[tense music]
‐ It is incredibly rare
for criminal defendants to take the stand.
It's a risk very few take.
At stake, one's freedom, or even their life.
This is Tammy Moorer, mother of three,
charged with kidnapping 20‐year‐old Heather Elvis.
She's decided to take that gamble.
Will it help her convince the jury she's not guilty...
‐ Or will it come back to haunt her?
‐ Take a courtside seat with the investigator,
the defense attorney,
the prosecutor,
and the reporter who covered the case.
I'm Dan Abrams, and this is "Under Oath."
‐ Raise your right hand. ‐ Do you solemnly swear...
‐ I'm being honest with everything I say to you.
‐ Do you solemnly swear...
‐ To tell the truth and nothing but the truth?
‐ I would like to testify.
‐ The testimony you are about to give...
‐ The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
‐ So help you God.
♪ ♪
‐ And there was some dirty words.
I'm not gonna say them, because I've said enough.
I can sit here and wonder
how many married men you've slept with,
but I'm not gonna judge you on that,
because that doesn't mean you killed somebody.
It doesn't mean you kidnapped somebody.
‐ Did you kidnap Heather Elvis?
‐ No, I did not.
♪ ♪
‐ This case has everything
that a movie mystery might have.
It has sex, lies, and then all these rumors
of pregnancy going around, and the affair.
People were drawn to this story immediately,
and it has held their attention for years.
‐ Heather Elvis, a 20‐year‐old waitress from Myrtle Beach,
disappeared in 2013
after having an affair with 37‐year‐old Sidney Moorer.
She's never been found.
Sidney's wife, Tammy Moorer,
stands accused of kidnapping and conspiracy
to kidnap her husband's young mistress.
Tammy, however, has maintained her innocence from day one.
Tammy Moorer and her attorney have made a big decision.
She'll take the stand to try to prove her innocence.
It is a rare and risky move.
‐ Did you cooperate with the police investigation?
‐ The second they contacted us,
we have tried to help in every way we could.
‐ All right.
‐ The victim in this case,
Heather Elvis, grew up here in Horry County.
She was an all‐around local girl.
She at the time, worked at Tilted Kilt,
which was a restaurant here in Myrtle Beach,
and she had a roommate,
and they were sharing an apartment.
‐ Heather went missing on December 18, 2013.
Her vehicle was found in this really dark area
of Horry County in the Socastee area,
and it's called Peachtree Landing.
‐ Peachtree Landing is desolate.
Literally if it was at night
and you weren't paying attention
you would drive right into the river.
No public lights.
Just a piece of asphalt next to a river on a dead‐end road.
That's Peachtree Landing, where her car was located.
♪ ♪
‐ All of a sudden, you had this very young girl,
20 years old, who was missing.
♪ ♪
‐ There were big signs of "Heather Elvis: Missing,"
and the community was just trying to find her.
It was a pretty big situation out here in Myrtle Beach.
‐ The last numbers that contacted Heather
before she went missing belonged to her roommate,
the guy that she had gone on a date with,
and Sidney Moorer.
♪ ♪
The only person at the time
that did not have an alibi was Sidney Moorer.
‐ Heather met Sidney at the Tilted Kilt.
He had been working there doing maintenance,
and she was a waitress.
Heather was 20,
and Sidney was in his late 30s,
and he was married.
‐ After Heather Elvis disappeared,
my job at the time
was to examine Tammy's cell phone
as well as her husband Sidney Moorer's cell phone,
to see what kind of data could be pulled.
From June, July, up until the first part of November,
there was constant contact
between Heather Elvis and Sidney Moorer.
‐ In early November,
Tammy Moorer found out about the relationship.
‐ And at that point in time, Tammy confront Heather Elvis
as to what the relationship was
between her and her husband.
‐ "Who is this?" Received.
"Nobody you need to worry about anymore." Sent.
"It's best you call back and speak immediately.
Save yourself."
"You ready to meet the Mrs.?"
‐ Shortly after that all communication between
Heather Elvis and Sidney Moorer stopped.
‐ There's no contacted between the two of them up the night
she went missing about a month and a half later.
♪ ♪
‐ That night, December 18th, there was surveillance video
of who is presumed to be Sidney Moorer
using a pay phone outside of a gas station.
One thing that prosecutors struggled with
is that this wasn't
great quality surveillance video of this pay phone.
It was hard to tell who exactly was using the pay phone.
But records show that Heather Elvis received a call
from that pay phone around that time.
