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Talk:Disappearance of Heather Elvis

{{DYK talk|18 December|2018|entry= ... that in the five years since the disappearance of Heather Elvis, there have been several trials related to the case but her whereabouts are still unknown?|nompage=Template:Did you know nominations/Disappearance of Heather Elvis}}

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{{WikiProject Crime and Criminal Biography|importance=low}}

{{WikiProject United States|importance=low|SCMB=yes|SCMB-importance=low|SC=yes|SC-importance=low}}

{{WikiProject Women}}

{{WikiProject Women's History|importance=low}}

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{{Did you know nominations/Disappearance of Heather Elvis}}

{{old move|date=1 May 2025|destination=Kidnapping of Heather Elvis|result=not moved|link=Special:Permalink/1289482566#Requested move 1 May 2025}}

Deletion proposal

Propose this page concerns an event that is not notable, and should be deleted. This is a routine news event: see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(events)

  • Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOT#IINFO
  • Wikipedia is not a newspaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:NOTNEWSPAPER#Wikipedia_is_not_a_newspaper
  • Too much detail.
  • A missing white woman is not a notable event in itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.47.9.218 (talk) 20:08, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

::Perhaps we should ignore a deletion nomination posted in the wrong place on the wrong page by an IP with maybe a dozen edits over the past year and a half who doesn't know how to wikilink and then forgets to sign ... But, just for the record's sake, I'll take up the argument as the creator and primary contributor to the article:

:::"this page concerns an event that is not notable, and should be deleted. This is a routine news event"

::::I would say that the IP misunderstands WP:ROUTINE, to which they did not link. While there are many missing-persons cases every year in the U.S. and other countries, they are not by definition routine events. They are not explicitly mentioned as routine events (in fact, nothing that the police investigate is) there, and I don't think they are "common, everyday, ordinary items that do not stand out".

I would also commend the IP's attention to WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE. The Elvis disappearance has been the subject of regular reporting in the newspapers and TV stations of South Carolina, all of which meet our definition of reliable sources in the five years since it occurred, due to five people getting charged with criminal offenses in relation to it or the investigation, charges that resulted in three trials where two defendants have gotten long prison sentences—all without really resolving the driving question of what happened to Heather Elvis that night such that she hasn't been seen since then. The trials, and the case, have drawn attention over this time from news organizations outside South Carolina, news organizations at the national level that similarly meet our standards for reliability: The New York Post, NBC News and People. Some of that coverage has also been picked up overseas.

::"Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information."

:::Not really applicable, as WP:INDISCRIMINATE is an inclusion policy that addresses itself primarily to inclusion of information within articles, not which articles we include. That's notability, addressed in my counterargument above.

::*"Wikipedia is not a newspaper"

:::Again, not really applicable at the article-inclusion level save for 2., which is basically a restatement of ROUTINE, discussed above. It seems as if the IP is unsure of themselves and is trying to reach for any argument that to them sounds vaguely relevant.

::*"Too much detail."

:::An editorial issue to be discussed, sometimes at considerable length, on the article talk page, but not a reason to delete an article.

::*"A missing white woman is not a notable event in itself."

:::It is true that WP:SENSATIONAL says "Some editors may take into account perceived media bias, such as missing white woman syndrome, when assessing notability". This does not make that problem a deletion criterion (indeed, that should be obvious on its face). We may certainly deplore this phenomenon, but we have long since decided that it is not Wikipedia's role to do something about it by refusing to run articles on cases of missing white women that the media goes overboard in reporting on (which should properly be described as "missing pretty blonde young well-educated from-affluent-family not-overly-sexually-active-or-substance-abusing white woman syndrome", cf. the Mollie Tibbetts case from this past summer), nor do I really think we'd accomplish anything positive in combatting it by doing so. So if the media's coverage has pushed such a case over the notability threshold, we create an article, and sometimes it results in things like Disappearance of Natalee Holloway becoming front-page FAs.

