247 - The Couple That Snapped - The Murder of Kate Waring
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So why not start focusing on what's important to you with Noom's approach? Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Getting close to the holidays. What can I say? We have a 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 hall, like every, anything anyone celebrates during an empty bowl of nothing, nothing, just everything. We kind of cool. Thank you for 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 not like that like 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 they're rescued a baby cheetah i do i i have loved cheetahs since i was a as long as i can remember since i've been in the womb

I love them. If anyone works at a zoo, that's a good zoo. Don't be a bad zoo. If 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 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 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 oh i'm not sure we ever updated the listeners that garrett now cries we broke the barrier sure we cracked it yeah it was painful but he's a he can cry now i've seen him cry lots hey now i see 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. It has to be a baby cheetah cub. If I can hang out with it, if I can feed 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 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 covenant. Our sources for this episode are Dateline Season 20, Episode 2, Oxygen.com, Live5News.com, ABCNews.com, WizTV.com, PostingCourier.com, CharlestonDaily.com, SportsKeita.com, and HappyScrap.com. 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. And 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

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. 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

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 horrible. - Especially because, you know, we had strangey-dangey for so long when in reality the people who are most dangerous to you are probably-- - Is closest to you. - 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. 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.

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...

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 billers and then go back to Russia and hang out. And now I'm just going to go study there because I can, you know. Seems weird to us, but probably wasn't weird to her. 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, D.C. to try and catch a flight to

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 going to let it set her back. She hopped the train from D.C. 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 D.C. 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 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 are we in? 2009. Okay. And maybe this is because I grew up on the West Coast. Maybe there's more trains on the East Coast. Maybe.

Maybe. For sure there's more trains on the East Coast. 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 East Coast thing. From DC to everywhere is a very common... I know I'm going to sound uneducated, but we in the West... We're about to get...

slander slander me i don't give a that 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 right 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

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 because this is the parent's point of view of the friendship. True. And they're like, it just seemed weird, but Kate didn't seem worried. She seemed happy. You know when you discover a new show to binge or a song that you listen to nonstop and you have to share it with your friends so they can experience just how awesome it is?

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That's meetundies.com slash murder code murder for 20% off plus free shipping. Meet Undies. Comfort from the outside in. 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. Yep. And she and Ethan were going to have a baby.

Kate was probably ecstatic for them. She was going to be an aunt, essentially, because these three are the three best friends. And at around 11.30 p.m., 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.

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 no avail. 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. Oh, 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 Does 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. Yeah. 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.

It's OK. 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 eleven forty five p.m. 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's 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? Yeah. So police at this point, move on to a new witness. So in the investigation at this point, police are like, we got to talk to more people. We got to 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 p.m. 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 a.m., they spoke one final time, during which Kate tells Howard, her ex-boyfriend,

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 flash 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 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 Warrings aren't going to 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. Well, you're kind of getting torn every which way. I'm getting torn. I mean, I think...

That, if I were to guess from everything so far, obviously 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 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, was there anything weird going on in Kate's life? Can you let us know anything? Yeah.

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. 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 girlfriends. Cause then once they find out instant suspect. So 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 are 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 I did 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, 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 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 live. 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,

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. Okay. Okay, you guys, from fresh-faced and radiant to winter glam, spice up your holiday routine with Thrive Cosmetics.

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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, whatever.

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 or 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, OK, if they have Kate's checkbook and she's missing, what?

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, is it 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. 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 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 retired police. I guess that should because then they couldn't have used any of that. To hand over to the police. To hand over to 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. 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. I can't believe Ethan's involved. They now know that police are onto them. Well, police, but it's the 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 yesterday.

Days after Kate disappeared. And it's Kate's iPod. It was the same iPod Kate was seen 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 him? 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 bloodhound 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 9-1-1 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 going to 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

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 gosh.

And he drowns her. Here's the thing though. Heather changes her story like a lot on the stand. Okay. And jurors will, they are like, we can't trust this woman. Yeah. 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, she,

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,

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,

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. Um,

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 wearings had hired, like 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, it,

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 done.

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 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. 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. 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 seriously.

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.

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