Dateline NBC - Strangers on a Train

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

In this Dateline classic, when a young woman disappears following a chance encounter with a stranger on a train, her desperate family hires a dream team of detectives to follow the mysterious trail she left behind. Keith Morrison reports. Originally aired on NBC on October 7, 2011.

She was the love of my life. Katie and I had a very special bond, always. We called the police station. We called some of her friends, and nobody had heard from her. A daughter in danger. We were absolutely convinced that foul play was involved. And no one could find her. I was concerned.

We've got to get going. We've got to get moving on this. On the train coming home, she had met this woman. Could a brief encounter hold the answer? She's talking about how someone has tried to assume her identity. There's more to this story, and you need to tell it right now.

Somebody was after her. True fear. I could really see it. I said, hey, hey y'all, come here, I think I found her. found. It began on a bright morning in May. The Palmetto slipped from its platform at Washington's Union Station and eased out

into an eight-hour run down the eastern seaboard to Charleston, South Carolina. On board was a beautiful, tall, and feisty redhead named Kate Waring, a daughter of the South, of a fine Southern family, an often troubled young woman who, sitting on this train, was finally on the brink of something very good. And what is it about trains, the ease there in that enclosed space of befriending perfect strangers. Somewhere along the line, between a greeting and goodbye, Kate Waring's invisible fate jumped its track. And quite unaware of the dark force descending. She disembarked to a future utterly changed.

Charleston, South Carolina, it almost goes without saying, is a showpiece of American history and Southern manners. Its charm is deeply embedded as the families who count seven, eight, ten generations here. Kate Waring was born to one of those families. Grew up in a fine big house along the historic waterfront called The Battery. Dance lessons, birthday parties. Dad, if we catch a turtle, can we keep it?

Doting parents, Janice and Tom, who adored their only daughter. And she had you essentially wrapped around her finger. Oh, absolutely. She was the love of my life. And not stupidly so. I mean, I could not always tell when I was being manipulated, but some of the time. Sure.

No, Katie and I had a very special bond. Always. She was the middle child, sandwiched between two brothers, No, Katie and I had a very special bond, always. She was the middle child, sandwiched between two brothers, older Joe, younger Richard. She was bright, maybe too bright. School bored her. Animals, all animals, enchanted her. She was naive, sweet, as younger brother Richard saw it. She could not turn away a stray, animal, or human.

She was a very, very kind person, whereas some people would dismiss someone who wasn't generally accepted by most. She would kind of try to help those people out. But somewhere in the course of an enchanted childhood, something happened to Kate. Outsiders saw a fearless tomboy morph into a sophisticated debutante. But at home, Kate struggled, often in secret, with eating disorders, depression. College was a frequently interrupted disaster. She sort of ran toward risk. I noticed that in a lot of things that she did. She seemed to court it.

Her parents discovered she'd been sexually abused when little by someone they knew. Years of therapy followed. Still, she drank to excess, lost her driver's license. She abused drugs. She sobered up. She fell off the wagon. She came home to live with her parents. Tried and failed at dozens of strategies to achieve the straight and narrow. And then finally, out of desperation, Tom Waring offered Kate a trip with him anywhere she wanted to go, anywhere on the planet, to see polar bears. And? It must have been an amazing trip. Oh, it was the trip of a lifetime. I'm so happy that we shared

that together. Well, the photographs show how happy she was there. She saw young men who were with their families about her age who were happy, and she said to me, Dad, I don't have to settle for what I've settled for, do I?

And I said, No, honey, you don't. You can basically write your own script. And it was a bit of magic. The change seemed almost instant. Kate reborn. On board the ship was a Russian crewman who was amazed how quickly Kate picked up his language, which is why, months after that trip, the newly inspired Kate traveled to Moscow to meet him again,

to explore the city, the culture, and to test drive both a budding relationship and her fledgling Russian skills. The snapshots taken of Kate on Red Square in Moscow were far more than just souvenirs. They were portraits of a young woman transformed. The Kate who stood on Red Square had a new passion in life. The depressions and failures in the past had fallen away. She was consumed by all things Russian. In fact, she was making plans even while there to return to Moscow in the summer to take up Russian studies. Finally, her life was taking off.

And that's why Kate Waring was in Washington that fine May morning. She was on her way back to Russia, but there was a problem with the visa, a paperwork mix-up sort of thing that would have sent her into a tailspin once, but now? The new Kate vowed to try again later, boarded the Palmetto for Charleston, and once home threw herself into college classes and a children's book she'd been writing. Big Brother Joe was, to say the least, encouraged. She, when I talked to her, was the happiest I can remember hearing her in the last 10 years. She sounded good. She sounded as if she was ready, had a conviction about what she wanted to do. And then it was June, heat rising in Charleston's deepening green. On Saturday morning, June 13th, Tom Waring, at his summer house outside the city, felt an absence.

Cell phone hadn't rung. No call from Kate. Kate, who always called or texted her parents practically hourly. She always checked in, and it was unusual. He drove home to check her room here in the big silent house on the battery. And all the lights were on, and it looked like, obviously, Katie had planned to come back. And she'd left her medicine.

She never went anywhere without her medicine. And then on Sunday, we came by the house also. No sign of her. Now there was dread. Was it possible that Kate had slipped back into that old destructive life? We called the police station. We called the detention center. Wow. So this is by the end of the weekend. Nobody had a Jane Doe in the hospital. Nobody had been brought in. We called some of her friends and nobody had heard from her. What to do?

Kate was 28, and though she lived at home, she was an adult. Her decisions, bad or good, were hers. They elected to give it one more day. If she wasn't back by Monday, they'd call the police. And then, when Monday came, there was word. No, not from Kate. From Kate's bank. Once I got off the phone with the branch manager, I called the police.

Yeah, what were you thinking then? I was thinking, something is wrong. Something was wrong. But could they discover what? And would the police help? I thought, I'm not going to put up with this. We've got to get going. We've got to get moving on this. It was Monday morning, the 15th of June, 2009.

Kate Waring had been missing for 48 hours when a surveillance camera captured a young man named Ethan Mack standing at the counter of a bank, waiting to cash a check signed by Kate Waring. Problem was, her account barely totaled $100, and this check was for $4,500, and the signature seemed off. The teller called Kate's dad. He called police. I never met Ethan. I didn't know Ethan's last name. All I knew was the name Ethan, who was a friend. It's too strong to say that she had a secret life, But she certainly had friends

and did things that we didn't know anything about. Of course she did. She was 28 years old. And even though she was financially and emotionally dependent on her parents, she had lots of friends. Some they knew, some they didn't. There was Howard Gatch,

for example, a martial arts trainer in the midst of a contentious divorce with whom Kate had been carrying on something of a romance. I felt that in my heart something was wrong, and I was concerned. Then there was Jason Luck, a young lawyer with whom she often shared lunch and a spirited debate. She was strong-willed. She was very energetic. She was rarely, rarely incorrect. But her best friend,

as she made clear to all the others, was Ethan Mack. She really liked Ethan. She really trusted him. She said, this is my best friend, Jason. She really, she put a lot of trust in him. She's a lovable person, full of energy, always rambunctious. Ethan worked in a local hotel, very different background than Kate.

But he'd been her best buddy for years, and in a way, her protector. Everybody in Ethan's neighborhood knew you didn't mess with Kate when Ethan was around. They loved each other like siblings. I mean, so no harm would come to her when those certain little boyfriends would act like they got hand problems and I would put them in their place. It wasn't a romance at all then. Never at all.

