The date had been Elvis' attempt to move on after a relationship with Sidney Moorer, a repairman she had met through her job at a local restaurant, that had ended two months earlier.

[8] 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.

"[3] Tammy, who later told a friend that her husband and Elvis had confined their relations to oral sex,[18] also sent the younger woman texts and pictures of herself and Sidney in sexual situations.

[10] To make sure Sidney remained faithful to her, Tammy handcuffed him to the couple's bed every night,[19] changed his phone password to one only she knew and accompanied him whenever he traveled outside the house, he said later.

[22] 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.

She had gotten a job at a beauty parlor in Myrtle Beach,[6] starting just before Christmas,[24] which she was eagerly anticipating,[8] and resolved, along with Warrelmann, to begin attending church regularly.

[3] On the evening of December 19, Elvis' green Dodge Intrepid[24] was found, parked perpendicular to the spaces it was in,[24] at the Peachtree Landing boat launch along the Waccamaw River in Socastee, about eight miles (13 km) from her apartment.

Surveillance video from a Myrtle Beach Walmart showed that at 1:12 a.m. that night, Sidney entered the store, purchased cigars and a pregnancy test, and left after seven minutes.

Its license plate is not visible; however, after analysis and enhancement of the video by both the South Carolina Highway Patrol's accident investigation unit and the FBI, it was determined to be Sidney's and subsequently searched.

[32] Twice during February, Sidney told police that people had fired at him or brandished weapons while he was driving on local roads with his family due to publicity over his possible role in Elvis' disappearance.

After 11 hours in which law enforcement searched thoroughly, the Moorers were both arrested at home and charged with murder, kidnapping, obstruction of justice and two counts each of indecent exposure.

[35] The obstruction charges against Sidney were later specified as resulting from his early denial of his use of the payphone, a claim he reportedly retracted only when confronted with the security camera footage from the gas station showing him making the call.

[36] Investigators also announced that they would later be making additional charges unrelated to the Elvis case that instead involved "financial discrepancies filed with the State of South Carolina on behalf of the occupants of the residence".

[35] In June these charges were formally filed as related to Medicaid fraud; investigators said that on a 2007 application for benefits that exceeded $10,000 the Moorers had failed to disclose the income from their businesses.

Tammy and Sidney had disparaged Elvis as a stalker beforehand on various sites, particularly their Facebook pages, suggesting the police had framed them and were protecting the real killers.

[3][38] At one point they barred a local newspaper which had repeated, in its coverage, some of the allegations made against them, from a news conference they held discussing the online harassment.

[39] In early 2015, the Moorers were released from jail, where they had been held for the preceding 11 months, after a judge accepted Tammy's mother's house as collateral sufficient to guarantee the $100,000 bond on the murder charges.

[42] The Elvises said that while they were disappointed, they understood that prosecutors had to make decisions like that and hoped that further investigations and trials on the outstanding charges would eventually lead to them finding out what had happened to their daughter.

[44] Law enforcement specialists documented the phone and video records that prosecutors argued connected Sidney to Elvis the morning she disappeared.

In a Dateline episode that aired in March 2021, prosecutors revealed that Tammy's cousin was referring to a photograph of Heather in which she appeared to be clearly deceased, with blood on her shirt and scratches on her face.

[52] Truslow said he would appeal, since as the offense is largely a matter of common law in South Carolina rather than statutorily defined, he felt it was so vague and overbroad as to be unconstitutional when applied to his client in this case.

"[50] In April 2018, a grand jury indicted Sidney and Tammy on a single count of conspiracy to kidnap, the first time in the case charges had been brought that way.

Shortly after the disappearance, Tammy had called Elvis a "psycho whore" in a Facebook post and suggested that the younger woman had been stalking her and her children.

Prosecutors brought this up on cross-examination, as well as eliciting from Tammy an admission that she and Sidney were now legally separated due to her disappointment over him not having taken the stand in his own defense during either of his trials.

Tammy's lawyers responded that her only response to learning that Sidney's liaison with Elvis had included a hotel room stay was to take a photograph of the receipt with her phone.

Two men who knew Elvis testified: one said that he had had a sexual relationship with her but offered no other details, and the other that he had possibly seen her at a bar in Murrells Inlet the night of December 20.

The prosecutor, drawing on the Moorers' love for Disney movies and parks, likened the defendant to the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: "When you mix jealousy, deceit and just an absolute crazed woman so worried about [Elvis] stealing her husband, that is when unnatural things happen."

One of Tammy's lawyers, Casey Moore, alleged that on the first day of the trial, Terry had yelled obscenities and insults at him as they met at the bathroom, violating the court's injunction not to have any verbal contact with the Moorers or their attorneys.

The court found him guilty and fined him $400, which he said he would pay even though the Elvis family felt the charge was misguided, since the case had lasted so long.

She also argued that the testimony of the state's expert witness who identified Sidney's truck on video leaving Peachtree Landing, based upon the vehicle's headlights, was subjective and unscientific and should not have been admitted.