Murder With My Husband - 247 - The Couple That Snapped - The Murder of Kate Waring
Episode Date: December 16, 2024In this episode, Payton and Garrett unravel the chilling case of Kate Waring — a compassionate spirit whose generosity ultimately led to her tragic demise. NEW MERCH LINK: https://mwmhshop.com Twit...ch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources - Dateline Season 20 Episode 2 - https://www.peacocktv.com/watch/playback/vod/GMO_00000000387869_01/82599ef9-4771-3382-8605-4043e36d639b?orig_ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F Oxygen.com - https://www.oxygen.com/snapped-killer-couples/crime-news/who-killed-kate-waring-heather-kamp-found-guilty Live5News.com - https://www.live5news.com/story/14363927/ethan-mack-court-kate-waring-murder/ ABCNews.com - https://abcnews4.com/archive/mack-expected-to-plead-we-will-provide-live-coverage WisTV.com - https://www.wistv.com/story/13057077/suspect-in-kate-waring-murder-pleads-guilty-to-lesser-charges/ PostAndCourier.com - https://www.postandcourier.com/suspect-in-kate-waring-murder-pleads-guilty-details-victims-final-moments/article_8d83fda5-06b7-5726-bce0-d80bf91e6e11.html CharlestonDaily.com - https://charlestondaily.net/charleston-sc-socialites-disappearance-ends-in-tragedy-story-of-kate-waring/ SportsKeeda.com - https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/dateline-secrets-uncovered-who-killed-kate-waring-why HappyScribe.com - https://www.happyscribe.com/public/dateline-nbc/strangers-on-a-train Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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You're listening to an Ono Media podcast.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Morland
And I'm Garrett Morland and he's the husband and I'm the husband getting close to the holidays. What can I say?
We have a crisp black Christmas tree in between us. I think we mentioned it. Oh
Just kidding ignore that we must have mentioned it while last week last week and I was not here
You definitely were.
If you don't celebrate Christmas, whatever you celebrate,
we need to get like a shrine in the middle
of just Christmas, Hanukkah.
All the holidays.
All the holidays, like anything anyone celebrates during-
An empty bowl of nothing.
An empty bowl of nothing, just everything.
Be kind of cool.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for supporting us.
We love you. Thank you if being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting us. We love you.
Thank you if you listen. Thank you if you listen and pay for our extra content and ad
free. We appreciate it. And we're back with another episode.
I think it's time for your 10 seconds.
Don't got much this week, everyone. I am sorry. No crazy raccoon stories.
And how do you top the raccoon story?
How do you top the raccoon story?
If you are curious, my favorite animal is a cheetah,
just in case, I don't know,
anyone has connections with some cheetahs out there.
Yeah, okay, Tiger King, calm down.
Well, not like that.
There's some baby cubs that needed rescued,
and then I can come feed it with a bottle or something.
No, you know what I'm saying?
Okay.
No, seriously, if anyone has any connections
to any baby cheetahs that are rescued.
I do.
I have loved cheetahs since I was a,
as long as I can remember, since I've been in the womb.
I love them.
Anyone works at a zoo that's a good zoo.
Don't be a bad zoo.
Anyone works at a good zoo or something
and wants to invite me and I can come check out
the baby cubs, I don't even have to touch them.
I just want to get close to them
and just feel their presence.
I would, that, you don't understand how happy
that would make me.
That would, it would make me so happy.
I don't, I don't have any other words for it I just get happy thinking about it I might tear up
and cry so please please help me make that a reality please help me make that
a dream come true I will travel anywhere I will go to any state I will go to it
will I go to any country I probably will go to any country if the offer is juicy enough.
I will do it.
I will go anywhere, anytime, any place.
Please help me out.
Also, it has to be humane.
Okay?
I don't want to...
Something humane.
And that's all I want for Christmas is that.
I actually just thought about something.
I think if you've been listening to Murder With My Husband since the beginning, you probably know the lore
that Garrett doesn't cry, that I had never seen him cry.
But that's not true, you've seen me cry now.
I was just about to say,
I'm not sure we ever updated the listeners
that Garrett now cries.
We broke the barrier, we cracked it, it was painful,
but he can cry now. I've seen him cry.
Lots.
Hey, now I've seen me cry.
So we're making progress over here.
Not sure if it was great thing, but here we are.
It was a beautiful thing.
Anyways, I will cry in front of you.
If you make my dream come true and I can hang out with a cub.
It didn't have to be a cub.
Okay.
It has to be a cub.
Has to be a baby cheetah cub.
If I can hang out with it, if I can beat it, if I can help it someplace that rescued one, I don't even know where to look.
I don't know where to start.
I will do almost anything.
