Heather Elvis case analysis II: Things aren't what they seem

Over the past several weeks I've been closely observing the Heather Elvis case, which has become a circus much like these high profile cases tend to do. In my first part of this analysis, I pondered on the possibility of Heather being taken and killed (or held captive, albeit an uncommon theory) by a serial predator -- what with all the women missing in this region of South Carolina over the past several years.

While I have not fully abandoned the possibility that Heather was the victim of a random predator who seeks out young attractive women, it would be intellectually dishonest to ignore the blatant suspicion in this case surrounding a particular married couple who lives in the Myrtle Beach area. You may remember the post I wrote about the telephone interview between myself and Tammy Ciason Moorer (click here). The public suspicion against her and her husband Sidney Moorer is at a critical high, and it's come to the point that there is a sort of lynch mob after them. While it's completely wrong of people to form a mob against a couple who have not been arrested, charged or convicted of any crime, there is something important that needs to be pointed out that was not necessarily known for a fact back when I interviewed Tammy Caison Moorer:  She and her husband are suspects in Heather Elvis's disappearance.
As you can see by the above police report image, the story being offered here is a little bit different from the story told to me on the phone by Tammy Caison Moorer. Does this mean Tammy Moorer was lying to me on the phone? I'm not a "human lie detector," but I will not lie when I say that the wife of Sidney Moorer did in fact raise red flags while I talked to her. Nonetheless, the content of our discussion didn't contain any evidence that either she or Sidney had a thing to do with Heather's disappearance. I should also point out that the video evidence given by one of the searchers appears to only have the last bit of the conflict, and not the beginning -- which would have been useful. So far, this does not prove that nobody was on the property necessarily, but it does differ slightly from Tammy's story.

I want to believe Tammy Caison Moorer, but I did not speak to Sidney Moorer. I cannot gauge whether or not both of them are honest. However, Tammy came across as a wife who desperately wants to clear her husband's name -- and by proxy clearing her family of any animosity shown by the Horry County community toward them. She was consistently insistent that Sidney Moorer had only had sex with Heather Elvis three times just as she had declared in a screenshot that's been circulating the net. However, there were conflicts between our phone discussion and comments she made on Facebook. In the screenshot below (the one previously mentioned) you see that she refers to her husband as "stupid" and that he "cheated" on her.
She also uses a common "armor" defense -- by referring to her boyfriend, and mentioning that she didn't care about Sidney's extramarital affair. I do not feel that this is suspicious  behavior -- not necessarily. It seems, though, that she has either crafted the "open relationship" story to protect her husband after she "said too much" on Facebook. Or the two of them really did have an open relationship and it's something that she personally struggles with. The latter would be a common phenomenon, and the former is also a possibility. How relevant is this information? I really don't feel it's entirely relevant. However, she does appear to hold animosity toward Heather, but it seems that this came after the point that Terry Elvis and others who are searching for the missing woman have made her feel threatened. So is her behavior normal or abnormal? I'm just not convinced enough of either option.

Nonetheless, I couldn't avoid taking notice of how insistent she was in her defense of her husband. She was (in her defense of him) 100% certain that he had nothing to do with Heather's disappearance, and 100% certain that their affair was just sex, three times. She seemed to really want to protect Sidney, which is typical of a devoted wife. However, her insistence of his devotion to her and his innocence in this crime has me a little concerned -- if not for the case, but for her in general. Maybe she just doesn't want to believe that he's involved, or maybe she just doesn't want to believe that hey may have told Heather that he'd leave his wife for her. And really, what this all boils down to is that most of what is being said in this case is nearly impossible to substantiate. How are we sure of what Heather and Sidney said to one another at all? One thing has stayed consistent, and that is Sidney's claim that he last talked to Heather to tell her to leave him alone.

She also seemed extremely insistent that that she was not a jealous wife. She was not jealous of Heather and Sidney's sexual relationship, which she maintains was brief. So, if she was not a jealous wife, why would she harm the woman? Could all of this just be a ploy to deflect suspicion? Probably, and probably not. How would one of us react if put suddenly in the public eye as a suspect in a crime?  Overall, I didn't detect any weird tones in the woman's voice. She didn't raise her voice, nor did she reach a high pitch when answering questions. She didn't direct conversation away from topics, and she was very conversational. Anyone can be fooled, even extremely seasoned experts (which I admittedly am not), but it seems to me that Tammy Caison Moorer is a woman who deeply loves her husband and is willing to defend him to hell and back -- which is not a crime, and is definitely not something to scoff at, unless she's willing to even commit a crime (or series of crimes) for him. And I just can't determine with any honesty that she has.

While it's been confirmed that Tammy and Sidney are (either one or both of them) suspects in Heather's disappearance, it's important to keep in mind that they may not be responsible. It's hard to see the rational facts in this case when there are so many people passionately rallying to attack the Moorer family, even resorting to threats of violence and crimes against innocent children. I've even read one quote where a woman in the area said that not even their children are innocent in her eyes. These mentalities exist in just about any high profile missing persons case, but they are terrible examples of just how dangerous it can be to simply know a victim of a crime.

Two things stand in this: Heather remains missing and nobody has been arrested. So the uncertainty in this case is just going to remain, but for how long?