Wanda Haithcock

Weight loss medications are everywhere right now.

Everyone's talking about them, everyone's on them.

But let's be real.

Have you seen the price tag?

It's hard to believe they're actually accessible.

That's where HERS comes in.

HERS is transforming women's healthcare by providing access to affordable weight loss treatment plans.

They connect you with a medical provider who will work with you to determine the best treatment option for you.

So, if you've been struggling to find a solution to your weight loss journey, it's time to find the best option that works for you through HERS.

Start your free online visit today at forhers.com/slash snapped.

That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S.com/slash snapped for your personalized weight loss treatment options.

For HERS.com/slash snapped.

Weight loss by HERS is not available everywhere.

Compounded products are not approved or reviewed for safety, effectiveness, or quality by the FDA.

Prescription required.

See website for full details, important safety information, and restrictions.

Actual price depends on product and plan purchase.

purchased.

Every Monday and Wednesday night, it's true crime on TV1.

Love, betrayal, murder, fatal attraction.

All new every Monday night at nine.

Then, Wednesday night at nine, loyal, ride or die, bad girls.

It's love to die for with all new episodes of For My Man.

Twisted Love, Twisted Endings, Desire, Deception, Betrayal.

True Crime with Fatal Attraction and For My Man.

Every Monday and Wednesday night on TV1.

He was a South Carolina Playboy with a heart of gold.

My dad, he wasn't a womanizer, but he liked ladies.

He dated a lot.

When you met Wayne, you loved him.

He was just a nice guy.

He was a good friend.

But a grim discovery in an abandoned home will expose that this bachelor lifestyle was anything but carefree.

I thought it was a sharecrunch, but that still looked surreal.

It's happening in his dead body.

He had been there for some time.

There was some discoloration on his face and body.

They don't know what had happened, and you still have a killer on the loose.

As investigators unravel a mysterious murder, accusations swirl.

He was being accused by a gentleman of having sex with his wife.

He had broken it off with her, and I know he was done with her.

He knew that she could get violent.

She was just stalking it, plain and simple.

I've got two locks on the door at the house, so you can't get in there.

I went outside and I looked up this guy, and I promised him and God that she wouldn't get away with it.

January 24th, 2001, Conway, South Carolina.

While neighboring Myrtle Beach is known for lively parties and busy streets, the pace of Conway is much slower.

It's a nice, clean town, nice town to live in, not a lot of problems.

Horry County is largely a farming community, the type of community where neighbors know their neighbors and families have been there for generations.

But on this breezy Wednesday afternoon, the quiet of Conway is about to be disrupted by a frantic 911 call.

I think we have found a dead body.

Okay.

A deserted house.

Uh-huh.

It was back off the highway a little bit.

It was someplace they had to have known.

It was there.

It was overgrown and been abandoned for a number of years.

I'm an artist, and I knew it was an old house in bad shape.

And I thought, well, you know, I just want to look at it and check too long so maybe I can use it with a little work at the studio.

As the two friends explored the abandoned house, they stopped in their tracks upon entry.

There was a pile of newspapers and sticking out at the end, one of them saw a foot.

I thought it was a scarecrow, but that still looked too real.

It was happening to be a dead body.

As police arrive and begin pulling back the the debris, a face emerges.

When seeing the victim, I could already tell that he was a male, white,

middle-aged, probably in his 40s to late 50s.

It was clear to police that he had been there for some time.

There was some discoloration on his face and body.

Being that it was in January, it had been cold, so the

decomp was not that advanced.

You could see that he had been there for a while with the decomposition that was present.

You're looking at days of decomposition.

So you can about imagine the odor.

It certainly was a bleak scene.

Before we moved the victim at all, you could see that he had some type of injury to his forehead.

Although it was a little hard to tell exactly what trauma had occurred.

After all the pictures were taken, we expanded our search for potential evidence at that scene.

And that search yielded two spent casings.

One was located near the closet area above the victim, and the other was closer towards the victim's feet.

