The Couple That Snapped - The Murder of Kate Waring

December 16, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett unravel the chilling case of Kate Waring — a compassionate spirit whose generosity ultimately led to her tragic demise.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband.

I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

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 last week.

Last week, and I was not here.

You definitely were.

If you don't celebrate Christmas, whatever you celebrate, we should get a little shrine in the middle with Christmas, Hanukkah — all the holidays. Like, everything anyone celebrates, and maybe just an empty bowl of nothing for those who don’t celebrate anything.

An empty bowl of nothing. Just everything. That would be kind of cool.

Thank you for being here, thank you for listening, and thank you for supporting us. We love you. Thank you if you listen, and thank you if you pay for our extra content and ad-free episodes. We appreciate it.

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.

How do you top the raccoon story?

If you’re curious, my favorite animal is a cheetah. Just in case anyone has connections with some cheetahs out there.

Okay, Tiger King, calm down.

Well, not like that. But if there were some baby cubs that needed to be rescued and I could come feed it with a bottle or something… you know what I’m saying?

Okay, no, seriously. If anyone has any connections to a baby cheetah rescue, I do. I have loved cheetahs since as long as I can remember. Since I was in the womb, I have loved them.

If anyone works at a zoo — a good zoo, not a bad zoo — and you want to invite me so I can check out the baby cubs, I don’t even have to touch them. I just want to get close to them and feel their presence.

You don’t understand how happy that would make me. It would make me so happy. I don’t have any other words for it. I get happy just thinking about it. I might tear up and cry.

So please, please help me make that a reality. Please help me make that dream come true. I will travel anywhere. I will go to any state.

Will I go to any country?

I probably will go to any country. If the offer is juicy enough, I’ll do it. I’ll go anywhere, anytime, anyplace. Please help me out.

Also, it has to be humane, okay? I don’t want anything inhumane. It has to be humane. That’s all I want for Christmas.

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, I’m not sure we ever updated the listeners that Garrett now cries.

We broke the barrier. We cracked it.

Yeah, it was painful, but he can cry now.

I’ve seen him cry a lot.

P has seen me cry, so we’re making progress over here. Not sure if it was a 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 doesn’t even have to be a cub.

Okay, it does have 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 in some place 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 and track it and stuff?

Garrett wants to do that but sponsor a cub instead.

Yeah, but I want to be there with the cub.

Yes.

Anyways, I’m beating a dead horse at the moment.

Okay, bad phrase. I am repeating myself. Dragging it on.

Here 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 cub in it.

Our sources for this episode are Dateline Season 20, Episode 2; oxygen.com; live5news.com; abcnews.com; wistv.com; poster.com; charleston.com; sportsk.com; and happyscrap.tf.

In life, we trust that we are supported, that we are loved, and that we are safe. It’s how we’re able to meet new people, make new friends, and build relationships. But trust is a delicate thing. 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 2009, she was on a train when another woman sat down beside her. 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 she met on the train to 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 5, 1981, Thomas and Janice Waring welcomed a little girl named Catherine — or Kate, as her friends and family called her.

Kate was a pretty lucky girl because she was born into wealth. Her family came from a good amount of generational wealth and even had a house along the Battery, which is a highly coveted street right along the ocean. This all goes to say that the Warings were well-known and well-connected in Charleston, and they had been for decades. It certainly helped that Thomas, her father, was a prominent lawyer in the city.

Kate, being the only girl in her family — sandwiched between an older and younger brother — 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. People who knew the Warings said that 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, going out of her way to make an outcast feel welcome.

She was also intelligent — maybe even to her own detriment — because school didn’t exactly challenge her. It bored her, and that boredom eventually started to cause other problems for Kate as she entered her teenage years.

Kate’s mother, Janice, noticed that her daughter had a tendency to run toward risk. Kate found herself experimenting with drugs and drinking at a fairly early age. Over the years, she struggled with those addictions as well as eating disorders and depression. When Kate started attending therapy, the family learned what the root cause of these issues had been — Kate had been sexually abused by someone the family knew.

Growing up, she did her best to work through her trauma and coping mechanisms. With the help of her parents, she pushed forward. This meant moving in and out of their house several times over the years.