It just was like, she was just like a little sister to me. And it was a token of his family's regard for Kate that she was godmother to Ethan's nephew Malachi. On her Moscow trip, Kate bought herself and Ethan matching brass bulldog keychains. And on that Monday morning in June, said Ethan, he was very worried about Kate, just as he had been for years as he helped her battle her demons. Calming her down and talking to her and understanding that was going on in the world of Kate. But now, he complained,

here was Kate's dad sending the police to talk to him about a check Kate told him to cash. Yeah, I did with that one. So Ethan explained to the cop, David Osborne, about the money he'd given Kate for jewelry and other expenses and that the check was to pay him back. He was basically best friends with Catherine, had been for several years.

In fact, Ethan told Detective Osborne he was very likely the last friend to see her before she disappeared. He said that he had saw her Friday night, had dinner, had drinks, came back, dropped Kate off back at her house. Did he say what time? Yeah, I think the time would have been probably around 11.30, 11.45 at that time.

The detective checked, of course, and found text messages that confirmed what Ethan told him. He even went to the house Ethan shared with his mom. And they both let me in and they both allowed me to search it. The mother and Ethan both told me that this is his room, this is where he stays. But to say that the instant suspicion on the part of the Warrings and the police

was upsetting to Ethan was probably an understatement. Good evening, Mr. Warrings, or Mr. Warrings. This is Ethan Mack calling. This is the voicemail he left for the Warrings after that policeman poked around his place as if he was some murder suspect. Well, I think you need to really check that and go find out and go see what really happened

and find the person who did something to her and stop harassing me because the only thing I ever did was try to help her and more than million ways. So, dead end. The police moved past Ethan, checked Kate's cell phone record, found she'd made a call late that Friday night that pinged on a tower in a place called James Island, several miles from her house. But phone pings can be funny that way sometimes. They told the Warrings one tower's busy, the next one over picks it up.

Probably made the call from home, they said. They also promised to keep looking for her. But really, Kate was known to have gotten herself in and out of trouble a time or two, and police resources were limited, and, well, Tom Waring got the cops' message. We do not know for a fact that a crime has been committed here. After all, the Warrings were reminded, Kate was a world traveler, could well have just picked up and gone back to Russia. Might be aboard some tramp steamer even now.

Or if something bad happened to her, could have been a drug overdose, even suicide. Impossible, thought Kate's parents. Even in her darkest times, she'd never failed to call. If she spent the night out unexpectedly, I mean, we'd get a call first thing the next morning because she knew that we would worry about where she was and was she safe. So the wearings began picking apart that Friday,

the last day anyone saw Kate, looking for something they may have missed. But it had been such a normal day. She had no driver's license, remember, so she asked Howard Gatch to give her a lift to her therapist's office. Gave me a hug, said goodbye, said thank you so much. And she's actually in a very good mood. An hour and a half later, Howard saw her again, this time at the gym.

She said, is it okay I skip rope over here, Howard? And I said, sure, Kate, that's fine. Mind you, there was an incident at the gym. Howard's soon-to-be ex-wife came around. She and Kate had words. But at 8 p.m., a drugstore camera showed Kate all relaxed again, talking on her cell, buying wine

and snacks while waiting on her prescription refills. Ethan paid for dinner, salmon, chicken teriyaki. It's like a Japanese, kind of like cuisine type thing. She didn't drive, so he took her home, dropped her off before midnight. But something else, something earlier that Friday that bothered the Waring's at first was terrifying them now. And the more they thought about it, the worse it seemed.

Just before she went to the drugstore Friday evening, she started telling her father about some problem. Saying that she felt like she perhaps had unintentionally gotten herself in trouble. And I said, well, why don't you tell me about that? She wouldn't tell me any details. Was she clearly worried? She was concerned. Clearly worried.

About something. Naturally, they told the police about that. But nothing came of it. And as the air thickened into a steaming August, the weeks that passed brought no new leads, just tourists clamoring for the cool shade of historic carriage rides. And Kate Waring, the urgency of finding her, began to fade. And that was driving me nuts. I thought, I'm not going to put up with this.

We've got to get going. We've got to get moving on this. And in the hush-cool of his perch overlooking the city. Someone was listening. A new investigation begins, but it's not the police who were behind it. We're the cream of the crop, and our job was to find Kate Waring. Not finding Kate was not an option. Who are these guys? Take a little drive beyond the grand old homes and markets and churches at the historic center of Charleston, South Carolina. Enter, quietly, a hushed suite of rooms overlooking the city, where an influential philanthropist flipped through his mental

Rolodex and placed a call to his friend, the chief of police. I really need a favor. You know, I really need some help with this situation. The caller, John Rivers, happened to be a childhood friend of Tom Waring, watched Kate Waring grow up.

John Rivers told the police chief he was worried about Kate, too. And he told me that, you know, they got a lot of stuff going on, but that he would assign his best and brightest to the case. And I felt pretty good about that. But now, almost two months later, Kate was still missing. And the investigation, such as it was, had accomplished nothing. And John Rivers couldn't stand what it was doing to his best friend, Tom Waring. I could see that he really was having a hard time functioning. So Rivers picked up the phone again, enlisted a seasoned pro,

and told him, do what it takes. His name is Andy Savage, former prosecutor, now famously tenacious criminal defense attorney. Savage had heard about K2 and how police had no evidence of any crime. Really? As soon as we scratched the surface just a little bit, we were absolutely convinced that foul play was involved. Savage was given just two mandates.

Find Kate Waring. Tell police everything you find. That last part, keeping the police in the loop, should be easy, figured Andy. Given the team he assembled, a band of retired policemen turned private eyes, each with a particular talent. I'm Bobby Minter. Bobby Minter, human bloodhound, tracking people without them knowing it his specialty. My name is Bill Capps. Bill Capps, techno geek, tracks bad guys through cyberspace, happens to be a crack shot. My name is James Randolph. James Randolph, ex-police department rebel,

strategy his specialty, shaking things up, a particular skill. But we're the cream of the crop, and our job was to find Kate Waring. Not finding Kate was not an option. Experience told James the best place to start was with Kate herself. If we listen to Kate, she'll tell us where she is.

James went to the house on the battery, up the stairs, down the hall, and into Kate's bedroom. These type cases, you have to take on the personality, and you have to see this person's world through their eyes. He sat there for a bit, looked around. The Russian notes in Kate's handwriting made sense. But why Chinese paper money? And why was her brand new prescription sitting there untouched? The medication in which she had gotten at her prescription

was still on her dresser, unused. That medication was her lifeline. She needed it to counter depression, anxiety, insomnia. She never left home without it. Meanwhile, cyber sleuth Bill Capps buried himself in social media sites. Kate used them. Bill scoured them all. If she was awake, she was Facebooking. She was texting, she was calling people on the phone, she was emailing. And at the time she went missing, when everything immediately ceased, I mean, that was completely out of character for her. Using Kate's friends, Capps built an electronic map of her communications the Friday night she vanished. From Kate's lawyer friend, Jason Luck, Capps retrieved a weird voicemail left late that evening.

10.06 p.m., missed call, left voicemail. Voicemail said that someone had, quote, stolen her identity, close quote, and had obtained a couple of credit cards in her name. She wanted me to sue the person responsible. The gym trainer and Kate's romantic interest, Howard Gatch, told Caps he heard from her about 10.30 p.m.,

still at dinner with Ethan then. But then there was another calls at Gatch, and it was after midnight, well, after police believed she was dropped off at home. She told me she was at some friend's house.