‐ A few minutes earlier,
about three blocks from the pay phone,
Sidney Moorer is also captured on surveillance camera
in Walmart buying a pregnancy test.
The theory was that Heather was pregnant.
‐ Could this possible baby between Sidney and Heather
have caused her disappearance?
‐ Heather called Sidney, and they talk again
around 3:00 a. m. in the morning.
‐ Heather Elvis then goes to Peachtree Landing,
which is probably one of the darkest areas in Horry County.
‐ It's not long after that that surveillance captured
what appeared to be the Moorers' truck
also heading to Peachtree Landing.
‐ About the time their truck would have reached the landing
is when Heather Elvis' phone dies,
and we never hear from it again.
‐ But there was some criticism of this video.
Again, this was back in 2013.
This wasn't very high‐quality footage.
‐ Look, there was some suspicious things,
the grainy footage, somebody they say that that's him,
and then the footage of his truck
going toward the boat landing and back.
All of that could be true, and it could be true
that Sidney Moorer was the culprit.
But Tammy wasn't calling her.
No one said Tammy drove the truck in that direction.
So if you look at it like that,
the case against Tammy Moorer
is that she's married to Sidney Moorer,
and Sidney Moorer had an affair with a woman.
His phone talked to her phone, and then no one saw her again.
That's it. That's the case. That's the entire case.
‐ Now, Sidney Moorer was already tried
for the crime in 2016, and did not take the stand.
But his kidnapping trial ended in a hung jury
after jurors couldn't agree on a verdict.
He was set to be retried.
But if jurors couldn't even agree whether he was involved
when so much of the prosecution's evidence
connected him to the victim,
how could they ever hope to convict Tammy?
‐ The conspiracy, which they're charged with,
it's because they're doing all this together.
Tammy has the motive, but Sidney has the means.
It takes Sidney to lure her out.
It takes them both working together.
‐ In the five years since Heather went missing,
the public response to Tammy Moorer
has not been particularly sympathetic.
‐ People definitely and very effectively
vilified Tammy Moorer.
It was never, "The poor woman is raising these kids,
home‐schooling these kids, and her husband's off
having an affair with this younger woman."
‐ So people were shocked
that Tammy was gonna walk up to the stand
and make her own defense in this case.
‐ Tammy Caison Moorer, M‐O‐O‐R‐E‐R.
‐ When Tammy took the stand, all eyes,
all ears were at attention.
We wanted to hear what she had to see.
‐ Tammy Moorer is on trial
charged with kidnapping in connection
with the disappearance of her husband's 20‐year‐old
girlfriend Heather Elvis in December of 2013.
It's been five years since Heather went missing
in a devastating loss for her grieving family.
‐ This is a story about jealousy and deceit.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall.
Who is the fairest of them all?"
And everything was fine
as long as she saw her reflection in the mirror.
‐ Because there's no body to even prove
that Heather died, prosecutors charged Moorer
with kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap
since they believe she worked together
with her husband to abduct Heather.
They portrayed a defendant motivated by jealousy
and an unexpected pregnancy.
‐ When we presented the evidence,
the first thing we went into was the fact
that Heather may have been pregnant at the time.
‐ Heather's roommate at the time testified that
leading up to when Heather went missing
she had noticed that Heather had put on some weight.
She had to buy new clothes to wear on a day‐to‐day basis.
‐ She gained weight, and I know that,
because she had to show off her fancy
new Victoria's Secret bra she bought.
‐ She also needed new clothes to wear to work.
‐ She had taken a pregnancy test at one point,
but it had come back as an error or inconclusive.
‐ Prosecutors pointed to this being a possible motive
of her disappearance.
‐ In Tammy Moorer's case, we've got some rumors
that Heather Elvis
might have been pregnant‐‐not that she was pregnant,
not that she said she was pregnant,
not that we have a positive pregnancy test.
So this whole pregnancy thing
was kind of a manufactured motive,
if you will, as far as I'm concerned.
‐ The state's case, however, relied on more
than a possible pregnancy.
The night of Heather's disappearance,
investigators say the Moorers were caught on camera
in multiple locations around Myrtle Beach.
‐ Being that the state didn't have any real hard evidence,
as far as fingerprints or blood or eyewitnesses,
some of the strongest evidence
that the state had was video surveillance
showing Sidney Moorer making a phone call from a pay phone
to Heather Elvis' cell phone.
‐ But it's very grainy.
It's‐‐it's really hard to tell what you're looking at.