It’s sad that most sexual abuse cases involve someone the family knows or someone within the family. That’s horrible, especially because, for so long, we were taught to fear strangers. But in reality, the people most dangerous to you are often already in your life.

Thomas, her father, even set Kate up with a bank account that he controlled so they could regulate her expenses together. This sort of support from her parents actually helped Kate turn her life around.

Eventually, Kate went to the University of North Carolina at 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 you were asking for in your 10 seconds.

No way. There’s a cheetah cub in the story?

No, but in 2008, Kate and her father went to the Arctic to see polar bears.

Okay, I see what you're saying.

During that trip, a Russian crewman commented on how quickly Kate was picking up his language. He invited her to come visit him in Moscow. So, she’s in the Arctic, she meets a Russian crewman, and he’s like, “Hey, 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.

This seems outlandish to us, but maybe if you grow up in a family with a lot of wealth, it's just normal. Like, "Hey, let's go to the Arctic to see the polar bears," and then, "Oh, I guess I’ll go to Russia now to hang out." And then, "Now I’m just going to go study there because I can."

Yeah, that’s true. It seems weird to us, but it 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 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 once the paperwork was all sorted out.

Kate was obviously heartbroken. She’d had this huge plan, and on the day it was supposed to happen, it all fell apart. But she wasn’t going to let it set her back. She hopped on a train from D.C. back down to Charleston, thinking she’d just take a college course there in the meantime. She even considered starting the children’s book she’d been thinking about writing.

But as Kate was sitting on that train from D.C. back home — this close to getting out of the country and 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. Heather told Kate she’d just had her own stroke of bad luck — her pocketbook had been stolen right before she got on the train.

What year are we in?

2009.

Okay. Maybe it’s because I grew up on the West Coast, but it feels like there are way more trains on the East Coast.

For sure, there are more trains on the East Coast.

But I’m just saying, they’re talking about taking the train like it’s the most normal thing. I guess DC to everywhere must be a big train route.

I’m about to sound uneducated, but we’re about to get slandered.

Slander me, I don’t care.

No, but when I lived in Spain for a few years, all I did was take the subway and trains. But the public transportation on the West Coast? It’s not like that. There’s no subway in California, right? I mean, yeah, there are trains, but they’re not great.

Yeah, that’s fair.

Anyway, back to the story. Heather’s like, “Yeah, I understand your visa situation. I just got my pocketbook stolen.” Heather told Kate she was a doctor — a pediatric surgeon, actually — who was moving to Charleston to work at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Heather’s like, “I don’t really know anyone in the area, but since we’re kind of hitting it off, maybe we should stay in touch.”

But Kate takes it a step further. She offers to help Heather get on her feet and lend a hand if she needs anything until she gets her credit cards back.

Heather acted incredibly grateful. The two kept chatting even after that ride. In fact, they grew so close that Kate introduced Heather to one of her best friends, a guy named Ethan Mack.

Ethan and Kate had been close friends for a while. Kate often said Ethan was like a big brother to her. He looked out for her, he protected her, and while it was strictly platonic between them, Kate thought her single friend Ethan might hit it off with Heather, this girl she’d just met on the train.

And Kate was right. She introduced her new friend Heather to her old friend Ethan, and the two started dating. Things seemed pretty solid between them.

Even when Heather experienced a terrible tragedy.

She told everyone that her young daughter, who was back in New Jersey, had passed away in a car accident.

Wait, she had a daughter?

Yeah, Heather was a mom. She had a young daughter back in New Jersey. She told her new group of friends that her daughter had passed away in a car accident.

When Kate shared this devastating news with her mother, Janice, Janice was suspicious. After interacting with Heather, she said, "She does not seem like a grieving mother in distress."

Not only that, but Heather also wasn’t in a rush to get back to New Jersey to be with her family. That raised even more red flags for Janice.

It got even stranger when, a few months later, Heather told Janice that her other child, a young son, had died of leukemia several years earlier.

Wait, what? So she’s had two kids? One died in a car accident and the other died of leukemia?

Yep. Two children. One died in a tragic accident, and one died of leukemia.