They had already made it to the house. She had sounded a little buzzed. And then, a very last message from Kate. A text. Very strange. I'm off to Greenville to pick up some lovely. And whatever lovely was, I had no idea.

And I'll be back in a few days. Did that make any sense to you? No. Be careful, he replied. But this time she did not text back. Silence from Kate. Except, middle of the night, her cell phone pinged out on James Island,

miles from her home. The cops at Surmise remembered that a closer tower to her house may have been too busy to handle the call. But at 1.53 in the morning? Not a chance, thought Andy Savage. It's just preposterous. They were looking for an explanation, plausible explanation,

consistent with their theory, that she voluntarily left. That middle-of-the-night call, by the way, was to her voicemail. The mailbox is full and cannot be... A voicemail box that had been jammed full for months, during which time she hadn't used it or called it at all. So the question... Why would she call the voicemail? She would not be doing it. Only one conclusion to draw. Somebody else was using her phone. But where was Kate now? Had she, as that one text suggested, left town looking for drugs or Lovely? If that's what Lovely meant.

For the moment, it was a dead end. And then, then he called. Eugene Frazier, legendary 34-year homicide detective, now retired. I believe that if a man commit a crime, he should be prepared to do the time. Thing is about Gene Frazier. Over here on Charleston's James Island, where his ancestors go back to slave days, Gene gets tips. All kinds of tips. And one day a church friend told Gene he'd heard the police had been to Ethan Mack's house. And something strange about that. He said, listen, I don't think this is right. He says, Ethan Mack is living in an apartment

that I have rented out to his father. But the police didn't search this place where Ethan actually lived, said the landlord. They searched his mother's house on a different island miles away where Ethan told them he lived. And he says, I think that he's trying to mislead the police officer. What did you think when you heard that? This guy's got something to hide.

And on that very day, Gene Frazier joined a band of ex-cops, which from now on we'll call the A-Team. A mysterious woman enters the picture. Katie had this strange girl in the room with her. Who was she? The A-Team was about to look for Kate Waring, that lovely young Charleston woman had been missing two months. And according to Kate's parents, Tom and Janice, the Charleston police were still saying this.

They think maybe she went somewhere. She's probably just up in Greenville. What'd you say to that? She doesn't have a car. How's she going to get there? It was after that when the A-team's Gene Frazier got his tip. Kate's best friend Ethan had lied to the police about where he lived. He didn't live at the house he allowed police to search. He really lived behind the house in one of two apartments five miles away. Which you presented to the police? Yes. And?

They didn't search the house. They never got a search warrant. They never asked for permission to search the house. They never went back to him and said, hey, you misled us two months ago. But, as the A-team discovered, Ethan failed to mention something else, too. He had a girlfriend in this little place, a woman named Heather Angelica Camp. And when Janice Waring heard that, her mind went straight to an afternoon at home three months earlier. I heard voices upstairs. And so I went up, and Katie had this strange girl that I'd never met before in the room with her.

And that was her name, Heather Camp. Kate explained she met and rapidly became fast friends with Heather on the train, the Palmetto, during her trip down from Washington. Typical Kate, Janice thought back then, drawn to someone who needed help, who had told her a hard luck story. She said when she got on the train, her pocketbook was stolen. And she's here in Charleston, and she doesn't have any money. And I'm helping her out until she can, whatever.

But Kay told her mother that Heather would pay her back soon because she was a pediatric surgeon in Charleston to take a new post at the local medical center. Then a few days later, a distraught Kate told her mother that Heather's daughter back home in New Jersey had been killed in a car accident. But something seemed odd about that, said Janice. Didn't seem like she was rushing to go up to New Jersey

to attend to the child. Or that she was a grief-stricken woman. Grief-stricken woman. She did not look that way at all. And now, here was news that Heather was living with Kate's friend, Ethan, in this tiny apartment. To me, she just looked like a con artist. But no, said Kate back then. Janice had it all wrong. Heather was nice. In fact, Kate said she'd introduced Heather to her friend Ethan and very quickly a romance had blossomed. They were even talking marriage.

Really? If Janice Waring was suspicious about Heather back then, the A-team was doubly so now. And sure enough, a few keystrokes on the Internet told Bobby Minter that Mother's intuition was right. I saw where she had been arrested for forgery in Indiana, but she'd been arrested in other states, too. Essentially, if you just Googled her name, I suppose you could find out a fair amount. That's how I found her.

She'd been impersonating a doctor. I just Googled her. And Ethan wouldn't be her first husband. She'd been married before and had four children. Now that they knew about Heather, a few fuzzy details were suddenly clearer. For one thing, the bill for Kate's last dinner with Ethan made more sense because there were three meals on that dinner bill. The other diner was Heather Camp.

And more important, that check Ethan tried to cash, the one that Teller flagged, maybe that was another Heather forgery. So right away, point man James Randolph rushed that information over here to police headquarters. Surely somebody here had put two and two together, a woman known to have committed forgery in Indiana and other states. A so-called best friend who tries to cash a bogus check with Kate's name on it then lies to police. Seemed like evidence these two were involved in her disappearance up to their necks. Enough to haul them in anyway. But... I was told that the story panned out and that these are petty criminals

and the check was going to be taken separate from the missing person. What did you say to that? I just didn't think it was the right thing to do. We had to figure out who wrote and endorsed those checks. Who signed and wrote those checks? It was obvious the A-team would have to find the connection between Ethan and Heather and Kate's disappearance without police help.

We always sort of remain stealth as much as possible. Time to keep a careful, quiet eye on Ethan Mack and Heather Camp. So Gene Frazier persuaded his church friend, Ethan's landlord, to allow surveillance specialist Bobby Minter to tuck a hidden camera into a corner of his kitchen window, a camera trained right at Ethan's front door. It was motion detected, just like that light that they've got over the door is.

So when they drove in, it would light up, and it would light up for our camera. The whole camera itself, Keith, was about the size of this little flashlight. It was pointed directly at the apartments. That's pretty slick. No doubt about it. And enough illumination to illuminate to see what they would be carrying, and that would lead us to know that they had something to do with Keith's disappearance.

And when Ethan and Heather left the apartment, Bobby had that covered, too. He'd already tracked Ethan to his job at a local hotel and attached a GPS locator on his car as it sat in the parking lot. Now there was no minute of the day when the team didn't know where Ethan and Heather were and what they were doing. And almost immediately, they got a surprise. When Ethan was at work, Heather sneaked over to visit the man living next door, rode around town with him.

