the 15-year-old were taken to an office and interviewed for the first time. Both of the people that were picked to do those interviews were people that either had a specialty

or had a ton of experience in the dialogue with a minor around that age. Investigators were not able to get much information from the Moore children, but at least one statement from their older son was notable. He told the police that they were home all night. So that was definitely cause for concern because even when the police said, look, we've already talked to them, they've already said that they weren't home all night. And he kept saying, you know, basically, I'm telling you, they were home all night. But there was no doubt from the interview you could tell that there had been extensive conversations between Sidney and Tammy and these two kids.

Once the charges were filed, the case against Sidney and Tammy Moore was full steam ahead. Both were originally charged with murder and kidnapping, but the murder charge was eventually dropped. Now, keep in mind, Heather had still not been found. We were unsure if we could get beyond a reasonable doubt on the murder. But there was no doubt that these circumstances showed that they lured this young woman out. Kidnapping is decoy, luring out. Anything to get that person moving away from a place of safety is considered kidnapping in South Carolina. We kind of backed up and then said, look, we know we could prove the kidnapping and that there was some conspiracy between the two of those.

It comes down to strategy. The decision was not that they believed that Heather was out there somewhere alive, unfortunately not, but that their more straightforward prosecution would be for the kidnapping and related charges. Through all of the twists and turns and difficult decisions, Nancy worked hard to keep Heather's family informed. We had constant contact with the Elvis family and they understood the obstacles of going forward with the case when we ultimately did not have what you would call a crime scene, and we ultimately did

not have a deceased victim. Quite honestly, I don't know that we really knew where the ultimate crime happened. They knew we had a lot of obstacles there. But like any parent, it's, I want justice for my child. Tammy and Sidney would both go to trial, but separately. The theory they were trying to prove was this. Tammy had the motive and Sidney had the means. So the whole idea was the two of them worked together to ultimately get the goal of moving this young woman from her apartment to somewhere where they had the advantage. Sidney was up first and his trial began in 2016.

A major issue for the prosecution to overcome is what we call the time gap. Because remember, Heather disappeared more than a month after she and Sidney had broken up. So why would the Moores decide to harm Heather after so much time had passed? Now, some of you may have heard the term revenge is best served cold, but you can't walk into a courtroom using that as a potential motive. Going back through conversations that investigators had had with Heather's friends and co-workers, prosecutors decided that they had their answer. The women at Tilted Kilt had told us

that at one time Heather thought she was pregnant. She had taken a test there at Tilted Kilt and it came back kind of error. So there was this mystery at the time whether or not she was pregnant. So the state's theory was this. Heather believed she was pregnant. So the state's theory was this. Heather believed she was pregnant and told Sidney, reigniting Tammy's anger at her.

And the Moores then lured Heather by asking her to take a pregnancy test. And to corroborate this theory, an empty pregnancy box test kit was found in Heather's apartment after her disappearance. The actual test was never located. Sidney's receipt from Walmart showed that he purchased a pregnancy test that night. He also admitted to officers when giving his initial statement, but claiming it was for Tammy because they were trying to have a baby.

Their goal? Get rid of Heather. Maybe even get rid of an unborn baby. For the Maurers, all their problems would be solved in one brutal act. The prosecutors presented their evidence, but things didn't end up the way they hoped. By the end of the trial, the jury was hung. Ten were guilty and two were not guilty. But at the end of the day, if it's 11 to 1, you know, a hung jury, it's a hung jury. So whatever the numbers are, we knew we had to pull it back up again.

Prosecutors decided to pause on the kidnapping charges and pivot to a lesser charge. He had been charged with obstruction of justice for telling the police that he had not called from the pay phone. So we backed up after the hung jury and just tried him on that and were able to gain a conviction. For that, Sidney got 10 years in prison, but the disappointment of the hung jury still lingered. The obstruction conviction was something, but it still wasn't the justice that Heather deserved. That's why Nancy didn't see this as an ending. We had made up our mind that we were not going to dismiss the charges. We were going to continue to dig and try to make it better. When we tried it the second time, when we went forward on Tammy after the hung jury, we had a lot more information.

More information meaning not one, but two new and big pieces of evidence. The first came from a cousin of Tammy's who came forward saying he'd been shown an alarming photo while he'd been at a family cookout after Heather went missing. I thought the information was a game changer. I think that was probably the only piece of evidence that you could consider was direct evidence. His testimony was that Sidney showed him a picture of Heather Elvis on a phone and that he had taken the picture to show Tammy. The picture had indicated that there was blood on her and scratches on her face and that she indeed was deceased in the picture. Being that neither Tammy or Sidney were charged with murder, prosecutors were unable to bring it out in the courtroom that she had appeared dead in that photo.

But they could ask the witness this. I think the question we posed to him was, do you ever expect to see Heather Elvis again? And he said no. It's the closest confirmation obtained about what had happened to Heather. And it's absolutely horrible. The theory behind the reason for the photo was just as grim. Basically, he had to show it to her as proof he had completed the deed. It was taken so Sidney could prove to Tammy that Heather was actually dead.

What better evidence that these two were both part and parcel of this heinous crime? But while they had testimony about the picture, they didn't have the actual photo, so they once again turned to digital forensics. Here's where the second new piece of evidence comes in. Remember how the Moores had replaced their surveillance system with the new one that coincidentally skipped over the night that Heather went missing? Well, investigators decided to review the footage from the new system, focusing on the days after Heather went missing. We saw them washing the black truck that we saw on the video going down to Peachtree Landing.

