Investigator: Kamp grew angry during interview with neighbor

CHARLESTON — Heather Kamp grew angry when she learned private investigators were at her neighbor’s house, flashing money and asking questions about Kate Waring’s disappearance, according to testimony today.

Investigator Eugene Frazier told a Charleston jury said he and two other investigators went to Terry Williams apartment on James Island in August 2009 hoping to learn something about Waring. Williams lived next door to Kamp and Ethan Mack, who emerged as suspects in the case.

Frazier said he had been contacted by landlord Isaac Washington, who was troubled by an article in The Post and Courier in which Mack claimed to be living on Johns Island. Knowing that Mack and Kamp lived beside him, Washington was worried that Mack was trying to mislead police, Frazier testified.

Frazier said the investigators went to James Island with some “flash money” to “push the panic button” and get people talking. He said he told Williams they knew he was in danger of being evicted and could use some cash to “better his condition.” They told him reward money was available if Williams knew something about Waring’s whereabouts.

Kamp suddenly burst through the door to the apartment and ordered the investigators to leave, Frazier said. They told her all they wanted was to find Waring’s body. “I think that rattled her,” Frazier said.

Kamp pulled out a cell phone, called Mack and told him investigators were at the apartment trying to get Williams “to roll on us,” Frazier said.

Frazier’s testimony came during the sixth day of Mack’s murder trial. Kamp, also charged with murder, previously testified that she and Mack killed Waring at their Riley Road apartment on June 12-13, 2009. She also testified that she and Mack were worried Williams had seen them that night.

Mack’s lawyers have tried to deflect suspicion from Mack and play up questions about Kamp’s credibility.

Earlier, Williams’ wife, Kimberly Bennett Williams, testified that Kamp regularly said “mean” things about Waring after her disappearance even though Williams didn’t know Waring. She never heard Mack say such things, she said.

“There was always something strange about her,” she said of Kamp. “She would be happy one moment and upset the next.”

J.W. Brown, a friend of Mack’s, said Mack and Waring were close friends and he never heard him say a negative thing about her. Brown said he never knew his friend to be violent, though he acknowledged on cross-examination that Mack did own a gun.

In earlier testimony Tuesday, Mack’s sister denied telling a neighbor that she thought her brother had been involved in Waring’s June 2009 killing.

Shontez Commodore testified that Tishka Mack approached him after Waring’s disappearance and asked if he thought her brother had killed Waring with a Taser stun gun. She told him she thought her brother was involved in Waring's death, he said.

Testifying for the defense in the sixth day of her brother’s murder trial, Tishka Mack adamantly denied making any such statements to Commodore. They were not close, she said. “I found him to be a bit creepy,” she said.

Her brother is accused of killing Waring, 28, at the James Island apartment he shared with then-girlfriend Heather Kamp on June 12-13, 2009.

Tishka Mack said she was close with Waring and named her the godmother of her young son. Kamp, on the other hand, was not welcome around her children. Mack said she had nothing to do with Kamp after learning that she had lied about being a doctor. Waring alerted her to the fraud, she said.

Tishka Mack said her brother continued to spend time with Kamp, despite his family’s warnings that he was making a mistake. She said she didn’t hold that against him.

“He trusts people too much sometimes,” she said. “He thinks he can make a good friend out of a bad one.”

Earlier, Mack’s mother said she would turn him into the police herself if she suspected he was involved in Waring’s killing but she doesn’t believe that is the case.

Corrine Mack Dean said she considered Waring, 28, to be like one of the family. She even planted a pink rose bush in Waring’s honor at the Macks’ Johns Island home, she said.

Dean said she felt differently about Kamp, whom she described as “something you wouldn’t expect your child to bring home.”

Testifying for the defense in the sixth day of her son’s murder trial, Dean testified that Kamp passed herself off as a doctor who had recently lost her former husband and a daughter in a car wreck. Waring later told them that Kamp was a fraud. After that, Kamp was banned from their house, Dean said.

Dean testified that she willingly allowed police to search her home after Waring’s disappearance and that she was worried about Kate. In October 2009, after Waring’s remains were found, Dean said she also allowed police to retrieve a pair of sunglasses from her car that belonged to Waring.

Kamp has testified that she and Mack took the sunglasses from Waring after they killed her in their James Island home on June 12-13,2009.

Dean said the last person she saw wearing the glasses was Kamp.