They were going to the bank a lot. And I called one of the investigators at Wachovia. As a result of that, they found that they were kiting checks. They were actually stealing money from the bank. Despite what Bobby told the bank, it never resulted in charges against anybody. But that wasn't all, he discovered. The GPS tracker on Ethan's car led Bobby to a couple of local pawn shops. They were pawning jewelry. The jewelry was the red flag dust. Was it Kate's jewelry? They couldn't be sure yet, without more

surveillance, that is. And then the landlord called Gene again. Another tip. This one bad. Ethan and Heather weren't paying rent. He says, I have, I'm going to evict these people. So after he said that, I said, hold on

a little. If these people evicted, we don't know where they're going. If the A-team didn't think of something and fast, Heather and Ethan might slip out of their sight and Charleston for good. An enticing offer from the A-team, 10,000 reasons to start talking. 10, 20s, 50s, everybody sees that, their eyes just jump. The team of retired detectives searching for Kate Waring

had a big problem. Crime Solving 101 told them Heather and Ethan had to be serious suspects, last people to see Kate alive, one a known forger, the other on tape trying to take money from Kate's bank account. But they were about to be evicted for lack of a rent payment. And if that happened, they would slip the invisible net the A-team had so carefully woven. Mind you, we had the camera, we had the GPS, we were tracking every movement that they have. So they made a call to a quiet office overlooking Charleston,

where the team's money man, John Rivers, decided he'd pay Ethan's rent. Secretly, of course. And it was a plan which, after a little brainstorming, offered a bonus, a built-in opportunity. Here's how. The A-team wanted to know if Heather or Ethan forged Kate's $4,500 check, but they needed original handwriting samples. We determined what was on the check that we needed comparison samples to, and we had numbers, obviously, on a check. Then the A-team helped Ethan's landlord prepare IOUs that contained the needed numbers and letters. And when Heather and Ethan signed the documents agreeing to pay the rent in installments,

they were giving the team the very samples that could prove they forged Kate's check. The team took the handwriting to their waiting expert, Mickey Dawson, the man who set up the state police handwriting lab. The question was simple. Did Heather and or Ethan forge that check from Kate, the one Ethan tried to cash? Immediately that day, our handwriting document examiner said, that's them. No question about it. So, if Ethan and Heather forged a check from Kate, what else did they do? Someone on the team needed to get a look inside that apartment. If Kate had been there, there still might be evidence of something. But how to get in? Well, the landlord has a right to inspect a tenant's homes for health and safety and welfare.

And the landlord decided that he needed to go in and spray for bugs. You can understand why that might be done in that little place. James thought it would be best that if he went with him to make sure that the bugs were all taken care of. Surveillance expert Bobby Minter's GPS device showed Ethan's car was out somewhere. Well, when we opened the door to go inside, Ethan's mic was sitting on the couch smoking a joint. Oh, for God's sake. And I'm like, oh, hell.

I'm like, hey, we're with the exterminating company. We're going to be using some dangerous chemicals, so you'll have to step out on the outside while we get this done. No idea who you were? No, no, no. You're sure about that? Absolutely. So the exterminator and I went inside. We closed the door behind us, just searched the apartment. And in one of the backpacks, an Ethan Mack's backpack, with some Chinese money, Chinese currency. Chinese money? Yes, just like the Chinese bills James saw in Kate's bedroom. Janice Waring had brought those bills to Kate from Hong Kong, souvenirs. Had Ethan stolen them? I put it here on this pole.

Time to stir things up, apply some pressure. And Bobby Mentor knew just how. Bobby went out and put on every telephone pole, every vacant house, every oak tree, every stop sign, wanted information, missing person, Kate Waring's poster. Right around where all those people hung up. Wherever they went, including on Max Windshield, when he was working that day, we put posters to send a psychological message to them. But no response.

At which point, John Rivers said, Perhaps what they do understand on the street, as it were, is Andrew Jackson and maybe Benjamin Franklin, and they would recognize their faces on a $20 or $50 bill. $10,000 worth of those bills went into a grocery bag. Ten, twenties, fifties, and hundreds. And it's a good bag. And when you open it up, you know, two rows,

and then everybody sees that, and they show their eyes, it's junk. And where better to waive that bag of up, you know, two rows, and then everybody sees that. And I show them, let their eyes just jump. And where better to waive that bag of money, they decided, than under the nose of that neighbor Heather was going to see, the man named Terry Williams, the one who seemed to be kiting checks with her. So we knocked on the door, and Terry Williams comes to the door with no shirt on. He has no shirt on, short pants. I said, Terry, listen, we know you're great friends with these people, Mack and Camp. You don't have to live in this condition. We know you're back on your rent. Look at this bag. Look at this bag of money. This could be all yours.

Now, to close the sale with Terry Williams, they try to bluff. Tell us what happened to Kate and where we can find her. We know Mack and Camp killed her, and this money could be yours. And at that point, that's when the side, the bedroom door bust open and a lot of yelling and screaming. To their utter surprise, there came Heather Camp, angrily and quickly pulling her clothes back together. Didn't appear to be a business meeting the team interrupted. The detectives told her who they were and who they worked for.

And then Heather Camp gets on the cell phone and makes a call to Ethan Mack. And said, Ethan, Andy Savage's investigators are here trying to get Terry Williams to roll on us. And when she said that, the three of us looked at one another in police terms. We knew that was definitely the case. We knew, hey, they had done it. Oh, yes. Decades of investigating made it perfectly clear to the A-team. Whatever happened to Kate Waring,

Ethan Mack and Heather Camp were in it up to their eyeballs. We knew something was up. Kate Waring. Ethan Mack and Heather Kapp were in it up to their eyeballs. We knew something was up. A new direction. The search for Kate Waring has been missing since June 12th. It was so awkward now, but necessary. The once very private Waring's and their only daughter's intentionally personal struggles were now so glaringly public. They had to be. And you can't just sit back and hope that she'll be found. I mean, we worked every day, all day long, trying to find her.

That's when it hit home. Kate was the latest of hundreds of people still lost in South Carolina. And it seemed to Janice and Tom that police weren't taking cases like theirs seriously. So what about all those other families also desperate for help? The Warrings held a vigil to make common cause. Somehow or another, somebody will be moved and want to come forward and tell us where Katie is.

That was the public Waring family. At home, the private Tom Waring couldn't help but be drawn to the playback button on their voicemail, just to hear her voice. Dad, Mom, if you're there, pick up the phone. If you're there, pick up the phone. Call me back later. Bye. I would look at photographs of her or play those voicemail messages, just keeping her voice current in my mind.

Meanwhile, Andy Savage's A-team of ex-detectives was making progress. And when they flashed that fat grocery bag of cash around the neighborhood, they certainly got a rise out of Ethan and Heather. A furious Ethan called Andy. Your investigators are out here and they're accusing me of being involved in this homicide. Kate was my best friend in life. As he's on the phone,

Tim calls. She starts out in his rage about, you know, what are you doing out here? Are you accusing me of this? We had nothing to do with that. Fascinating reaction, thought Andy Savage, and perhaps an opportunity. We had done a lot of background on Kim. And so we knew her and we knew her personality and we

knew a little bit about what buttons to push. So the reaction we had towards Heather was one of comfort, not one of angst. And during that time, we planted the seeds as a mother. She must know the feeling of Janice Waring missing her daughter and try to apply to her empathy for a mother. But the call from Heather wasn't all that fat bag of money accomplished. Before long, it reeled in a fish. That neighbor Heather was sneaking off to see called too. The A-team went to talk to him. And he said, I know Ethan and Heather did something to Kate. And Terry went in the back room, came back out, and had this iPod. And Terry said, I believe this iPod is going to belong to Kate.

Now that was huge. Last time Kate was seen with that iPod, it was at the gym the day she went missing. Now a man Kate never met said, Heather gave him the iPod days after Kate disappeared. But just to be sure this was in fact Kate's iPod, tech expert Bill Capps got the serial number and within minutes had the proof. I examined the registry files from all the computers that we'd had access to that Kate had used in the past.

So we knew proof positive that that was Kate's iPod. Of course, right away the A-team told the police about the iPod and also handed over the handwriting expert's report showing that Heather and Ethan forged Kate's check two days after she vanished. And now things started happening fast. After her heart-to-heart with Andy Savage, Heather made a remarkable decision. She called the Charleston Police Department and confessed. No, not to murder. Instead, she said it was she who forged the bogus check supposedly signed by Kate Waring, and Ethan who tried to cash it two days after Kate disappeared.