You know how you can like adopt a dolphin? Yeah.
And you track it and stuff.
Garrett wants to do that, but sponsor a cub.
Yeah, but I want to, I want to be there with the cub.
Yes.
Anyways, I'm beating a dead horse at the moment.
Okay.
We hate enemies.
A bad phrase.
I am repeating myself and dragging on.
There we go.
I'm dragging this on.
I'm repeating myself.
Let's hop into today's case,
which I hope has a baby cheetah cub in it.
Our sources for this episode are Dateline Season 20 Episode 2,
Oxygen.com, Live5news.com, ABCnews.com,
WizTV.com, Post and Currier.com, CharlestonDaily.com,
SportsKeyTo.com, and HappyScribe.com.
Now, murder with my husband listeners.
Trust is a tricky thing. Now, murder with my husband listeners.
Trust is a tricky thing.
I mean, it's one of the first instincts that we rely on in life.
We trust that we are supported, that we are loved, that we are safe.
It's how we're able to meet new people, make new friends and relationships.
But trust is a delicate thing.
Because as we get older, we learn that not everyone is deserving of our trust,
especially if you've had it broken before. But this wasn't something 28-year-old Kate Waring
believed in. In 2009, she was on a train when another woman sat down beside her.
She and Kate started chatting. In fact, they really hit it off
and they would go on to become good friends.
Kate even set her up with another one of her close buddies.
But what Kate clearly didn't expect
was for this woman that she met on the train
to go on and betray her trust so badly
that it would actually cost her her life.
So today we are headed down south
to Charleston, South Carolina,
where on May 5th, 1981,
Thomas and Janice Waring welcome a little girl
named Catherine or Kate,
as her friends and family call her.
Now, Kate's a pretty lucky girl because
she was born into wealthy people. They come from a good amount of generational
wealth, even have a house along the Battery, which is a highly coveted
street right along the ocean. So this all goes to say the Warrings are well known
and well connected in Charleston, and they have been for decades.
And it certainly helps that Thomas, the father,
is a prominent lawyer in the city,
and Kate, being the only girl in her family,
sandwiched between an older and younger brother,
had her parents eating out of the palm of her hand.
She was the princess of the family in a good way.
She got everything she wanted from dance lessons
to fancy birthday parties,
but all that spoiling didn't affect Kate
in the way it might have with other kids.
Because those who knew the Waring said,
while they had money, they were always very modest.
They never stuck their noses up at anyone.
And that kindness shined through Kate.
She was sweet and friendly.
She would go out of her way to make an outcast feel welcomed.
She was also intelligent, maybe even to her own detriment.
Because school didn't exactly challenge Kate, it bored her to the point where it started
to cause other problems for Kate as she entered her teenage years.
Okay.
So Kate's mother Janice noticed her daughter had a tendency to run towards risk.
Kate found herself experimenting with drugs and drinking at a fairly early age.
And over the years, she struggled with those addictions as well as eating disorders and depression.
And when Kate started attending therapy, the family learned what the root cause of these issues had been.
Kate had been sexually abused by someone that the family knew.
And growing up, she did her best to work through her trauma and her coping mechanisms
And with the help of her parents she pushed forward
This meant moving in and out of the house with them several times over the years. It's sad that most
sexual abuse cases are
Someone that the family knows or someone within the family. That's that's horrible
Especially because you know
We had strange you dingy for so long when in
reality, the people who are most dangerous to you are probably in your life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Thomas, her father even set Kate up with a bank account that he controlled so
they could regulate her expenses together.
And this sort of support from her parents actually really helped her
turn her life around.
Eventually Kate went to university of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she joined a
sorority.
She even took a trip to Greece to participate in an archaeological dig in Crete.
But there was one vacation that really changed the course of Kate's life.
And I think this is ironic considering what ended
up being your 10 seconds and what you were asking for. No way. It's there is a cheetah
cub in this story. No, but in 2008, Kate and her father went to the Arctic to see polar bears.
Okay. I mean, I see what you're saying. And during that trip, a Russian crewman commented on how quickly Kate was picking up his language
and he invited her to come visit him in Moscow.
So she's in the Arctic, but she meets a Russian crewman and he's like, Hey girl, come to Moscow
with me, which she did.
No way.
A few months later.
And it seems there might have been a romance blossoming between the two, because after that trip,
Kate planned to return the following spring
to study Russian further.
And this seems outlandish to us,
but maybe if you grow up in a family with a lot of wealth
and it's like, hey, let's go to the Arctic
to see the polar bears and then I'm gonna go back to Russia.
Hang out.
And now I'm just gonna go study there,
cause I can, you know. It's true. Seems weird to us, but probably wasn't weird to her. Like's go to Moscow, I guess. Hang out. And now I'm just gonna go study there, cause I can, you know.