Earlier on Tuesday, the prosecution rested its case.

Defense lawyers for Mack asked for a direct verdict in their favor, saying prosecutors had failed to make a solid case for murder. Circuit Judge J.C. Nicholson Jr. denied that request, and the trial continues in its sixth day of testimony.

Mack’s lawyers also lost a bid to have jurors see a police video in which Mack’s wife, Heather Kamp, re-enacted Waring’s killing for investigators at her Riley Road home in October 2009.

Outside the jury’s presence, Stephen Harris, one of Mack’s lawyers, argued that the tape will help prove that Kamp’s version of events is implausible and did not occur. He also wanted jurors to see her demeanor during the re-enactment.

Chief Deputy Solicitor Bruce DuRant argued that defense attorneys had ample time to question Kamp during more than two days on the witness stand. Jurors also had plenty of time to size up her demeanor, he said.

Nicholson agreed.

Also this morning, a pathologist testified that she was unable to determine how Waring died because only skeletal bones remained when she was found in October 2009.

Forensic pathologist Erin Presnell testified that she examined Waring’s remains and found no evidence of trauma to her bones, only evidence of animal gnawing after she died.

“We had no soft tissue to examine for evidence of trauma, disease or even drug use,” she told a Charleston jury.

Presnell offered her findings during the sixth day of testimony in the murder trial of Ethan Mack, who is accused of killing Waring on June 12-13, 2009.

Jurors were shown detailed photographs of Waring’s remains from her autopsy, conducted shortly after her bones and hair were found in Wadmalaw Island woods in October 2009. She was identified through dental records, Presnell testified.

The autopsy failed to reveal the cause of death, Presnell said.

Mack is accused of jolting Waring with a stun gun after she was tricked into climbing into a suitcase at his James Island home. He then allegedly bashed Waring’s head with a wine bottle and dumped her in a bathtub to die in their James Island home, according to testimony.

Mack’s wife, Heather Kamp, provided police with details of the killing and also faces a murder charge. Her trial has not been scheduled.

Presnell said a hit from a wine bottle would not necessarily leave a skull fracture, even if the impact proved fatal. The lack of soft tissue made it impossible to find evidence of drowning, a brain injury, Taser marks and other elements involved in Kamp’s story, but it doesn’t mean these things didn’t happen, she said.

“All of these things could have happened to this woman,” she said.

In other morning testimony, a police detective testified that Mack drove to Wal-Mart on Folly Road to buy a suitcase the morning after Waring disappeared.

Charleston Police Detective David Osborne said that purchase piqued investigators interest because Mack’s girlfriend had told investigators a suitcase had been involved in Waring’s killing. Kamp told police the pair dumped the suitcase as they cleaned up the crime scene, he said.

Kamp had also told them that she and Mack used suitcases as furniture to store their clothes. Mack’s sudden need for a suitcase on the morning after Waring died seemed very relevant to police, Osborne said. It seemed plausible he was trying to replace the one used in the killing.

Kamp told police she and Mack went to a Bi-Lo supermarket on James Island after the killing and bought cleaning supplies to scour the crime scene, Osborne said. Mack initially told police he only purchased chips and a drink during a trip to the store, he said.

In November 2009, a month after Waring’s remains were found on Wadmalaw Island, Mack changed his story and told investigators he bought a mop at the store to “clean up,” Osborne said.

That admission came during a meeting in the solicitor’s office where Mack was shown a police video tape in which Kamp re-enacted the killing for investigators at the couple’s Riley Road home, Osborne said.

On cross-examination by Harris, Osborne acknowledged he had had no proof the suitcase Mack purchased at Wal-Mart was meant to replace the one allegedly used in the killing. Harris also elicited testimony from Osborne that Mack bought several other common household items that day.

Osborne also acknowledged details in Kamp’s account of the killing changed over time, offering a variety of motives and a cast of characters – real and imagined – who had some role in Waring’s demise.

But Osborne said core details – the suitcase, the wine bottle, a pillow Mack jammed in the case – remained consistent. “The whys kept changing,” he said. “But in terms of doing it, she was putting herself right there.”

In fact, the more versions Kamp told, the deeper she implicated herself in the crime, Osborne said. That is common for suspects, who initially try to distance themselves from crimes and then reveal more damning evidence as they get closer to the truth, he said.

Check back with postandcourier.com for updates on the trial.