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She was the love of my life. Katie and I have a very special bond. Always. Oh, we call the police station, we call some of our friends, and nobody had heard from a daughter in danger. We were absolutely convinced that foul play was involved and no one could find her. I was concerned. We got to get going. Move. Moving on this.

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On the train coming home, she had met this woman, could a brief encounter hold the answer?

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She's talking about how someone has tried to assume her identity.

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There's more to this story and you need to tell it right now. Somebody was after true here. I could really see it. I said, hey, hey, yo, let me back up found.

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It began on a bright morning 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.

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On board was a beautiful, tall and feisty redhead named Kate, wearing a daughter of the south of a fine Southern family.

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An often troubled young woman who is sitting on this train was finally on the brink of something very good.

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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 goodbye Kate, where invisible fate jumped its tracks and quite unaware of the dark force descending, she disembarked to a future utterly changed.

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Charleston, South Carolina, it almost goes without saying, is a showpiece of American history and Southern manners, its charm is deeply embedded as the families who count seven, eight, 10 generations here.

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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 that catch a turtle.

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Can we keep it doting?

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Parents Janice and Tom, who adored their only daughter and she had you essentially wrapped around her finger? Oh, 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.

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She was the middle child sandwiched between two brothers, older Joe, younger Richard. She was bright, maybe too bright school board, her animals, all animals enchanted her. She was naive, sweet as younger brother Richard sighs she could not turn away a stray animal or human.

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She was a very, very kind person. Whereas some people would dismiss someone who wasn't generally accepted by by most. She would kind of try to help those people out.

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But somewhere in the course of that shattered childhood, something happened to Kate outside or saw a fearless tomboy morph into a sophisticated debutante. But at home, Kate struggled, often in secret with eating disorders, depression. College was a frequently interrupted disaster.

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She sort of ran toward risk. Yeah, I noticed that. And a lot of things that she did, she seemed to caught it.

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The parents discovered she'd been sexually abused one little by someone they knew. Years of therapy followed. Still, she drank to excess, 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. And 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.

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And it was must have been an amazing trip. Oh, it was the trip of a lifetime. I'm so happy that we shared that together. Well, the photographs show how happy she was there.

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And she saw young men who were with their families about her age who were happy. And she said to me, Dad, I don't have to settle for what I've settle for, do I? And I said, No, honey, you don't. You can you can basically write your own script.

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And it was a bit of magic. The change seemed almost instant.

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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 traveled 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.

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The snapshots taken of Kate on Red Square in Moscow were far more than just souvenirs.

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They were portraits of a young woman transformed. The Kate who stood on Red Square had a new passion in life. The depressions and failures in the past had fallen the way she was consumed by all things Russian. In fact, she was making plans, even while there, 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 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 have sent her into a tailspin once.

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But now the new Kate vowed to try again, later ordered the Palmetto for Charleston and once home, threw herself into college classes and a children's book she'd been writing.

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Big Brother Joe was, to say the least, encouraged.

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She, when I talked to her, was the happiest I can remember hearing her. And the last 10 years she sounded good. She sounded as if she was ready, had a conviction about what she wanted to do.

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And then it was June. Heat rising in Charleston, deepening green. On Saturday morning, June 13th, Tom, wearing at his summer house outside the city, felt an absence. Cell phone hadn't rung, no call from Kate. Kate, who always called or texted her parents practically hourly.

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She always checked in and it was unusual.

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He drove home to check her room here in the big silent house on the battery and all the lights were on.

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And it looked like, obviously, Katie had planned to come back and she'd left her medicine. She never went anywhere without her medicine.

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And then on Sunday, we came by the house also. No sign of her.

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Now, there was dread.

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Was it possible that Kate had slipped back into that old destructive like what we call police station we call the detention center?

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Wow. So this is a by the end of the weekend, nobody had a Jane Doe in the hospital. Nobody had been brought in. We call some of our friends and nobody had heard from her what to do.

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Kate was 28, and though she lived at home, she was an adult. Her decision, bad or good, were hers. They elected to give it one more day. If she wasn't back by Monday, they'd call the police.

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And then when Monday came, there was word, no, not from Kate, from Kate's bank.

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Once I got off the phone with the branch manager, I call the police. What were you thinking then? I was thinking something is wrong.

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Something was wrong, but could they discover what and what the police hell up up this? We got to get going to get moving on this. It was Monday morning, the 15th of June 2009, Kate, where you've been missing for 48 hours when a surveillance camera captured a young man named Ethan Mack standing at the counter of a bank waiting to cash a check signed by Kate Wari. Problem was her account barely totaled a hundred dollars and this check was for 4500 and the signature seemed off.

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The teller called Kate's dad. He called police.

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I never met Ethan. I didn't know Ethan's last name. All I knew was named 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.

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Of course she did. She was 28 years old.

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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 Gatch, 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 it in my heart. Something was wrong. And I was I was concerned.

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Then it was Jason Locke, a young lawyer with whom she often shared lunch and a spirited debate. Though she was strong willed, she was very energetic. She was rarely, rarely incorrect. That's been her best friend, as she made clear to all the others was Ethan, that she really liked Ethan. She really trusted him. So this is my best friend, Jason. She really she put a lot of trust in him. She's a lovable person, full of energy.

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All these rambunctious Ethan worked in a local hotel. Very different background, 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.

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They loved each other like siblings.

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I mean, no harm would come to her when no certain little boyfriends would act. I'd got hand problems and I would put them in their place. Wasn't a romance at all. They never he just was like she was just like a little sister to me.

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And 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 Braasch Bulldog key chains.

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And on that Monday morning in June said even 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 that was going on in the world of keep.

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But now he complained, here was Kate's dad sending the police to talk to him about a check. Kate told him to cash. Yeah, deal with that one. So 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 with Catherine had been for several years.

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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 and drinks, came back, drop Kate off back at her house. Did he say what time? Yeah, I think the time would have been probably around eleven, thirty, eleven forty five at that time.

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The detective checked in, of course, and found text messages that confirm 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 in.

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The mother and Ethan both told me that this is his room, this is where he stays.

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But to say that the instant suspicion on the part of the Waring's and the police was upsetting to Ethan was probably an understatement, given the most aware of where this is people can call.

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This is the voicemail he left for the Waring's after that policeman poked around his place as if he was a murder suspect.

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Why don't you leave the real room and go find out what really happened to find the person this happened to her sakorafa Loukas.

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Only thing I ever did was try to help her a more than way so that end the police move past.

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Ethan checked Kate's cell phone records, found she'd made a call late that Friday night 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 Waring's one tower is busy, the next one 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 at a time or two and police resources were limited.

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And well, Tom Waring got the cop's message.

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We do not know for a fact that the crime has been committed here. After all, the Waring's were reminded Kate was a world traveler, could well have just picked up and gone back to Russia, might be aboard some tramp steamer even now, or if something bad happened to her, could have been a drug overdose, even suicide.