Now, surely the police would swoop in and arrest them both. But here's something you should know about the way it worked between the A-Team and their former colleagues, the cops. The deal was entirely one way. That's to say the A-Team told the cops everything they uncovered. The cops told the A-Team nothing. So they kept their ears to the ground, waited for something to happen,

but they didn't have to wait for long. We knew something was up, and so first thing we did was yank the GPS off the car because we didn't want the police to seize his car and have our GPS. Ethan was easy enough for the Charleston police to find. They arrested him at his hotel job, but they didn't seem to know where to find Heather. So... Of course, we had to tell her where she was working.

Obviously, they didn't have a surveillance on her. And you could tell them that? Yeah, we told them. We told them where Heather Camp was working. She was working at the gas station. She was working at the Sunoco gas station. I walked into the gas station and bought a Pepsi, paid for it, and walked out,

and a police officer in uniform had pulled up. He was peeping around the corner of the building. I said, that's her inside. Ethan and Heather were charged with forgery and obstruction of justice, with a murder charge followed shortly. We get a call from, of course, we do have friends that are still at the police department. We get a call that, hey, the police are searching Wadmaloe Island for Kate Warren's body. Wadmaloe Island.

Wild, beautiful, isolated. And 20 miles from Kate's home on Charleston's Battery. So I got in my car and I drove out to Wadmaloe Island. And there were the police. A serious search going on. So I sat there in the shade and watched them all afternoon. Didn't attempt to interfere. Just watch the police and see what they're doing?

Just watched lots of officers and cadaver dogs also. There's a ton of folks out there. A ton of folks. Show us your back. So this, apparently, is where their primary mission would end. And if it was the police department that found Kate's remains, at least she'd finally be coming home. And the A-Team could take quiet satisfaction in the belief that it was their investigation that made it happen.

Except, it didn't quite work out that way. She said, well, they didn't find her, did they? I know they wouldn't find her. Was Heather Camp, the con artist, at it again? Where was Kate Waring? A lingering summer heat lay close to the marshes of Wadmalaw Island, steamed up through the dense bushes toward the city beyond.

It was October 2009. A delegation of Charleston policemen sifted through the brush, eyes to the ground. Police cadaver dogs nosed along the shoulders of Pauley Point Road. Heather Camp sat in the back seat of a police cruiser. And Bill Capps, off on the sidelines, watched it all from his car. The cops had brought Heather here to lead them to Kate Waring's body. As a couple of detectives that I knew left, I did ask them, you know, any luck. And I just simply said no and continued driving on. Police called off the search, drove Heather back to jail.

Had she intentionally given them bad information? Perhaps nobody would find Kate, not the police, not the A-team. And then... We got a terrific break by the criminal justice system. Mack and Kemp both came to the bond hearing, and it's done by video. At the bond hearing, Max shows up with his family, who were all there to support him, and not only a public defender, but the chief public defender. Kemp has no one. She has no family. She has no friends. She has no support to speak on her behalf. Now, I immediately said, James and Jean, go see her. Treat her with kindness. Treat her with caring.

And within minutes, the same men who'd so upset Heather with their bag of money were face to face with her. What was the look on her face when she came out and saw what she'd done? She was stunned, very surprised. And I said, Heather, we need help here. All we want is a body. And she said, well, they didn't find her, did they? She said, I put them through the test. They told me they were going to help me.

They wouldn't arrest me. And the minute I told them the area in which she was, the general area in which she was, they got all abusive with me, you know, and they berated me. So they failed the test. And just at that moment, what happened was, well, sheer luck. Directly across the lobby, in the mail side of the visitation area, they brought Ethan Mack to see his attorneys who happened to arrive the same time we did. Just coincidentally?

Just coincidental. And also coincidentally, the jailers positioned Ethan and Heather across a hallway from each other, separated by glass partitions. They could see each other? Oh, yeah. I told them. Here's his lawyer and the detective over there with him. And he's over there ratting you out. So she stopped waving her arms trying to get Ethan's attention. So she snaps and she breaks.

With a little more encouragement from Andy Savage, that is. His deal? If Heather told him exactly where to find Kate's body, and if it turned out she had nothing to do with any murder, Andy would help her with her forgery charges. And at that moment, Heather Camp agreed to tell the A-Team what they needed to know. Her directions were precise.

They drove out here right away. That's the large oak tree that she described. And then she says, if you look farther up to your left in the marsh, you'll see a dock that's running down to the water. And she says, after you do that, you will look to your left over here on my right and left, and you'll see some underbrush growing. And she said, that can't remain, or she would say the body is five feet from this path, from this roadway. Incredibly detailed, just the sort of place to leave a body.

But, just like the police, the team found nothing. I was very disturbed. Well, why are we not finding her? Because we were convinced that she was here. They searched until darkness finally forced them out of the marsh, and then they called Andy Savage, who was out of town on business. They're on a cell phone from where they are. I'm in a hotel in Boston.

I punch up the address for Google Earth, and I'm looking at the satellite imagery of where they are. I said, Well, James, is there a dock off to your left? And so I was pretty well able to identify where they were. So I said, What you got to do is just print that off. Isn't that amazing? You can do that from thousands of miles away? You could also do it from the police station. The Google map clearly showed the A-team exactly how and where they lost the trail. After investigating so much, Savage wasn't ready to give up on Heather.

But he wasn't naive either. We knew that she was a sociopath liar. I wanted something specific from her. Give me something that nobody else knows so that we can believe what you're saying is truthful. And that's when she told us about the souvenirs from Kate's body, the jewelry she was wearing and where it was located. They found Kate's jewelry at a pawn shop.

And behind the dresser in their tiny apartment, Kate's bulldog keychain, the one she'd gotten in Moscow, Ethan, said Heather, took it from Kate's purse as a memento. She was telling them the truth. So they decided next morning, first light, armed with Andy's Google map and more to tell from Heather, the team would return to Wadmala Island. You know, all what we were believing was now coming to fruition.

All our suspicions about her activity and Mac's activity, at that point we knew we had the right people. One thing, they'd be going without the police. Good idea? Maybe not. The A-Team under arrest? What do you mean? You were arrested? We were not free to leave. They made that clear.

This was a twist even they didn't see coming. The early sun had cooked the mist off the marshes of Guatemala Island. Now the still air was heating up toward another dripping hot day. Bobby Minter, Bill Capps, and Gene Frazier shared a car from the city. They rode in silence most of the way, confident the precise directions Heather Capp had given them were correct this time. So, this was it. It was somehow fitting that Bobby, the one they called the human bloodhound, was the first to spot her.

And I saw what looked like an animal path, where animals or something had pretty much beat down the bush. So I walked out to the animal path and started walking parallel with the road and walked up. And I saw what looked like bones. And I said, I think I found her. I said, hey, hey, y'all, come here. I think I found her. I said, hey, hey, y'all, come here. I think I found her. And I said, it was just like a ton of bricks come off of me at that point.

And I went, I said, oh, my God, there she is. Wasn't much, wasn't much left, you know, just bones. In the end, it took only six minutes to find the earthly remains of Kate Waring and thus at last fulfill their promise to her parents. I saw where Bobby was standing and took two shots with my camera just to document the scene the way it was when we saw it. And then I just backed back out of the woods and Bobby followed me out and we called 911. 911, what's the address of the emergency? Yes ma'am, this is Robert Minter. Okay, you need police fire or EMS fire? Police. What's the address then? There's no address. This is Robert Minter. Okay, you need police fire or EMS, sir? Police.

