tv Dateline Extra MSNBC December 25, 2018 1:00pm-3:00pm PST
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for my family, i'm sorry for his family. >> that's all for this edition of dateline extra. i'm craig melvin, thanks for watching. g melvin, thanks for watching she was the love of my life. always. >> she was daddy's girl. the free spirit with fiery hair and a wide open heart. >> she was a very kind person. >> then she vanished. >> i called the police. something is wrong. >> and something was. days passed, then months. no leads, no clues, no progress. >> i thought i'm not going to put up with this. we've got to get going, we've got to get moving on this.
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>> enter the a-team. a band of tough guy private eyes. >> this guy's got something to hide. >> there had been a brief encounter with a mysterious stranger. >> on the train coming home, she had met this woman. >> did that hold the answer? >> she's talking about how someone has tried to assume her identity. >> a chilling case of a daughter in danger. >> somebody was after her. >> strangers on a train. hello and welcome to dateline extra, i'm craig melvin. she was beautiful, talented trusting and sometimes troubled. a young woman finally grabbing the promise in life. right up until the day she vanished. when the police seemed unable to find her, her family hatched a plan, an unusual strategy to solve the mystery. here's keith morris. >> it began on a bright morning
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in may. the palmetto slipped from its platform at washington's union station and eased out into an eight hour run down the eastern seaboard to charleston, south carolina. on board was a beautiful, tall and feisty redhead named kate warring. the daughter of a fine southern family, a troubled young woman who was finally on the brink of something very good. and what is it about trains? the ease there in that enclosed space of befriending perfect strangers. somewhere along the line between a greeting and good bye, kate waring's invisible fate jumped its track. and quite unaware of the dark force descending, she disemba disembarked to a future utterly changed. charleston, south carolina. it almost goes without saying,
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is a showpiece of american history and southern manners. its charm is deeply embedded as the families who count seven, eight, ten generations here. kate waring was born to one of those families. grew up in a fine big house along the historic waterfront called the battery. dance lessons, birthday parties. >> dad if we catch a turtle, can we keep it? >> doting parents, janice and tom, who adored their only daughter. she had your essentially wrapped around her finger? >> absolutely. she was the love of my life. and not stupidly so. i mean, i could not always tell when i was being manipulated, but some of the time. >> sure. >> no, katie and i had a very special bond always. >> she was the middle child, sam was between two brothers, older joe, younger richard. she was bright.
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maybe too bright. school bored her. animals, all animals enchanted her. she was naive, sweet. as younger brother richard saw it, she could not turn away a stray, animal or human. >> she was a very kind person. where as some people would dismiss someone who wasn't generally accepted by most, she would kind of try to help those people out. >> but somewhere in the course of an enchanted childhood, something happened to kate. outsiders saw a fearless tomboy morph into a sophisticated debutante. at home, kate struggled with eating disorders, depression. college was a frequently interrupted disaster. >> she sort of ran toward risk. i noticed that in a lot of things she did. she seemed to court it. >> her parents discovered she had been sexually abused when
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she was little they knew. she lost her driver's license, she abused drugs, she sobered up, she fell off the wagon. she came home to live with her parents. tried and failed at dozens of strategies to achieve the straight and narrow. then finally, out of desperation, tom waring offered kate a trip with him anywhere she wanted to go. anywhere on the planet. to see polar bears. it must have been an amazing trip? >> it was the trip of a lifetime. i'm so happy that we shared that together. >> the photographs show how happy she was there. >> she saw a young man who, with their family, about her age, who were happy and she said to me, dad, i don't have to settle for what i've settled for, do i? and i said, no, honey, you don't. you can basically write your own
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script. >> and it was a bit of magic. the change seemed almost instant. kate reborn. on board the ship was a russian crewman who was amazed how quickly kate picked up his language, which is why months after that trip the newly inspired kate travelled to moscow to meet him again to explore the city, the culture, and to test drive both a budding relationship and her fledgling russian skills. the snapshots are more than souvenirs, they were portraits of a young woman transformed. the kate who stood her on red square had a new passion in life, the depressions of the past had fallen away. she was consumed by all things russian. in fact, she was making plans even here, to return to moscow in the summer to take up russian studies. finally, her life was taking off. and that's why kate waring was in washington that fine may
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morning. she was on her way back to russia, but there was a problem with the visa. a paperwork mix up sort of thing that would send her into a tailspin once, but now the new kate vowed to try again later. boarded the train to charleston and threw herself into college classes and a children's book she had been writing. her big brother was to say the least, encouraged. >> she, when i talked to her, was the happiest i can remember hearing her in the last ten years. she sounded good. she sounded as if she was ready, had a conviction about what she wanted to do. >> and then it was june. heat rising in charleston's deepening green. on saturday morning, june 13thpatjune 13th, tom waring felt an absence. the cell phone hadn't wrong, no call from kate.
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kate who called her parents practically hourly. he drove home to check her room here in the big silent house on the battery. >> all the lights were on. it looked like, obviously, katie had planned to come back. she'd left her medicine. she never went anywhere without her medicine. >> and then on sunday, we came by the house also no sign of her. >> now there was dread. was it possible that kate had slipped back into that old destructive life? >> we called the police station, we called the detention center. >> wow. so this is by the end of the weekend? >> nobody had a jane doe in the hospital. we called our friends and nobody had heard from her. >> what to do? kate was 28. though she lived at home, she was an adult, her decisions bad
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or good were hers. they elected to give it one more day. if she wasn't back by monday they'd call the police. and then when monday came, there was word. no, not from kate. from kate's bank. >> once i got off the phone with the branch manager, i called the police. >> what were you thinking then? >> i was thinking something is wrong. >> coming up, something was wrong. but could they discover what and would the police help? >> i thought i'm not going to put up with this. we've got to get going, we've got to get moving on this. >> when strangers on a train continues. >> when strangers on a train continues. i'm a veteran
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and the army taught me a lot about commitment. which i apply to my life and my work. at comcast we're commited to delivering the best experience possible, by being on time everytime. and if we are ever late, we'll give you a automatic twenty dollar credit. my name is antonio and i'm a technician at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. welcome back to dateline extra. returning to our story, here again is keith morris. it was monday morning the 15th of june, 2009. kate waring had been missing for 48 hours when a surveillance
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camera captured a young man named ethan mack standing at the counter of a bank waiting to cash a check signed by kate waring. problem was her account barely totalled $100, and this check was for $4500, and the signature seemed off. the teller called kate's dad. he called police. >> i never met ethan, didn't know ethan's last name. all i knew was the name ethan who was a friend. it's too strong to say that she had a secret life, but she certainly had friends and did things that we didn't know anything about. >> of course she did. she was 28 years old. and even though she was financially and emotionally dependent on her parents, she had lots of friends. some they knew, some they didn't. it was howard gatts, for example, a martial arts trainer in the midst of a contentious divorce with whom kate had been carrying on something of a romance.