And they really had to rely on
the call records that existed
with that pay phone and testimony
from Heather's best friend
to really connect that the person you're seeing
in that surveillance video was Sidney.
Bree Warrellmann testified that Heather had told her,
you know, that she had heard from Sidney
calling from this pay phone.
Heather told Bree that Sidney was leaving his wife,
that he wanted to be with Heather,
that he wanted to meet up with her.
‐ My exact words were, "Do not call Sidney back.
Don't do anything rash.
Go to sleep, and we'll talk about it tomorrow."
‐ I haven't.
‐ The prosecution argued that Sidney may have helped,
but it was Tammy's plan from the beginning.
They painted a picture of Tammy as a jealous,
controlling wife.
‐ Early on in the investigation
Tammy has spoken to an investigator,
and in Tammy's own words,
she said that they had a very open relationship.
‐ You don't‐‐you guys don't understand.
I had boyfriends. We had an open marriage.
That's okay. I could care less if he had sex with 100 people.
‐ Okay. All right.
‐ I mean, that doesn't really‐‐that doesn't bother me.
‐ But by reading Tammy's text messages,
she described her heart as being black,
that she had lost her‐‐ her soulmate.
‐ You want me to just start reading from the very top?
‐ Yes. ‐ "He betrayed me,
"and I will never, ever forgive or forget it.
"Trust me. There's zero love on my end.
I [bleep] hate him."
‐ A lot of the witness testimony and evidence
that was presented does paint her
in a bit of a different light.
‐ "It pisses me off that he'd [bleep] such a dog."
‐ She was scared of Tammy.
‐ There was also some testimony brought up
that Tammy had Sidney tattoo her name above his...
‐ When Sidney Moorer got the tattoo of Tammy's name
on his lower body,
I did recall hearing, "If you wouldn't have messed
with that girl, this wouldn't have been happening."
‐ There was testimony that she had possibly
chained her husband to the bed.
‐ If you ever get accused of anything,
if you're ever on trial,
you really want to have led an exemplary life.
‐ The prosecution brought up text messages
that Tammy had with an internet lover,
if you will, of Tammy's,
and some of those text messages were sexually graphic.
‐ Another message: "I want to feel it
inside of me." Another message:
"You are perfect." And then there's a message:
"Have you [bleep] a lot of girls?"
‐ And you're supposed to be on trial because the evidence
says you're guilty. You're supposed to be on trial
because scientific evidence
and reliable witnesses say that you did something illegal.
‐ And there's another message from the phone:
"This boy is so [bleep] fine."
‐ Not how you've lived your life,
whether or not you were rude on social media.
‐ And then there's a message from the phone that says,
"You are making my [bleep] wet."
‐ And so our position was always the state
had to go after her character,
because they didn't have any evidence
that she kidnapped Heather Elvis.
‐ In cases like this, defendants facing
exclusively circumstantial evidence stand a real chance
of being acquitted if they play their cards right.
So what compelled Tammy Moorer to tell hour side of the story
and gamble with her freedom?
She's facing 30 years in prison
if the jury doesn't believe her.
‐ All experienced defense lawyers
would say the same thing:
do not testify in your own defense
in a circumstantial case.
‐ There's a big safety factor in not testifying.
Now, having said that, the right to testify
or not to testify belongs to the person on trial.
‐ If Tammy Moorer is going to testify
in Tammy Moorer's defense, that's 100% her right.
‐ Did you, out of retaliation,
handcuff your husband to that bed to keep him there?
‐ Have you ever handcuffed your husband
in some kind of, like, sex play?
‐ Tammy Moorer has taken the stand to try to convince
the jury she has no hatred for her husband's lover,
Heather Elvis, who has never been found.
It's a risky decision to take the stand.
Will she convince the jurors that she had nothing to do
with Heather Elvis' disappearance,
or might she make a mistake that could seal her fate?
‐ Did your husband, Sidney Moorer,
get a tattoo of your name, Tammy,
tattooed across his abdomen?
‐ Was Sidney forced to get‐‐ by you to get that tattoo?
‐ Was he forced by you
to get that tattoo in retaliation
for having an affair with Heather Elvis?
‐ I believe that it's just not fair for a person
who is put on trial to be ridiculed or put down
or being convicted‐‐ "Yeah, she's guilty."
We don't know until we get deeper into the trial.
‐ It was Halloween night, going into November 1st
that morning‐‐ is when I found out.
‐ She called that‐‐ within hours,
the girl called me back and told me who she was.