What's the address, son? There's no address. It's in the woods. We found the body of Kate Waring. You believe you found the body of Kate Waring? Yes. We know where she is. In the woods? Yes. But listen to what happens after Bobby hangs up. The 911 recording continues.

You can hear the operator spreading the word around to other officers, a bit skeptical that the four-month-long mystery is finally solved. Hello. Hey, Sarge. You ready for this? No. This guy is adamant that he found Kate Waring in the woods off of Pauley Point Road. Off of where?

Pauley Point Road in Guatemala Island. All right. How's he adamant? He says he knows it's her. Out on the island off Polly Point Road, the trio of former cops instinctively reverted to long practice standard procedure. We said, okay, let's just secure the crime scene, back out, wait for law enforcement to get here. So far, so good. But what happened next was quite a surprise. The first officer was a Charleston County deputy, and I said, we're going to show you where the remains are. Took him out there and said, it's your crime scene now, and we're backing off.

And that's what we did. But that wasn't the end of it, was it? No. We were detained, to put it mildly. Detained? Detained and placed in separate police cars. You mean you were arrested? Well, very strictly, I guess, by the legal definition, we were not free to leave.

They made that clear. And when we couldn't leave leave because they seized my car. But wait a minute, you found the body and showed them where it was. That's correct. They wanted a statement from us as to everything that we had done from the very beginning, not just what we had done that day. The whole long story. That's basically what they were asking for. And in fact, they had been given the story along and along as it occurred. Hours later, the ex-detectives were asking for. And in fact, they had been given the story along and along as it occurred.

Hours later, the ex-detectives were finally released. But not Bill Capp's car. Didn't get that back till they filed motion papers for an injunction. And even now, the memory still rankles. All of them. 34 years in the police department. To sit in the back of a police car and have some guy question you,

get you to take a statement. That's right. Like a criminal. We were sitting in the back of a car like a criminal. And it was less caught up like we see it. Still, this was it. The news traveled to the house on the battery. The wearings fell from their anxiety and into grief. Mixed emotions. Relief that she's been found, but at the same time, devastating grief that

now you have conclusive evidence that your only daughter is dead and that you're never going to see her again. And then, soon as they were allowed, after the crime scene tape came down, after all the evidence was taken away, the whole team assembled at the spot where Kate lay hidden for so long. All except Tom Waring, who did not want the image burned in his brain, the dismal place the love of his life lay dead. But perhaps it was a mother thing. Janice had to be here, she said. Had to see it. It helped me to see for myself.

It was so remote. We wouldn't have found her in a million years. And not knowing where she is, I mean, it's just, it would have been horrible. They formed a circle, held hands around the place they knew she had been. One of the investigators is a deacon in his church, and he said a prayer. And there's beautiful water, marsh, and docks, and I think it might have given Mrs. Warren some peace, thinking, you know, at least it wasn't in a garbage dump somewhere.

It was a peaceful place, you know, God's place. So now the A-team had done its job, and Kate's killers could finally be brought to justice. Or so you'd think. But the mystery, the web that was spun on that train down from Washington, was far stranger, more bizarre, than you have so far heard. And justice? Well, we shall see.

They thought they solved the case, but would it stick? Actual evidence. It just wasn't there. And the close call that just might have saved Kate Waring's life. If I could have hung on one more month, I could have helped them get her. Most everybody around Charleston, South Carolina, seems to know who the county solicitor is. Scarlett is what people call her. Solicitor Scarlett Wilson, officially, a well-known and popular prosecutor. And Solicitor Wilson had a problem. Actually,

two problems. For one thing, though Heather Camp practically leapt at a deal to turn state's evidence against Ethan and plead guilty to murder in exchange, her credibility, as you'll soon see, was not exactly triple A. And despite all the information the A-team uncovered, what could be used in court was thin. I mean, frankly, we didn't have a lot of evidence. We had a lot of opinions and we had a lot of conjecture, but actual evidence, it just wasn't there. Kate's skeletal remains gave the solicitor none of the forensic evidence the juries like to see. The coroner was unable to establish even a cause of death. As for those personal items of Kate's that they found in Ethan's apartment,

those could just as easily have been gifts. The two were supposedly best friends, after all. And to top it off, there was the amazing tale that came with the state's star witness, Heather. It's true she helped the Waring's investigators find Kate's body and agreed to testify against a man she revealed she actually married soon after the crime. But Heather was also, as Ethan's lawyer was discovering, a grade-A, world-class liar. Not only was she a drifter, I mean, this was a true con artist just with just the most horrid background of just anyone I'd ever seen. I mean, a true sociopath.

David Ehler was certain that Heather Camp, back on that train to Charleston, the Palmetto, took one look at Kate Waring and knew she'd found her ideal next mark. Why was Ehler so sure? His research, he said, had turned up enough camp victims to fill a small bus to the poorhouse. We had 13 different names for her that we could use, and we called all 13. I mean, these were men and women all over the country. She would say that, you know, she was pregnant. She would say that her children had died of leukemia, that men had beat her.

Her scam? Troll the Internet for men, latch onto one, move in, fleece him, and leave him with a mountain of debt, all the while pretending to be a doctor, an heiress, or the daughter of a mafia-style drug family. That was probably the worst whirlwind I've ever been through, seen, done in my entire life. There was Chris Beard, for example, in Pennsylvania. Just being around her made me feel better

because that's what I wanted, you know? I wanted to be loved. He found her on the Internet. In less than two months, they were engaged, and she said she was pregnant. At the time that I had met her, I had no credit cards to my name whatsoever. She persuaded him, he said, to get 15 cards, which she maxed out, leaving him $33,000 in debt. Oh, and by the way, she told Chris's sister-in-law, Lori, that she was a pediatric burn specialist and she had worked with children and that was her specialty.

And as Lori had been having some behavior issues with her daughter, Heather gave the girl a blood test. See if there was anything wrong with her. And? She said, I just want you to know that your daughter's bipolar. But it was odd. How would she know based on a quick blood test whether or not her daughter was bipolar? And why would Heather use her own diabetes kit for the test? Laurie hit the internet just to check out the woman who was playing doctor with her child. And found that, you know, she actually was a wanted felon.

So she called the cops, who arrested Heather in the act of spending more of Chris's money. But somehow, Heather slipped off the hook. Though Lori pressed charges and pushed hard for a prosecution, nobody followed through, and Lori eventually gave up, lives with the guilt now. I think it was a month or so after I gave it up, that's when she came to DC and she had met Kate. And I always feel if I could have hung on one more month, I could have

helped them get her. Now, as he prepared to defend Ethan, David Ehler was feeling much better. His client's chief accuser, it appeared, was a practiced con artist. Would any jury believe her? Ethan might be naive, said Ehler, but his story, after all, had never changed. They had gone out to dinner, he, Kate, and Heather. And then after they went out to dinner, he dropped Kate back off at her parents' home here in downtown Charleston and spoke with her a couple times via text message that night, and he didn't talk to her again after that.