Yeah, that's true.
Seems weird to us, but probably wasn't weird to her.
Like this seems like a fairy tale.
This is not real life.
So she's planning to return in spring,
but in May of 2009,
Kate went up to Washington DC
to try and catch a flight to Russia,
only she realized at that point
that there was a problem with her visa. She'd have to go home, work it out, and reschedule her trip for when the
paperwork was all sorted out. So Kate's obviously heartbroken. I mean, she'd had
this huge plan and literally the day of it doesn't work, but she wasn't gonna let
it set her back. She hopped the train from DC back down to Charleston, thinking she'll just take a college course there
in the meantime, maybe even start that children's book
that she'd been thinking about writing.
But as Kate was sitting on that train from DC back to home,
she was this close to getting out of the country,
figuring out how to bide her time,
a stranger sat down next to her.
It was a woman named Heather
Camp.
Okay. I don't, I don't know where this is going at all.
Perhaps looking for someone to vent to about her recent upset, Kate and Heather started
chatting intimately about their lives on that long train ride back to Charleston. And Heather
told her she'd just had her own
stroke of bad luck. She'd gotten her pocketbook stolen right before she got
on the train. What year we in
two thousand and nine. Okay, and maybe this is because I grew up in the West
Coast. Maybe there's more trains on the East Coast. Maybe the first year there's
more trains on these. Okay, but I'm just saying like they're talking about
taking the train like it's I think that train
It just must be an easy to everywhere. I know I'm gonna sound uneducated, but we're about to get
Slandered slander me. I don't give it
When I lived in Spain for a few years all I did was take the subway and the trains but the
Public transportation on like the West Coast like there ain't no subway in California.
Like there's no, I mean, yeah, there's trains,
but they're really not that great.
I don't know.
Anyways, just defending myself and also pointing something
out at the same time.
Yes.
So Heather's like, hey, yeah, I understand your visa.
There's an issue.
I just got my pocketbook stolen.
And Heather told Kate she was a doctor,
a pediatric surgeon who was actually moving to Charleston to work at the Medical University of
South Carolina. And Heather's like, I don't really know anyone in the area. And since we're kind of
hitting it off, maybe we should stay in touch. But Kate takes it a step further. She offered to help
her get on her feet and lend a hand if she
needed anything until she got her credit cards back. So Heather acted incredibly grateful. The
two kept chatting after that ride to the point where Kate actually introduced Heather to one
of her best friends, a guy named Ethan Mack. Now, Ethan and Kate had been close friends for a while.
In fact, Kate said Ethan was like a big brother to her.
He looked out for her.
He protected her.
And while it was strictly platonic between the two of them, Kate thought that her single
friend Ethan might actually hit it off with Heather, this girl she'd met on the train
who happens to be moving to Charleston.
And Kate was right.
So she introduces her new friend, Heather, to her old friend, Ethan, and the two start
dating.
And things seemed pretty solid between them.
Even when Heather experienced a terrible tragedy.
She said her young daughter back in New Jersey had passed away in a car accident. Now, Heather was a mom and she had a young daughter
back in New Jersey.
And she tells her new group of friends
that her daughter had passed away in a car accident.
Now, when Kate shares this devastating news
about her friend Heather's daughter to her mother, Janice,
Janice is suspicious. After interacting
with Heather, she's like, she does not seem like a grieving mother in distress.
And she also wasn't in a rush to get back to New Jersey to be with family. And
it got even stranger to Janice when Heather told her a few months later her
other child, her young son, had
died of leukemia several years prior.
So she's had two kids, one who's died in a tragic accident, one who's died of
leukemia and she doesn't live or hasn't been living with these kids.
Yeah.
But Kate, her friend, she didn't see any reason not to believe Heather.
She seemed to make her best friend,
Ethan, happy, and the three of them practically became inseparable over the next few months.
In fact, Kate's parents said that she seemed happier than she'd ever been before. And this
was a feeling that persisted seemingly into June of 2009. Interesting. What do you like start asking
questions at some point or trying to get to know people on a deeper level? Right?
I mean, it's hard cause this is the parents point of view of the friendship.
And they're like, it just seemed weird, but Kate didn't seem worried.
She seemed happy.
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So Friday, June 12th was a day like any other for Kate.
That afternoon, she went to the gym.
She stopped at a CVS pharmacy at around 8 p.m.
where security cameras showed her looking relaxed.
She was buying wine and snacks
while she waited for a prescription to get refilled.
And then she met Heather and Ethan for dinner
a short distance away at a Japanese steakhouse.
And they spent a few hours there drinking,
laughing and having a good time.
