Naman Shrestha
In December 2013, 20-year-old Heather Elvis suddenly vanished from the face of the earth, leaving the community skeptical about her whereabouts and her family members distraught. When the authorities investigated the missing woman’s life, they uncovered some dark secrets, which involved her affair with a married man named Sidney Moorer and his wife, Tammy Moorer. The detectives concluded that Heather found herself in a twisted love triangle, which led to her disappearance. In the episode titled ‘Return to the Landing’ of NBC’s ‘Dateline,’ all the intricate details about the case are explored, including the arrest and conviction of the two kidnappers, the Moorer couple.
Tammy Moorer Interrupted Sidney Moorer’s Affair With Heather Elvis
In 1997, 21-year-old Sidney St. Clair Moorer worked at Broadway at the Beach’s Hard Rock Café, where he crossed paths with a 25-year-old Horry County native named Tammy Caisan. Sparks flew between the coworkers, and they soon started dating. A few months later, they decided to take the next step in their relationship and got married at Ocean View Baptist Church in March 1998. Over a year later, in 1999, they welcomed their first son into the world. Over the next few years, they became parents to a daughter in 2001 and another son in 2005. Given his expertise and experience in the hospitality industry, Sidney established a property maintenance business called Palmetto Maintenance LLC, serving several restaurants in the area. Meanwhile, Tammy took on the role of a homemaker and homeschooled their children.
On the surface, Sidney and Tammy were the ideal couple leading a picture-perfect life in Socastee. However, Sidney got into trouble with the law a couple of times between 2009 and 2011. A couple of years later, while serving Broadway at the Beach’s Tilted Kilt, the married man met with a 20-year-old waitress named Heather Elvis, with whom he got involved in an extramarital affair. Around October 2013, when his wife, Tammy, found out about the affair a few months later, she made life difficult for her husband as well as young Heather, to whom she sent threatening and verbally abusive messages. In order to get Sidney under control, she handcuffed him to the bed, accompanied him on his personal and business meetings, and password-protected his phone to have sole access to it.
For several weeks, things appeared to have calmed down until Heather and Sidney got in touch again. Soon after, the former went missing on December 18, while she was alleged to be pregnant with his child. When the detectives learned that Sidney and Heather had been in contact in the early morning hours of the fateful day, they questioned the former, who denied being in the area where she was last seen and claimed that he was running errands with his wife. However, surveillance footage placed him at a payphone, talking to Heather. When asked again about the same, he claimed that he only called her to ask her to stay away from him. Given the number of circumstantial evidence against the Moorers and the motive to get rid of the young woman, the police arrested them on February 21, 2014, and charged them with the kidnapping of Heather Elvis
Sidney and Tammy Moorer Are Serving Time in Separate South Carolina Prison Facilities Today
In June 2016, Sidney Moorer stood trial for the kidnapping of Heather Elvis. The prosecution presented the evidence against him and speculated that Heather being pregnant “would be another reason why Tammy would want Heather out of the picture.” Meanwhile, the defense argued that the prosecution lacked any hard evidence and only relied on circumstantial evidence. Several hours of deliberation later, the jury failed to reach a unanimous decision, resulting in a mistrial.
More than a year later, during his retrial in August 2017, he was convicted of obstruction of justice and sentenced to a decade in prison. The following year, in October 2018, Tammy Moorer’s trial commenced, which also resulted in the jury finding her guilty of kidnapping Elvis. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In September 2019, Sidney was finally convicted of the kidnapping charges as well, for which he also received a 30-year imprisonment sentence. The couple tried to get their respective convictions overturned by filing multiple appeals in the following years, making arguments like the court denied changing the venue of the trial and a motion for a directed verdict.
Each of their appeals was denied by the judge, as the court found enough evidence against them to uphold their convictions. As of today, Sidney Moorer is incarcerated at Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina, while Tammy Moorer is serving her sentence at Camille Graham Correctional Center in Columbia, South Carolina. Although both are ineligible for parole, Sidney’s projected release date is scheduled for March 2044, while Tammy’s is May 2043.
Read More: Heather Elvis Kidnapping Details and Investigation Timeline