Looking for possible gunshot wounds, it appeared that the victim had been shot in the upper part of the neck area and forehead.

The scene hadn't been disturbed.

The victim was shot and killed at that location.

It appeared that the victim was standing up and not facing the individual that pulled the trigger.

As police try to identify their victim, they immediately notice his pockets have been pulled out and his wallet appears to be missing.

It makes it difficult when you don't know who the victim is because one of the first stages of an investigation is the victimology.

Who would want this person dead and when you don't know who that person is you can't answer those questions?

At that point police don't know if there is an imminent threat to the community.

They don't know what had happened and you still have a killer on the loose.

That evening, the John Doe is transported to the coroner's office, where police hope an autopsy will assist in identifying him.

As they await the results, investigators do what they can with the limited information in their possession.

We checked missing person reports that would match the description of our victim.

Scouring the reports, one case from a nearby town stands out.

It was relayed to the investigators that they had a possible match.

A white male was missing who appeared to fit the physical descriptors.

The victim was the subject of the missing person report out of Myrtle Beach.

The missing report was of Wayne Coates

who was a local resident here.

Wayne Coates was last seen January 5th.

The information that we had was he was driving a

SUB Ford Explorer, that he was 53 years old, about 160 pounds with a mustache, was not dating anybody at the time, had a number of friends.

Hoping to get more information on Wayne, Horry County Police reach out to Wayne's closest relative, his 32-year-old son, Kenny.

Last time I saw him was December 28th of 2000.

He called my mom on January 5th to see how I was doing to check on me.

And then towards the end of the month, I get a call from my aunt, Linda,

wanting to know if I know where my dad is.

Apparently, at this point he's been missing for over three weeks going on shore and nobody had any idea where he was.

We had to try to figure out what had happened.

Kenneth Wayne Coates was born and raised on the South Carolina coast.

All of my dad's family is from that area, the Grand Strand area, Cox T, Surfside, Garden City.

I have family all through there.

Wayne was from Hainer, which is just west of Cadillac.

Growing up, Wayne proved to be a hard worker, a gifted athlete, and the life of every party.

He worked hard for what he had.

He didn't expect any handouts.

If he wanted something, he would go get it.

What Wayne wanted most in high school wasn't recognition or achievements.

It was a pretty classmate named Margaret Taylor.

My mom and dad met at a skating skating rink in North Myrtle Beach and they got married in 1966.

Eager to provide for his new bride, Wayne enlisted in the military.

He was a combat engineer, went to a boot camp and I think AIT in

Leonardwood, Missouri, and then he got stationed in Germany.

After serving four years in the military, Wayne and his young wife returned home, where Wayne focused on building a family and a career.

My father was a structural engineer, but he trained himself.

He got books and taught himself how to draw and do everything.

In 1969, the couple welcomed their only child, Kenneth Wayne Coates Jr.

I idolize my dad.

I'm named after him

junior.

I grew up wanting to be like my dad.

When I was a child, you know, he was my hero.

While his bond with his son only deepened over the years Wayne's marriage to Margaret took a different turn

they initially got married twice once before I was born and after I guess like seven years they ended up getting divorced but then they wanted to give another try for me and they got married again for about three years But when the couple divorced a final time, Margaret and Kenny moved to North Carolina while Wayne remained in Myrtle Beach.

I still had a relationship with him.

I would go down and spend the summers down there with him and my mom and I would always go back to the beach area to visit relatives at Christmas time.

So I mean I still saw him and spoke to him on the phone regularly.

Although his marriage failed, Wayne's career soared.

We used to tease him about how much money he made and we just jerk his chain a little bit.

He was a good good guy.

In his free time, Wayne was a social butterfly.

Wayne was a very engaging, charming man.

He would talk to everybody.

If he walked into a bar or a restaurant, you know, and sat down next to somebody, they would become his friend.

Though it seemed like Wayne could make friends with anyone, In January 2001, his son Kenny now fears his father had made at least one enemy.