And that's when Ethan and Heather broke the news to Kate.
We are getting engaged.
Wait, no, we're pregnant.
Heather was pregnant.
And she and Ethan were going to have a baby.
Kate was probably a static for them.
She was going to be an aunt essentially
because these three are the three best friends.
And at around 11.30 PM, they called it a night
and Ethan offers to drive Kate home.
The following morning though,
Tom Waring went to check on Kate in her bedroom. Only Kate wasn't
there. Her medicine was though, prescriptions for depression, anxiety, and insomnia.
Holy crap. If this goes where I think it's going, this is going to be wild.
This is medicine that Kate never left home for long without. So Tom and Janice called Kate repeatedly through the day to Noa Vail.
And by Sunday morning, with still no sign from their daughter, Kate, they
start to suspect the worst and they wonder if Kate might have fallen back into her
old habits, was there a relapse they needed to be concerned about?
And usually in these cases we cover,
they're worried that someone has hurt their loved one,
but these parents are worried that Kate
might have gone back to her old ways.
Ah, I see.
And so they start calling around to Kate's friends
and other family members, only no one has seen her.
So they call local hospitals to see if Kate
or any Jane Doe's have showed up.
There's nothing.
But they figure, okay, their daughter at this point is 28 years old. Maybe she just
met someone and had, you know, kind of spent the night with him or was hanging
out with him, gone off with him. Maybe she figured out her visa and she caught a
flight to Russia after all. They'll give it one more day, see if Kate returns, see
if anything changes, but it doesn't.
So by Monday, June 15th, they call the Charleston Police Department.
By now, Kate's parents also realize she hasn't used any of her credit cards or bank accounts
since the night that they last saw her.
Remember her parents had access to all of her finances despite the fact she was 28 just
as a protection.
But that day after filing a report with the police, they do get a phone call.
It's Kate's bank and they're calling with alarming news.
The branch manager says, someone came in trying to cash what looked like a forged check from
Kate's checkbook.
For how much?
For $4,500.
Only Kate had like barely $100 in that account at the time.
So this is not exactly the news you want to hear
when your daughter is missing.
But at least it might be a clue.
Now when Thomas Waring gets a hold of this check, he sees who it was made out
to. He's in contact with the bank. He's like, tell me who got the check. No way. It's going to be
made out to Heather. Ethan. Okay. Ethan Mack. This is Kate's longtime best friend. And it was written
on June 12th. So the day Kate was last seen. That's crazy.
So the wearings actually take this information to police and they're like, okay, yes, we
need a question, Ethan.
This girl's missing.
Someone tried to forge a check and it is probably Ethan.
Now Ethan seems very willing to cooperate with the police and he says, yes, he saw Kate
on the night she went missing June 12th
when she gave him that check.
He claims he had actually lent her a bunch of cash recently
for a piece of jewelry that she wanted.
And this check was her paying him back.
And he had no idea that she didn't have enough
in her account to cover it,
or he wouldn't have even tried cashing it
in the first place.
So, okay, this is possible.
He also says after that dinner on Friday,
he drove Kate home to her parents' house on the battery
and she got out of the car at around 11.45 PM.
And he's like, honestly, I haven't heard from her since.
But he's not concerned because he tells police,
listen, it's normal for Kate to sort of disappear
from time to time and not call or text him back. Now, Ethan even lets police look at
his phone and they see text messages that seem to confirm this exchange. Plus, when
they ask, Ethan agrees to let them come and search the house that he's currently living
in, the one that he shares with his mother. And they don't find anything of interest there either.
So Ethan leaves the police station that day
without being named a suspect.
This is where it gets a little weird
because he leaves the police station.
He's not really a suspect.
He does, however, after this,
call the wearings with an earful.
He leaves them a voicemail on their landline
and he is not happy with Kate's parents.
He tells them, all I ever did was look out for Kate,
stop wasting your time
and find out what really happened to her.
He seems genuinely concerned about Kate,
but he's also like,
why did you not just talk to me about the check?
Why did you go to police about the check?
So police at this point move on to a new witness.
So in the investigation at this point,
police are like, we gotta talk to more people.
We gotta figure out what's going on in Kate's life.
So they talked to people who might know her,
like Kate's ex-boyfriend, a guy named Howard Gatch.
Howard and Kate had met at the gym she went to.
He was a
martial arts trainer but was also in the middle of a pretty ugly divorce when he
and Kate started dating. Now on the day she went missing, Kate actually saw
Howard. Since she didn't have a license, he gave her a ride to her therapist's
office. She seemed in really good spirits according to Howard, even when he saw
her out and about about an hour and a half later at the gym. However, there was apparently an
altercation that day because Howard's ex-wife was also at the gym that afternoon and some said that
she and Kate had exchanged words at the gym. Whatever was said though, it wasn't enough to ruin Kate's entire day
because we know she still went out to dinner
with Ethan and Heather later.
