The father of a woman charged in the disappearance of her husband’s 20-year-old pregnant mistress made a chilling threat to the cop investigating the case.
Officer Peter Cestare, a lieutenant with the Horry County Police Department in South Carolina, reveals how William Caison, the father of Tammy Moorer, had a disturbing exchange with him as he quizzed Caison about Heather Elvis’s disappearance.
Heather had been having an affair with Moorer’s husband Sidney and had vanished just days before.
The 2013 case and that chilling exchange are now featured in a new three-part docuseries called VANISHED: The Heather Elvis Case that launches March 10 and will be available on Amazon Prime, Apple+, and Google Play.
Ahead of the release, Cestare told DailyMail.com that when he went to Tammy’s house, her father Caison who lived next door was very ‘agitated’.
He asked him what he was doing here and when the officer told him that there was a missing girl, whose car was found but she was not, he responded, ‘what are you here for and what do you want with us about it?’
He told him that there was some indication that the missing girl might have been seeing or dating Sidney Moorer, his daughter’s husband and that he would like to speak to both of them.
Cestare recounted the unsettling response. ‘He just looks at me and says, ‘there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do to protect my daughter. ”
Heather Elvis, 20, a hostess in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was starting a new job as a makeup artist before she mysteriously disappeared on December 2013
Sidney Moorer was having an affair with Heather and asked to meet her before she vanished
Tammy Moorer, Sidney’s wife, had found out about the affair
‘It struck me as an odd thing to say right away, so I turned to him and I said, ‘Well, I can completely understand that I have two daughters of my own, and I always look to protect them.’
The former NYPD police sergeant said Caison then turned and looked at him with this ‘deadpan stare’ and said, ‘No, you don’t understand. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my daughter.’
‘It was really bizarre the way he approached me and what he told me,’ Cestare said.
‘That whole conversation between him and I lasted maybe all of about two minutes, but it just never sat well with me,’ he added.
‘I just got this odd feeling that there was a lot more there than I was aware of.’
He said he eventually served the search warrant on Caison’s home and his daughter Tammy’s house. He recalled him being very argumentative and objected to them being there.
At the time of Heather’s disappearance she worked at the Tilted Kilt and House of Blues in Myrtle Beach.
She had met Sidney there as he was the restaurant’s repairman. One afternoon they started flirting and then it turned into much more.
The detective recalled Caison turning around and looking at him with this ‘deadpan stare right in his face. He said, ‘No, you don’t understand. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my daughter’. Above actors re-enact the moment for the new docuseries
William Caison, Tammy’s father appears agitated when he is approached by Cestare. The actors in the docuseries are seen above
Peter Cestare worked on the Heather Elvis case and speaks in the new documentary. He also spoke to DailyMail.com ahead of its release
The 37-year-old married father-of-three, who was nearly 20 years older than Heather, had kept their affair secret.
In September, only months after they had been together Sidney’s wife Tammy found out about it.
Enraged, she made Sidney end the relationship, and reportedly went to great lengths to ensure he would be loyal to her.
She handcuffed him to the bed, made him get a tattoo of her name above his crotch, changed the password on his phone that only she knew, and stayed close to his side.
It appeared that Sidney succumbed to Tammy’s demands in order for this marriage to be saved.
Though the love affair was over, Tammy continued to taunt Heather sending her contentious texts and racy photos of her and Sidney having sex.
Despite the bullying and harassment, friends said Heather was working on getting her life back and was just starting a job as a makeup artist.
Then, on the night of December 17, 2013, Heather went on a date with someone new.
Hours before vanishing, Heather had been learning how to drive a car with a manual transmission. She was pictured smiling and sent a photo to her father and roommate. This is believed to be the last photo taken of her
A man similar in age to her, they went to look at the Christmas lights and then drove to the parking lot of a mall where her date was teaching her how to use a manual transmission on his car.
Heather sent a photo of herself smiling to her roommate Brianna ‘Bri’ Warrelman and her dad – unaware it would be the last time they would ever see or speak to her.
Around 1.15am Heather returned to her apartment. She and Sidney had been broken up for two months. She was alone in the apartment. Her roommate was out-of-town visiting family for the holidays.
A call came in from Sidney. He was calling from a pay phone. He reportedly told Heather how he missed her and that he was planning to leave Tammy.
He then asked her to meet him. Heather called her roommate, who pleaded with Heather not to go.
Her car, a green Dodge Intrepid, was later found at a boat launch in Peach Tree Landing along the Waccamaw River, and approximately eight miles from her apartment in Colonial Forest, South Carolina.
A missing persons report was filed. Divers scoured the nearby river to no avail, and Horry Police started their investigation.
According to the detective, Heather’s last cell phone activity was around 3am on December 18, 2013.
Footage showed a truck believed to be Sidney’s driving to and from a boat landing where Heather’s car was found.
Cestare said that the Peach Tree boat landing is on a riverfront and it is not well lit – there are no lights there at night.
‘At night, he said, it becomes like a ‘little lovers lane type of spot.’ We had learned from friends of Heather that she had met Sidney there in the past,’ he said.
Cestare said that Heather knew where the boat landing was and based on the phone calls that they had that night and vehicle sightings, police know that they met at the boat landing.
Earlier that day Sidney was seen buying a pregnancy test on surveillance footage leading people to believe that Heather was pregnant.
December will mark 12 years since Heather’s disappearance, and her body has not yet been found.
The boat landing where Heather’s car was last seen
Tammy denied having anything to do with Heather’s disappearance but continued to harass Heather’s family online.
A month before Tammy and Sidney were charged with Heather’s abduction, Tammy’s father died of natural causes.
‘They were initially arrested based on the kidnapping charges. We had developed a lot of forensic information about their cell phones, the movement of their vehicle, and things like that. That’s what enabled us to get a kidnapping conviction on them,’ Cestare said.
He explained that the prosecutor’s office, initially, was going to charge them with murder but that never happened.
‘They felt that because we didn’t have her body or anything yet, that they didn’t think that they could pursue both the kidnapping and the murder charges so they elected to go with just the kidnapping charges at that time.’
After his interaction with Tammy’s father that day when he refused to talk, Cestare told DailyMail.com that he felt like he was either involved or he knows exactly what happened’ but said ‘unfortunately, he was never able to get to the bottom of that statement from him’.
‘It always bothered me. I always felt like, Okay, ‘Could he be involved?’
The couple were sentenced to 30 years in prison for abduction, but not charged with murder since no body was ever found.
In late 2024, Tammy had her appeal overturned. Her projected release date is May 9, 2043 and Sidney’s is March 31, 2044, as per The Department of Corrections.
Tammy Moorer enters the court for a hearing at the Horry County Courthouse in Conway, South Carolina on March 17, 2014
Michael Bayer, the director/producer of the docuseries told DailyMail.com that he chose Heather’s story to focus on because of the online harassment Heather’s family and those involved had to endure.
‘It wasn’t a normal case where the perpetrator just sat there and remained silent while they are being prosecuted or looking for the victim, Tammy was out there writing a smear campaign starting conspiracy theories, threats all these things,’ he said.
The Elvis family is hoping that with renewed public engagement thanks to the launch of the documentary that they can find their daughter’s remains.