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Impossible, thought Kate's parents, even in her darkest times, she'd never failed to call if she spent the night out unexpectedly.

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I mean, we get a call first thing the next morning because she knew that we would worry about where she was and where she's safe. So the Waring's 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 Gatch to give her a lift to her therapist's office, gave me a hug, say goodbye.

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And thank you so much. She's actually in a very good mood.

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An hour and a half later, Howard saw her again, this time at the gym.

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She said, is it OK? I skip rope over here, Howard? And I said, sure, that's fine.

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I knew there was an incident at the gym. Howard, soon to be ex-wife, came around. She and Kate had words.

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But at eight pm, a drugstore camera showed Kate all relaxed again, talking on her cell, buying wine and snacks while waiting on her prescription refills. Ethan paid for dinner. Salmon, chicken teriyaki. It's like a.

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Japanese like kind of like cuisine type thing. She didn't drive, so he took her home, dropped her off before midnight. Something else something earlier that Friday that bothered the Waring's at first was terrifying them now. And the more they thought about it, the worse it seemed.

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Just before she went to the drugstore Friday evening, she started telling her father about some problem, saying that she felt like she perhaps unintentionally gotten herself in trouble.

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And I said, well, why don't you tell me about that? And she wouldn't tell me any details, which she clearly worried. She was concerned, clearly worried about something.

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Naturally, they told the police about that, but nothing came of it. And as the air thickened into a steaming August, the weeks that pass brought no new leads, just tourists clamoring for the cool shade of historic carriage ride. And Kate, wearing the urgency of finding her, began to fade. And that was driving me nuts, I thought I put up with this, I've got to get going. Got to move out of this.

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And in the hush cube of his perch overlooking the city, someone was listening. A new investigation began, but it's not the police were behind it. We're the cream of the crop and our job was to find Kate. We're not finding Kate was not an option. Who are these guys?

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Take a little drive beyond the grand old homes and markets and churches at the historic center of Charleston, South Carolina enter quietly a hushed suite of rooms overlooking the city where an influential philanthropist flip through his mental Rolodex and placed a call to his friend, the chief of police.

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And I really need a favor. You know, I really need some help with this situation.

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The caller, John Rivers, happened to be a childhood friend of Tom Waring, watched Kate Waring grow up.

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John Rivers told the police chief he was worried about Kate, too.

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And he told me that, you know, they got a lot of stuff going on, but that he would sign 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 Joan Rivers couldn't stand what it was doing to his best friend, Tom Waring.

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I could see that he really was having a hard time functioning.

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So Rivers picked up the phone again, enlisted a seasoned pro and told him, 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.

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Really, as soon as we scratched the surface just a little bit, we were absolutely convinced that foul play was involved.

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Savage was given just two mandates. Find Kate Wari, tell police everything you find that last part. Keeping the police in the loop should be easy. Figured dandy. Given the team assembled a band of retired policeman turned private eyes, each with a particular talent. Bobby mentor, Bobby mentor, a human bloodhound, tracking people without them knowing it.

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His specialty. My name is Bill Capps. Bill caps techno geek tracks. Bad guys through cyberspace happens to be a crack shot.

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My name is James Randolph. James Randolph, Ex Police Department, rebel strategy. His specialty shaking things up a particular skill. But we're the cream of the crop.

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And our job was to find Kate. We're not finding Kate was not an option.

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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 indicates bedroom.

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These type cases you have to take on the personality and you have to see this person's world through their eyes.

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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 your brand new prescription sitting there untouched? The medication in which she had gotten that prescription was still on her dresser. Unused medication was her lifeline.

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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.

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If she was awake, she was Facebook. 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.

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Using Kate's friends, caps built an electronic map of her communications the Friday night she vanished from Kate's lawyer friend, Jason Lucke.

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Cops retrieved a weird voicemail left late that evening to the six p.m. missed call left voicemail. Voicemail said that someone had, quote, stolen her identity, close quote, and had obtained a couple of credit cards in her name.

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She wanted me to sue the person responsible, the gym trainer and Kate's romantic interest, Howard Gatch told cops he heard from her about ten thirty pm still to dinner with Ethan then. But then there was another calls at Gatch, and it was after midnight. Well, after police believe she was dropped off at home, she told me she was at some friend's house.

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We had already made it to the house. Yeah, she sounded a little buzzed.

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And then a very last message from Kate, a text very strange. I'm off to Greenville to pick up some lovely. And whatever lovely was, I had no idea for what you know, and I'll be back in a few days. That make any sense to, you know, be careful, he replied.

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But this time she did not text back. Silence from Kate except middle of the night. Her cell phone pinged out on James Island miles from her home. The cops atomize remembered that a closer tower to her house may have been too busy to handle the call. But at 153 in the morning, not a chance, thought Andy Savage.

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It's just preposterous. They were looking for an explanation, plausible explanation, consistent with their theory. That she voluntarily left that middle of the night call, by the way, was to her voicemail and mailbox for a voicemail box that had been jammed for months, during which time she hadn't used it or called it at all. So the question, why would she call the voicemail that she would not be doing it? Only one conclusion to draw somebody else was using her phone.

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But where was Kate now that she has that 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.

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I believe that if a man commit a crime, he should be prepared to do the time. Thing is about Gene Frazier over here on Charleston, James Island, where his ancestors go back to slave days. Gene gets tips, all kinds of tips.

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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.

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So, listen, I don't think this is right, he says. Ethan Mack is living in an apartment that I have rented out to has his father, but the police didn't search this place where Ethan actually lives at the landlord.

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They searched his mother's house on a different island miles away where Ethan told them he lived.

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And he says, I think that he's trying to mislead the police.

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What did you think when you heard that this guy gets up the high and on that very day, Jean Fraizer joined a band of ex cops, which from now on, we'll call the 18. A mysterious woman enters the picture, Katie had this strange girl in that room. So who was she? The team was about to launch a hidden camera. Surprise.

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At the time, Andy Savage put his team together to look for Kate, wearing that lovely young Charleston woman had been missing two months. And according to Kate's parents, Tom and Janice, the Charleston police were still saying this, they think. Maybe she went somewhere, but she's probably just up and going. What do you say to that? She doesn't have a car. How is she going to get there?

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It was after that when the ATMs Jean Frazier got his tip. Kate's best friend, Ethan, had lied to the police about where he lived. He didn't live at the house. He allowed police to search. He really left behind the house in one of two apartments five miles away, which you presented to the police.

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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 went back to them and said, hey, you misled us two months ago.

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But as the team discovered, Ethan failed to mention something else, too. He had a girlfriend in this little place, a woman named Heather Angelica camp. And with Janice wearing her back, her mind went straight to an afternoon at home.

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Three months earlier, I heard voices upstairs and so I went up and Katie had this strange girl and that I'd never met before in the room with her.

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And that was her name, Heather Camp, Kate explained. She met and rapidly became fast friends with Heather on the train, the Palmetto during her trip down from Washington. Typical Kate Janis thought back then, drawn to someone who needed help, who had told her a hard luck story.

