a built in opportunity. here s how. the a-team wanted to know if heather or ethan forged kate s $4,500 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 check. keith morrison: then, the a-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 that could prove they forged kate s check. the team took the handwriting to their waiting expert, mickey dawson the man who set up the state police handwriting lab. the question was simple, did heather, and or ethan, forge that check from kate the one ethan tried to cash? immediately, that day, our handwriting document examiners said, that s them. no question about it. keith morrison: so, if ethan and heather forged a check from kate, what else did they do?
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 wadmalaw island because he thought no one would ever find her there. so, did you think that you d convinced that jury? i thought that the trial went better than i ever could have hoped. keith morrison (voiceover): except, that is, for two things. one, would the jury believe ethan actually killed his best friend, kate? and two heather kamp s a liar, heather kamp s jealous of kate, heather kamp s the one stealing. keith morrison (voiceover): 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
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. and because she broke the deal, the sentence, 39 years 14 more than ethan. scarlett wilson: this was heather kamp s kill. while certainly ethan mack was involved and certainly he laid his hands on kate, i do not believe that but for heather kamp we would be here. keith morrison (voiceover): still, said andy savage after the fact, solicitor wilson could have had a much stronger case had 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. they turned it back over to the landlord without examining it. and so the landlord went in and vacated the premises. he took all of their furniture out and put it in storage. keith morrison: cleaned the place. cleaned the place.
heather was nice. in fact, kate said she had 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. and sure enough, a few keystrokes on the internet told bobby minter that mother s intuition was right. i saw where she had been arrested for forgery in indiana. but she d been arrested in other stage, 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. keith morrison: 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 kamp. and more important, that c
yeah, i think the time would have been probably around 11:30, 11:45, at the time. keith morrison: the detective checked, 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 it. the mother and ethan both told me that this is his room. this is where he stays. keith morrison: 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. this is the voicemail he left for the waring s after that policeman poked around his place, as if he was some murder suspect. so, dead end. the police moved past ethan.