And she doesn’t live or hasn’t been living with these kids?

Exactly. It was odd.

But Kate, her friend, 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 feeling persisted seemingly into June of 2009.

It's interesting, though. Wouldn't you start asking questions at some point or try to get to know people on a deeper level? Right? I mean, it's hard because this is the parents' point of view of the friendship. They're like, "It just seemed weird," but Kate didn't seem worried. She seemed happy.

Friday, June 12th, was a day like any other for Kate. That afternoon, she went to the gym. She stopped at a CVS Pharmacy around 8:00 p.m., where security cameras showed her looking relaxed. She was buying wine and snacks while waiting for a prescription to be refilled. Then, she met Heather and Ethan for dinner a short distance away at a Japanese steakhouse. They spent a few hours there, drinking, laughing, and having a good time.

That's when Ethan and Heather broke the news to Kate: "We're getting engaged! Wait, no... we're pregnant." Heather was pregnant. Yep, 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 were the three best friends.

At around 11:30 p.m., they called it a night, and Ethan offered to drive Kate home.

The following morning, though, Tom Waring went to check on Kate in her bedroom, but Kate wasn't there. Her medicine was, though — a prescription for depression, anxiety, and insomnia.

"Holy crap," you might think.

If this goes where I think it's going, this is going to be wild.

This was medicine that Kate never left home without for long. So Tom and Janice called Kate repeatedly throughout the day, but to no avail. By Sunday morning, with still no sign of their daughter, they started to suspect the worst. They wondered if Kate might have fallen back into old habits. Was there a relapse they needed to be concerned about?

Usually, in these kinds of cases, parents are worried that someone has hurt their loved one. But these parents were worried that Kate might have gone back to her old ways. So, they started calling around to Kate's friends and other family members. But no one had seen her. They even called local hospitals to see if Kate — or any Jane Doe — had shown up. Still, there was nothing.

At this point, they figured, "Okay, our daughter is 28 years old. Maybe she just met someone, spent the night with him, or was hanging out with him." They wondered if she had somehow figured out her visa situation and caught a flight to Russia.

They decided to give it one more day to see if Kate returned or if anything changed. But it didn't.

By Monday, June 15th, they called the Charleston Police Department. By now, Kate's parents also realized she hadn't used any of her credit cards or bank accounts since the night they last saw her.

Kate's parents had access to all of her finances, despite the fact that she was 28, as a form of protection. The day after filing a report with the police, they received a phone call from Kate's bank. The branch manager had alarming news — someone had come in trying to cash what looked like a forged check from Kate's checkbook.

For how much?

$4,500.

But Kate had barely $100 in that account at the time. This was not the kind of news you want to hear when your daughter is missing. Still, it was at least a clue.

When Thomas Waring got a hold of the check, he saw who it was made out to. He contacted the bank, asking, "Tell me who, who, who got the check?"

No way. It was made out to Ethan.

Ethan Mack.

This was Kate's longtime best friend, and the check was dated June 12th — the day Kate was last seen.

That's crazy.

The Warings took this information to the police, telling them, "Okay, yes, you need to question Ethan. This girl is missing, and someone tried to forge a check. It's probably Ethan."

Ethan seemed very willing to cooperate with police. He admitted he had seen Kate the night she went missing, June 12th, and claimed she gave him that check. He said he had lent her a bunch of cash recently for a piece of jewelry she wanted, and this check was her paying him back. He insisted he had no idea she didn't have enough money in her account to cover it. If he had known, he wouldn't have even tried cashing it.

Okay, so that's possible.

He also claimed that after dinner on Friday, he drove Kate home to her parents' house on The Battery. She got out of the car around 11:45 p.m., and he said he hadn't heard from her since. He wasn’t concerned, though. He told police, "Listen, it's normal for Kate to sort of disappear from time to time and not call or text me back."

Ethan even allowed police to look at his phone, and they saw text messages that seemed to confirm his story. Plus, when they asked, Ethan agreed to let them search the house he was living in — the one he shared with his mother. The police didn't find anything of interest there either.

So, Ethan left the police station that day without being named a suspect.

This is where it gets a little weird.