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She said when she got on the train, her pocketbook was stolen and she's here in Charleston and she doesn't have any money. And I'm helping her out until she can whatever.

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But Kay 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.

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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, or that she was a grief stricken, grief stricken woman.

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She did not look that way at all. Now, here was news that Heather was living with Kate's friend Ethan in this tiny apartment.

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To me, she just 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 introduced Heather to her friend Ethan. And very quickly, a romance that blossomed. They were even talking marriage briefly. If Janice Waring was suspicious about Heather back then, the 18 was doubly so now. And sure enough, a few keystrokes on the Internet told Bobby Myntra that mother's intuition was right.

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That's all where she had been arrested for forgery. And in Indiana, she thought she'd been arrested in other states to essentially if you just Googled her name, I suppose you could find out for.

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That's how I found her, that she'd been impersonating a doctor, which I just Googled her.

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And Ethan wouldn't be her first husband. She'd been married before and had four children. Now that they knew about Heather, a few fuzzy details were suddenly clearer. For one thing, the bill for Kate's last dinner with Ethan made more sense because there were three meals on that dinner bill. The other diner was Heather Camp. And more important, that check if tried to cash the one the teller flagged, maybe that was another Heather forgery. So right away, point man James Randolph rushed that information over here to police headquarters.

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Surely somebody here had put two and two together. A woman known to have committed forgery in Indiana and other states. A so-called best friend tries to cash a bogus check with Kate's name on it, then lies to police. Seemed like evidence these two were involved in her disappearance up to their necks, enough to haul them in anyway.

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But I was told that this story panned out and that these are petty criminals and the check was going to be taken separate from the missing person.

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What do you say to that? I just didn't think it was was the right thing to do. We had to figure out who wrote and endorsed those checks, who signed and wrote those shirts. Sure.

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It was obvious the team would have to find the connection between Ethan and Heather and Kate's disappearance without police help sort of remain stealth as much as possible.

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Time to keep a careful, quiet eye on Ethan Mack and Heather Camp. So Jean Fraizer persuaded his church friend, Ethan's landlord, to allow surveillance specialist Bobby Minter to take a hidden camera into a corner of his kitchen window, a camera trained right at Ethan's front door with a motion detector just like that light that they've got over the door is so when they drove in, it would light up and it would light it for our camera.

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The whole camera itself was about the size of this little flashlight. It was pointed. It was pointed directly at the apartment.

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It's pretty slick, no doubt about it. And then 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 and what Ethan and Heather left the apartment.

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Bobby had that covered, too.

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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, that Heather were and what they were doing, and almost immediately they got a surprise.

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When Ethan was at work, Heather sneaked over to visit the man living next door, rode around town with him.

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They were going to the bank a lot. And I called the investigator, one investigator, to walk over here. As a result of that, they found that they were kiting checks. They were 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.

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He discovered the GPS tracker on Ethan's car. Let Bobby do a couple of local pawn shops, a pawn and jewelry.

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The jewelry with a red flag does was in Kate's jewelry. They couldn't be sure yet without more surveillance, that is.

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And then the landlord called Jean again. Another tip, this one bad. Ethan and Heather weren't paying rent.

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He says, I have I'm a with these people. So after he said that this is not good. I said, hold on a little. If these people evicted, we don't know what is going on.

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If the team didn't think of something and fast, Heather and Ethan might slip out of their sight. And Charleston. For good and enticing offer from the 18 ten thousand reasons to start talking 10, 20 50s, everybody sees that guys as Joe. The team of retired detective searching for Kate Waring had a big problem solving one, no one told them Heather and Ethan had to be serious suspects last people to see Kate alive, one known forger, the other on tape, trying to take money from Kate's bank account.

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But they were about to be evicted for lack of a rent payment. And if that happened, they would slip the invisible net. The ATM had so carefully woven. Monya, we had the camera.

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We had a GPS tracking every movement that they have.

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So they made a call to a quiet office overlooking Charleston, where the team's money man, John Rivers, decided he'd pay Ethan's rent secretly, of course. And it was a plan which, after a little brainstorming, offered a bonus, a built in opportunity. Here's how the team wanted to know if Heather or Ethan forged Kate's 4500 dollar check, but they needed original handwriting samples. We determine what was on the check that we needed comparison samples to. And we had numbers, obviously, on a.

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Then the team helped Ethan's landlord prepare IOUs that contained the needed numbers and letters. And when Heather and Ethan signed the documents agreeing to pay the rent in installments, they were giving the team the very samples they could prove they forged Kate's jack. The team took the handwriting to their waiting expert, Micki Dawson, the man who set up the state police handwriting lab. The question was simple.

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Did Heather and or Ethan forge that check from Kate, the one Ethan tried to cash immediately and that they are handwriting document examiners said that's then? No question about it. So if Ethan and Heather forged a check from Kate, what else did they do?

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Someone on the team needed to get a look inside that apartment. If Kate had been there and still might be evidence of something. But how to get in? Well, the landlord has a right to inspect.

[00:35:23]

A tenant's homes for health and safety and welfare, and the landlord decided that he needed to go in and spray for bugs.

[00:35:34]

You can understand why that might be done in that little place, James.

[00:35:36]

So it'd be best that if he went with them to make sure that the bugs were all taken care of.

[00:35:42]

Surveillance expert Bobby Minter's GPS device showed Ethan's car was out somewhere.

[00:35:48]

Well, when we opened the door to go inside, Ethan's max sitting on the couch smoking a joint of godsake.

[00:35:55]

And I'm like, oh, hell, I'm like, what? The exterminating company? We're going to be using some dangerous chemicals. So you'll have to step out on the outside while we get this done. No idea who you were. No, no, no. You sure about that? Absolutely. So the exterminator and I went inside and close the door behind us, just search the apartment and in one of the backpacks and Ethan Mac's backpack with some Chinese money.

[00:36:23]

Chinese currency.

[00:36:24]

Chinese money. Yes. Just like the Chinese bills James saw in Kate's bedroom, Janice wearing head brought those bills to Kate from Hong Kong.

[00:36:33]

Souvenirs that Ethan stolen them. I put it here a little time to stir things up, apply some pressure. And Bobby mentioned just how Bobby went out and put on every telephone pole, every vacant house, every oak tree, every stop sign, wanted information.

[00:36:52]

Missing person Kate Waring's posted that right around where all those people hung up wherever they went, including on Mac's windshield when he was working that day.

[00:37:03]

We put posters to send a psychological message to them, but no response, at which point John Rivers said perhaps what they do understand. And on the street is it where is Andrew Jackson and maybe Benjamin Franklin? And and they would recognize their faces on a 20 or 50 dollar bill.

[00:37:29]

Ten thousand dollars worth of those bills went into a grocery bag, 10, 20, 50 in Hunt. And they said, well, goodbye. And when you open it up, you know, you two rolls and then everybody sees that that I show that I just Joe.

