The 2013 disappearance of 20-year-old Heather Elvis out of Peachtree Landing in Myrtle Beach left many in Horry County and throughout the nation baffled and afraid.
Elvis’ disappearance gained a lot of attention on social media. While some of the social media activity surrounding the case garnered awareness and support for the Elvis family, some of it also hurt the Elvis family and put them through additional torment on top of losing Heather.
Hacker Films, a production company of four, is working on a documentary intended to shed light on how social media can impact criminal investigations through the retelling of Elvis’ story.
“These are human beings. This is a town that was extremely affected by a huge social media harassment campaign. And I think the story needs to be told,” Micheal Bayer, executive producer of the documentary, said. “If this story in any way, shape, or form, can help the Elvis family, then that would be our main thing more than anything, if it can help find Heather or anything like that, that would be number one. If it leads to getting more information or leads, that’s what keeps us up working late at night.”
Producer Summer Dashe, director of photography Nick Andrews and sound mixer Danny Crapanzano are all working under Bayer’s guidance to complete the documentary, tentatively titled “Vanished: Heather Elvis,” for its expected release in 2023.
“Mike emailed me and he had found me through my reporting of the Heather Elvis story. So he emailed me and asked me if I would do an interview for the piece,” Dashe, a former reporter for WPDE, said. “I almost blew it off because there had been so many documentaries done on this story that I kind of thought, ‘Well, what’s going to be different this time? Why do we need to rehash this for the Elvis family?’ Then I felt like he had an angle to this story that was really, really important for society to see that had not been covered yet.”
Dec. 18, 2013, the last known whereabouts
“This was right before Christmas. So, their family is getting ready for Christmas. They’ve got decorations. They’ve got Christmas gifts around their tree. The Elvis’ have three children. They have a boy and they have two girls, Heather and Morgan,” Dashe said. “It came in as a typical missing persons call. Heather was an adult, she wasn’t a 13-year-old or something. When the police start looking into those sorts of disappearances, until they have something that makes it really suspicious, it could just be someone who left on their own.”
According to a 2015 Sun News story, Elvis was last seen on Dec. 17 after a date, then her cellphone documented her last known whereabouts to be at Peachtree Landing on the Waccamaw River on Dec. 18, then her vehicle was found at Peachtree Landing on Dec. 19. On Dec. 21 was when the FindHeatherElvis Facebook page was created.
“When the search started for Heather, the community got wildly involved and they’re very supportive of that family too. However, you also had the Moorers, the two people who have been charged in this case,” Dashe said. “There was a giant gap in the community between the people who supported the Elvis’, and then the people who supported the Moorers.”
Social media and Heather Elvis
“This was right around the time that social media was getting huge. So people were starting these Facebook groups about this case, speculating and spreading rumors and leaking information from the police officers and so the investigation was really impacted by the element of social media,” Dashe said. “I think it was around the time where police departments were learning how to navigate the massive impact of social media on the actual police investigation. They hadn’t had to deal with before. This was one of those very first cases in the community where social media just took off with the story and I think it’s part of the reason it got so much attention nationwide.”
Dashe said that her hope is that the documentary will “show society how their actions online are affecting victims and criminal investigations.”
Elvis herself was an active social media user.
“I don’t think that Heather’s online activity increased the amount of publicity the case got, necessarily,” Dashe said. “I think it would have gained that publicity regardless because it was in the time of social media history where people were taking off with this sort of thing and getting obsessed with these kinds of stories.”
The Elvis family
“The Elvis family handled it all incredibly. They were so open with the local media, and they still remain fairly open with people despite what they’ve been through,” Dashe said.
One of the people interviewed in the documentary is Morgan Elvis, Heather’s sister.
Dashe said that Morgan Elvis has involved herself with victim advocacy initiatives. She hopes to help law enforcement officers and first responders become trauma-informed so when they go to crime scenes and visit impacted families, that they are “not doing more harm than good when they’re meeting those families,” Dashe said.
Hacker Films
“The documentary does not have a home yet, so this is kind of a passion project at this point for Mike and his brother. They’re funding the whole thing. And if it doesn’t do well, then they don’t get anything from it. You really have to have a heart for this stuff if you’re going to commit financially to something like this,” Dashe said. “We’ve been working together now for almost a year and it’s been great.”
Hacker Films chose to do a lot of their interviews at the Cooper House on Dick Pond Road not only because of the comfortable and home-like feel, but also because of its proximity to the last place Elvis was known to be, Peachtree Landing.
“My goal, whenever I’m interviewing anyone, especially in a sensitive story like this, is to make sure they’re comfortable,” Dashe said. “I want to make sure that they know they have control in the telling of their own story.”
Comments