And investigators in Horry County, South Carolina are anxious to track that person down.

You don't know if there's a danger to the community, what had taken place and why he was there.

Coming up, could Wayne's bachelor lifestyle have led to his death?

It was one of those kind of guilty pleasures that he couldn't seem to give up.

And investigators zero in on a suspect.

They just wanted to know what happened that that Friday night.

That was the last time anybody saw Wayne Coates alive.

Detectives in Horry County, South Carolina believe the body they've discovered in an abandoned farmhouse is that of 53-year-old Wayne Coates.

During the autopsy, it was discovered that the victim had a set of dentures, and from those dentures, his identity was confirmed.

It was like being in a nightmare.

I was devastated at home.

That's the hardest thing I've ever had to go through.

I'd go days without eating, days without sleeping.

Hoping to figure out a motive for Wayne's murder, investigators learned from Wayne's son Kenny that his father was known for his extensive dating history.

My dad, he wasn't a womanizer, but he liked ladies.

You know, he dated a lot when he, you know, after him and my mom divorced.

And I met a lot of his girlfriends.

He was just a very charming guy.

And he was very good with the ladies.

He was very quick to chat up a lady, a charming smile, and his eyes would light up.

The laid-back low-country lifestyle suited a bachelor like Wayne well, until he met a woman that would change his life forever, Wanda Hafecock.

Charleston, South Carolina native Wanda Ward was a free-spirited person by nature.

She's beautiful, she's charismatic, she's, you know, she's outgoing, she's got a great personality.

Wanda married young and settled down in Conway with her husband, an Army veteran turned plumber named Bo Hafecock.

She met her ex-husband in Charleston and they got a divorce.

They were married at least 15 to 20 years.

She was a stay-at-home mom.

In her early 40s, Wanda re-entered the dating scene and soon fell head over heels for the notoriously charming Wayne Coates.

He was very nice to her.

You know, he opened doors for her.

Pull a chair out for her.

I mean, he was just a real gentleman, you know, so I'm sure that was very attractive to Wanda Wanda because she wasn't used to that.

She was petite.

Very, very pretty girl.

She was absolutely gorgeous.

Wayne seen her as eye candy, I think.

Before long, Wanda joined Wayne at all his usual Myrtle Beach haunts.

I met her when Wayne brought her into a bar.

Seemed real nice.

She was outgoing, fit in pretty good.

You know, she took the teasing that girls get

and put up with a lot of the guys in there.

She was always kind of loud, kind of wanted to be the center of attention.

While Wanda's brash personality didn't always rub everyone the right way, it didn't bother Wayne one bit.

I think that her personality fit in to him nicely with his personality and his outgoing spirit.

They got along well.

They had same interests, same social interests, it appeared.

They seemed to be pretty happy whenever they first got together.

She thought she had met a nice man, you know, somebody that that was going to

work with her, stand beside her.

You know, she was planning on marrying him.

Things between the happy couple moved quickly and soon Wayne and Wanda decided to invest in their future together.

Wanda and my dad did end up acquiring a couple pieces of property together.

One was a condo townhouse in Myrtle Beach and one was a manufactured home in Conway.

Seemed like a normal relationship.

Wanda and my dad didn't fight or anything

at that time that I knew of.

Everything just seemed normal.

However, Wayne wasn't always an open book when it came to his relationships.

By the late 90s, Wayne's friends noticed he didn't bring Wanda around as much as he once did.

You didn't know how he was feeling.

He'd never pour out his feelings to you and tell you that something was bothering him.

By 1999, after eight years together, the once burning flame between Wayne and Wanda flickered out.

It's really hard to describe the relationship between the two of them because it wasn't a clean breakup.

It was a breakup that she was doing her thing and having relationships with other men.

He supposedly was having relationships with other women.

And then they would get together.

It was one of those kind of guilty pleasures that he couldn't seem to give up.