Apparently at 10, 15 PM that night,
she even called Howard,
and I'm not sure what they spoke about,
but he said that wasn't the last time
they chatted that night.
According to Howard, at around 12, 30 AM,
they spoke one final time, during which Kate tells Howard, her around 1230 AM, they spoke one final time,
during which Kate tells Howard, her ex-boyfriend,
that she's still hanging out with Ethan and Heather.
Now that's about 45 minutes after Ethan claims
that he had dropped Kate off at her home.
So when police learn this,
they're like, there's a discrepancy in the timeline,
there's something fishy going on.
Plus Howard tells police when he talked to Kate that night slash morning, she sounded
a little buzzed.
And according to him, he warned her to be careful around Heather.
Now Howard had met Heather before, but according to him, there was something that just felt
off about Heather before. But according to him, there was something that just felt off about Heather Camp. And when he had told Kate this, she laughed off his concerns.
But later that night, he ends up getting a strange text from Kate. She said she
was heading to Greenville to, quote, pick up some lovey. Now, whether that was drugs
or something else, Howard didn't know. But by the time he inquired about it the following day, Kate was missing.
She never responded.
Police received another interesting tip though around this time.
On June 12th, the last day Kate was seen, she also called her friend Jason Luck and
left a voicemail.
Now, in this message, Kate was ranting that someone had stolen her identity and they were
trying to take credit cards out and her name.
Now this sort of lines up with what Kate had said to her father that same day.
I guess this was right before she left for CVS and then dinner.
She told her dad that she may have, quote, unintentionally gotten herself in trouble.
And when Thomas pried further, Kate wouldn't offer
up any more details other than that, but her dad is thinking it was probably this, that someone had
stolen her identity. Now here's the thing. Police have all of this information, but they don't move
forward on any of it for weeks. Despite how prominent the wearings are in Charleston,
despite them being this sort of legacy family there, Kate's case honestly doesn't gain any steam.
In fact, it's the opposite.
It kind of stalls out.
Like police have all these weird angles they could be looking into.
This is suspicious.
This is suspicious.
Kate knows a lot of people.
There's been a lot of weird things happening the last day she was seen,
but they do nothing.
And the wearings aren aren't gonna just sit around
and wait for the Charleston PD to get some miraculous tip.
So they decide to take their daughter's case
into their own hands.
Two months after Kate goes missing,
the Warrings hire their own star team of investigators
to figure out where their daughter went
and what may have happened to her.
I haven't said much because,
I mean, I think I know where this is going.
But you're kind of getting torn every which way.
I'm kind of getting torn.
I mean, I think that if I were to guess
from everything so far,
obviously it has something to do with Heather.
And I'm kind of curious,
like who Heather actually is, like who's Heather?
So the wearings start with Andrew Savage. It's a local attorney who has an incredible group of
people who can investigate the crime even when police aren't. And that includes former police
officers James Randolph, Bill Capps, and Bobby Minter. Now Bobby was sort of this known human
bloodhound excellent at following a trail and Detective Bill was sort of this known human bloodhound excellent at following a trail
and Detective Bill was sort of this tech guy who could find almost anything on the internet
and Detective James was great for thinking outside the box, shaking things up and talking to
witnesses. So one of the first people this team of three speak to is Kate's therapist. They see,
hey, can you tell us anything? Like is it, was there anything weird going on in Kate's life?
Can you let us know anything?
And what they learn is Kate had been having issues with her old time friend,
Ethan, ever since she had introduced him to Heather.
Apparently she had told her therapist that she was actually planning to distance
herself from the couple, despite the fact that these three had kind of become
best friends,
which clearly wasn't successful
if she was still out with them on the night she disappeared.
But the investigators learn something else
the police didn't know,
and that's that Ethan had lied to them
about where he lived at the time of the disappearance.
He wasn't actually living with his mother.
He had recently gotten his own place with Heather Camp, his girlfriend on James Island.
It's crazy you would lie about that because now it's going to just blow up.
Right. And it's like you told the police, oh yeah, come, I'm staying with my mom,
but he's actually living with his girlfriend. It's kind of insane.
And then once they find out, instant suspect.
Idiot.
So as this team of investigators learn, Ethan wasn't
the only one keeping secrets in Kate's life. Heather, her best friend she had met on the
train that was dating Ethan, had plenty of her own. What a surprise. In fact, she had
been lying to Kate practically since the moment she met her back on that train. Is her name even Heather?