After leaving the police station, Ethan called the Warings and left a voicemail on their landline. He wasn’t happy with Kate's parents. He told them, "All I ever did was look out for Kate. Stop wasting your time and find out what really happened to her." He seemed genuinely concerned about Kate, but he was also frustrated. He asked, "Why did you not just talk to me about the check? Why did you go to the police about it?"

At this point, police decided to move on to a new witness. They figured they needed to talk to more people and get a clearer picture of what was going on in Kate's life.

One of those people was Kate's ex-boyfriend, a man named Howard Gatch.

Howard and Kate had met at the gym she went to. He was a martial arts trainer, but he was also in the middle of a pretty ugly divorce when he and Kate started dating.

On the day Kate went missing, she actually saw Howard. Since she didn't have a driver's license, he gave her a ride to her therapist's office. According to Howard, she seemed to be in really good spirits. He even saw her out and about about an hour and a half later at the gym.

However, there was apparently an altercation at the gym that day. Howard's ex-wife was also there that afternoon, and some people said she and Kate had exchanged words. Whatever was said, it wasn't enough to ruin Kate's entire day because, as we know, she still went out to dinner with Ethan and Heather later that evening.

At 10:15 p.m. that night, Kate called Howard. It's unclear what they talked about, but Howard said that wasn't the last time they spoke that night. According to him, they talked again around 12:30 a.m., during which Kate told him she was still hanging out with Ethan and Heather.

This is about 45 minutes after Ethan claimed he had dropped Kate off at her home.

When police learned this, they realized there was a discrepancy in the timeline. Something wasn't adding up.

Plus, Howard told police that when he spoke to Kate during their last call, she sounded a little buzzed. He also claimed that during that conversation, he warned her to be careful around Heather. Howard had met Heather before, and according to him, there was something that just felt off about her. When he shared his concerns with Kate, she laughed them off.

Later that night, Howard received a strange text from Kate. She said she was heading to Greenville to "pick up some lovey." Whether "lovey" referred to drugs or something else, Howard didn't know. By the time he inquired about it the following day, Kate was already missing. She never responded.

Around this same time, police received another interesting tip. On June 12th, the last day Kate was seen, she called her friend Jason Luck and left a voicemail. In the message, Kate was ranting that someone had stolen her identity and was trying to open credit cards in her name.

This lines up with something Kate had told her father that same day. Just before she left for CVS and then dinner, she mentioned to her dad that she may have "unintentionally gotten herself in trouble." When Thomas pressed her for more details, she wouldn't offer any. He assumed it had to do with someone stealing her identity.

Here's the thing — police had all this information, but they didn’t move forward on any of it for weeks. Despite how prominent the Warings were in Charleston — a legacy family, no less — Kate's case didn’t gain any traction. In fact, it stalled.

Police had several strange angles they could have pursued. There were multiple suspicious events on the day Kate was last seen. She knew a lot of people, and there were plenty of possible leads. But police did nothing.

The Warings weren’t about to sit around and wait for the Charleston PD to get a miraculous tip. So, two months after Kate went missing, they hired their own star team of investigators to figure out where their daughter went and what might have happened to her.

I haven't said much because I think I know where this is going. You're kind of getting torn every which way. I mean, if I were to guess from everything so far, obviously it has something to do with Heather. I'm kind of curious—like, who is Heather, actually? Who's Heather?

The story starts with Andrew Savage, a local attorney who has an incredible team of people who can investigate crimes even when the police aren't. That team includes former police officers James Randolph, Bill Caps, and Bobby Mentor.

Bobby was known as a sort of human bloodhound, excellent at following a trail. Detective Bill was the tech guy who could find almost anything on the internet. Detective James was great at thinking outside the box, shaking things up, and talking to witnesses.

One of the first people this team of three speaks to is Kate's therapist. They ask, "Can you tell us anything? Was there anything weird going on in Kate's life? Can you let us know anything?"

What they learn is that Kate had been having issues with her longtime friend, Ethan, ever since she introduced him to Heather. Apparently, she had told her therapist that she was planning to distance herself from the couple, despite the fact that the three of them had become close friends. Clearly, that plan wasn't successful if she was still out with them on the night she disappeared.

