Disappearance of Heather Elvis

The case again focused on the cell phone records and video from the morning Elvis disappeared, as the prosecution attempted to prove to the jury that Sidney's initial denial that he had made the payphone call to Elvis, only to admit to it when confronted by the video evidence, hindered the progress of the investigation. A cousin of Tammy's also testified that at some point after the disappearance Sidney had shown him something on his phone which indicated that he had known more about the case than he had told police at that point, but did not elaborate in court as to what Sidney had shown him. 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.

Tammy's appeal was heard in late 2021. She argued that the judge's decision to bar family members who were ready to testify in support of her alibi from the witness stand after they had reportedly been following the trial on livestream before being called to testify, in apparent defiance of the sequestration order, denied her a fair trial. 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. Lastly she said the explicit text messages between her and Sidney should also have been excluded as irrelevant and prejudicial.

In 2019, shortly after Sidney was convicted of kidnapping, he appealed the obstruction conviction, arguing his motion for a directed verdict should have been granted because the evidence was insufficient. The conviction was sustained; he appealed that decision to the South Carolina Supreme Court, which upheld the lower courts.

In September of 2019, Sidney Moorer was also found guilty of kidnapping Heather Elvis, and sentenced to 30 years.

After deliberating for seven hours, the jury informed the judge that they were irreconcilably divided. Ten of them wanted to convict, but two did not. Due to this hung jury, the judge declared a mistrial. As of December 2018, a new date for that trial has not been set; Sidney's motion for a change of venue was granted, so when he is retried it will be in neighboring Georgetown County.

After three days, Sidney was convicted. The judge sentenced him to ten years in prison, the maximum for the offense, with credit for nearly a year of time served over a year earlier. Sidney will likely be paroled long before serving the full sentence, although his first application, in November 2018, was unanimously denied. As of October 2018 he is being held at Lee Correctional Institution. 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. "I also believe it is obvious that much more of the trial had to do with the underlying allegations", he said. While Sidney had indeed lied to the police, he claimed it did not seriously hinder their investigation, and accused prosecutors of "just trying to put somebody away, just so [they] can say [they] put somebody away?"

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. Prosecutors would not elaborate on the specifics of the charges, citing the standing gag order, but commentators believed the indictment, and especially the additional charge, suggested that either new evidence had been found or one of them had agreed to testify against the other. "[T]he only way you're gonna get a conspiracy conviction is if the co-conspirator comes forward", said one. Failing that, the goal might have been to put pressure on them both to do so.

In October 2018, almost five years after Elvis's disappearance, Tammy went on trial, drawing national media attention. In addition to the documentary evidence that had been introduced in Sidney's trial, the prosecution introduced the threatening text messages she had sent Elvis to support the state's theory that Tammy had been driven into a jealous rage when she knew of Elvis' possible pregnancy, giving her a motive to hurt her. 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. Sidney's mother testified that a few days after learning of the affair, Tammy beat her husband severely.

Court proceedings related to the case resumed over a year later. In late July 2017 a hearing was held to determine whether Tammy had violated the gag order and should be charged with contempt of court. Neither the circumstances that necessitated the hearing, nor its disposition, were made public. Sidney was tried on the obstruction charge, a rare instance of that charge actually reaching that stage in South Carolina, shortly afterwards.

Four months later, both Moorers were charged with murder, obstruction of justice, and indecent exposure; investigation also led to the couple being charged with Medicaid fraud as well. The murder and indecent exposure charges were dropped in 2016, but Sidney was convicted of the obstruction charge the following year. Two men, one a relative of Elvis', were charged with obstructing justice in 2014 for posting misleading information online and conducting their own independent investigation. Sidney's 2017 trial on the 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; she is currently appealing.

In March 2016, prosecutors dropped the murder charges against both Sidney and Tammy without prejudice, meaning they could be reinstated later should the state decide to. The indecent exposure charges were dropped as well, along with the obstruction charge against Tammy. The charges related to the alleged Medicaid fraud remained. 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.

In June 2016, the first trial in relation to Elvis' disappearance took place when a jury was seated to decide whether Sidney had kidnapped her. Over the next four days the state presented its case. Elvis's coworkers testified that she had had an affair with Sidney and that they, along with Elvis herself, believed she had gotten pregnant as a result. Law enforcement specialists documented the phone and video records that prosecutors argued connected Sidney to Elvis the morning she disappeared. The jurors were also taken to see both Peachtree Landing and the Moorers' house.

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. At the bond hearing, prosecutors told the court they still had no direct evidence linking the couple to Elvis's disappearance. The Elvis family argued against the release, claiming they had received threats from the Moorer family and their supporters, so the court required Sidney and Tammy to agree to GPS monitoring of their whereabouts, to stay 5 miles (8.0 km) away from the Elvis family home at all times and to avoid interacting with any of them on Facebook or other social media.

The first two arrests related to the case were not the Moorers, or anyone else suspected of involvement in Elvis's disappearance. On January 28, 2014, William Christopher Barrett and Garrett Ryan Starnes were arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. Police said both men had posted information on social media about the case that was either false or misleading, and that investigators had wasted time being diverted from the case when they looked into the posts. Both were released after posting bond; the charge against Starnes was dismissed in April when the charging officer missed the preliminary hearing because he mistakenly believed the case had been continued. Starnes was indicted on the charge in July.

On December 17, 2013, Heather Elvis (born June 30, 1993), of Carolina Forest, South Carolina, United States, went out for 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' 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. At 1:44 a.m., Elvis called her roommate, Brianna Warrelmann, who was visiting her 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 ends that day around 6 a.m., and she has not been seen or heard from since that morning.

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." Her roommate, Brianna "Bri" Warrelmann, also a coworker at that time, recalled that Elvis pointed Moorer out to her at work. Almost a month later she expressed sexual interest in "the guy who builds things at my job" and expressed a desire to rape him. A July 12 tweet, responding to a friend who had told Elvis she had "a lot of explaining to do", named a "Sydney" 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".

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.

Caison testified that Sidney had gotten his tattoo in January 2012, long before he had met Elvis, and that she could prove this with texts between herself and the tattooist's wife. She also said that Tammy did not handcuff Sidney to the bed, only that they liked to use the cuffs for sexual roleplaying, in which capacity she would sometimes handcuff him to the bed. On cross-examination, the prosecution confronted her with her police interview, where she had said otherwise. The defense also elicited from Caison some testimony about the events of the night Elvis disappeared. While Caison had been watching the Moorer children until 3 a.m., she said this was not an unusual occurrence since the children were homeschooled and often stayed up late. Tammy had texted her at 3:10 a.m. that she and Sidney were home, whereupon the children walked back there.

Sydney Moffitt, a former roommate of Elvis', testified about her abusive previous boyfriend, and recounted an incident in 2012 where Elvis returned from work with bruises on her neck that she did not explain; however, she said on cross-examination that she had not had much contact with Elvis since that year. 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. However, he admitted on cross-examination that it could not have been her since security camera footage of the encounter showed that the woman did not have Elvis's distinctive tattoos.

Heather Elvis, a native of Horry County, South Carolina, graduated in 2011 from St. James High School in Murrells Inlet. Her parents allowed her, as their older daughter, to move out to her own apartment shortly afterwards in Carolina Forest, which she shared with a roommate from out of state. She worked as a hostess at the Tilted Kilt in Myrtle Beach and House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach while studying cosmetology.

The Moorers posted the $20,000 bond set for the obstruction and exposure charges, but later waived the bond on the kidnapping charges in favor of the murder charges, on which they were initially held without bond. A month after the arrests the court imposed a gag order on all participants in the case. 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". 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.