The proper way for Wikipedians to deal with this issue, really, would be to improve the MWWS article to FA status and get it on the front page. Daniel Case (talk) 04:43, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

:Agree - this should be taken up again for deletion. She's news in part of SC, and that's about it - just another (sad to say) kidnapping/murder with no repercussions on society et al. 2603:6080:21F0:6140:D0F0:571B:2B23:BC18 (talk) 12:38, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

::That would be true about many of our articles about missing persons. I tend to see the fact that the Moorers got convicted of kidnapping someone who has not been seen since the night she disappeared as making this case notable—bodyless murder convictions are one thing, rare enough but not unknown, but a bodyless kidnapping? Does anyone know any other cases?

Aside from which, this article has never been formally nominated for deletion. Daniel Case (talk) 01:58, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

What does this sentence from the article mean?

  • The Moorers posted the $20,000 bond set for those two charges, but later waived the bond on the kidnapping charges in favor of the murder charges,[35] on which they were initially held without bond*? 2600:1006:B05B:81E3:E0FD:D6FA:7966:21EC (talk) 13:24, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

::What it meant was that I didn't look closely enough at what the sources said. I have corrected it. Daniel Case (talk) 15:02, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 1 May 2025

:The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Jeffrey34555 (talk) 02:06, 9 May 2025 (UTC)

----

:Disappearance of Heather Elvis → {{no redirect|Kidnapping of Heather Elvis}} – Since @Daniel Case (pinging so he can give his opinion) is contesting my proposed move, let's discuss this. For my part, I think the article should be titled "kidnapping", not "disappearance", because it's more accurate to the case. A court of law has determined that Heather Elvis was kidnapped by Sidney and Tammy Moorer, a conclusion which does not seem to have been seriously contested outside of the convicted persons and their lawyers. Therefore it is accurate to call it a kidnapping. Calling it a "disappearance" implies that she simply went missing and no reason was ever established, which is not the case: we know that she was kidnapped, we just don't know what they did with her afterwards (inasmuch as we can't assert it in wikivoice anyway). Admittedly there are plenty of other apparent kidnappings that are titled as "Disappearance of...", but the difference is that no convictions occurred in those cases. Not titling a page "Kidnapping of..." when the victim is simply missing is one thing; not doing so when somebody has actually been found guilty of kidnapping her, purely because what precisely they did after they kidnapped her has not been established, is another.

Of course there's no guideline for titling cases where someone was found guilty of kidnapping but the victim wasn't located (indeed, the only other such cases I can think of with a wiki page are Kidnapping of Charley Ross and Kidnapping of Melissa Brannen), but I would argue that we should call it a kidnapping if a court has determined it to be one, as is the case here. It's the principle we follow in the case of a murder conviction without a body, and I don't see any compelling reason not to follow the same principle here, since it's basically the same situation only with "kidnapping" instead of "murder". --Tulzscha (talk) 21:24, 1 May 2025 (UTC)

Oppose. Sorry for taking so long to respond (busy weekend).

As you admit, there's no guideline for how we title pages. Your analogy with bodyless murder convictions fails since that is a final judgement that settles the victim's fate and declares them legally dead. Kidnappings, on the other hand, when they are the most serious offense charged, usually presume that the victim survives and is released.

I don't think your two counterexamples really work here, either. Charley Ross was over 150 years ago and his parents received ransom notes, which is not known to have happened in this case (and the article says nothing about whether those notes were authenticated as coming from people who genuinely had the boy in their captivity. Also, more saliently, the one person convicted of anything was only convicted of conspiracy to kidnap, not kidnapping. So, by your logic we should rename that article Conspiracy to kidnap Charley Ross (Honestly, you make a better case for renaming it Disappearance of Charley Ross, as it was [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kidnapping_of_Charley_Ross&oldid=13196522 named as it currently is upon its creation in 2005], long before we had any naming conventions for things like this (and many other things ... trust me, I remember). And that name does not appear to have ever been revisited since).