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>> i felt that in my heart something was wrong. and i was -- i was concerned. >> then there was jason locke, a young lawyer with whom she often shared lunch and a spirited debate. >> she was strong-willed. she was very energetic. she was rarely, rarely incorrect. that's a -- >> her best friend, as she made clear to all the others, was ethan mack. >> she really liked ethan. she really trusted him. "this is my best friend, jason." she put a lot of trust in him. >> she's a lovable person, full of energy, always rambunctious. >> ethan worked in a local hotel. a very different background than kate. but he'd been her best buddy for years and in a way her protector. everybody in ethan's neighborhood knew you didn't mess with kate when ethan was around. they loved each other like -- well, siblings. >> i made sure no harm would come to her when certain little boyfriends would act like they
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got hand problems. i would put them in their place -- >> it wasn't a romance at all then? >> never at all. she was like a little sister to me. >> it was a token of his family's regard for kate that she was godmother to ethan's nephew, malachi. on her moscow trip, kate bought herself and ethan matching brass bulldog key chains. and on that monday morning in june, said ethan, he was very worried about kate, just as he had been for years as he helped her battle her demons. >> calm her down and talking to her and understanding what was going on in the world of kate. >> but now he complained, here was kate's dad sending the police to talk to him about a check kate told him to cash. ethan explained to the cop, david osborne, about the money he'd given kate for jewelry and other expenses and that the check was to pay him back. >> he was basically best friends
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with katherine, had been for several years. >> in fact, ethan told detective osborne he was very likely the last friend to see her before she disappeared. >> he said that he had saw her friday night, had dinner, had drinks, came back, dropped kate off back at her house. >> did he say what time? >> yeah. i think the time would have been probably around 11:30, 11:45 at that time. >> the detective checked, of course, and found text messages that confirmed what ethan told him. he even went to the house ethan shared with his mom. >> and they both let me in. and they both allowed me to search it. the mother and ethan both told me this is his room, this is where he stays. >> but to say that the instant suspicion on the part of the warings and the police was upsetting to ethan was probably an understatement. >> good evening, mr. waring and mrs. waring. this is ethan mack calling -- >> this is the voicemail he left for the warings after that policeman poked around his place as if he was some murder suspect. >> i think you need really check
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that and go find out or go see what really happened and find the person who did something to her and stop harassing me. cause the only thing i ever did was try to help her in a million ways. >> so dead end. the police moved past ethan, checked kate's cell phone record, found she'd made a call late that friday that pinged on a tower in a place called james island, several miles from her house. but phone pings can be funny that way sometimes, they told the warings. one tower's busy, the next over picks it up. probably made the call from home, they said. they also promised to keep looking for her. but really kate was known to have gotten herself in and out of trouble a time or two, and police resources were limited. and well, tom waring got the cops' message. >> we do not know for a fact that a crime has been committed here. >> after all, the warings were reminded, kate was a world traveler. could well have just picked up and gone back to russia.
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might be aboard some tramp steamer even now. or if something bad happened to her, could have been a drug overdose, even suicide. impossible, thought kate's parents. even in her darkest times, she'd never failed to call. >> if she spent the night out unexpectedly, we'd get a call first thing the next morning because she knew that we would worry about where she was and was she safe. >> so the warings began picking apart that friday, the last day anyone saw kate, looking for something they may have missed. but it had been such a normal day. she had no driver's license, remember, so she asked howard gatts to give her a lift to her therapist's office. >> gave me a hug, said good-bye, thank you very much. she was in a real good mood. >> an hour and a half later, howard saw her again. this time at the gym. >> she said, is it okay i skip rope over here, howard? i said, sure, kate, that's fine. >> mind you, there was an
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incident at the gym. howard's soon-to-be ex-wife came around. she and kate had words. but at 8:00 p.m., a drugstore camera showed kate relaxed, talking on her cell, buying wine and snacks while waiting on her prescription refill. ethan paid for dinner. chicken, salmon teriyaki. >> like a japanese like -- kind of like cuisine-type thing. >> she didn't drive, so he took her home. dropped her off before midnight. something earlier that friday that bothered the warings at first was terrifying them now. the more they thought about it, the worse it seemed. just before she went to the drug store friday evening, she started telling her father about some problem. >> saying that she felt like she perhaps had unintentionally got herself in trouble. and i said, "well, why don't you tell me about that." and she wouldn't tell me any details. >> was she clearly worried? >> she was concerned. >> clearly worried.
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>> about something. >> naturally they told the police about that. nothing came of it. and as the air thickened into a steamy august, the weeks that passed brought no new leads. just tourists clamoring for the cool shade of historic carriage rides. and kate waring, the urgency of finding her, began to fade. >> and that was driving me nuts. i thought, i'm not going to put up with this. we've got to get going. we've got to get moving on this. >> and in the hushed cool of his perch overlooking the city, someone was listening. coming up, a new investigation begins, but it's not the police who are behind it. >> we're the cream of the crop, and our job was to find kate waring. not finding kate was not an option. >> who are these guys?
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into what happened to kate waring was going nowhere. so one of charleston's more prominent and generous citizens made some calls. here again is keith morris. take a little drive beyond the grand old homes and markets and churches at the historic district center of charleston, south carolina. enter quietly the hushed suite of rooms overlooking the city where an influential philanthropist flipped through his mental roledex and placed a call to his friend, the chief of police. >> i really need a favor. i really need some help with this situation. >> the caller was this man, john rivers. happened to be a childhood friend of tom waring, watched kate waring grow up. john rivers told the police chief he was worried about kate, too. >> and he told me that, you know, they got a lot of stuff going on. >> sure. >> but that he would assign his best and brightest to the case. and i felt pretty good about that.