[00:37:45]

And we're better with that bag of money they decided than under the nose of that neighbor. Heather was going to see the man named Terrie Williams, the one who seemed to be kiting checks with her.

[00:37:55]

So we knocked on the door and Terrie Williams come to the door with no shirt on as no shirt on short pants, said Terry. Listen, we know you're great friends with these people, Marc, and you don't have to live in this condition. We know you're back on your rent. We know it's bad. But this bag of money, this could be all used now to close the sale with Terrie Williams.

[00:38:17]

They try to bluff.

[00:38:19]

Tell us what happened to Kate and where we can find it. We know Mac encamp, killed, and this money could be used. And at that point, that's when the inside the bedroom door burst open and a lot of yelling and screaming.

[00:38:34]

And to their other surprise, there came Heather camp angrily and quickly pulling her clothes back together. Didn't appear to be a business meeting. The team interrupted. The detectives told her who they were and who they worked for.

[00:38:48]

And then Heather can get on the cell phone and makes a call to Ethan Matt and say Ethan and establishes. Investigators are here trying to get Terrie Williams to roll on us. And when she said that the three of us looked at one another in police terms, we knew that was definitely the case. We knew they they had done it.

[00:39:12]

Oh, yes. Decades of investigating made it perfectly clear to the team whatever happened to Kate wearing Ethan Mac and Heather Camp were in it up to their eyeballs. We knew something was up. A new direction, the search for Kate Waring takes the 18th to a wild and desolate place. What would they find their. 28 year old Kate Waring has been missing since June 12th. It was so awkward but necessary, the once very private Waring's and their only daughter's intensely personal struggles were now so glaringly public they had to be.

[00:40:04]

And you can't just sit back and hope that she'll be failed. I mean, we worked every day, all day long trying to find her. That's when it hit home.

[00:40:16]

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 their seriously. So what about all those other families also desperate for help, the Waring's held a vigil to make common cause.

[00:40:33]

Somehow or another, somebody will be will be moved and want to come forward and tell us where Katie is.

[00:40:39]

That was the public wearing family at home, the private Tom, where he couldn't help but be drawn to the playback button on their voicemail just to hear her voice.

[00:40:50]

Mom, pick up the phone to pick up the phone, or I would look at photographs of her or play those voicemail messages, just keeping her voice current in my mind.

[00:41:10]

Meanwhile, Andy Savage is a team of detectives who's making progress.

[00:41:14]

And when they flashed that fact grocery bag of cash around the neighborhood, they certainly got a rise out of Ethan and Heather, a furious Ethan called Andy.

[00:41:23]

Do you? Investigators are here and they're accusing me of being involved in this homicide. Kate was my best friend in life. As he's on the phone calls, she starts out in his rage about, you know, what are you doing out here?

[00:41:37]

You accusing me of this? We had nothing to do with it.

[00:41:40]

Fascinating reaction, thought Andy Savage, and perhaps an opportunity.

[00:41:45]

We had done a lot of background on Ken. And so we knew her and we knew her personality and we knew a little bit about what buttons to push. So the reaction we had towards Heather was one of comfort, not one of angst. And during that time, we planted the seeds as as a mother, she must know the feeling of Janice wearing missing her daughter and try to apply to her empathy for her mother.

[00:42:16]

But the call from Heather wasn't all that fat bag of money accomplished before long. It reeled in a fish that neighbor Heather was sneaking off to see, called to the 18, went to talk to him and he said no. Ethan and Heather did something to Kate and Gerry went in the back room, came back out and had this iPod and tears. I believe this is going to belong to Keith.

[00:42:44]

Now, that was huge.

[00:42:47]

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. But just to be sure, this was, in fact, Kate's iPod. Tech expert Bill Caps got the serial number and within minutes had the proof.

[00:43:07]

I examined the registry files small to computers that we've had access to that Kate had used in the past, you know, proof positive that that was Kate's iPod.

[00:43:16]

Of course, right away, the team told the police about the iPod and also handed over the handwriting expert's report showing that Heather and Ethan forged Kate's check two days after she vanished.

[00:43:27]

And now things started happening fast after her heart to heart with Andy Savage, Heather made a remarkable decision. She called the Charleston Police Department and confessed no, not to murder.

[00:43:41]

Instead, she said it was she who forged the bogus check, supposedly signed by Kate Waring and Ethan, who tried to cash it two days after Kate disappeared. Now, surely the police would swoop in and arrest them both.

[00:43:55]

But here's something you should know about the way it worked between the ateam and their former colleagues, the cops. The deal was entirely one way. That's to say the ateam told the cops everything they uncovered. The cops told the 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 get the GPS off the car because we didn't want the police to seize the car and have our GPS.

[00:44:31]

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 her where she was working. Obviously, they didn't have a surveillance over so and you could tell them that we thought we told her the camp was was working.

[00:44:52]

The way we work, we have stations working at the local gas station. I walked into the gas station and bought Pepsi, paid for it, walked out and a police officer in uniform had pulled up with people around the corner of the building. I said, that's her inside. Ethan and Heather were charged with perjury and obstruction of justice with a murder charge followed.

[00:45:13]

Shortly we get a call from course. We do have friend that still at the police department. We get a call.

[00:45:20]

The hey, the police are searching Warbelow Island for Kate Waring's body, Guatamala, Highland Wild, beautiful, isolated and 20 miles from Kate's home on Charleston battery.

[00:45:35]

So I. Get in the car and I drove out to Melville Island and there were the police. A serious search going on. So I sat there and watched them all afternoon, didn't attempt to interfere. Just watch the police, see what they're doing. Watch lots of officers and cadaver dogs off as a ton of folks out there trying to force this whole shebang.

[00:45:55]

So this is where their primary mission would end.

[00:45:59]

And if it was the police department that found Kate's remains, at least she'd finally be coming home and the team could take quiet satisfaction in the belief that it was their investigation that made it happen.

[00:46:13]

Except it didn't quite work out that way.

[00:46:19]

She said, well, they didn't find anything.

[00:46:21]

I know they wouldn't find. Was Heather Camp the con artist at it again? Where was Kate wearing?

[00:46:31]

Jeffrey Epstein is dead, but for as many victims, the search for justice is still alive because Epstein had help, lots of help. And on this season of Broken, host and investigative reporter Tara Palmeri follows Eppstein survivors as they tracked down those who enabled and witnessed his crimes and hold them accountable. Broken Seeking Justice documents the journey of these women to find out what justice looks like in their lives, including their battle against the government to change how it treats victims of child sex abuse.

[00:47:04]

They're naming names, they're seeking justice, and sometimes they even find it. For the many brave survivors, the Eppstein story isn't over. It's just beginning. Listen to Broken seeking justice wherever you get podcast's. September is National Life Insurance Awareness Month, but with everything going on right now, a lot of people are wondering if it's possible to buy life insurance at all. That's where policy genius can help. In minutes, you can work out how much coverage you need and compare quotes from top insurers to find your best price, all at policy genius.

