Where Is Heather Elvis? Woman Vanishes After Breaking Off Affair With Married Man
Did couple Sidney and Tammy Moorer have something to do with the 20-year-old’s sudden disappearance in late 2013?
Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (Screenshot from ID's "Disappeared in the Darkness: An ID Mystery")
A South Carolina woman went on a first date one night not long after breaking up with the married man she was seeing, and nobody has seen or heard from her since.
In 2013, Heather Elvis, 20, met maintenance worker Sidney Moorer, then 37, at the Myrtle Beach restaurant where she hosted, The Tilted Kilt. Though Sidney was married with three children, the two began an affair.
“We all knew about it because people did make fun of [Heather] knowing that he was a married man,” Elvis’ former roommate and coworker Brianna Kulzer told Myrtle Beach station ABC 7. “Heather was made fun of a lot, and she was called multiple names by girls we worked with.”
The pair’s three-month relationship ended when Sidney’s livid wife, Tammy Moorer, called up Elvis that fall and confronted her.
“Tammy was relentless,” Kulzer claimed. “She would call [Heather] nonstop for hours and hours and hours. She would call off of Sidney's phone. She was sending pictures of her and Sidney performing sexual acts, videos of the two of them together. I guess, kind of, to taunt Heather.”
Elvis ended the affair. Although she was heartbroken, Elvis attempted to begin dating again. On the evening of Dec. 17, 2013, she went on a first date with Steven Schiraldi, and he dropped her off at her house around 1:15 a.m.
Around 20 minutes later, Elvis received a phone call that was placed from a payphone. ABC 7 reported that phone records show Elvis then called the payphone back nine times. Sidney later admitted to police he made the call to Elvis from the payphone, claiming he did so to ask Elvis to leave him alone.
Kulzer said her former roommate and coworker, Elvis, called her not long after.
“She was hysterically crying ... and she said, ‘Sidney called me.’ My heart dropped because I was like, ‘I thought we were past this.’ ... I said, ‘Why'd you answer?’ And she said, ‘Because it wasn't his number.’ ... She told me that he said he left his wife and that he was sorry, and that he wanted to see her and be with her. ... And I told her, ‘Don't do it. Why don't you go to sleep? Sleep on this and we'll talk about it first thing in the morning.’”
Some believe Elvis may have been carrying Sidney’s child, and the investigation determined that earlier that evening, Sidney went to Walmart, where he bought a pregnancy test.
“Heather had taken a pregnancy test while at work. I want to say it was the beginning of November,” Kulzer said, according to ABC 7. “And she, at the time, wasn't sleeping with anyone else other than Sidney.”
Elvis’ result came back as an error. “I think it was kind of up in the air,” Kulzer said of whether or not her friend was pregnant at the time she went missing. “I think that if she was pregnant, I think that would be another reason why Tammy would want Heather out of the picture.”
On Dec. 19, 2013, police found Elvis’ car abandoned at a landing on the Waccamaw River in Horry County, The Post and Courier reported.
Police eventually arrested Tammy and Sidney Moorer and charged each with kidnapping, conspiracy to commit kidnapping, and murder. Though Elvis is presumed dead, the murder charges were later dropped since Elvis’ body has never been located.
Over multiple trials, prosecutors contended the couple’s Ford F-150 truck was recorded on surveillance video near the site where Elvis’ vehicle was found, though the pair denied they were in the area at the time.
At trial, Tammy was portrayed as jealous and prosecutors claimed she and her husband planned and carried out Elvis’ kidnapping.
“Tammy Moorer was definitely the more domineering part of that couple,” prosecutor Chris Helms said. “She told Sidney where to work, when to work, what to do. If I could classify Sidney as anything in that relationship, it would be 'utterly submissive.’”
In 2018, Tammy was convicted of the kidnapping charges and she was sentenced to 30 years behind bars. Her husband, Sidney, was convicted on the charges the following year and received the same sentence.
“I despise when people say that it’s been so many years since Heather went missing, and that’s not accurate,” Heather Elvis’ sister, Morgan Elvis, told WBTW. “It’s been so many years since Heather was taken from us.”