I had no idea.
‐ Tammy Moorer and her attorney tried to present Tammy Moorer
as a woman who did not care
that her husband had had an affair.
She as 42 years old. She had three kids.
But she was not jealous of this very young,
attractive 20‐year‐old.
‐ It was just an affair,
and it was blown out of proportion.
‐ Tammy's stance from day one is that she just‐‐
she didn't know what‐‐
I mean, her point of view was that,
"I don't‐‐why am I here?"
‐ All right.
‐ "Why do they think that I did something?
And this is crazy."
‐ That was her stance from day one,
and it's never changed.
‐ And once you went home, did you stay home?
‐ Yes.
‐ Tammy's given her version of events, what she says
she and Sidney did the night Heather disappeared.
Against that, the jury has to weigh the state's case,
where the most significant evidence
is a pair of grainy surveillance videos
that don't show Tammy at all.
‐ As far as the surveillance video goes,
it's really hard to tell what you're looking at.
‐ Was there enough evidence
to connect Tammy to Heather's disappearance?
‐ Was the jury gonna believe that she was really
jealous enough to be involved in Heather's disappearance?
‐ While her defense attorneys questioned her,
she was cooperative.
She seemed to be this reasonable woman
that the jury could understand.
‐ As a lawyer, once you say,
"No more questions; please answer any questions
the prosecutor may have,"
now you have completely let go of the wheel.
It's going to be a rough ride.
♪ ♪
‐ When you're in court against any prosecutor
that knows what he or she is doing...
‐ It's like getting in a boxing match
in a ring with a boxer
who's trained for five years, and you haven't.
The prosecutor is there to knock your lights out.
‐ It's late October 2018,
and Tammy Moorer is on trial for kidnapping her husband's
20‐year‐old girlfriend in December of 2013.
Her direct examination went well,
but few defendants ever take the stand
in large part because the prosecution gets a turn too.
The real danger in testifying is the cross‐examination.
‐ When I got up to cross‐examine Tammy Moorer,
I knew that that was the moment that everybody in Horry County
had been waiting for.
Now, you do know who Heather Elvis is, correct?
‐ I do. She's a very pretty girl.
‐ This is her? ‐ Yes.
‐ And is this the way you saw her?
‐ I've never seen her. That's a picture. Yes.
‐ I think she was a little tired by that time.
And like all of us,
that's when our true colors kind of start coming out.
On the phone records, it showed where you called Heather Elvis
and blocked your number. Do you remember that?
‐ I probably did that night... ‐ Okay.
‐ Trying to get her to answer.
‐ When Tammy was on the stand, I thought,
"Okay, you know, this girl has to have it together,
because her life is on the line."
‐ I didn't talk to her till the next day.
She was at work when she called me.
‐ She called the person
that was trying to find out who she was.
She didn't hang up on me when she called me or anything.
It was a nice conversation. She was a nice girl.
She wasn't mean to me. I wasn't mean to her.
‐ I was not mean to her in that conversation.
‐ So before that phone call, you texted her,
"You can tell me who you are right now,
"or I will find out another way.
That way won't have a great turnout for you."
‐ I think it was good for Tammy
to be out there to tell her story.
‐ And she wrote you back,
"Nobody you need to worry about anymore."
‐ Because she knew she was having an affair
and he was married.
I didn't know anything about it.
I had no clue about any of this.
‐ So we can compare it to what Nancy‐‐
the prosecution‐‐ had presented to us,
so we can put them kind of together.
‐ Again, she's telling you, "You don't need to worry
about me. Please leave me alone."
‐ Yeah. So that‐‐that raised more questions from me,
'cause why would she say that?
That made me think that it was some sort of affair.
‐ Well, it was an affair. ‐ It was. And I didn't know it.
I mean, do you see what I'm saying?
'Cause I understand the way you're looking at it
and the way the world's looked at it for five years.
You guys didn't understand my point of view,
and my point of view was, I had no idea
who I was talking to in the beginning.
Once Heather told me the truth,
I had no‐‐ I didn't care anymore.
She called me, and we were fine.
‐ Then why did you write, "I do not love him.
"He betrayed me. And I will never,
"ever forgive or forget it. Trust me.
There's zero love on my end. I [bleep] hate him"?
‐ In the beginning, I still‐‐I still
hated him a lot, and I hate him a lot now,
because he didn't stand up for himself
and testify in his last trial.
It's just‐‐there's feelings for people,
and it's hard to overcome that.
‐ So you were obviously very angry.