[00:47:39]

Dotcom policy genius works for you, not the insurance company. So if you hit any speed bumps during the application process, they'll take care of everything. They even have policies which allow eligible customers to skip the in-person medical exam and do it over the phone. So if you need life insurance, head to policy genius dotcom right now to get started, you could say 1500 dollars or more a year by comparing quotes on their marketplace policy genius when it comes to insurance.

[00:48:08]

It's nice to get it right.

[00:48:19]

A lingering summer heat lake close to the marshes of what island steamed up through the dense bushes toward the city beyond it was October 2009.

[00:48:30]

A delegation of Charleston policemen sifted through the brush eyes to the ground. Police cadaver dogs nosed along the shoulders of Polly Point Road at the campsite in the back seat of a police cruiser. And Bill caps off on the sidelines, watched it all from his car.

[00:48:46]

The cops had brought Heather here to lead them to Kate Waring's body as a couple of detectives that I knew left. I did ask them, you know, any luck? And I just said simply said no and continue driving on.

[00:49:00]

Police called off the search, drove Heather back to jail.

[00:49:03]

Had she intentionally given them bad information, perhaps nobody would find Kate. Not the police, not the 18.

[00:49:12]

And then we got a terrific break by the criminal justice system. Mack and Kemp both came to the bond hearing and it's done by video at the bond hearing. Mark shows up with his family. Yeah, we were all there to support him.

[00:49:27]

And not only a public defender. But the chief public defender, wow, King has no one, she has no family, she has no friends, she has no support to speak on her behalf.

[00:49:42]

Now, I immediately said, James and Gene go see her. Treat her with kindness, treat her with caring, and within minutes, the same man who so upset Heather with their bag of money, we're face to face with her. And what was the look on her face when she came out and said she was surprised and very surprised.

[00:50:03]

And I said, Heather, we need help here. We just we wanted the body. And she said, well, they didn't find it, did they? She said, I put them through the tests. 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 where she was, they got all abusive with me, you know, and they they berated me.

[00:50:30]

So they failed the tests.

[00:50:32]

And just at that moment. What happened was, well, sheer luck directly across the lobby in the male side of. The visitation area they brought in back to see his attorneys who happened to arrive the same time we did just coincidentally all and also coincidentally, the jailers positioned Ethan and Heather across the hallway from each other, separated by glass partitions. They could see each other. Oh, you to his lawyer and the detective. We there with it. And he's over there, right?

[00:51:06]

Yeah. So she thought women are all trying to get Ethan's attention. So she snaps and she breaks with a little more encouragement from Andy Savage that he is.

[00:51:19]

Do you if Heather told him exactly where to find Kate's body and if it turned out she had nothing to do with any murder and he would help her with her forgery charges, and at that moment, Heather Camp agreed to tell the team what they needed to know. Her directions were precise. They drove out here right away. That's the large oak tree that she described.

[00:51:44]

And then she says, if you look farther up to your left in the marsh, that you'll see a gap that running down to the water.

[00:51:53]

And she says after you do that, you will look to your left over here to on my right and left and you see you will see some underbrush growth. And she said that Kate remain or she would say the body is five feet from this path, from this roadway, incredibly detailed, just the sort of place to leave her body.

[00:52:17]

But just like the police, the team found nothing. I was very disturbed. Why are we not finding her? Because we were just I we were convinced that she was here. They searched until darkness finally forced them out of the marsh. And then they called Andy Savage, who was out of town on business there on a cell phone from where they are on a hotel in Boston.

[00:52:41]

Punch up the address for Google Earth. And I'm looking at the satellite imagery of where they are. I said, well, James, is there a dark off to your left? And so I was pretty well able to identify where they were. So I said, what you got to do is just print that off.

[00:52:59]

Isn't that amazing? You could do that from thousands of miles away. You could also do it from the police station.

[00:53:04]

The Google map clearly showed the ATM 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.

[00:53:17]

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 what she told us about the souvenirs from Kate's body, the jewelry she was wearing and where it was located.

[00:53:36]

They found Kate's jewelry at a pawn shop and behind the dresser in their tiny apartment, Kate's bulldog keychain, the one she'd gotten in Moscow. Ethan 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 an I.D. Google map and more to tell from Heather, the team would return to Guatemala Island.

[00:54:00]

You know, all of what we were believing was now coming to fruition. All our suspicions about her activity and max her activity.

[00:54:09]

At that point, we knew we had the right people.

[00:54:13]

One thing, baby, going without the police. Good idea.

[00:54:19]

Maybe not the eighteen under arrest. Maybe you were arrested or we were not free to leave. They made that clear. This was a twist even they didn't see coming. The early son had cooked the mist of the marshes of Guatemala Island. Now the steel layer was heating up toward another dripping hot day.

[00:54:57]

Bobby Menger, Bill Capps and Jeanne Frazier shared a car from the city.

[00:55:01]

They rode in silence most of the way, confident the precise directions Heathered camp had given them were correct this time.

[00:55:08]

So this was it.

[00:55:11]

It was somehow fitting that Bobby, the one they call the human bloodhound, is the first to spot it.

[00:55:17]

And I saw what looked like a animal path where animals or something had pretty much beat down the bush. So I walked out that animal path and started walking 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, yo, come here. I think I found her and I said it was it was just like a ton of bricks come off of me at that point.

[00:55:46]

And when I said, oh, my God, there she is. Know. On much one, much less, you know, just bone. 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.

[00:56:02]

So when Bobby was standing and took two shots with my camera just to document the scene was when we saw it.

[00:56:09]

And then I just backed back out of the woods and Bobby followed me out. And we call 911.

[00:56:14]

What's your emergency? Yes, ma'am. This is Robert. And then you need police. Are you missing the police? What's the address? And where there's no address, it's in the woods. We found the body of where you believe you found the body of Kate learing. Yes. Know we did in the woods.

[00:56:36]

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 that the four month long mystery is finally solved. Hello? Hey, Sarge, you ready for this? No. This guy is adamant that he found Kate Waring in the woods off a poly point road of where Polly Point Road and Guatemala Island are Pisey adamant.

[00:57:06]

He says he knows it's her only out on the island off Poly Point Road, the trio of former cops instinctively reverted to long practice standard procedure. We said, OK, let's let's just secure the crime scene back out, wait for it. Law enforcement to get here.

[00:57:20]

So far, so good. But what happened next was quite a surprise. The first officer with the Charleston County deputy and said, we will show you where the remains are taking out, that it's your crime scene now and we're back at all. And that's what we did. But that wasn't the end of it, was it?

[00:57:43]

No, we were detained, to put it mildly, detained, detained and placed in separate police cars.

[00:57:51]

Maybe you were arrested or just.

[00:57:53]

Well, very strictly. I guess by the legal definition, we were not free to leave. They made that clear. And when we couldn't leave, because they took my they seized my car.

[00:58:04]

But wait a minute. You found the body and showed them where it was?

[00:58:07]

That's correct. They wanted a statement from us as to everything that we had done from the very beginning, not just what we had done that day, the whole long story. That's basically what they were asking for.