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>> but now almost two months later, kate was still missing. and the investigation such as it was had accomplished nothing. and john rivers couldn't stand what it was doing to his best friend, tom waring. >> i could see that he really was having a hard time functioning. >> so rivers picked up the phone again and told this man, "do what it takes." his name is andy savage, former prosecutor, now famously tenacious criminal defense attorney. savage had heard about kate, too, and how police had no evidence of any crime. really? >> as soon as we scratched the surface just a little bit, we were absolutely convinced that foul play was involved. >> savage was given just two mandates -- find kate waring, tell police everything you find. that last part, keeping the police in the loop, should be easy, figured andy, given the team he assembled. a band of retired
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policemen-turned-private eyes. each with a particular talent. >> bobby minter. >> bobby minter, human blood expert. tracking people without them knowing, his specialty. >> bill capps. >> bill capps, techno geek. tracks bad guys through cyber-space. happens to be a crack shot. >> james randolph. >> james randolph. ex-police department rebel. strategy his specialty. shaking things up a particular skill. >> we're the cream of the crop. and our job was to find kate waring. not finding kate was not an option. >> experience told james the best place to start was with kate herself. >> if we listen to kate, she'll tell us where she is. >> james went to the house on the battery, up the stairs, down the hall, and into kate's bedroom. >> these type cases, you have to take on the personality, and you have to see this person's world
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through their eyes. >> he sat there for a bit, looked around. the russian notes in kate's handwriting made sense, but why chinese paper money? and why was her brand-new prescription sitting there untouched? >> the medication in which she had gotten for a prescription was still on her dresser, unused. >> that medication was her lifeline. she needed it to counter depression, anxiety, insomnia. she never left home without it. meanwhile, cyber-sleuth bill capps buried himself in social media sites. kate used them. bill scoured them all. >> if she was awake, she was facebooking, she was texting, she was calling people on the phone, she was e-mailing. and at the time she went missing, when everything immediately ceased, i mean, that was completely out of character for her. >> using kate's friends, capps built an electronic map of her communications the friday night she vanished. from kate's friend jason locke,
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capps retrieved the weird voicemail left that evening. >> 10:06 p.m., missed call. voicemail. voicemail said that someone had "stolen her identity," and had obtained a couple of credit cards in her name. she wanted me to sue the person responsible. >> the gym trainer and kate's romantic interest, howard gatts, told capps he heard from her about 10:30 p.m., still at dinner with ethan then. there was another call. it was after midnight. well after police believe she was dropped off at home. >> she told me she was at some friend's house. they had already made it to the house. she sounded a little buzzed. >> and then a very last message from kate. a text. very strange. >> "i'm off to greenville to pick up some lovely." whatever lovely was i had no idea, you know, and, "i'll be back in a few days."
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>> did that make sense to you? >> no. >> be careful, he replied. but this time she did not text back. silence from kate. except the middle of the night, her cell phone pinged out on james island, miles from her home. the cops had surmised, remember, that a closer tower to her house may have been too busy to handle the call. but at 1:53 in the morning? not a chance, thought andy savage. >> just preposterous. they were looking for an explanation, plausible explanation, consistent with their theory that she voluntarily left. [ ringing ] >> that middle of the night call, by the way, was to her voicemail. >> the mailbox is full -- >> the voicemail box that had been jammed full once during which time she hadn't used it or called it at all. so the question -- >> why would she call voicemail? she would not be doing it. >> only one conclusion to draw. >> somebody else was using her phone. >> but where was kate now?
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had she as the one text suggested left town looking for drugs or lovely? if that's what lovely meant? for the moment, it was a dead end. and then -- then he called. eugene frazier, legendary 34-year homicide detective now retired. >> i believe that if a man commits a crime, he should be prepared to do the time. >> thing is about gene frazier, over here on charleston's james island where his ancestors go back to slave days, gene gets tips. all kinds of tips. and one day a church friend told gene he'd heard the police had been to ethan mack's house. and something strange about that. >> said, "listen, i don't think this is right," he says. "ethan mack is living in an apartment that i have rented out to his father." >> but the police didn't search this place where ethan actually lived, said the landlord. they searched his mother's house
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on a different island miles away where ethan told them he lived. >> and he says, "i think that he's trying to mislead the police." >> what did you think when you heard that? >> this guy got something to hide. >> and on that very day, gene frazier joined a band of ex-cops which, from now on, we'll call the a-team. coming up, a mysterious woman entered the picture. >> katie had this strange girl in the room with her. >> who was she? the a-team was about to launch a hidden camera surprise when strangers on a train continues. s
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today, president trump expressed frustration over the government shutdown. >> it's a disgrace what's happening in our country. but other than that, i wish everybody a very merry christmas. with that, back to dateline. . returning to strangers on a train, here again is keith morr morris. by the time andy savage put his a-team together to look for kate waring, that lovely young charleston woman had been missing two months. according to kate's parents, tom and janice, the charleston police were still saying this -- >> they think maybe she went somewhere. she's probably just up in greenville. >> what did you say to that? >> she doesn't have a car. how's she going to get there? >> it was after that when the a-team's gene frazier got a tip. kate's best friend ethan lied about where he lived. he didn't live where he allowed police to search. he really lived in one of two apartments five miles away which
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you presented to the police. >> yes. >> and? >> they didn't search the house. they never got a search warrant. they never asked for permission to search the house. they never said, "hey, you misled us two months ago." >> but as the a-team discovered, ethan failed to mention something else, too. he had a girlfriend in this little place, a woman named heather angelica kamp. and when janice waring heard that, her mind went straight to an afternoon at home three months earlier. >> i heard voices upstairs. and so i went up, and katie had this strange girl in -- that i'd never met before in the room with her. >> and that was her name, heather kamp. kate explained she met and rapidly became fast friends with heather on the train to palmetto during her trip down from washington. typical kate, janice thought back then. drawn to someone who needed help, who had told her a hard luck story. >> she said when she got on the train, her pocketbook was stolen.