But the investigators learn something else the police didn't know—Ethan had lied to them about where he was living at the time of Kate's 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 he would lie about that because now it's just going to blow up. He told the police, "Oh yeah, I'm staying with my mom," but he was actually living with his girlfriend. So now they find out, and instantly, he's a suspect. Idiot.

As this team of investigators digs deeper, they learn that Ethan wasn't the only one keeping secrets in Kate's life. Heather—her so-called best friend, the one she met on a train—had plenty of secrets of her own.

What a surprise.

In fact, Heather had been lying to Kate practically from the moment they met.

Is her name even Heather?

Apparently, Howard and Kate's mother, Janice, were right about Heather. (Howard was Kate's ex-boyfriend.) Something was definitely off with this 31-year-old woman. Not only did she not have a license to practice medicine, like she had claimed, but she also had an extensive criminal record for fraud.

It takes just one background check to find this out.

And get this—unauthorized practice of medicine on a child.

In 2009, Heather took a blood sample from a six-year-old girl she was babysitting. The girl's parents, of course, pressed charges when they learned Heather wasn't actually a doctor.

But the lies didn’t stop with Heather’s fake medical career.

Despite what she told Kate and Ethan, Heather had been married before. And those stories she told about her children dying from leukemia and in a car accident? Those were lies too.

As far as any of the sources suggest, Heather had four children. They were all alive and well. She had apparently just run off to Charleston and started a new life.

The fact that she was pregnant with Ethan's child at this time was also a lie—one that Ethan was not aware of. In fact, it doesn't seem like Ethan knew any of this about the girlfriend he was living with.

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?

No. She catfished them.

I believe Ethan had no idea, but how do you have a significant other and not know them?

Because people are manipulative. And if you never ask, "Hey, let's go visit your family," you might never know. They just lie, and the lies keep going and going and going.

When I met you, the first thing I did when I got home was run a background check on you.

Oh, and what came up?

I didn't actually do it. It would have cost me a dollar.

If I had known that, I would have...

I'm just kidding. No, I didn’t actually do it. But I’m just saying—that's pretty crazy.

So Ethan doesn’t know any of this, but the private investigators hired by the Warings learned it almost immediately. 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.

Imagine the Warings telling the investigators, "Her kids have died, and she practices medicine, and she's pregnant," blah, blah, blah. And the investigators are like, "No, she has four kids, and they're alive. She’s never practiced medicine, and she’s not pregnant."

It would be gut-wrenching.

After finding Heather and Ethan’s new apartment, Detective Bobby convinces their landlord to help them out. The landlord agrees to put a small camera in his window, which points directly at Ethan and Heather’s place. It’s like his own little Ring doorbell, if you will.

They also put a tracker on Ethan’s car so they know where he is at all times.

But here’s what they discover: while Ethan is away—at work or wherever he goes during the day—Heather is sneaking over to the neighbor’s house and having an affair with a 31-year-old guy named Terry Williams.

The investigators have to consider whether this guy, Terry, might be involved in some way too.

After a few weeks of watching Ethan and Heather for more suspicious activity, they get a phone call from the couple’s landlord. He says, "Hey, they haven’t paid their rent. If they don’t pay soon, I’m going to have to evict them."

This is a problem because if Ethan and Heather move, it might be difficult for the investigators to maintain the same level of surveillance at the new place.

So, Mr. Waring authorizes something unusual—he agrees to pay the couple’s rent, as long as his detectives can keep surveilling them.

Wow.

And he’s like, "Also, I’m kind of doing you a favor here, so if I need anything from you, Mr. Landlord, please help me out."

After they grease the landlord’s palms and pay the rent, they ask him, "Hey, do you have anything in writing from the couple? We want to see if the handwriting matches that forged check Ethan was trying to cash. Did it come from our daughter, or did it come from them?"

Sure enough, the landlord hands over some IOUs that were written by the couple. After turning in the forged check to a handwriting analyst, they confirm it’s definitely a match. The check was written by Heather. There was no doubt about it.