So it was all on Heather. And with her as Ethan's chief accuser, how could any jury convict him? But just days before the trial was to start, solicitor Scarlett Wilson finally uncovered something the case lacked, a clear motive. She found it, she said, in letters Kate wrote to a friend just before she disappeared. She's talking about how someone has tried to extend her credit limit

or has tried to assume her identity and mess with her money in her bank. And she was livid. And I think Kate was threatening to get her father involved. And that was a new dimension for Heather Camp. And she didn't need Katie as an enemy. And I have no doubt Katie confronted Heather Camp with that. And that, the prosecutor said, is when Heather Camp and Ethan Mack must have decided they had to keep her from talking. Kate Waring had to die.

He began to make the choice to join in the scam, to rip off Kate Waring. Finally, the prosecutor, Scarlett Wilson, felt ready, and almost a year to the day after Kate was found, she launched the trial of Ethan Mack, the sole defendant in the courtroom, Heather having taken that plea agreement. The Warrings tried to prepare themselves, though what they saw defied preparation. We had to see images and see what it was like when they found her and then go through all the forensics. And we were seeing that for the first time along with the jurors and all those other spectators in the courtroom. One by one, the A-team took the stand, as did detectives and experts from the Charleston

Police Department, to present the evidence. Over a stupid forgery. Prosecutor Wilson told the jury that Ethan and Heather killed Kate to avoid getting caught for forging Kate's checks and using her credit cards. Then Heather took the stand and told the jury it was Ethan, not her, who lured Kate to their tiny apartment, then smothered her, shocked her with a taser,

drowned her in the bathtub, and dumped her body out on Guatemala Island because he thought no one would ever find her there. So, did you think that you'd convince that jury? I thought that the trial went better than I ever could have hoped. Except that is for two things. One, would the jury believe Ethan actually killed his best friend, Kate? And two...

Heather Camp's a liar. Heather Camp's jealous of Kate. Heather Camp's the one stealing. But Heather's testimony did seem to terrify one person, Ethan Mack himself. And it showed. When he was in the courtroom, waiting for the jury to come back, we have that picture of him that shot him. What was happening with your client?

At that point, you know, true fear. You know, true fear. I could really see it. What hold did Heather have on this man? Did the jury, did anybody have this crime figured out? A surprise from the jury and another one from Ethan Mack's mom. His mother said, there's more to this story and you need to tell it and you need to tell it, and you need to tell it right now. You just never can tell how a jury will react to the facts of a complicated murder case or the accusations of a person like Heather Camp.

Ethan Mack cooled his heels while his jury tried to decide if he did or did not smother, beat, taser, and drown his best friend, the woman he claimed was like a little sister to him. And then after 14 interminable hours, they trooped back into the courtroom and told the judge they could not decide whether or not Ethan was guilty of murder. All right, what I'm going to do is on the murder charge,

I'm going to declare a mistrial on that. Mistrial. A hung jury. Huge letdown. Right. It wasn't going to be over. It wasn't going to end. We were going to possibly have to relive that whole event again. As she packed up her files, Solicitor Scarlett Wilson vowed to find justice somehow. And then, quite unexpectedly, there was an intervention. From a surprising source, it was Ethan Mack's own church-going, no-nonsense mother. She had testified during the trial, for her son, of course, gave a hint then of what she was made of. Corrine Mack Dean, D-E-A-N. Ethan's sort of a mama's boy, isn't he?

Yes, he is. Do you know anything about your son having any involvement with Kate Waring's murder? No. If you did, would you stand here today and support him? He know I'll turn him in. Then, as Ethan's mother

sat through the rest of the trial, she heard things. She knew her son, knew when he was hiding something, and so she went to see him in jail. Ethan's attorney, David Aylor, heard it all. So it did get loud in that cell when they were talking. It got very confrontational. Basically, his mother said, there's more to this story, and you need to tell it, and you need to tell it right now.

His mother wanted him to tell the truth and tell what happened. And so it was decided. Soon after Ethan and his mother had their talk, he appeared before the judge and admitted he did participate in the murder of his good friend Kate. He agreed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for a 25-year prison sentence. Do you understand that the court still treats this as a guilty plea? Yes, ma'am. And that your criminal record will reflect it as a guilty plea?

Yes, ma'am. Of course, since Heather pleaded guilty to murder and forgery and obstruction of justice, they didn't need a trial for her either. Guilty but mentally ill, by the way. At her sentencing, her therapist told the judge that Heather developed, after a deeply traumatic childhood, a whole basket of serious psychological disorders, some of which rendered her virtually incapable of separating truth from her elaborate fictions, and which led into her years of failed marriages, abandoned children, and constant

grifting. If Heather was hoping for a shorter prison term because of all that, abandoned children, and constant grifting. If Heather was hoping for a shorter prison term because of all that, she didn't get it. Instead, solicitor Scarlett Wilson noted she continued to lie about important details after she made her deal to testify. And because she broke the deal, the sentence, 39 years, 14 more than Ethan. This was Heather Camp's kill. While certainly Ethan Knight was involved, and certainly he laid his hands on Kate, I do not believe that but for Heather Camp, we would be here. Still, said Andy Savage after the fact, Solicitor Wilson could have had a much stronger case

had the Charleston police acted more aggressively. Just one example? When police arrested Ethan and Heather. Because of their own incompetence, they released the property, the crime scene, where the homicide took place. They turned it back over to the landlord without examining it. And so the landlord went in and vacated the premises. He took all their furniture out and put it in storage.

Cleaned the place? vacated the premises. He took all their furniture out and put it in storage. Cleaned the place? Cleaned the place. It wasn't until over two weeks later. They go in there knowing that the property had already been tamed, that the crime scene was destroyed. No wonder Scarlett Wilson didn't have all the ammunition she'd have liked, said Andy Savage. But the Charleston police said they didn't see it quite that way.

They did take the case of Kate Waring very seriously, they said, right from the beginning. And the second guessing from the A-team was rather puzzling, at least according to Captain Thomas Robertson. I'm surprised. I really am. I thought we both did a fabulous

job, and I think the team of detectives that I had working from this agency and the support that we had, it was fantastic. What may have looked like inaction, said Detective David Osborne, was actually a careful and thorough investigation, one that didn't leave out any possibility. Was there some point at which you thought this girl has, she's probably dead. She's come to some serious harm. Early on. Early on. How many days after would you say? I would say that, I mean, within that first week for sure.

Yeah. So you knew it was a murder investigation at that stage? No. I mean, it could have been an overdose. It could have been an accidental death. I think we felt like we were probably dealing with a death investigation. Right. But neither Tom nor Janice Waring was the least bit satisfied. Hadn't the police suggested early on that Kate may simply have skipped town on her own? Didn't seem to the Waring's they were trying very hard to find her. And what about all those other families of missing people, they asked? Families without the resources to hire an A-team.

Unfortunately, missing people are low on the priority list nationwide. I feel like that a missing person or missing child should be just as important as a bank robbery, because lots of people never find out what happened to their child. It was late after midnight when she came to the end of her story, ushered there by two people she believed to be good friends of hers. And nobody, not the Warrings, not the A-Team, not the police, has heard the story you are about to hear. The competing stories of the last hours and minutes of Kate Waring's life. Question is, whose story will you believe?

Her longtime friend, the uncle of her godson, or the charming grifter, the woman who played with fate on the train? Heather versus Ethan. I had a big conscience. And he doesn't. He doesn't have a conscience. Who was really behind Kate Waring's death? Two very different tales. They call it the Palmetto, the train that glides down the eastern seaboard. Eight hours from Washington to Charlestown.

