Heather Rachelle Elvis was a 20-year-old from Horry County, South Carolina, who vanished in the early hours of December 18, 2013. A 2011 graduate of St. James High School, she lived in Carolina Forest with a roommate and worked as a hostess at the Tilted Kilt in Myrtle Beach and at the House of Blues while studying cosmetology and preparing to start a job at a beauty salon. Friends and family described her as outgoing and social-media active, with tattoos including a compass rose and a sea turtle; she was also trying to move past a short-lived affair that summer with Sidney Moorer, a married 37-year-old equipment repairman she met at the restaurant.
On the night of December 17, Elvis went on a first date with another man who dropped her off at her apartment around 1:15 a.m. Roughly twenty minutes later she received a call from a payphone later linked to Sidney Moorer. She then phoned her roommate, who was out of town, and said Sidney wanted to meet and was planning to leave his wife. Her roommate urged her not to go. Cell-phone records show activity continuing for a couple of hours afterward, including calls to Sidney’s phone and movement that eventually placed her device near Peachtree Landing, a boat ramp on the Waccamaw River in Socastee. Her dark-green Dodge Intrepid was found locked and abandoned there the next evening; her purse, keys, and phone were missing, and she has never been seen again. Extensive searches of the area and river turned up nothing.
Investigators learned that Sidney’s wife, Tammy, had discovered the affair months earlier, sent confrontational messages, and tried to get Elvis fired. Security footage showed a truck consistent with the Moorers’ near the landing around the time of the final phone activity, and Sidney was seen buying a pregnancy test earlier that night. In early 2014 both Moorers were charged with murder, kidnapping, and related offenses. The murder counts were later dropped because Elvis’s body was never recovered. Tammy was convicted in 2018 of kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap and sentenced to 30 years; Sidney was convicted of the same charges on retrial in 2019 and received the same sentence. Both have lost appeals.
More than a decade later, Heather remains missing. Her family continues to mark anniversaries, raise awareness for other missing-person cases, and maintain a public Facebook page. While the convictions stand, the precise circumstances of her disappearance and the location of her remains are still unknown.