Now, investigators are thinking, "Okay, if they have Kate’s checkbook and she’s missing, what else are they involved with?" They know they need to step up their game.

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 look around?"

The landlord says, "Yeah, go ahead. Go into my house that I own and rent to these people. You can do that."

Is that even legal?

No idea. But maybe because it’s the landlord’s property, he can give permission to search the house.

I would assume not, but I don't know.

I mean, you have to think about it like a hotel. They can have permission to search a room, right?

Yeah, but I think there are more rights involved with renting or leasing a place. I’m not sure.

Some attorney or lawyer out there, let me know.

If it was illegal, they probably wouldn’t have done it. They’re retired police, after all.

That’s true. If it were illegal, they wouldn’t have been able to submit any of that as evidence.

Exactly.

When the team gets into Ethan and Heather's apartment, they don’t find any signs of Kate. But they do use the opportunity to go speak with the neighbor—Terry Williams.

They don’t show up empty-handed. Instead, they arrive with a big bag of cash.

They tell Terry, "Look, we know you’re also behind on your rent. This could all be yours if you just tell us what happened to Kate Waring."

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 within earshot, they hear Heather sneak a phone call to Ethan.

She’s telling Ethan that investigators were trying to get Terry to "roll on us."

That’s when the investigators look at each other and think, "Ethan’s definitely involved. Ethan and Heather did something to Kate."

Holy crap. I can’t believe Ethan’s involved.

I know. That’s wild.

The police—or rather, the private detectives—are on to them.

But that doesn't stop them from paying Terry another visit.

Since he could really use that cash, he gives them something in return—an iPod.

One that Heather gifted him just days after Kate disappeared.

It’s Kate’s iPod.

It’s the same iPod Kate was seen using at the gym the day she vanished.

No way, dude.

To be absolutely sure, the investigators pull the serial number off the iPod and confirm it was one Kate purchased herself.

It is Kate’s iPod.

With all this information, they decide it’s time to go to the Charleston Police.

They tell them, "Hey, we’ve been working on this case while you haven’t, 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 Heather’s sleeping with him?

Maybe, maybe not. She could’ve just said, "Oh, Terry the neighbor came over."

True. Sources obviously aren’t saying what exactly was said.

But something’s definitely going on there.

As this is going on—while the private detectives are going to the Charleston Police—Heather Camp is trying to get ahead of the accusations. She calls the Charleston Police too.

At the same time, Charleston Police are hearing from the private investigators and from suspect number one—Heather.

Heather says, "Um, I... I have a confession to make, but it’s not about murder."

Heather admits, "Okay, I was the one who forged the check."

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. 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 Warings' 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 a spot on Wadmalaw Island, just south of Charleston.

That afternoon, the team follows her instructions down to the very tree where Heather told them to look—but they find nothing.

With the sun starting to set, they promise to return tomorrow.

This time, they follow a new path.

Sure enough, Detective Bobby Mentor—the human bloodhound—spots something.

After only six minutes of searching the area, they find Kate Waring's remains right where Heather said they'd be.

The investigators immediately dial 911 because, remember, they’re PIs—not actual police officers.

But here’s what’s so shocking.

When the police arrive, they separate the private investigators and put them in the back of police cars.

They treat these former officers—who just solved the case and found the missing body—like criminals.

They even seize Bill Caps' car, one of the investigators’ vehicles, and bring them all in for questioning.

While the investigators are released that night, Bill has to file a mountain of paperwork just to get his car back.

Bill had served 36 years as a police officer, so you can imagine how shocked he was to be treated this way after bringing the police a solved case.

They were basically saying, "Hey, it’s Heather and Ethan. Heather called us and told us where the body is."

Still, it seemed like their hard work paid off.

Not only had they done what they promised—bringing Kate Waring home to her parents—but they were also able to get Heather Camp and Ethan Mack charged with murder.

But one question still remained—why did Heather and Ethan want to kill Kate?

Once prosecutors start looking into the case, they come up with a pretty strong theory for the motive.

Remember, Kate had told her father and some friends that she was in trouble. She said someone had been trying to extend her credit limit and assume her identity to steal her money.

Prosecutors think Kate might have threatened to get her father involved.