It seemed Wayne was destined to be a bachelor for the rest of his life.

But his son Kenny was holding on to another dream.

My mom and dad were kind of joking around that maybe one day they would end up back together again.

Just personally speaking, that was always my biggest dream.

But that dream came to an end on January 24th, 2001, when Wayne was found dead in an abandoned house.

Now, sitting with Wayne's son Kenny, investigators need to piece together Wayne's final moments.

I was with the detectives.

It was a lot for me to do, but I dedicated myself.

Kenny explains that this all began on January 5th.

He didn't show up for work on Saturday, and he didn't show up for work on Monday.

And we went, oh, gee, something's wrong.

There was some evidence that he had on occasion just kind of gone off for two or three days, but never this long.

I kind of blew it off because I'd known Wayne for years.

I think Wayne might have just jumped in his car and went to Florida.

I thought everything was okay.

Kenny says Wayne's friend, Phil Whitaker, was one of the last people seen with his father the night before his disappearance.

If that's the last person seen

with Mr.

Coates,

then you obviously want to talk to that person to get any information they may have or to even see if they're possibly involved with the disappearance.

Investigators track down Phil and bring him in for questioning.

The police contacted me and they came in and sat down and told me what they were there for to inquire about Wayne Coates.

They just wanted to know what happened that Friday night.

They asked me what we had done that night.

We met at this bar that we always meet at for happy hour.

We had a few cocktails and chatted it up.

There were some people in there, some old friends.

We shopped pooled there for a good hour, hour and a half.

Karaoke started up, so we sang a song with karaoke, and we're just having a good time.

Good Friday night out.

About two o'clock, it was closing time, so we left.

Wayne and I live right about a mile and a half from the last bar.

And we just made one right, and I followed him down the road.

I turned off to go to my house.

He went straight to go to his house.

That was the last time anybody saw Wayne Coates alive.

Police have to wonder, is Phil telling the truth?

Everybody's a person of interest until we eliminate him.

The cops asked me about if we had run into anybody, if any, if there had been any arguments with anybody.

You know, Wayne was non-confrontational.

According to Phil, Wayne was in high spirits on the night of January 5th.

He always got a Christmas bonus.

And that night we went out, it was on Wayne.

He had his Christmas bonus with him.

It was cash, and he was buying us drinks.

Every place we went, you know, he'd buy us some drinks.

And when we got back to another bar, he'd splash a little cash for some other people for some things.

The details from Phil lead police to consider whether he had his eyes on his friend's money.

He said, you're a suspect.

You're the last one seen with Wayne alive.

And I was, you know, I was taken aback at this.

They thought that I could have followed him on

down the road.

And when he turned in, I could have turned in behind him.

And he wouldn't have known from Adam that it was me going to hit him on the head and take his money.

But Phil insists he's been just as concerned as everyone else about Wayne's disappearance.

In fact, he and Wayne had made plans to play golf on January 6th.

The next day, I get up and I call Wayne, no answer.

And, you know, we were supposed to meet at the golf course, so I, you know, no big deal.

So I went ahead and took off, went to the golf course, wasn't there, called him again.

And, I mean, I burned the phone up.

I probably called him six, seven times, only to get his voicemail.

So he didn't show up that day.

If we're able to get a pretty good feel for the first person that we talked to being the last person that saw Mr.

Coates, certainly he's a person of interest,

but we have to have more than the fact they're sitting there having a beer and talking.

And as it turned out, he was not involved in any way.

With Phil cleared, investigators circle back to another aspect of Wayne's life that could have led to his murder, his dating history.

We found out out through the investigation that Wayne was,

pardon the term, a ladiesman.

Coming up, investigators discover salacious details hidden behind closed doors.

They had a volatile relationship.

Those type of situations, you know, do invoke a huge amount of emotion.

You have to look at jealousy.

Everybody knew that she was bad news.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

You chose to hit play on this podcast today.

Smart Choice.

Progressive loves to help people make smart choices.