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and she's here in charleston, and she doesn't have any money. and i'm helping her out until she can whatever. >> but kate told her mother that heather would pay her back soon because she was a pediatric surgeon in charleston to take a new post at the local medical center. then a few days later, a distraught kate told her mother that heather's daughter back home in new jersey had been killed in a car accident. but something seemed odd about that, said janice. >> didn't seem like she was rushing to go up to new jersey to attend to the child that had been -- >> or that she was a grief-stricken woman. >> grief-stricken woman. she did not look that way at all. >> and now here was news that heather was living with kate's friend, ethan, in this tiny apartment. >> to me, she looked like a con artist. >> but no, said kate back then. janice had it all wrong. heather was nice. in fact, kate said she'd
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introduced heather to her friend ethan and very quickly a romance had blossomed. they were even talking marriage. really? if janice waring was suspicious about heather back then, the a-team was doubly so now. sure enough a few key strokes on the internet told bobby that mother's intuition was right. >> she had been arrested for forgery in indiana. but she'd been arrested in other states, too. >> essentially if you just googled her name, i suppose you could find out a fair amount. >> that's how i found her. she'd been impersonating a doctor. i just googled her. >> and ethan wouldn't be her first husband. she had been married before and had four children. now that they knew about heather a few fuzzy details were suddenly clearer. the one thing -- the last dinner with ethan made more sense because there were three meals on the dinner bill. the other diner was heather kamp. and more important, that check
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ethan tried to cash, the one the teller flagged, maybe that was another heather forgery. right away, point man james randolph rushed that information over here to police headquarters. surely somebody here would put two and two together. a woman known to have committed forgery in indiana and other states, a so-called best friend who tries to cash a bogus check with kate's name on it and lies to police. seems like evidence these two were involved in her disappearance up to their necks. enough to haul them in anyway, but -- >> i was told that the story panned out. and that these were petty criminals, and the check was going to be taken separate from the missing person. >> what did you say to that? >> i just didn't think it was the right thing to do. we had to figure out who wrote and endorsed those checks, who signed and wrote the checks. >> sure. it was obvious the a-team would have to find the connection between ethan and heather and
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kate's disappearance without police help. >> sort of remained stealthy as much as possible. >> time to keep a careful, quiet eye on ethan mack and heather kamp. so gene frazier persuaded his church friend, ethan's landlord, to allow surveillance specialist bobby minter to tuck a hidden camera into the corner of the kitchen window. a camera trained right at ethan's front door. >> it was a motion detected just like the light that they've got over the door is. when they drove in, it would light up, and it would light up for our camera. >> the whole camera itself, keith, was about the size of this little flashlight. it was pointed directly at the apartments. >> that's pretty slick. >> no doubt about it. >> and that's enough illumination to illuminate to see what they would be carrying. and that would lead us to know that they had something to do with kate's disappearance.
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>> and when ethan and heather left the apartment, bobby had that covered, too. he'd already tracked ethan to his job at a local hotel and attached a gps locator on his car as it sat in the parking lot. now there was no minute of the day when the team didn't know where ethan and heather were and what they were doing. and almost immediately, they got a surprise. when ethan was at work, heather sneaked over to visit the man living next door. rode around town with him. >> they were going to the bank a lot. and i called one of the investigators of wachovia. as a result of that, they found that they were kiting checks. they were actually stealing money from the bank. >> despite what bobby told the bank, it never resulted in charges against anybody. but that wasn't all he discovered. the gps tracker on ethan's car led bobby to a couple of local pawnshops. >> pawning jewelry. the jewelry was a red flag to us. >> was it kate's jewelry? they couldn't be sure yet without more surveillance, that
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is. and then the landlord called gene again, another tip. this one bad. ethan and heather weren't paying rent. >> he says, "i'm going to evict these people." so after he said that -- >> this is not good news. >> i said, "hold on. if these people are evicted, we don't know where they're going." >> if the a-team didn't think of something and fast, heather and ethan might slip out of their sight and charleston for good. >> coming up, an enticing offer from the a-team. 10,000 reasons to start talking. >> 10s, 20s, 50s. everybody sees that and their eyes just jump. >> when strangers on a train continues. rangers on a train continues.
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returning to "strangers on a train," here again is keith morrison. >> reporter: it was so awkward now but necessary, the once very private warings are their only daughter's intensely personal struggles were so glaringly public. they had to be. >> you can't just sit back and home she would be found. we worked every day all day long trying to find her. >> reporter: that's when it hit home, kate was the latest of hundreds of people still lost in south carolina, and it seemed to janice and tom that police weren't taking cases like theirs seriously. so what about those other families also desperate for help? the warings held a vigil for the common cause. >> somehow or another, somebody will be moved and want to come forward and tell us where katie is. >> reporter: that was the public waring family. at home the private tom waring couldn't help be drawn to the
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playback button on the voicemail just to hear her voice. >> dad, mom, if you're there, pick up the phone. if you're there, pick up the phone. call me back later, bye. >> i would look at photographs of her or play those voicemail messages. just keeping her voice current in my mind. >> reporter: meanwhile, andy savage's a-team of ex-detectives were making progress and when they flashed that fat bag of cash around the neighborhood, they got a rise out of ethan and heather. a furious ethan called andy. >> there are investigators out here accusing me of being involved in this, kate was my best friend in life. as he's on the phone, kim calls. she starts out in this rage, what are you doing out here, accusing me of this, we had nothing to do with that. >> reporter: fascinating
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reaction, thought andy savage, and perhaps an opportunity. >> we had did a lot of background on kamp so we knew her and knew about her personality and we knew what buttons to push. the reaction towards heather was one of comfort, not one of the angst. during that time we planted the seeds as a mother, she must know the feeling of janice waring missing her daughter and trying to ply to her empathy as a mother. >> reporter: but the call from heather was all that fat bag of money accomplished, before long it reel ed in a fish. that neighbor heather was sneaking off to see called too. the a-team went to talk to her. >> he said, i know ethan and heather did something to kate. and he went into the back room and came back out and had this ipod and terry said, i believe this ipod is going to belong to kate.
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>> reporter: now that was huge. last time kate was seen with that ipod it was at the gym the day she went missing. now a man kate never met said heather gave him the ipod days after kate disappeared. just to be sure this was in fact kate's ipad, tech expert bill caps got the serial number and within minutes had the proof. >> i examined the registry file to the computers we had access to that kate used in the past so we had proof positive that was kate's ipod. coming up -- >> she said well, they didn't find her, did they? i knew they wouldn't find her. >> was heather kamp the con artist out of the gate? where was cakate waring? ing?