So apparently Howard and Kate's mother Janice were right about Heather.
Remember Howard's her ex-boyfriend.
Something was definitely off with this 31-year-old woman because not only did she not have a
license to practice medicine, like she had said, she had an extensive criminal record for fraud. This takes one background,
one background search, by the way. And get this, unauthorized practice of medicine on a child.
Holy crap.
In 2009, Heather actually took a blood sample from a six-year-old girl she was babysitting.
The parents, of course, pressed charges when they learned she wasn't actually a doctor.
But the lies didn't stop with Heather's fake medical career
that she had imagined.
Despite what she told Kate and Ethan,
she had been married before.
And those stories about her children dying from leukemia
and in a car accident, those were lies too.
As far as any of the sources suggest,
Heather's four children, so she had four,
and they were all alive and well.
She just kind of run to Charleston and started a new life.
Apparently, the fact that she was pregnant
with Ethan's child at this time was also a lie,
and this was one that Ethan was not privy to.
In fact, I don't think Ethan knew any of this
about the girlfriend he was living with.
Okay, wait, so you're telling me
Heather's been lying about everything
and Ethan has no idea.
Ethan has no idea and Kate didn't either.
I just-
She catfished them.
I'm not, I believe that Ethan had no idea
but how do you have a significant other
and like not know them?
Because people aren't manipulative and.
Like, hey, let's go visit your family.
I don't know.
They just lie.
They just keep the lies going and the lies going
and the lies going.
Right when I met you first thing
and then when I got home,
I ran a background check on you.
Oh, and what came up?
I didn't actually.
$12 in my bank account.
I didn't actually.
If I would have known that, I'm just kidding. No? I didn't actually. $12 in my bank account. I didn't actually. If I would have known that, I'm just kidding.
No, I didn't actually, but I'm just saying,
that's pretty crazy.
So Ethan doesn't know this,
but literally these private investigators
that the Warrings had hired learned this immediately.
And that's when they realized, okay,
Heather is not who she says she is, Kate is missing missing and we need to keep a closer eye on this.
I mean, imagine the wearings telling these investigators
her, both her kids have died and she practices medicine.
And it's all lie.
She's pregnant, blah, blah, blah.
And they're like, no, she has four kids and they're alive
and she's never practiced medicine.
Like it's just, it would be gut wrenching.
So after finding Heather and Ethan's new apartment,
Detective Bobby convinces their landlord to help them out.
He puts a little camera in the landlord's window,
which points directly to Ethan and Heather's place,
his own little ring doorbell, if you will.
And they also put a tracker on Ethan's car
so they know where he is pretty much every second
of the day.
But what they find is while Ethan's away,
you know, at work or wherever he's going during the day,
Heather at home is actually sneaking over
to the neighbor's house.
Okay.
And having an affair
with this 31 year old guy named Terry Williams.
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So the investigators have to consider, could this person, Terry, be involved in some way
as well?
But after a few weeks of watching Ethan and Heather to see if there's any other suspicious
activity, they get a phone call from the couple's landlord.
And he says, hey, the two haven't paid their rent, and if they don't, I'm going to evict
them, which is a problem because if they move, they might not be able to get this kind of
surveillance on them in the next place.
So Mr. Waring authorizes something.
He agrees to pay the couple's rent as long as his detectives can keep surveilling
them. And he's like, also, I'm kind of doing you a favor here.
So like, if I need anything from you, Mr.
Landlord, please help me out. Please help me out.
And after they grease his palms and pay the rent, they ask the landlord,
Hey, do you have anything in writing from the couple?
We want to see if the handwriting matches up with that forged check
Ethan was trying to cash.
Did it come from our daughter? Did it come from them?
And sure enough, the landlord hands over some IOUs that were written by the couple.
And after turning that in the forged check over to a handwriting analyst, they say it's definitely a match. The check was written
by Heather. There was no doubt about it. So now investigators are thinking, okay,
if they have Kate's checkbook and she's missing, what else are they involved with?
They need to step up their game. And they ask the landlord, hey, do you think we can tell the couple we need to spray for bugs to get into their place? Get them out for a day while we go in
and just kind of look around? And the landlord's like, yeah, go ahead, go into my house that I own
and I'm renting to these people. And you can, the legal? No idea. But maybe because it's the
landlord's legal place, he can give permission to search the house. I would assume not, but I don't know. I have no idea. Maybe.
I mean, you have to think about it. If it's like a hotel,
you could have permission to search the room.
Yeah. I just think there's a little bit more rights behind, um,
renting leasing a place, but I don't know. Some attorney lawyer out there.
Let me know. I'm going to say if it was illegal, they probably wouldn't have done it.
They're they're retired police.
