On December 17, 2013, Heather Elvis (born June 30, 1993), of Carolina Forest, South Carolina, United States, went on a first date with a man that ended when he dropped her off at her apartment the following morning at 1:15 a.m. The date had been Elvis's attempt to move on after a relationship with Sidney Moorer, a repairman she had met through her job at a local restaurant. At 1:44 a.m., Elvis called her roommate, Brianna Warrelmann, who was visiting family, to tell her how the date had gone. The conversation lasted approximately ten minutes. Warrelman had advised Elvis against returning Sidney's calls, and cautioned Elvis "not to do anything rash and to get some sleep." Elvis' cell phone activity ended that day around 6 a.m., and she has not been seen or heard from since.
According to some accounts, Elvis's disappearance had been a result of Sidney's wife, Tammy, learning of her husband's affair. She sent Elvis several confrontational text messages but denies any role in her disappearance. Phone records show that Elvis's and Sidney's phones were used to call each other several times in the early hours of December 18; he says the two did talk with each other briefly on two occasions, but also denies any wrongdoing—despite security camera footage showing a truck believed to be his driving to and from the boat landing where Elvis's car was found that evening.
Four months later, both Moorers were charged with murder, kidnapping, obstruction of justice, and indecent exposure; investigation also led to the couple being charged with Medicaid fraud. The murder and indecent exposure charges were dropped in 2016, but Sidney was convicted of the obstruction charge the following year. His trial on the kidnapping charges ended in a hung jury; he was convicted on retrial two years later. Shortly after the mistrial the Moorers were indicted on an additional charge of conspiracy. Tammy was convicted of both charges in October 2018. Both Moorers have lost appeals against their convictions.
Despite the convictions, many of the facts of the case remain in dispute. In text messages and posts on social media, Tammy depicted Elvis as an obsessed stalker whose attention to her husband would not have bothered her if she had not become physically threatening to the family; Elvis's friends have suggested, in turn, that Sidney privately told Elvis he wanted to continue the affair to the point of leaving his wife, who reportedly handcuffed him to the bed at night to keep him faithful to her and, Sidney's family claims, physically abused him. Sidney reported to the police several instances in which he was physically threatened while on bail from the murder charges, and posted signs decrying harassment of his children on his property; similarly, the Elvises held a news conference to denounce what they claimed was organized online harassment of them.
Background Heather Elvis was a native of Horry County, South Carolina and the older of two children of Terry and Debbie Elvis; she had a younger sister, Morgan. She graduated in 2011 from St. James High School in Murrells Inlet. She moved into her own apartment shortly afterwards in Carolina Forest, which she shared with Brianna "Bri" Warrelmann, a roommate from out of state. Elvis worked as a hostess at the Tilted Kilt in Myrtle Beach and House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach while studying cosmetology.
Affair with Sidney Moorer In June 2013, Elvis took notice of Sidney Moorer, a 37-year-old married resident of Socastee who repaired the kitchen equipment at the Tilted Kilt; she tweeted early that month that she had "a taste for men who're older." Warrelmann, also a coworker at that time, recalled that Elvis pointed Moorer out to her at work. Almost a month later, on her Twitter page, Elvis expressed sexual interest in "the guy who builds things at my job" and expressed a desire to rape him. A July 10 tweet, responding to a friend who had told Elvis she had "a lot of explaining to do", named a "Sidney" as someone she would go out of her way to see; four hours afterward she followed up with "baby did a bad bad thing" and, "I'm in way too deep. But watch me get in deeper".
Friends and coworkers recalled that Elvis also discussed the relationship she was having with them as well. Moorer would often come to the restaurants when he was not working to deliver coffee and bagels to her. He considered asking Elvis to work as his children's nanny should he and his wife move to Florida, as they were considering doing.
Moorer said his affair with Elvis was primarily confined to September 2013. Late that month, Elvis tweeted that, "Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. It did not end well", which has since been interpreted as referring to the relationship, by then ended. Shortly afterwards, Moorer's wife Tammy found out about the affair and became very angry. According to Warrelmann, Tammy made Sidney call Elvis and end the affair with her listening. Sidney, she says, told Elvis that she was "nothing to me ... just someone who spread your legs". Warrellmann said Sidney "basically tore Heather apart as a human being ... and made her feel horrible about herself." Tammy, who later told a friend that her husband and Elvis had confined their relations to oral sex, also sent the younger woman texts and pictures of herself and Sidney in sexual situations.
To make sure Sidney remained faithful to her, Tammy handcuffed him to the couple's bed every night, changed his phone password to one only she knew and accompanied him whenever he traveled outside the house, he said later. Sidney agreed to all these restrictions in order to save their marriage. Tammy also made Sidney get her name tattooed above his crotch.