[00:58:19]

And in fact, they had been given the story along and along as it occurred.

[00:58:23]

Hours later, the detectives were finally released, but not Bill Caps car didn't get that back till they filed motion papers for an injunction would take anyway. But even now, the memory still rankles all of them.

[00:58:38]

Thirty four years in the police department to sit in the back of a police car and have some guy question you get you to take a step. That's right. Like a criminal. That's where we were sitting in the back of a car, like a criminal. And it was, let's call it like we see it.

[00:58:53]

Still, this was it. The news traveled to the house on the battery.

[00:58:58]

The Waring's 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 and that you're never going to see her again.

[00:59:25]

And then soon as they were allowed after the crime scene tape came down, after all the evidence was taken away, the whole team assembled at the spot where Kate lay it 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.

[00:59:45]

But perhaps it was a mother thing. Janice had to be here, she said, had to see it helped me to see for myself.

[00:59:55]

It was so remote we wouldn't have found her in a million years. And not knowing where she is, I mean, it's just it would have been horrible.

[01:00:08]

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's beautiful water, marsh and dogs. And I think it might have given his wearing some peace thinking, you know, at least they wasn't in a garbage dump somewhere and it was a peaceful place and, you know, God's God's place.

[01:00:37]

So now the team had done its job and takes killers could finally be brought to justice, or so you'd think. But the mystery, the web that was spot on that train down from Washington. As far stranger, more bizarre than you have so far heard and justice. Well, we shall see. They thought they solved the case, but would it stick actual evidence it just wasn't there and a close call that just might have saved Kate Waring's life.

[01:01:15]

I could have hung on one more month. I could help them get her.

[01:01:33]

Most everybody around Charleston, South Carolina, seems to know who the county solicitor is, Scarlet is what people call her solicitor, Scarlett Wilson, officially a well-known and popular prosecutor and solicitor. Wilson had a problem, actually two problems, for one thing. So Heather can't practically elected a deal to turn state's evidence against Ethan and plead guilty to murder in exchange for her credibility, as you'll soon see, was not exactly triple A.

[01:02:02]

And despite all the information the team uncovered, what could be used in court was then I mean, frankly, we didn't have a lot of evidence.

[01:02:10]

We had a lot of opinions and we had a lot of conjecture. But actual evidence just wasn't there. Kate.

[01:02:20]

Skeletal remains gave the solicitor none of the forensic evidence the juries like to see, and the coroner was unable to establish even the cause of death. As for those personal items of case that they found in Ethan's apartment, those could just as easily have been gifts. The two were supposedly best friends after all.

[01:02:40]

And to top it off, there was the amazing tale that came with the state's star witness, Heather. What's true? She helped the Waring's 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.

[01:03:01]

Not only was she a drifter, I mean, this was a true con artist just with just the most horrid background of just anyone I'd ever seen. I mean, a true sociopath.

[01:03:11]

David Taylor was certain that Heather came back on that train to Charleston. The Palmetto took one look at Kate Waring and knew she'd found her ideal. Next. Mark, why was Ayla so sure?

[01:03:24]

His research, he said, had turned up enough camp victims to fill a small bus to the poor house.

[01:03:29]

We had 13 different names for that we could use and we called all 13. I mean, these were men and women all over the country.

[01:03:36]

She would say that she was pregnant. She would say that her children had died of leukemia, that men had beat her.

[01:03:43]

Her scam trolled the Internet for men, latch on to one move in fleecy and leaving with a mountain of debt, all the while pretending to be a doctor, an heiress or the daughter of a mafia style drug family. That was probably the worst whirlwind I've ever been through, seen, done in my entire life.

[01:04:08]

It was Chris Beard, for example, in Pennsylvania just being around her and made me feel better because that's what I wanted. You know, I wanted to be loved.

[01:04:19]

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.

[01:04:30]

She persuaded him, he said, to get 15 cards, which she maxed out, leaving him thirty three thousand dollars in debt.

[01:04:37]

Oh, and by the way, she told Chris's sister in law, Laurie, that she was a pediatric burn specialist and she had worked with children and that was her specialty.

[01:04:48]

And as Laurie had been having some behavior issues with her daughter, Heather gave the girl a blood test to see if there was anything wrong with her. And she said, I just want you to know that your daughter's bipolar.

[01:05:02]

But it was odd. How would she know, based on the quick blood test, whether or not her daughter was bipolar? And why would Heather use her own diabetes kit for the test?

[01:05:13]

Laurie hit the Internet just to check out the woman who was playing doctor with her child and found that she actually was a wanted felon. So she called the cops who arrested Heather in the act of spending more precise money. But somehow Heather slipped off the hook, though Laurie pressed charges and pushed hard for a prosecution. Nobody followed through, and Laurie eventually gave up lives with the guilt.

[01:05:39]

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.

[01:05:47]

And I always feel if I could have hung on one more month, I could help them get her.

[01:05:53]

Now, as he prepared to defend, even David Aylor was feeling much better. His client's chief accuser, it appeared, was a practiced con artist with any jury believe her reason might be naive, said Taylor. But his story, after all, had never changed. They had gone out to dinner, he, Kate and Heather, and then after they went out to dinner, he dropped Kate back off at her parents home here in downtown Charleston and spoke with her a couple of times via text message that night.

[01:06:23]

And he didn't talk to her again after that.

[01:06:25]

So it was all on Heather and with her as Ethan's chief accuser, how could any jury convict him? But just days before the trial was to start, solicitor Scarlett Wilson finally uncovered something. The case lacked a clear motive. She found it, she said in letters Kate wrote to a friend just before she disappeared.

[01:06:47]

She's talking about how someone has tried to extend her 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 Camp.

[01:07:10]

And you need Katie as an enemy. And I have no doubt Katie confronted Haverkamp with that.

[01:07:17]

And that, the prosecutor said, is when Heather Camp and Ethan McCluskey decided they had to keep her from talking, Kate where had to die, he began to make the choice to join in the scam to rip off Kate Waring.

[01:07:33]

Finally, the prosecutor, Scarlett 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 Waring's tried to prepare themselves, though what they saw defy preparation.

[01:07:51]

We had to see images and see what it was like when they found her and then go through all the forensics.

[01:07:58]

And we were saying that for the first time, along with the jurors and all those other spectators in the courtroom, one by one, the 18 took this down, as did detectives and experts from the Charleston Police Department, to present the evidence over a stupid forgery. 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.

[01:08:25]

Then Heather took the stand and told the jury it was Ethan, not her, who lured Kate to their tiny apartment, then smothered her, shocked her with a taser, drowned her in the bathtub and dumped her body out on Ludmilla Island because he thought no one would ever find her there.

[01:08:43]

So did you think that you convinced that jury?

[01:08:47]

I thought that the trial went better than I ever could have hoped. Except that is for two things, one, with the jury believe Ethan actually killed his best friend, Kate, and two, Heather Camp survivor Heather Kamps, jealous of Kate.