I guess that should be because then they couldn't have used any of that to hand over to hand
over the evidence. Yes. Interesting. Okay. So when the team gets into Ethan and Heather's
apartment, they don't find any signs of Kate, but they do use this opportunity to go speak
with the neighbor, Mr. Terry Williams, but they don't show up empty handed. Instead,
they arrive with a big bag of cash
and they say, Terry, look, we know you're also behind
on your rent and this could all be yours
if you just tell us what happened to Kate Waring.
And that's when the door to his bedroom flies open.
No way, Heather is right there.
As police are in there and Heather Camp comes storming out,
half dressed, screaming at the investigators to leave. But while they're still in earshot, they hear Heather sneak a phone call to Ethan.
She's telling Ethan that investigators were trying to get Terry to quote,
roll on us.
Us.
So that's when the investigators look at each other and they're like,
Ethan's definitely involved and Ethan and Heather did something to Kate.
Holy crap.
And I believe Ethan's involved.
They now know that that's wild.
Police are onto them. Well, police, that's a private detectives,
but that doesn't stop them from paying Terry another visit.
And since he could really use that cash, he gives them something in return.
And it's an iPod, one that Heather gifted him
days after Kate disappeared.
And it's Kate's iPod.
It was the same iPod Kate was seeing,
using at the gym. No way, dude.
The day she vanished.
To be sure it's Kate's, investigators pull
the serial number off of it and confirm
it was one that she purchased herself.
It is Kate's
iPod. So with all of this information, they decide now to go to the Charleston police and they're
like, Hey, we've been working on this case. You haven't been, and here's all the evidence we've
collected. I'm even more confused. So Ethan knows who Terry is. Yes. So does Ethan know that she's
sleeping with them and maybe not, maybe she just was like Terry, the neighbor came over. You know
what I mean? Like sources obviously aren't saying what exactly was
said, but something's going on there. Yes. Yeah. So as this is going on,
as the private detectives are going to Charleston police, Heather camp is
trying to get ahead of the accusations. So she calls the Charleston police too.
So at the same time, Charleston police are hearing from the private
investigators and from suspect number one, Heather.
She's like, um, I have a confession to make,
but not to murder.
Heather admits, okay, I was the one who forged the check.
And within a matter of days, both she and Ethan are
arrested for forgery and obstruction of justice,
but nothing related to Kate's disappearance.
However, things start to fall apart when Heather shows up for her bond hearing in October 2009,
because now that she's separated from Ethan with no way of contacting him, she starts
to get worried.
Is he going to talk?
Should she talk before he does?
That's when Heather goes to one of the members of the Waring's investigation team and says,
look, I had nothing to do with Kate's murder, but I know where her body is buried.
If I give you directions to her, can you help me with these charges?
Next thing you know, Heather is giving them very precise directions to this spot on Wadmalaw Island,
just south of Charleston. And that afternoon, the team follows her instructions down to the very tree where
Heather told them to look and they find nothing.
So with the sun starting to set, they promise to return tomorrow.
This time they follow a new path.
Sure enough, detective Bobby Minter, the human blood hound spots something this time.
After only six minutes of searching the area,
they find Kate Waring's remains
right where Heather said they'd be.
Now the investigators dial 911,
because remember their PIs are not actually cops,
but here's what's so shocking.
When the police arrive,
they actually separate the detectives,
like the private investigators,
and put them in the back of police cars.
They treat these former officers
who just solved their case, found this body, mind you,
like criminals.
They even seized Bill Capps, one of the investigators' cars,
and they brought all of them in for questioning.
And while they are released that night,
Bill has to file all of this paperwork
to get his car back days later.
Bill served 36 years as a police officer.
So you can imagine how shocked he was to find this is how he was being treated.
When they went to police and said, Hey, it's Heather and Ethan.
And Hey, Heather called us and told us where the body is.
Still, it seemed like their hard work paid off because not only had
they done what they promised, they were bringing Kate Waring home to her parents.
They were also able to get Heather Camp and Ethan Mack charged with murder.
But the question still remained.
Why did Heather and Ethan want to kill Kate?
Well, once the prosecutors start looking into the case,
they come up with a pretty good theory for the motive.
Remember Kate had told her father and some friends
that she was in trouble
and that someone had been trying to extend her credit limit
and assume her identity to take her money.
And prosecutors think Kate might have threatened
to get her father involved.
And that's when Heather and Ethan snapped.
So Kate went to Heather and Ethan that night and said,
hey, I know it's you guys.
I know you're trying to take my money.
I'm gonna get my dad involved.
He's an attorney.
And they freak out.
It looked like prosecutors might get to confirm that theory when
Heather agreed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter, forgery,
and obstruction of justice charges.