However, Tammy continued to contact Elvis, sending threatening texts or implying that she was going to kill her husband. On November 1, Elvis texted back that she was "no one you need to worry about anymore". A text that said "by the way, dad no longer has his phone", presumably referring to Sidney, drew a period in response from Elvis, her only other direct response to the many messages she received from Tammy. Tammy also tried to get Elvis fired from her job at the Tilted Kilt, calling the restaurant regularly and telling them her husband would stop repairing their equipment as long as Elvis continued working there. At one point, Sidney reportedly managed to begin texting Elvis again, telling her that his wife had not objected to the affair itself, since she also had a lover, but to his lying about it. Elvis asked him when he would have his phone back, and he said the relationship was over. She agreed, but said she wanted Tammy to stop calling the Tilted Kilt. "I lost hours today because they sent me home after she kept calling", she wrote at one point.
On November 5, Elvis retweeted a joke by comedian Daniel Tosh that seemed to be indirectly referencing the affair: "hey married fellas, you can either cheat on your wife OR murder her. never both. that's when you get caught." The Moorers and their two children left South Carolina to drive to Disney World for a vacation on November 19. They returned on December 11.
Disappearance At the time of the Moorers' return, Elvis, according to her friends and family, was moving on from the affair. She had gotten a job at a beauty parlor in Myrtle Beach, starting just before Christmas, which she was eagerly anticipating, and resolved, along with Warrelmann, to begin attending church regularly. However, Elvis had put on weight and coworkers at the Tilted Kilt noted that her uniforms had gone up three bra sizes. She was concerned she had become pregnant, possibly by Sidney. Her manager at the Tilted Kilt said she had taken one pregnancy test, which came back as "error".
On the night of December 17, Elvis went on a first date with another man, Steven Schiraldi. Starting at 10 p.m., he drove her around in his car looking at residential Christmas lights in the area. They later drove to the parking lot of the Inlet Square Mall, where he taught her how to drive his manual transmission vehicle. Elvis sent photos of herself using the stick to her father and to Warrelmann.
Schiraldi dropped Elvis off at her Carolina Forest apartment around 1:15 a.m. EST. He is the last person known to have seen her. Twenty minutes later, a call was placed from a payphone to Elvis' cell phone, lasting five minutes. Shortly afterwards, she called Warrelmann, who was then out of state visiting her family for the holidays. Elvis said that Sidney had called, telling her he was planning to leave his wife, and asked her to meet him. Warrelmann, who described her roommate as "hysterical" during the conversation, counseled her not to do so. After two minutes, the call was ended. Elvis' whereabouts have not been conclusively established beyond 1:45 a.m. on December 18.
Investigation On the evening of December 19, Elvis' green Dodge Intrepid was found, parked perpendicular to the spaces it was in, at the Peachtree Landing boat launch along the Waccamaw River in Socastee, about eight miles () from her apartment. The car was locked, and when opened, Elvis' phone, keys and purse were not inside. Calls to her phone went unanswered, and she was not at her apartment nor either of her jobs.
Horry County police began a missing person investigation; Schiraldi, the last person known to have seen Elvis, was quickly cleared. The day after the car was found, a search of the area around the boat landing found no sign of Elvis; later searches of the riverbed down to Winyah Bay by a team of rescue divers from Coastal Carolina University were likewise fruitless. A set of bones discovered in another area nearby around New Year's Day were later found to belong to a male.
Cell phone records Investigators were able to obtain Elvis' phone records, which showed considerable activity on the preceding morning over the two hours after she had told Warrelmann that Sidney had called her, although they cannot say whether Elvis was the one using it. Pings showed that at 2:30 a.m., a call had been made from the phone to the payphone that had made the call Elvis said came from Sidney, but no one answered. Shortly afterwards, it was taken to Longbeard's Bar and Grill elsewhere in Carolina Forest, where it remained for 15 minutes.
After the phone left, it was taken as far away as Augusta Plantation Drive (roughly from Longbeard's), whereupon it was returned to Longbeard's for another 15 minutes. At the end of that time period, a call was placed to Sidney's cellphone, but was not answered. Elvis' phone appeared to be in motion, suggesting it had left Longbeard's. Within five minutes it was back at Elvis's apartment and remained there for another five minutes. During that time it called Sidney's phone again, then located at his home, resulting in a four-minute conversation.
At 3:37, about eight minutes after that call ended, the phone was taken to Peachtree Landing. A minute later, three attempts were made to call Sidney's phone within the space of two minutes; all were unanswered. At 3:41, another attempt was made. A minute and a half later, data records for Elvis' phone end; its location could only be identified as somewhere in the Waccamaw National Wildlife Refuge.
Tammy and Sidney's phone records were also examined. There had been no communication between the two via those phones from November 2, the day Sidney would later testify he surrendered his phone to Tammy as a condition of remaining married, until 3:37 a.m. December 18, when she sent him a text asking for "the pot stickers and orange juice". "Yes ma'am" he replied immediately afterwards.
Security camera footage