‐ Okay.
♪ ♪
"With a psycho whore."
‐ To watch your client be cross‐examined
in a felony trial,
you just‐‐you're really‐‐ it's powerlessness.
‐ And that's what you called her after the girl was missing.
‐ Person testifying is on their own.
They're untethered.
You are completely out of control.
‐ Right.
‐ You can't do anything.
‐ Tammy Moorer's cross‐ examination has been tough.
Lucky for her, she's testifying
on a Friday afternoon,
and the judge adjourns for the weekend.
The following Monday, Tammy's about to get one
last chance to make her case.
‐ You can continue this cross‐examination.
‐ Thank you, Judge.
Okay, so at 3:17,
this phone call happens between y'all and her.
‐ Yes. Not me. Between her and Sidney. Yes.
‐ And then at 3:35, your truck is going down 814
just a few minutes later. Is that correct?
‐ My truck is not, but you have told people that
and led them to believe that over the years.
But my truck did not go to the landing that night.
I promise you that on this Holy Bible.
‐ Despite Tammy's assertions, grainy surveillance footage
of a truck that drove towards Peachtree Landing
on the night of December 18th
was a pillar of the state's case against her.
‐ During the time that Heather Elvis was at the landing,
those surveillance cameras caught a truck
we thought was Sidney's going down to the landing.
‐ After a few minutes,
this same truck is seen coming back,
and you do not see Heather Elvis' car returning.
So it all seemed that Sidney was directly
connected to the disappearance of Heather Elvis.
‐ But it's really hard to tell what you're looking at.
So the prosecutors brought on this expert witness,
who supposedly works in this science
of examining headlight patterns,
because they needed someone to testify
to that being the Moorers' truck.
‐ He said that a headlight spread pattern
was equal to a fingerprint or a DNA match.
And when I heard this, I laughed out loud.
If there's a guy who can definitively
identify a vehicle
as being unique in the universe
based on a headlight spread pattern on an old
analog video camera,
then why would that not be used everywhere?
And even if you believe that that's Sidney Moorer's truck,
two things they couldn't say with any kind of certainty
is where the truck went and who was in the truck.
‐ If the jury believes it was the Moorers' truck
and Tammy was in it, it could be damning evidence.
But Tammy isn't gonna concede that without a fight.
‐ Tammy Moorer had a plan to use cross‐examination
to her advantage.
This is just more time for me to get in front of the jury
the information I want in front of the jury.
‐ They were horrible. You can't tell what that is.
‐ I don't know when those videos were made,
so I don't agree with you. No.
‐ She was trying to take little bits and pieces here
and twist it around in an effort to make it appear
to be something it's not
to try to cast doubt on all the testimony.
‐ I saw the videos you all produced.
Yes. It's not my vehicle.
‐ When the state closed our case,
we were very uncertain what the jury was gonna do.
‐ We knew that there was just as much of a chance
that it could come back not guilty
as it could guilty.
‐ A lot of the evidence that the prosecution relied on
was circumstantial
and brought up a lot of questions about,
is this enough to tie Tammy to Heather's disappearance?
‐ With their circumstantial case,
Nancy Livesay has to emphasize to the jury
that the circumstances of Heather's disappearance
can only lead to one conclusion.
‐ This is a story about jealousy and deceit.
Heather was growing.
She was getting bigger.
She was taking pregnancy tests at work.
The conspiracy which they're charged with,
it's because they're doing all this together.
Wherever you see his phone, you see her phone.
They are working in conjunction.
They arrived at Walmart at 1:12.
They purchased the pregnancy test at 1:19.
Departed at 1:21.
And lo and behold, look,
pay phone call, 1:33.
Why? 'Cause the test was for her.
Who‐‐what couple goes into Walmart
and buys a test for each other
and immediately walks out and calls his girlfriend?
She's at home when she receives this pay phone call.
Her date has dropped her back off.
She then calls Bree and talks to her,
and what does Bree tell her?
"Stay home. Don't do anything tonight."
That was good advice.
Now, every phone call from here on out
is trying to get back up with Sidney Moorer.
Pay phone. Pay phone. Pay phone.
Pay phone. Pay phone.
I mean, she's tearing the pay phone up.
She's speaking through these phone records.
She's telling us who she's trying to get in touch with.
She's telling us her last conversations.
And they are all to do with Sidney Moorer.
So don't question who's going down there.
It's the same people
that had the conversation with her at 3:17.
She didn't talk to anybody else.