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need, had been missing for months. the trail of clues led to two of kate's friends and now the private investigators recruited by their family believed they were close to solving the final part of the mystery, finding kate at last of the but there were a few more twists in store. here again, keith morrison. >> reporter: the a-team told the police about the ipad, the one heather kamp gave to a friend daze after kate disappeared and also handed over the handwriting expert reports showing heather and ethan forged kate's check two days after she vanished and now things started happening fast. after her heart to heart with andy savage, she made the decision to call the charleston police department and confess. no, not the murder, she said it was she who foerrged the bogus check to kate waring and ethan tried to cash it two days after
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she disappeared. now surely police who swoop in and arrest them both. but here's something you should know about the way it worked between the a-team and their former colleagues, the cops, the deal was entirely one way. that is to say the a-team told the cops everything they uncovered. the cops told the a-team nothing. so they kept their ears to the ground, waited for something to happen. but they didn't have to wait for long. >> we knew something was up. and so first thing we did was yank the gps off the car because we didn't want the police to see the car and have our gps. >> reporter: ethan was easy enough for the charleston police to find. they arrested him at his hotel job. but they didn't seem to know where to find heather. so -- >> we had to tell them where she was working. they didn't have surveillance on her. >> you could tell them that? >> we told them where miss
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heather kamp was working. she's working at the sunoco gas station. >> i bought in, bought a pepsi, paid for it and walked out and a police officer in uniform pulled up and was peeping around the corner of the building. i said, that's her inside. >> reporter: ethan and heather were charged with forgery and obstruction of justice. would a murder charge follow shortly? >> we get a call -- of course, we do have friends still at the police department. we get a call, hey, the police are searching wadmalaw island for kate's body. >> reporter: wadmalaw island, wild, beautiful, isolated and 20 miles from kate's home. >> i so got in my car and i drove out to wadmalaw island. >> reporter: and there were the police, a serious search going on. >> so i sat there in the shade and watched them all afternoon. didn't attempt to interfere. >> reporter: just watched the police to see what they're
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doing. >> watched a lot of officers and cadaver dogs. >> ton of folks, whole shebang. >> reporter: cops had brought heather to lead them to kate waring's body. >> as a couple of detectives i knew left, i asked them any luck? and they said no and continued driving on. >> reporter: police called off the search, drove heather back to jail. had she intentionally given them bad information? perhaps nobody would find kate, not the police, not the a-team. and then -- >> we got a terrific break by the criminal justice system. mack and kamp both came to the bond hearing and it's done by video. at the bond hearing, mack shows up with this family who were all there to support him, and not only a public defender, but the chief public defender. >> reporter: wow. >> yeah. kamp has no one. she has no family, she has no friends, she has no support to speak on her behalf.
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i immediately said, james and gene, go see her. treat her with kindness, treat her with caring. >> reporter: within minutes the same men who upset heather with their bag of money were face to face with her. >> reporter: what was the look on her face and came out? >> she was stunned, very surprised. and i said, heather, we need help here. all we want is a body. and she said well, they didn't find it, did they? and she said, i put them through the test. they told me they were going to help me. they wouldn't arrest me and the minute i told them the area in which she was, the general area in which she was, they got all abusive with me, and they berated me. so they failed the test. >> reporter: and just at that moment what happened was -- well, sheer luck. >> directly across the lobby on
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the male side of the visitation area they brought mack to see his attorneys who happened to arrive the same time we did. >> reporter: coincidentally? >> it was coincidental. >> reporter: also coincidentally the jailers positioned ethan and heather across the wall from each other, separated by glass partitions. >> reporter: they could see each other? >> oh, yeah. i told him there's the lawyer and detective over there with him and she's over there ratting you out. so she started waving her arms trying to get ethan's attention so she snaps and she breaks. >> reporter: with a little more encouragement from andy savage that is. his deal, if heather told him exactly where to find kate's body and if it turned out she had nothing to do with any murder andy would help her with her forgery charges. and at that moment heather kamp agreed to tell the a-team what they needed to know. her directions were precise. they drove out here right away. >> that's the large oak tree she
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described. then she says if you look farther up to your left of the marsh, you'll see a dock that's running down to the water. and she says, after you do that, you'll look to your left over here to on my right and left, and you will see some underbrush growing and she said, that kate remains -- or she said the body -- is five feet from this path, from this roadway. >> reporter: incredibly detailed, just the sort of place to leave a body. but just like the police, the team found nothing. >> i was very disturbed. why are we not finding her? as i said, we were convinced she was here. >> reporter: they searched until darkness. typal finally forced them out of the marsh and then they called andy savage, who's out of town on business. >> they're on a cell phone from where they are on a hotel in
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boston. i pinch up the address from google earth and i'm looking at the satellite imagery of where they are. i said well, james, is there a dock off to your left? i was pretty well able to identify where they were. so i said what you got to do is just print that off. >> reporter: isn't that amazing you can do that from thousands of miles away? >> you can also do it from the police station. >> reporter: the google map clearly showed the a-team exactly how and where they lost the trail. after investigating so much, savage wasn't ready to give up on heather. but he wasn't naive either. >> we knew that she was a sociopath liar. i wanted something specific from her. give me something that nobody else knows so that we can believe what you're saying is truthful. and that's when she told us about the souvenirs from kate's body, the jewelry she was wearing and where it was located. >> reporter: they found kate's jewelry at a pawnshop and behind the dresser in their tiny apartment kate's bulldog key
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chain, the one she had gotten in moscow, ethan he, said heather, took it from kate's purse as a memento. she was telling them the truth. so they decided next morning first light armed with the google map and more detail from heather, the team would return to wadmalaw island. >> now all we were believing was coming to fruition, all of the suspicion about her activity and mack's activity, at that point we knew we had the right people. >> reporter: one thing, they'd be going without the police. good idea? maybe not. coming up -- the a-team under arrest? >> reporter: you mean you were arrested? >> we were not free and they made that clear. >> this was a twist even they didn't see coming when "strangers on a train" continues. continues. i just got my cashback match,
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returning to "strangers on a train," the a-team felt they were closing in on their mission to find kate waring, but there were more surprises ahead. once again, keith morrison. >> reporter: the early sun had cooked the marshes of watt mala island. they shared a car to the city and road in silence most of the way, confident the precise directions heather kamp had given them were correct this time. so this was it. it was somehow fitting that bobby, the one they called the human bloodhound, was the first to spot her. >> and i saw what looked like an animal path where animals or something had pretty much beat down the bush. so i walked out to the animal path and started walking