I mean, just every nick and cranny of the truck is being washed. That happened on December 22nd, four days after Heather disappeared. Tammy's sister and the sister's boyfriend were there too. The whole family was out there focused on this truck. The inside of the door, the handle, I mean, you really see how focused they are on the interior of the truck, which is compelling. But what's more compelling is then you see them take the rags that were used from washing the truck and they're putting it in a burn pile, burning all the rags. Then you see Sidney, after they've washed the truck, pressure wash the driveway where the truck

had been washed. It's one thing to wash your truck. It's another one to start a fire and start burning everything you use to wash the truck. When interviewed, Tammy's sister claimed the following. The sister says, you know, I gave Sidney this kit for Christmas to wash the truck, and we were just all out there using his new Christmas present. Scott, you happen to be a car guy, but me, even though I'm not the car person, come on. I mean, how could you claim that this is normal par for the course behavior to wash this truck like this? When you're washing a truck like an F-150, which is such a large vehicle, but you're spending all your time on the rear passenger side of the car?

What about the hood? What about the tires? What about the back? What about the bed? I mean, why are you focusing so much of your efforts into that one location? That is maybe my second big red flag. And for me, it was like game over

that they take the rags and then burn them in a burn pit. Again, I've washed my car by myself plenty of times. And while those rags get disgusting and filthy, I have never burned them. Yeah. There's no reason to have a burn pit after a car wash unless you want to destroy evidence. That's powerful to talk about. But imagine being able to show that to a jury. You get up and you explain what your theory is, what investigators believe what they were doing, and then you back that up with video evidence. That's powerful. And that's exactly why this new evidence was presented in the trial against Tammy Moore in 2018.

At Tammy's trial, the prosecution argued that it was Tammy that fueled the motive, that she was actually the mastermind, the puppet master, the driving force behind the kidnapping, pointing to her desire for control in all other aspects of her life. All of the kids were homeschooled. None of them went to any kind of, you know, brick building to socialize, make friends, that sort of thing. So she really controlled everything in the household. And like I say, Sidney worked alone at night after the restaurant closed. So he wasn't around a whole lot of people. Basically, the theory was that Tammy had created this life for her family to ensure that she, Tammy, could oversee it. Tammy's reaction to finding out Sidney's initial statement to police, which revealed she took possession of his phone and did things to exert total control over him. He was saying, look, since this happened, my wife always has my phone. And in fact, I am handcuffed to the bed at night because she doesn't trust me.

Tammy's lack of trust carried over to Sidney's job as well. After finding out about Heather, Tammy started to tag along on Sidney's work shifts, theoretically to keep an eye on him. I think that was an indicator of really what an extreme situation this affair was on Tammy and Sidney. At trial, Tammy testified on her own behalf, refuting the prosecution's claims and denying any involvement. The trial lasted 11 days on its first round, ending in a guilty verdict. And, you know, one thing I found really interesting watching portions of the trial was Tammy was on the stand and she was calling the prosecutor by her first name, Nancy. And later, the veteran prosecutor would tell reporters that she felt that Tammy was once again trying to control the situation and show that she was in charge. And clearly that did not work out to her benefit.

All that evidence had helped secure the conviction against Tammy, and with the new evidence the state had gathered, the prosecution now turned back to Sidney Moore. 2019, we tried Sidney again for kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap, and he was convicted. In the end, both Moores were convicted on those charges, each held a maximum of 30 years in prison. After the verdict came in, I was so relieved.

I felt like I could breathe for the first time in about three years. To date, both convictions have been confirmed on appeal. Heather Elvis received justice in the courtroom, but that can never repair the life she lost at such a young age. She was just 20 years old when she died. All who knew and loved her were robbed of getting to know how she would have ultimately turned out as an adult. Still, there are some clues.

I think Heather would be extremely successful. She had a wonderful personality. Everybody in the restaurant, when she did not show up after she went missing, said, look, there's no doubt something is wrong. She's always here. The couple days that she's missed, she always calls. She had a wonderful work ethic, had a wonderful bubbly personality. There were no limits on her. I think she could have achieved anything she put her mind to. Heather's mom has said that her daughter is still the first thing she thinks of when she gets up in the morning. Not knowing where Heather's body is must be another layer of extreme pain. She doesn't have, I feel like, a resting place where people that love her can go and celebrate her life and have these memories. Heather's family has not given up hope that they will one day find her,

and they continue to honor her memory. They initiated searches for Heather and have held vigils at the spot where she disappeared. On what would have been her 28th birthday, they hosted a fundraiser in Heather's honor to provide support of other families of missing persons. I've been thinking about this case and how I would categorize the motive and the violence, and it's tough. Heather was targeted and then killed by her ex-intimate partner and his wife. Rather than deal with the aftermath of the extramarital relationship between themselves, they instead focused on Heather,

a 20-year-old adult still very much trying to figure it out. Her disappearance is even more tragic when you think about how Heather went out into the night assuming she was going to meet someone she loved, someone she thought loved her back. She had no idea what was about to happen. It's agonizing to think what those last seconds are for any victim, especially one that thinks they are going to somebody that they trust. And it kind of all turns. The Moores ultimately used Heather's feelings for Sydney as a way to lure her from the safety of her home

and out into the danger that was them. We will think of Heather and send supporting thoughts to her family for all the years of her life taken, many moons too soon. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an Audiochuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?