Nobody else was worried and upset
about Heather being pregnant but her.
♪ ♪
‐ We have been in here for two weeks.
We have heard 38 witnesses, who proved what?
They didn't prove that she made him get a tattoo,
because of the jealousy.
They didn't prove that Heather Elvis was pregnant.
The case is a joke. All right? They don't have a case.
They don't have one piece of evidence.
They don't have one fiber, one teardrop,
one piece of salt,
one piece of a shoelace at the boat landing.
They cannot prove to you that anybody named Moorer
ever went to the boat landing at the end of Peachtree Road.
Think about it just a minute.
If this lady right here,
who's been under the cloud of these charges
for four years‐‐ under suspicion four years
and ten months‐‐
if that lady was who they say she is,
and Sidney's gonna go use the pay phone
to make the call to lure her out, then what?
Don't you think she'd be standing there
in the video listening?
Her case is really her theory
of how this might could have happened
if you disregard a lot of things about it.
And that's not a case.
That's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Does not overcome the presumption of innocence.
Thank you.
‐ After everything was done,
we deliberated back to our jury room,
and this is when we had to make the decision.
We were all talking.
Each one got to speak what they thought
and what they thought about this whole thing,
Tammy was guilty or not guilty.
It is much different than it is when you watch it on TV,
because you're gonna convict or not,
and you want to make sure that you're doing the right thing.
‐ Now Tammy Moorer and the rest
of the court have to wait.
Will she be set free by this South Carolina jury?
Or will she spend the next 30 years of her life
regretting her decision to take the stand?
‐ Tammy Moorer's on trial for kidnapping her husband's
young girlfriend, who's never been found.
Her testimony's been a roller‐coaster ride of wins...
‐ And losses.
‐ So has the jury believed
Tammy's assertions of innocence,
or has her sometimes combative demeanor
made them think she really did commit the crime?
‐ After everything was done,
we deliberated back to our jury room,
and this is when we had to make the decision.
We were all taking.
Each one got to speak what they thought
about this whole thing.
‐ Thank you very much. Please be seated.
Madame Forelady, I understand the jury
has reached a verdict. Is that correct?
‐ Yes, sir. ‐ All right.
If you would, please hand it to the bailiff.
‐ I feel like the tension in the room
when the jury came back was almost impossible
to breathe for everybody in there.
This was an extremely complicated case.
It was a tough case. It was nothing
but circumstantial evidence in this case.
There was no body.
There was no confession. There was no eyewitness.
♪ ♪
‐ Looking at all the evidence, seeing the tapes,
hearing the detectives,
I knew that Tammy was definitely guilty.
‐ When the clerk read "guilty," I felt like
for the first time in a long time
the victim's family was able to feel some relief
and some closure
from everything that had gone on up to this point.
‐ I was just so upset that this lady‐‐how stupid.
She's going to jail. And she's got these kids.
What are they gonna do for the rest of their lives?
But we knew we made the right decision at that time.
‐ Whether or not Tammy Moorer taking the stand
and testified‐‐whether that made a difference a trial,
that's something‐‐even though I was there,
I was present, I was actively defending her,
I don't know the answer to that.
I can't know the answer.
‐ Tammy took the stand,
because she wanted to prove her innocence.
But there was not a doubt in my mind she was guilty.
‐ I think a lot of people struggled to like Tammy,
to take her at her word as, you know,
she talked about how she wasn't jealous of Heather
and she was fine with her relationship with Sidney
and stepping out of her marriage.
‐ I had boyfriends. We had an open marriage.
That's okay. I could care less if he had sex with 100 people.
‐ I don't think that that played well with
this conservative atmosphere
in Horry County, South Carolina.
‐ I think that Tammy was the person;
the state said she did it.
The people needed it, and everybody believed it.
She got convicted, and now whatever terrible thing
happened to Heather Elvis,
no one is worried about it anymore.
‐ She was a very ugly person, Tammy.
She called Heather Elvis a "psycho bitch."
I think Tammy was thinking about herself.
Tammy was the psycho bitch, not Heather.
Heather was the one that was running from the psycho bitch.
We reached out to Tammy Moorer.
She actually provided a long letter in response.
In part, she said the following,
"One day when discovery is put out for the world to see,
"everyone will understand.
"The next trial‐‐ and it will be a fair trial‐‐
"will expose the truth.
It's coming."
Defendants are never forced to take the stand.
But that decision is likely the biggest one they ever make.
For "Under Oath," I'm Dan Abrams.