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parallel with the road, and walked up and i saw what looked like bones, and i said, i think i found her. i said hey, hey, y'all, come here, i think i found her. i said it was just like a ton of bricks come off me at that point. i said oh, my god, there she is. wasn't much, wasn't much left. just bones. >> reporter: in the end it took only six minutes to find the earthly remains of kate waring, and thus at last fulfill their promise to her parents. >> i saw where bobby was standing and i took two shots with my camera just to document the scene, the way it was when we saw it, and then i just backed back out of the woods and bobby followed me out and we called 911. >> 911, what's the emergency? >> yes, man, this is robert winter. >> okay, you need police, fire and ambulance there? >> police. >> what's the address, hun? >> there's no address. it's in the woods. we found the body of kate
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waring. >> you believe you found the body of kate wearing? >> yes, we know we did. >> in the woods? >> yes. >> reporter: but listen to what happens after bobby hangs up. the 911 recording continues. you can hear the operator spreading the word around to other officers, a bit skeptical the four-month long mystery is finally solved. >> hey, sarge, are you ready for this, this guy is adamant he found kate waring in the woods off poly point road. >> off where? >> poly point road in wadmalaw island. >> how is he aware of it? >> he said he knows it was her. >> reporter: the instinctive cops waited. >> we said let's sit back and way for law enforcement to get here. >> reporter: so far, so good. but what happened next was quite a surprise. >> the first officer was a
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charleston county deputy i said, we'll show you where the remains are, took him out there and said it's your crime scene now and we're backing off. and that's what we did. >> reporter: but that wasn't the end of it, was it? >> no. we were detained, to put it mildly. >> reporter: detained? >> detained. placed in separate police cars. >> reporter: what do you mean, you were arrested? >> very strictly by the legal definition, we were not free to leave, they made that very clear. and we couldn't leave because they seized my car. >> reporter: but wait a minute, you found the body and showed them where it was. >> that's correct. they wanted a statement to us of everything when he done from the very beginning, not just what we had done that day. >> reporter: the whole long story? >> that's basically what they had been asking for. in fact they had been given the story along and along as it occurred. >> reporter: hours later the ex-detectives were finally
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released but not bill caps' car, didn't get that bag until they filed an injunction. now years later the memory still rankles all of them. 43 years in a police department, to sit in the back of a police car and have some guy question you, get you to take a statement. >> that's right. we were shoved in the back of a car like a criminal and call it like we see them. >> reporter: still, this was it. the news traveled to the house on the battery, the warings fell from their anxiety and into grief. >> mixed emotions. relief that she's been found. but at the same time devastating grief that now you have conclusive evidence that your only daughter is dead, opinion that you're never going to see her again. >> reporter: and then as soon as they were allowed after the crime scene tape came down, after all of the evidence was
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taken away, the whole team assembled at the spot where kate lay hidden for so long, all except tom waring, who did not want the image burned in his brain, the dismal place the love of his life lay dead. but perhaps it was a mother thing. janice had to be here, she said. shto see had to see it. >> it helped me to see for myself. service so remote, we wouldn't have found her in a million years. and not knowing where she is, it's just -- it would have been horrible. >> reporter: they formed a circle, held hands around the place they knew she had been. >> one of the investigators is a deacon in his church, and he said a prayer. >> and there was beautiful water, marsh and docks and i think it might have given mrs. waring some peace at least
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thinking they wasn't in a garbage dump somewhere. it was a peaceful place, you know, and god's place. >> reporter: so now the a-team had done its job and kate's killers could finally be brought to justice, or so you would think. but the mystery, the web that was spun on that train down from washington, was far stranger, more bizarre than you have so far heard. and justice, well, we shall see. coming up -- >> they thought they solved the case but would it stick? >> actual evidence, it just wasn't there. >> and the close call that just might have saved kate waring's life. >> i could have hung on one more month, i could have helped them get her.
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>> reporter: most everybody around charleston, south carolina, seems to know who the county solicitor is, scarlet is what people called her, solicitor scarlet wilson officially, well known and popular prosecutor. and solicitor wilson had a problem, actually two problems. for one thing, though heather kamp practically leapt at a deal to turn state's evidence against ethan and plead guilty to murder in exchange, her credibility, as you will soon see, was not exactly triple a and despite all of the information the a-team uncovered that could be used in court was thin. >> frankly, we didn't have a lot of evidence. we had a lot of opinions and a lot of conjecture, but actual evidence, it just wasn't there. >> reporter: kate's skeletal remains gave the solicitor none of the forensic evidence the juries like to see. the coroner was unable to establish even a cause of death. as for those personal items of
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kate's they found in ethan's apartment, those could just as easily have been gifts. the two were supposedly best friends after all. and to top it off, there was the amazing tale that came with the state's star witness, heather. it's true she helped the waring investigators find kate's body and agreed to testify against the man she revealed she actually married soon after the crime, but heather was also, as ethan's lawyer was discovering, a gray day world class liar. >> not only was she drifting, she was a true connarist with the most horrid background of anyone i had ever seen, a true sociopath. >> reporter: he was certain heather kamp on the train to palmetto, one look at kate waring she knew she found her ideal next mark. why was allier so sure? his ruesearch, he said, filled p a victims to fill a poor house.
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we had 13 names and called all 13. these were men and women all over the country. she would say she's pregnant, she would say her children died of leukemia, that men had beat her. >> her scam, troll the internet for men, latch on to one, move in, fleece him and leave him with a mountain of debt, all the while pretending to be a doctor, heiress or doctor of a mafia-style drug family. >> that was probably the worst whirlwind i have ever been through, seen, done in my entire life. >> reporter: there was chris beard, for example, in pennsylvania. >> just being around her made me feel better because that's what i wanted, you know. i wanted to be loved. >> reporter: he found her on the internet. in less than two months they were engaged and she said she was pregnant. >> at the time that i had met her, i had no credit cards to my name whatsoever. >> reporter: she persuaded him,
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he said, to get 15 cards, which she maxed out leaving him $33,000 in detd. and oh, by the way, she told chris' sister-in-law, lori that -- >> that she was a pediatric burn specialist and she had worked with children and that was her specialty. >> reporter: and as lori had been having some behavior issues with her daughter, heather gave the girl a blood test. >> to see if, you know, there was anything wrong with her. >> reporter: and -- >> she said, i just want to you know that your daughter is bipolar. >> reporter: but it was odd, how would she know based on a quick blood test whether or not her daughter was bipolar? and why would heather use her own diabetes kit for the test? lori hit the internet just to check out the woman who was playing doctor with her child. >> and found that, you know, she actually was a wanted felon. >> reporter: so she called the cops who arrested heather in the act of spending chris' money but somehow heather slipped off the hook. though lori pressed charges and
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pushed hard for a prosecution, nobody followed through, and lori eventually gave up. lives with the guilt now. >> i think it was a month or so after i gave it up, that's when she came to d.c. and she had met kate. and i always feel if i could have hung on one more month, i could have helped them get her. >> reporter: now as he prepared to defend ethan, david allier was feeling much better, his client's chief accuser, it appeared, was a practiced con artist. would any jury believe her? ethan might be naive, said allier, but his story after all never changed. >> they had gone out to dinner, he kate and heather. after they went out to dinner, he dropped kate back off at her parent's home here in downtowns charleston and spoke with her a couple of times via text message that night and he didn't talk to her again after that. >> reporter: so it was all on heather and with her as ethan's chief accuser, how could any jury convict him?