And that’s when Heather and Ethan snapped.

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."

That’s when they freaked out.

It looked like prosecutors might be able to confirm that theory when Heather agreed to plead guilty to charges of voluntary manslaughter, forgery, and obstruction of justice—all for a shorter sentence.

But with that deal, Heather also agreed to testify against her boyfriend, Ethan.

That day came in October 2010, when Ethan's trial began. During the trial, Heather took the stand to offer the full story of what happened to Kate Waring—or at least her version of those events.

This is what she told the jury:

On the night of June 12th, she and Ethan brought Kate back to their apartment on James Island after dinner.

In the weeks leading up to that night, Kate had threatened to go to her father if they ever tried to take her money again. But it seems Kate believed they had cleared the air. She continued her friendship with Ethan and Heather, perhaps trusting that the past was behind them and they could start fresh.

But, according to Heather, 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.

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.

He then put Kate—still unconscious—into a suitcase and placed it in a bathtub filled with water.

Oh my gosh.

He drowned her.

But here’s the thing—Heather changes her story a lot on the stand.

Jurors are like, "We can’t trust this woman."

How could they? She’s been lying her whole life.

She’s a known con artist—someone who stooped as low as to lie about her own children dying when they were fully alive. She even pretended to be a doctor and took the blood of a child.

How do you trust her?

Ultimately, the jury wasn’t convinced by her story.

When it came time for Ethan's verdict, the jury found him guilty of obstruction of justice and forgery, but they couldn’t reach a consensus on the murder charges.

They were like, "We don't know if this is actually what happened because we don't trust your star witness."

So, it was declared a mistrial.

Wow.

Ethan was sentenced to 15 years for the forgery and obstruction of justice charges. Rather than go through the whole trial process again, he decided to take a plea deal in April 2011.

He was given an additional 25 years for involuntary manslaughter.

As for the lighter sentence Heather had been hoping to get for testifying against Ethan?

That deal was taken off the table when she changed her story so many times on the stand.

Prosecutors told her, "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 are a lot of people who think that if the Charleston Police had handled Kate’s case with more urgency, Heather and Ethan would have been put away for life.

They didn’t actually get as harsh of a sentence as many people think they deserved.

Apparently, after Heather and Ethan were arrested, their apartment wasn’t even properly searched. It was simply turned back over to the landlord so he could re-rent it.

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 in that apartment.

So, there wasn’t much physical evidence at all.

Outside of the confessions and a few forged checks, they had no blood, no DNA, and no weapon.

When it came time for trial, they had nothing concrete to prove, without a doubt, that Ethan and Heather did it.

You have to wonder—would Kate have even been found if it weren’t for the investigators the Warings hired?

Would this case have just gone cold?

Would Heather and Ethan still be walking free?

Because if it weren’t for the PIs who solved Kate’s case, Ethan and Heather could be out there right now, preying on their next kind, compassionate, and trusting victim.

And might I add—not every victim has a family who can hire a team of skilled private investigators to solve their loved one’s case.

And that is the case of Kate Waring.

Yeah, 100%—it might not have even been solved if they hadn’t hired PIs, which is crazy.

Right?

Yeah, I don’t know. It’s horrible. Extremely sad.

Kate didn’t do anything wrong.

Ethan and Heather are just evil human beings.

Ethan, of all people—he killed his own best friend for money.

What a loser. Just an evil, selfish person.

I don't get it.

And Heather, being a con artist from the start, lying to Kate—when Kate was nothing but kind to her on that train.

Yeah, it's horrible.

Kate just put all her trust in her friends.

I also think it would be extremely frustrating for Kate’s parents.

To know that the police didn’t take your daughter’s disappearance seriously, didn’t investigate it properly, and then—when the case was handed to them on a silver platter, paid for by the Warings—they botched it again.

They didn’t even close off the crime scene or secure proof.

I mean, yeah, Ethan and Heather got prison time, but at the same time, as a family seeking justice—when you basically solved the case yourself—it’s got to be incredibly frustrating.

Yeah, I agree.

Alright, you guys, we’ll see you next time with another episode.

I love it.

And I hate it.

Goodbye.

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