All for a shorter sentence.
But with that deal, Heather also agreed to testify against her boyfriend, Ethan.
And this was a day that came in October of 2010
when Ethan's trial began.
During which Heather took the stand
to offer up the full story of what happened to Kate Waring,
or at least her version of those events.
This is what she tells the jury.
On that night, June 12th,
she and Ethan brought Kate back
to their James Island apartment after dinner.
Apparently in the weeks leading up,
Kate had threatened to go to her father if they took any money from her again. Yet it seems Kate
thought they had cleared the air because she continued a friendship with Ethan and Heather,
perhaps trusting that the past was behind them and they could start fresh. But Heather
said Ethan had other plans for her. That night at their apartment, Heather says they dared
Kate to see if she could fit into a suitcase.
And that's when Ethan used a taser on Kate to render her unconscious.
When that didn't work, Ethan hit Kate over the head with a wine bottle until she passed
out.
What?
He then put the suitcase with Kate still inside of it.
Oh my gosh.
Into a bathtub full of water.
Oh my.
And he drowns her. Here's the thing though.
Heather changes her story like a lot on the stand.
And jurors, well, they are like,
we can't trust this woman.
Yeah, I know.
Like someone-
She's been lying her whole life.
Not only is she a con man,
someone who would stoop as low to say her children died when
they're fully alive and would play doctor on strangers, even taking the blood of a child.
How do you trust her?
Ultimately, the jury wasn't convinced by her story.
And so when it came time for Ethan's verdict, the jury found him guilty of obstruction of
justice and forgery, but they couldn't reach a consensus on those murder charges because
they're like, we can't, we don't know if this is actually what happened because we don't trust your
star witness.
And so it's a mistrial.
Ethan was sentenced to 15 years for the forgery and obstruction of justice charges.
And rather than go through the whole operation again, he decides to take a plea deal in April
of 2011.
He was given an additional 25 years for involuntary manslaughter.
And as for the lighter sentence that Heather was
hoping to get for testifying against Ethan, well, that
was actually taken off the table when Heather decided
to change her story so many times on the stand.
They're like, you were not a reliable witness.
You actually lost us this case.
So instead, when Heather finally faced a judge in
April, 2011,
she pleaded guilty, but mentally ill.
She was given a longer sentence than Ethan,
39 years in prison.
Good.
But there's a lot of people who think,
had the Charleston police handled Kate's case
with more urgency,
Heather and Ethan would probably be put away for life.
Like that they didn't actually get as harsh of a sentence as they should have. Okay, I see that. Apparently after Heather and Ethan would probably be put away for life like that They didn't actually get as harsh of a sentence as they should have okay
I see that apparently after Heather and Ethan were arrested their apartment wasn't properly searched and was instead turned back over to the landlord
To re-rent it out it wasn't until weeks later that the Charleston police realized they had
destroyed their own crime scene because Ethan and Heather had killed Kate at that apartment.
So there really wasn't much evidence at all outside of those confessions and if
you forged checks they had no blood, they had no DNA, they had no weapon. When it
came to trial they had nothing to be like no for sure they did it. You have to
wonder would Kate have even been found had it not been for the investigators
the Warrings had hired? Like would. Would this case have just ran cold?
Would Heather and Ethan still be walking free?
Because if it weren't for the PIs who solved Kate's case,
Ethan and Heather could be out there right now,
preying on their next kind, compassionate, and trusting victim.
And might I say, not every victim has a family who can hire a team of really good private
investigators to solve their loved one's case.
And that is the case of Kate Waring.
Yeah.
100% it would not have been, it honestly might not have even been solved if they didn't get
PIs involved, which is crazy.
Right. Yeah. I don't know.
Horrible, extremely sad.
I mean, Kate didn't do anything, man.
They just, Ethan and Heather are just evil human beings.
Ethan, out of all people too.
Kill his own best friend for money.
What a loser.
Like what a just evil human being.
I don't know, man.
I don't get it.
I also think just Heather being a con man
and lying from the start when Kate was nothing but nice to her on that train.
Yeah. Oh, horrible.
Kate just put all her trust in her friends.
Yeah.
I also think it would be extremely frustrating as Kate's parents to know that the police did not take
your daughter's disappearance very seriously, didn't look into it very heavily. And then when the case was handed to them
on a gold platter paid for by the wearings,
they botched the investigation once again
by not closing off the crime scene
and actually finding proof.
I mean, I know it's just a number of in prison,
but at the same time as the family seeking justice,
when you basically solve this case yourself,
it's got to be extremely frustrating.
Yeah, I agree.
All right, you guys, we will see you next time with another episode.
And I love it.
And I hate it.
Goodbye.