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but just days before the trial was to start, solicitor scarlet wilson finally uncovered something the case lacked, a clear motive. she found it, she said, in a letter kate wrote to a friend just before she disappeared. >> she's talking about how someone has tried to extend her credit limit or has tried to assume her identity and mess with her money in her bank. and she was livid. and i think kate was threatening to get her father involved. and that was a new dimension for heather kamp. i mean -- >> reporter: she didn't need katie as an enemy. >> i have no doubt katie confronted heather kamp with that. >> reporter: and that's when heather kamp and ethan mack decided they had to keep her from talking. kate waring had to die. >> reporter: he began to make the choice to join in the scam to rip off kate waring.
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>> reporter: finally, the prosecutor scarlet wilson felt ready and almost a year to the day after kate was found, she launched the trial of ethan mack, the sole defendant in the courtroom, heather having taken that plea agreement. the warings tried to prepare themselves though what they saw defied preparation. >> we had to see images and see what it was like when they found her and then go through all of the forensics and we were seeing that for the first time along with the jurors and all of those other spectators in the courtroom. >> reporter: one by one, the a-team took the stand, as did detectives and experts from the charleston police department, to present the evidence. >> over a stupid forgery. >> reporter: prosecutor wilson told the jury that ethan and heather killed kate to avoid getting caught for forging kate's checks and using her credit cards. then heather took the stand and told the jury it was ethan, not her, who lured kate to their
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tiny apartment, and then smothered her, shocked her with a taser, drowned her in the bathtub and dumped her body out on wadmalaw island because he thought no one would ever find her there. so did you think you convinced that jury? >> i thought that the trial went better than i ever could have hoped. >> reporter: except that is for two things, one, would the jury believe ethan actually killed his best friend kate? and two -- >> heather kamp is a liar. heather kamp is jealous of kate. heather kamp is the one stealing. >> reporter: but heather's testimony did seem to terrify one person, ethan mack himself, and it showed. when he was in the courtroom waiting for the jury too com co back, we have that picture, what was happening with your client? >> at that point, you know, true
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fear. you know, true freeear. i could really see it. >> reporter: what hold did heather have on this man? did the jury, did anybody have this crime figured out? coming up -- >> please raise your right hand. >> a surprise from the jury and another one from ethan mack's mom. >> he got very confrontational. basically his mother said there's more to this story and you need to tell it right now. his mother wanted him to tell the truth and tell what happened. kayla: our dad was in the hospital. josh: because of smoking. but we still had to have a cigarette. had to. kayla: do you know how hard it is to smoke in a hospital? by the time we could, we were like... what are we doing? kayla: it was time for nicodermcq. the nicodermcq patch with unique extended release technology helps prevent your urge to smoke all day. and doubles your chances of quitting.
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and blaming them for the shutdown. an an 8-year-old boy died from guatemala in u.s. customs board protection. this is the second child to die this month. now back to "dateline." welcome back to "dateline" extra. i'm craig melvin. ethan mack awaited a jury verdict. would they find him guilty of murdering his best friend kate waring, or would they set him free? and what about his wife and accuser, heather kamp? the stranger kate met on a train. here again is keith morrison. >> reporter: you just never can tell how a jury will react to the facts of a complicated murder case, or the accusations of a person like heather kamp. ethan mack cooled his heels while his jury tried to decide if he did or did not smother,
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beat, taser and drown his best friend, a woman he claimed was like a little sister to him. and then after 14 interminable hours, they trooped back into the courtroom and told the judge they could not decide whether or not ethan was guilty of murder. >> all right. what i'm going to do is on the murder charge, i'm going to declare a mistrial on that. >> reporter: mistrial, a hung jury. >> huge letdown. >> right. >> it wasn't going to be over, it wasn't going to end. we were going to possibly have to relive that whole event again. >> reporter: as she packed up her file, solicitor scarlet wilson vowed to find justice somehow. and then quite unexpectedly there was an intervention from a surprising source. it was ethan mack's own church going, no-nonsense mother. she had testified during the trial for her son, of course,
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gave a huge stand about what she was made of >> korean mack dean. d-e-a-n. >> ethan is a mama's boy, isn't he? >> yes, he is. >> do you know anything about your son having involvement in kate waring's murder? >> no. >> if you did, would you stand here today and support him? >> he know i would turn him in. >> reporter: then as ethan's mother sat through the rest of the trial she heard things, she knew her son, knew when he was hiding something, so she went to see him in jail. ethan's attorney david aylor heard it all. so it did get loud in that cell when they were talking? >> it got very confrontational. basically his mother said there's more to this story, and you need to tell it and you need to tell it right now. his mother wanted him to tell the truth and tell what happened. >> reporter: so it was decided soon after ethan and his mother had their talk, he appeared before the judge and he admitted
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he did participate in the murder of his good friend kate. he agreed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in exchange for a 25-year prison sentence. >> you understand the court still treats this as a guilty plea? >> yes, ma'am. >> and your criminal record will reflect it as a guilty plea? >> yes, ma'am. >> reporter: of course, since heather pleaded guilty to murder and forgery and obstruction of justice, they didn't need a trial for her either. guilty but mentally ill, by the way. at her sent echbsing her therapist told the judge that heather developed after a deeply traumatic childhood a whole basket of serious, psychological disorders, some of which rendered her basically incapable of separating truth from her elaborate fictions, which led into her years of failed marriages, abandoned children and constant drifting. if heather was hoping for a shorter prison term because of all of that, she didn't get it. instead solicitor scarlet wilson noted she continued to lie about important details after she made