[01:09:08]

Heather camps, the one stealing.

[01:09:12]

But Heather's testimony did seem to terrify one person. Ethan back himself. And it showed when he was in the courtroom waiting for the jury to come back. We have that picture of a child who was happening with your client at that point, you know. True fear, you know, true fear, I could really see it. What hole did Heather have on this man? Did the jury did anybody have this crime figured out? A surprise from the jury and another one from Ethan, Mac's mom.

[01:09:54]

His mother said there's more to this story and you need to tell it and you need to tell it right now. We get support from liquid Ivy, did you know that three out of four people are dehydrated and they don't even know it? And as the weather turns cooler, it's that much easier for us to miss signs of dehydration. So I've been drinking liquid I.V. It's the fastest, most efficient way to stay hydrated. In fact, every serving and hydrate you two to three times faster and more efficiently than water alone.

[01:10:22]

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[01:11:36]

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.

[01:11:47]

All right. What I'm going to do is on the murder charge, I'm going to declare a mistrial on that mistrial. A hung jury, a huge letdown. Right. And 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.

[01:12:10]

As she packed up her files, solicitor Scarlett Wilson vowed to find justice somehow.

[01:12:17]

And then quite unexpectedly, there was an intervention from a surprising source. It was even Mack's own churchgoing, no nonsense mother.

[01:12:29]

She had testified during the trial for her son, of course, gave a hint then of what she was made of, Corrine Magdalene, d.E.A in either sort of a mama's boy.

[01:12:41]

And yes, he is. Do you know anything about your son having any involvement with Kate Waring's murder? You know, if you did, would you stand here today and support him? He no, I'll turn him in.

[01:12:58]

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. And so she went to see him in jail.

[01:13:07]

Ethan's attorney, David Aylor, heard it all. So it did get loud in that. So when they were talking, he got very confrontational.

[01:13:16]

Basically, his mother said there's more to this story and you need to tell it and you need to tell it right now. You know, his mother wanted him to tell the truth and tell what happened.

[01:13:25]

And so it was decided soon after Ethan and his mother had their talk, he appeared before the judge and admitted 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.

[01:13:43]

You understand that the court still treats this as a guilty plea? Yes, ma'am. And that your criminal record will reflect that as a guilty plea? Yes, of course.

[01:13:52]

Since Heather pleaded guilty to murder and forgery and obstruction of justice, they didn't need a trial for her either.

[01:13:59]

Guilty, but mentally ill. By the way, at her sentencing, 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 virtually incapable of separating truth from her elaborate fictions and 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 that, she didn't get it. Instead, solicitor Scarlett Wilson noted, she continued to lie about important details after she made her deal to testify.

[01:14:36]

And because she broke the deal, the sentence 39 years, 14 more than Ethan.

[01:14:42]

This was Heather can't kill, while certainly Ethan that was involved. And certainly he laid his hands on Kate. I do not believe that.

[01:14:50]

But for Heather Camp, we would be here still, said Andy Savage.

[01:14:56]

After the fact, Solicitor Wilson could have had a much stronger case at the Charleston police acted more aggressively. Just one example.

[01:15:04]

When police arrested Ethan and Heather because of their own incompetence, they released the property, the crime scene where the homicide took place.

[01:15:14]

They turned it back over to the landlord without examining. And so the landlord went in and vacated the premises.

[01:15:20]

They took all their furniture out and put it in storage, cleaned the place, cleaned the place. It wasn't until over two weeks later to go in there knowing that the property had already been turned.

[01:15:31]

The crime scene was destroyed.

[01:15:33]

No wonder Scarlett Wilson didn't have all the ammunition she'd have liked. So Randy Savage now. But the Charleston police said they didn't see it quite that way.

[01:15:42]

They did take the case of Kate Waring very seriously. They said right from the beginning. And the second guessing from the ATF was rather puzzling, at least according to Captain Thomas Robertson.

[01:15:54]

I'm surprised. I really am. I thought we both did a fabulous job. And I think the team of detectives that I had working from this agency and the support we had, it was fantastic.

[01:16:07]

What may have looked like in action, said Detective David Osborne, was actually a careful and. Thorough investigation, one that didn't leave out any possibility, was there some point at which you thought this girl has she's probably dead. She's come to some serious harm. And early on. Early on. How many days after would you say with. I would say that I mean, within that first week for sure. Yeah.

[01:16:31]

So you knew it was a murder investigation at that stage? No, I mean, it could have been an overdose. It could have been an accidental death.

[01:16:39]

I think we've we felt like we were probably dealing with a death investigation, but neither Tom nor Janice Waring was the least bit satisfied. Hadn't the police suggested early on that Kate may simply have skipped town on her own, didn't seem to the Waring's. They were trying very hard to find her.

[01:16:56]

And what about all those other families of missing people? They asked families without the resources to hire an 18.

[01:17:03]

Unfortunately, missing people are low on the priority list nationwide. I feel like that a missing person, a missing child should be just as important as a bank robbery because lots of people never find out what happened to their child.

[01:17:25]

It was late after midnight when she came to the end of her story. I should there by two people she believed to be good friends of hers.

[01:17:35]

And nobody, not the Waring's, not the team, not the police has heard the story you were about to hear the competing stories of the last hours and minutes of Kate Waring's life.

[01:17:48]

Question is, whose story will you believe her long time friend, the uncle of her godson or the charming grifter, the woman who played with fate on the train, Heathered versus Ethan?

[01:18:06]

I had a big conscience and he does it. He doesn't have conscience. Who was really behind Kate Waring's death? Two very different tales. They call it the Palmetto, it's a train that glides down the eastern seaboard, eight hours of Washington to Charleston, a fine city to meet a stranger.

[01:18:39]

Same sat in the same seat, laughed, were joking the whole way, started talking.

[01:18:45]

Heather Cam, freshly supplied with jewelry and cash from her last March, 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.

[01:18:59]

What did you see in her? Why do you like her? She was funny. Very funny now sitting here in jail, Heather claims she came to see Kate not as her next victim, but as a friend. And when in Charleston, she professed her love for Kate buddy Ethan back and then eventually married him, that love was true, too.

[01:19:19]

So she says now and when she told them both, all those well practiced lies about being a doctor, about her husband and child being killed in an accident, etc., etc., those stories, she says, were just part of the schtick.

[01:19:31]

She admits it of a con artist.

[01:19:33]

That's what I do. That's who I am. That's the way I've learned how to survive.

[01:19:38]

But remember, in court, the prosecutor called Heather, the mastermind who lied to Con Kate, lied to manipulate Ethem, lied about murder.

[01:19:48]

You were the decision maker. You were the person who caused Kate's death. I don't take it as that stole from her.

[01:19:56]

Yes, but kill Kate. No. Heather Camp will not cop to that. Instead, this was the story the grifter had for us. It was all Ethan right from the start.