Fine setting to meet a stranger. Sat in the same seat. Sat in the same seat, laughed, were joking the whole way, started talking. Heather Camp, freshly supplied with jewelry and cash from her last mark, just by chance, found herself sitting with a young woman wearing jewelry and perhaps with access to such cash as Heather had never seen before. What did you see in her? Why'd you like her? She was funny. Very funny. Now, sitting here in jail, Heather claims she came to see Kate not as her next victim, but as a friend. And when in Charleston she professed her love for Kate's buddy, Ethan Mack, and then

eventually married him, that love was true too, so she says now. And when she told them both all those well-practiced lies about being a doctor, about her husband and child being killed in an accident, et cetera, et cetera, those stories, she says, were just part of the schtick,

she admits it, of a con artist. That's what I do. That's who I am. That's the way I've learned how to survive. But remember, in court, the prosecutor called Heather the mastermind who lied to con Kate, lied to manipulate Ethan, lied about murder. You were the decision maker. You were the person who caused Kate's death.

I don't take it as that. Stole from her, yes, but kill Kate? No. Heather Camp will not cop to that. Instead, this was the story the grifter had for us. It was all Ethan, right from the start. My husband wanted to rip her off because she had money. But wait, why would Ethan want any harm to come to his good friend Kate? The trouble was, is that Ethan never considered her a friend. Not a friend of hers at all?

No. Not like friend of hers at all? No. Not like a sister or anything? No. He was babysitting her, and she became a problem for him. Became a real problem, says Heather, when Kate found out that she and Ethan were stealing from her. She was like, I'm going to put you guys in jail. And that scared Ethan. And the whole nightmare began that night because he was not going to go to jail. So you're saying Ethan was the mastermind, not you?

Yes. And so after dinner that last night, says Heather, they took Kate back to their apartment. Ethan got her a little high. After a couple of drinks, she was in a very good mood. There was a big suitcase on the floor. Ethan dared her, says Heather, get in. She did, didn't see the taser he was holding. He starts tasing her and doesn't stop.

And by the time he removes the taser, she's not moving inside the suitcase at all. He races into the bedroom, grabs the pillow off the bed, comes back in, pushes me away, unzips the suitcase, takes the pillow, compresses it over her mouth, grabs the wine bottle that is maybe four feet away, takes the wine bottle, crack, crack. I think maybe it's three times he hits her. He tells me to go inside the bathroom, start the water. She was terrified, she says.

Didn't you say, Ethan, stop? Stop what you're doing. I didn't say anything. Didn't say anything at all? Why not? I cried, but I didn't say anything. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say.

When he told me to do something, I did it. She filled the tub, she says. He asked me to help him pull her in there. I try, but I can't do it. I start crying and I throw up in the toilet. Why didn't you pull her out of the water? At that point, the only thing I was thinking about was, how am I going to make it out of this house?

Did you think he's the one to kill you too? Why not? Who else knows but me? Why not? Why wouldn't I be next? So she helped him put Kate's body in the car, watched him dump her out on Wadmilla Island. And of course she lied, she admits, when she told Ethan she was pregnant, but that was just for the sake of her own safety, said Heather. I thought,

well, if I'm carrying his kid, I'm okay. He's not going to try to hurt me. Really? And so then a moment later when asked why she didn't just leave Ethan slip away like she always did she quite reverses herself. I didn't want to. I really I really loved him. But eventually she says she just had to confess. Constance is a bitch and I had a big conscience. And he doesn't. He doesn't have a conscience. And that's the God's honest truth, says Heather Camp every single word. And then Ethan Mack is led from his cell and tells his version, which comes with a revised opinion of Heather Camp. Deniving, evil, evil, lying type of person that do anything that she can to basically get her way.

Of course, it was different when Kate brought Heather around to see him that first time. I said, she attractive. She ain't an ugly female at all. And Talkative told him all kinds of things. She told me that her son died from a disease that she was trying to help find. The cure for. The cure for, because she was supposed to be a doctor, and she told me that her daughter and her husband got killed in a bad car accident. Ethan was entranced, he said, claimed he believed everything she told him.

That's when they moved in together, and each day he'd go to his hotel job, and she'd head off to the hospital to her doctor work. She would be getting up, putting on her makeup, putting on her scarves, putting on her white jacket with her name that was sold in it. But Heather had another story, says Ethan, one she had used on other marks, but he didn't know that, that members of her family were violent and powerful drug dealers.

And one day, he says, she told him a terrifying story. Her family members had learned that Kate Waring had sold out. She had ratted them out to police. Kate was going to have to die. And those drug kingpins decided Heather and Ethan would be the executioners. She's saying that her family, them, basically telling her that she better get rid of Kate or they're going to get rid of us, basically, and they're going to handle my family, too. They're going to kill my family.

You believe this actually could happen? I done seen people done get beat up over $5 and $10 and done get shoot after behind less than that. So Ethan's version of that awful night? Basically, Heather zipped her up in the suitcase, and then that's when she came at me like, Ethan, you got to zip her up in the suitcase, and then that's when she came at me like, Ethan, you got to kill her. Right then, Ethan, she's lying in that suitcase, top is zipped up.

What you do as her friend is you go and unzip the suitcase and say, ha, ha, okay, come on, get up, right? No, it wasn't. That's not how it worked. No, it wasn't. That's not how it worked. No, it wasn't like that. Because it's my mother, my sister, my daddy, them at state two, and my life. But, says Ethan, it was not he, but Heather, who smothered Kate with the pillow. I couldn't do it to her or kill her, so Heather pushed me out of the way, and she jumped on top of her and started smothering her with the puller and

i went into the room and i dropped down on my knees and i'd be like heavenly father please forgive me for what is going on and what i'm kind of witnessing and let it happen in front of my face so well yeah you were praying but you weren't pushing her off you weren't stopping it no i couldn't stop her because as as it was said, that I still was thinking that those people were going to kill me. I know, but let me challenge you for a minute because I know you're a good friend to her. Yes, sir. It's like killing your sister, for God's sake.

Yes, it is, and that's exactly what it's like. The rest of it, the taser, the wine bottle bludgeoning, the drowning in the bathtub, all Heather, says Ethan, not him. And when he helped hide their crime, when he actually married Heather, that, says Ethan, is because she told him she was pregnant. She wasn't, of course. But Ethan says he believed her as usual, and he wasn't about to abandon his child. Yeah, I mean, but you're married to a killer.

You got married to her after the murder. Just for her to stop always threatening me with the running off and taking my baby. God's honest truth, says Ethan, every single word. And now, at night, in his jail cell. How often do you think about that moment? Oh, I think about it a whole lot. Man, it's just real bad. Thought I could

save her and always been able to save her all the rest of the time. I wouldn't let nobody harm her, but now look at me. You're getting about what you deserve? Yes, sir. I'm getting exactly what I deserve. I know I got to do this time in jail, but still, I can't bring her back. Whatever all of the powers that I ask for and how much I ask the Heavenly Father to take my life away, to bring hers back, it will not be that. No, it will not. Not for him, not for the wearings. It was in court that Kate's father, Tom, read one of the last things she ever wrote. They had gone to church together, he and the daughter who adored him, the girl about whom he worried so. And she scribbled something on a prayer note and stuffed it in a church pew.

Just a couple of Sundays before she boarded that fateful train. She wrote, Please pray for my father, Tom Waring, who worries himself sick and for nothing. I am and will be fine. If I die tomorrow, I have lived through almost everything and more, and I am not afraid of anything. Just know that I pray for God's forgiveness for bringing tears to my daddy's eyes.