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her deal to testify. and because she broke the deal, the sentence, 39 years, 14 more than ethan. >> this was heather kamp's kill. while certain liejly evenage mas involved and certainly he laid his hands on kate, i do not believe but for heather kamp we would be here. >> reporter: still said andy savage after the fact solicitor wilson could have had a much stronger case if the charleston police acted more aggressively. just one example -- when police arrested ethan and heather -- >> because of their own incompetence, they released the property, the crime scene where the homicide took place, and turned it back over to landlord without examining it. and so the landlord went in and vacated the premises. he took all of their furniture out put it in storage. >> reporter: cleaned the place. >> cleaned the place. it wasn't until over two weeks later they go in there knowing the property had already been tainted, the crime scene was
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destroyed. >> reporter: no wonder scarlet wilson didn't have all of the ammunition she would have liked, said andy savage, but the charleston police said they didn't see it quite that way. they did take the case of kate waring very serious right from the very beginning and the second guessing from the a-team was rather puzzling, at least according to captain thomas robertson. >> i'm surprised, i really am. i thought we both did a fabulous job, and i think the team and detectives i had working from this agency and support that we had, it was fantastic. >> reporter: what may have looked like inaction, said detective david as borne, was actually a careful and thorough investigation, one that didn't leave out any possibility. was there some point in which you thought this girl -- she's probably dead? she's come to some serious harm? >> early on. >> reporter: early on. how many days after would you say? >> i would say that -- within that first week for sure. >> reporter: yeah. so you knew it was a murder
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investigation at that stage? >> no. it could have been an overdose. it could have been an accidental death. i think we felt like we were probably dealing with a death investigation. >> reporter: right. but neither tom nor janice waring was the least bit satisfied. hadn't the police suggested early on kate may have simply skipped town on her own? didn't seem to the warings they were trying very hard to find her. what about all of those other families of missing people, they asked? families without the resources to hire an a-team. >> unfortunately, missing people are low on the priority list nationwide. >> i feel like that a missing person or missing child should be just as important as a bank robbery because lots of people never find out what happened to their child. >> reporter: it was late after midnight when she came to the end of her story, ushered there by two people she believed to be good friends of hers.
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and nobody, not the warings, not the a-team, not the police, has heard the story you're about to hear, the competing stories of the last hours and minutes of kate waring's life. the question is, whose story will you believe, her longtime friend, the uncle of her god son, or the charming drifter, the woman who played with fate on the train? coming up -- heather versus ethan. >> i had a big conscience and he doesn't. he doesn't have a conscience. >> who was really behind kate waring's death? two very different tales. so lionel, what does being able to trade 24/5 mean to you? well, it means i can trade after the market closes. it's true. so all... evening long. ooh, so close. yes, but also all... night through its entirety. come on, all... the time from sunset to sunrise.
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returning to "strangers on a train," the trial is over, the killers in jail but it was not the end of the story. in fact, there were two sharply different tales about the last hours and minutes of kate waring's life. you're about to hear the first. once again, keith morrison. >> reporter: they call it the
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palmetto, a train that rides down the eastern seaboard, eight hours from washington to charleston, fine setting to meet a stranger. >> sat in the same street, laughed, were joking the whole way, started talking. >> reporter: heather kamp, fleshly supplied with jewelry and cash from her last mark, just by chance found herself sitting with a young woman wearing jewelry and perhaps with access to such cash as heather had never seen before. what did you see in her? why did you like her? >> she was funny, very funny. >> reporter: now, sitting here in jail, heather claims she came to see kate not as her next victim but as a friend. when in charleston, she professed her love for kate's body ethan mack and eventually married him, that love was true too, so she says now. when she told them both all of those well practiced lies about being a doctor, about her husband and child being killed in an accident, et cetera, et cetera, those stories, she said, were just part schtick she
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invented as a con artist. >> that's what i do. that's who i am. that's the way i learned how to survive. >> reporter: remember in court the prosecutor called heather the master mind who conned kate, lied to manipulate ethan, lied about murder. you were the decisionmaker. you were the person who caused kate's death. >> i don't take it as that. >> reporter: stole from her, yes. but kill kate, no. heather kamp will not cop to that. instead, this was the story the drifter had for us. it was all ethan right from the start. my husband wanted to rip her off because she had money. >> reporter: but wait, why would ethan want any harm to come from his good friend kate? >> reporter: the trouble was that ethan never considered her a friend. >> reporter: not a friend of hers at all? >> no. >> reporter: not like a sister? >> no. he was baby sitting her and she became a problem for him. >> reporter: became a real problem, says heather, when kate
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found out she and ethan were stealing from her. >> she was like i'm going to put you guys in jail and that scared ethan and the whole nightmare began that night because he was not going to go to jail. >> reporter: so you're saying ethan was the mastermind, not you? >> yes, yes. >> reporter: and so after dinner that last night, says heather, they took kate back to their apartment, ethan got her a little high. >> after a couple of drinks, she was in a very good mood. >> reporter: there was a big suitcase on the floor. ethan dared her, says heather, get in. she did. didn't see the taser he was holding. >> he starts tasering her and doesn't stop. by the time he remeevs the taser, she's not moving inside the suitcase at all. he races into the bedroom, grabbing the pillow off the bed, comes back in, pushes me away, unzips the suitcase, takes the pillow, compresses it over her mouth, grabs the wine bottle that is maybe four feet away, takes the wine bottle, crack,
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crack, i think maybe three times he hits her. he tells me to go inside the bathroom and start the water. >> reporter: she was terrified, she >> i cried but i didn't say anything. i didn't know what to do. i didn't know what to say. when he told me to do something, i did it. >> she filled the tub, she says. >> he asked me to help pull her in there. i tried, but i can't do it. i start crying, and i throw up in the toilet. >> why didn't you pull her out of the water? >> at that point, i -- the only thing i was thinking about was how am i going to make it out of this house. >> did you think ethan would kill you, too? >> why not? who else knows but me? why not? why wouldn't i be next? >> she helped him put kate's body in the car. watched him dump her out on the island. of course she lied, she admits, when she told ethan she was pregnant. but that was just for the sake of her own safety, says heather.
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