Similarly, the Brannen case, while there was a conviction, it was specifically not for kidnapping but abduction with intent to defile. We should thus rename it Abduction of Melissa Brannen, then, I suppose. (And while that article is a little newer, we still did not have conventions for this back in 2012, either. Frankly it should be renamed to Disappearance of Melissa Brannen, as well).

The conviction in that case raises another reason why we should be leery of naming articles "kidnapping of ...": Jurisdictions do not define the offense consistently. For most readers it's going to suggest a ransom kidnapping. For instance, New York, where I live, [https://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article135.php#p135.20 defines] second-degree kidnapping as merely "abducting" another person (i.e. taking them to another place while captive) and first-degree kidnapping as doing it for ransom or terror purposes, or to facilitate the commission of another crime, or if the victim dies in captivity. We also have [https://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article135.php#p135.05 the offense of unlawful imprisonment] (similar to what some other states call unlawful restraint) in which the actor must merely confine the victim or restrict their movements without any legal reason.

However, South Carolina has [https://law.justia.com/codes/south-carolina/title-16/chapter-3/section-16-3-910/#:~:text=A%20person%20who%20unlawfully%20seizes,not%20to%20exceed%20thirty%20years. only kidnapping in its criminal code], covering all these things. There have, it seems, been bills over the years to create a lesser offense of unlawful restraint, but they have not passed. So what the Moorers were convicted of (which if the state's theory was what I understand it to be) was more like unlawful imprisonment. And I believe that if the state felt they could prove murder (which, to be sure, the Moorers were originally charged with) they would have gone to trial with that. If the state didn't think it could prove even some sort of negligent homicide, and we don't know where Heather Elvis is, we cannot call it a kidnapping.

Lastly I would note that very few of the articles in {{cl|2010s kidnappings in the United States}} (a category to which, I should say, I have no objection to the article being added to, even begin with "Kidnapping of ..." And in all four of those cases, the victims were found alive. Unlike Heather Elvis.

There is one other "Disappearance of ..." but I'm going to remove it as the article doesn't support Lisa Irwin being so categorized. That leaves only a bunch of other cases properly categorized as murders due to convictions for that offense after a body was found. Daniel Case (talk) 05:42, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

  • Oppose having read the intro and the two arguments above, and skimmed the rest of the article. I don't think "kidnapping" implies ransom, but I do think most readers will assume (rightly or wrongly) that it means the victim was ultimately found alive or at least confirmed not to have been killed by her captors. I also agree that a murder conviction without a body is different, because it means a person has been declared legally dead. This story is back in the news, and sources are careful about how they describe it. Apple TV+ says she "goes missing in 2013" and then calls the incident "her disappearance" in describing their new docuseries about "the case" (WP won't let me link to Apple TV+). Local news also refers to it as "the Heather Elvis case" [https://wpde.com/news/local/sydney-moorer-heather-elvis-case-post-conviction-relief-new-trial-south-carolina-horry-county-tammy-kidnapping-murder-cold-case-conspiracy-peachtree-landing here], [https://wpde.com/news/local/heather-elvis-docuseries-to-raise-awareness-highlight-online-harassment-case-missing-social-media-socastee-south-carolina-horry-county-vanished-summer-dashe# here], and [https://www.wmbfnews.com/2025/03/19/man-convicted-heather-elvis-case-files-application-new-trial/ here]. They are careful to say she disappeared, that the body was never found, to describe it as a "missing persons case", and to describe the convictions. It is also described as a "disappearance" in several stories from late last year[https://www.wmbfnews.com/2024/12/18/wednesday-marks-11-years-since-heather-elvis-disappearance/][https://www.yahoo.com/news/heather-elvis-case-wednesday-marks-161136907.html?guccounter=1][https://www.wistv.com/video/2024/12/19/family-friends-hold-vigil-11th-anniversary-heather-elvis-disappearance/] "Disappearance of…" an appropriate descriptive title. Finally, I agree it's fine to leave this article on a "List of kidnappings".--MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 22:48, 8 May 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.