for two full days, and john heckel feared the worst. kathy heckel would never on this earth abandon those two children. trooper caldwell still didn t know if he was working a missing persons case, an abduction, or a homicide. then on the evening of the third day, investigators got a big break. they found kathy heckel s car parked behind the local hospital. the keys were missing. i think they recovered one print. but i don t know that it was ever identified. it was from the exterior of the car. investigators were now pretty sure that someone, possibly her killer, had moved kathy heckel s car to the hospital parking lot. and then the case hit a dead end. days turned to weeks. those weeks stretched into months. kathy heckel was somewhere in the wind. we had cadaver dogs come down
kathy heckel s husband john was no exception. we did consider that john may have known that his wife was having an affair and that he may have taken some action on his own. did you feel like you were ever a suspect? never worried about it. i knew they were trying to find where kathy was and what had happened, and if that included questioning me, i have no problems with that. at some point somebody said to you, we believe she was having a relationship with some other people. was that shocking to hear? it was surprising, because that wasn t the way kathy was. in his interview with trooper caldwell, john heckel said he d noticed a change in his wife s demeanor in recent weeks and wondered if she might be having an affair. he was emotional. there s times when john and i just sat together with my arm around him and he would cry. he was concerned about his wife. and i felt very bad for the man. john heckel s alibi checked out. and police found no evidence he d paid anyone t
after breaking for the weekend, the jury returned on monday morning, rested, but still deadlocked. there was one juror in particular who was voting for acquittal originally, who couldn t get over the fact that he thought the prime suspect should be john heckel. over and over, jurors reviewed and discussed the evidence. then just before 3:00 that afternoon, jurors notified the judge they had reached a verdict. it was a nervous moment, absolutely. i i was nervous. and we were all holding hands. on the charge of first degree or premeditated murder, the verdict was not guilty. then in what seemed to be a compromised decision, the jury found groves guilty of third-degree murder, which is legally considered a spontaneous act in the heat of the moment. you look at groves during that time?
vat of acid and dissolved her body. that was the working theory for years. but tom says the files he read didn t prove any of that. in fact, he says he found a silver bullet in those piles of documents. we actually discovered that in the police reports, in medical records, that she had cut her finger at work. it was bleeding so badly that she had to get it treated three times. and this was at the time that she was allegedly in her in loyd s van every day. so if the prosecution planned to make a big deal out of a dna test showing kathy heckel s blood in loyd groves van, the defense response now would be so what. they think it came from kathy because loyd killed her. but yet, here s kathy s blood because she cut herself at work. i mean, if this isn t reasonable doubt, what is? as the case went to trial in november 2018, pennsylvania
groves was a bit of a stalker. he said that he had met kathy at a park, a nearby park. he said that there was a gray van parked nearby. he recalled seeing the van. and the next time he talked to kathy, she said, did you see that van? that was loyd. and he was following her. was the guitar man being helpful, or was he trying to implicate a rival to save his own skin? the trooper knew this much. if kathy heckel had been juggling simultaneous affairs with married men, there could be a lot of people who wanted her to disappear, including her husband. he was definitely a person of interest. exactly how much did john heckel know about what was going on in his wife s life? coming up were police looking for a runaway wife or her killer? there were just no answers. and that was that was the worst part. did you feel like you were ever a suspect? never worried about it.