[01:20:10]

My husband wanted to rip her off because she had money. But wait, why would Ethan want any harm to come to his good friend Kate? The trouble was, is that Ethan never considered her a friend, not a friend of hers at all. No, not like a sister. No, he was babysitting her and she became a problem for him, became a real problem, says Heather. When Kate found out that she and Ethan were stealing from her, she was like, I'm going to put you guys in jail.

[01:20:37]

And that scared Ethan. And the whole nightmare began that night because he was not going to go to jail.

[01:20:44]

So you're saying Ethan was the mastermind, not you? Yes. And so after dinner that last night together, they took Kate back to their apartment.

[01:20:55]

Ethan got her a little high after a couple of drinks.

[01:20:58]

She was in a very good mood. 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 tasing her and doesn't stop.

[01:21:10]

And by the time he removes the Taser, she's not moving inside the suitcase at all races into the bedroom, grabbed a pillow off the bed, comes back and pushes me away, unzips the suitcase, takes the pillow, compresses it over her mouth, grabs a wine bottle that is maybe four feet away, takes the wine bottle, crack, crack. I think maybe it's three times he hits her. He tells me to go inside the bathroom, start the water.

[01:21:42]

She was terrified.

[01:21:43]

She says, Didn't you say Ethan stops? I don't see anything. I didn't say anything at all. I know I cried, but I didn't say anything. I, I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. When he told me to do something, I did it.

[01:21:57]

She filled the tub. She said he asked me to help him put her in there.

[01:22:01]

I tried, but I can't do it. I start crying and I throw up in the toilet.

[01:22:06]

Why don't you her out of the water at that point, the only thing I was thinking about was how am I going to make it out of this house?

[01:22:14]

Did you think he's going to kill you too? Why not? Who else knows but me? Why not? Why? Why wouldn't I be next?

[01:22:22]

So she helped him put Kate's body in the car, watched him dump her out on Guatamala Island. And of course, she lied, she admits, when she told Ethan she was pregnant, but that was just for the sake of her own safety, said Heather, I thought, well, if I'm carrying his kid, I'm OK. He's not going to try to hurt me, really.

[01:22:43]

And so then a moment later, when asked why she didn't just leave Ethan slip away like she always did, she quite reverses herself. I didn't want to.

[01:22:52]

I really I really loved him.

[01:22:54]

But eventually she says she just had to confess.

[01:22:58]

Cotsis is a bitch and I had a big conscience and he doesn't he doesn't have conscience.

[01:23:04]

And that's the God's honest truth, says Heather. Every single word. And then he Mack is led from his cell and tells his version, which comes with a revised opinion of Heather Camp.

[01:23:18]

Conniving, evil, evil, lying type of person that do anything that she can basically get her way.

[01:23:25]

Of course, it was different when Kate brought Heather around to see it.

[01:23:28]

That first time she tried to see the ugly female that tall and talkative told him all kinds of things. She told me that her son died from a disease that she was trying to help find the cure for because she was supposed to be a doctor. And she told me that her daughter and her husband got killed in a car accident.

[01:23:49]

Ethan was entranced, he said claimed he believed everything she told him. That's when they moved in together. And each day he'd go to his hotel job and she'd head off to the hospital, to her doctor work.

[01:24:00]

She would be getting up, putting on her makeup, putting on her scalp, putting on her white jacket with her name. That was so then it.

[01:24:07]

But Heather had another story, says Ethan. Once she had used another marks, but he didn't know there that members of her family were violent and powerful drug dealers.

[01:24:18]

And one day he said she told him a terrifying story. Her family members had learned that Kate Waring had sold out. She had ratted them out to police. Kate was going to have to die. And those drug kingpins decided Heather and Ethan would be the executioners.

[01:24:35]

She's saying that her family. I'm basically telling her that she better get ready, Kate. Are they going to get rid of peacefully? And I'll handle my family, too. They're going to kill my family.

[01:24:45]

You believe this actually could happen? I don't see. And people don't get beat up over five and ten dollars and don't get should I have to behind less than that.

[01:24:54]

So Ethan's version of that awful night, Beesly zitter up in the suitcase. And then that's when she came at me like Ethan. You got them. You got got the killer now. Right. Right.

[01:25:05]

Then Ethan she's lying in that suitcase top it zipped up. What you do as her friend, is he going unzipped the suitcase and say, ha ha, OK, come on, get up right now.

[01:25:19]

It wasn't that's not how it worked. No, I was like, that is my mother, my sister, my daddy. Damn. At stake, too, and my life.

[01:25:29]

But says Ethan, it was not he but Heather who smothered Kate with the pillow.

[01:25:34]

I couldn't do it to kill her. So he had to push me out of the way and she jumped on top of her and started smothering her with the in. I went into the room and I dropped down my knees and I was like, Heavenly Father, please forgive me for what is going on and what I'm kind of witnessing. And it happened in front of my face.

[01:25:53]

OK, well, yeah, you were praying, but you weren't pushing her off. You weren't stopping it.

[01:25:58]

No, I couldn't stop her because as soon as it was said that, I still was thinking that those people were going to kill me. I know. But let me challenge you for a minute, because I know you're a good friend to her. Yes. You're killing your sister for good. It is.

[01:26:14]

And and that's exactly what it's like.

[01:26:17]

The rest of it, the taser, the wine bottle bludgeoning, the drowning in the bathtub. Oh, Heather, says Ethan, not him. And when he helped hide their crime, but he actually married Heather. That says Ethan is because she told him she was pregnant. He wasn't, of course. But Ethan says he believed her as usual and he wasn't about to abandon his child.

[01:26:40]

Yeah, I mean, but you're married to a killer.

[01:26:42]

You got married to her after the murder just for her to stop. Always threatening me with the running off and taking my baby.

[01:26:49]

God's honest truth, says Ethan, every single word. And now at night in his jail cell.

[01:26:57]

How often do you think about that moment? I think about it a whole lot. This is a real bad to see her and always funny to see for all the rest of the time when there's no body armor. But now look at look at me. You're getting about what you deserve. Yes, sir. I get exactly what I deserve. I know I got to do this time in jail, but still, I can't bring her back. We have all of the powers that I explain how much I ask the Holy Father to take my life away, then bring her back and I will not be done.

[01:27:26]

No. Well, not not for him, not for the Waring's, it was in court that Kate's father, Tom, read one of the last things she ever wrote.

[01:27:35]

They had gone to church together, he and the daughter who adored him, the girl about whom he worried so and she scribbled something on a prayer note and stuffed it in a church pew just a couple of Sundays before she boarded that fateful train, she wrote. Please pray for my father, Tom Waring, who worries himself sick and for nothing.

[01:27:59]

I am and will be fine if I die tomorrow. I have lived through almost everything from more. And I'm not afraid of anything, just know that I pray for God's forgiveness, for bringing tears to my daddy's eyes. The Meet the Press Chuck Todd cast, it's an insider's take on politics, the twenty twenty election and more candid conversations with some of my favorite reporters about things we usually discuss off camera. Listen for free wherever you get your podcast.