That's why they offer a tool called AutoQuote Explorer that allows you to compare your progressive car insurance quote with rates from other companies.

So you save time on the research and can enjoy savings when you choose the best rate for you.

Give Give it a try after this episode at progressive.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.

Not available in all states or situations.

Prices vary based on how you buy.

As much as I'd love to hold on to summer for as long as I can, I get excited for fall by thinking about my wardrobe.

Cozy sweaters, layering my scarves.

Quince nails it with luxury essentials that make your capsule closet effortless, easy, and always so stylish.

Think chic cashmere wraps or cotton sweaters.

The best part?

With Quince, everything is half the cost of similar brands.

They work directly with top artisans and cut out the middleman to give you luxury without the markup.

One classic I've been using every day since I got them is the Bally Polarized Sunglasses in Green.

They're great for road trips, pumpkin patches, or early mornings.

I don't want to risk my eyesight for style, so I'm glad Quince offers polarized frames in a cute style.

I've also been eyeing the Italian leather laptop backpack for a while.

I might just have to check out my cart right after this.

Elevate your fall wardrobe essentials with Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash snapped for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-in-ce-e.com/slash snapped to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com/slash snapped.

It's been nearly three weeks since murder victim Wayne Coates was last seen alive.

Speaking to Wayne's friends, investigators in Horry County, South Carolina learn that Wayne was a bit of a ladies' man.

Wayne just had an air about him, an aura.

And when he walked into the bar, if there was a new lady there, it wasn't five minutes before he was talking to her.

And he was a charming, charming kind of guy.

And he would just, he'd become your friend almost immediately.

And he was a ladies' man.

He liked talking to the girls, chatting them up.

He was like a social magnet whenever he walked into somewhere.

I mean, people were just drawn to him.

He was always described by everybody as a very charismatic person, very flirtatious.

After interviewing Wayne's friends, detectives begin to wonder, could Wayne's philandering ways have gotten him into trouble?

A man accused him of having an affair with his wife.

According to one of Wayne's friends, Wayne believed the man was out looking for him.

It certainly is worth looking into.

It's certainly evidence.

Anytime that you have

severe emotions that come into play, such as Mr.

Coke's affiliation or relationship with a married woman, clearly those type of situations

you know, do invoke a huge amount of emotion.

You have to look at jealousy.

But when investigators locate the woman at the center of this alleged love triangle, she is adamant her husband didn't even know Wayne's name.

People of interest are great,

but those are the ones that you're eliminating out of the pool.

At an impasse, detectives begin looking into the names of other women Wayne's friends claim he had dated.

We have to dig deeper.

It puts puts more people out there that you're going to have to follow up with and eliminate as actual people who would be involved.

Among the list of ex-lovers, one name comes up more than the rest, Wanda Hathcock.

I'd heard about their relationship and that it was rocky, but everybody that knew Wanda knew that she was bad news.

At that point in time, Wanda Haithcock becomes our prime suspect.

While officers fan out in search of Wanda, detectives decide to circle back to Wayne's 32-year-old son, Kenny, hoping to learn more about his father's relationship with her.

I was super stressed.

I couldn't go to school.

I couldn't keep my mind on what I was, you know, my school work.

And then I got a call.

that the detectives wanted me to come down to Myrtle Beach to speak with them.

They asked me who I thought might have done it.

and the first person I said was Blanca.

According to Kenny, the couple had broken up several years earlier.

I think they dated for a total of like eight years, from what I can gather, an up-and-down roller coaster type relationship.

They continued to have communication and contact with each other.

They still had fights

because we still had domestic reports after he had moved out,

accusations by both against each other.

And from what we understand, they still continued to have a sexual relationship.

Kenny also tells investigators that long after their romantic relationship ended, his dad and Wanda remained linked by their shared assets.

They owned the property together on Summer Drive.

That's where they used to reside together with.

Very turbulent relationship, volatile.

When they split up, there was some animosity over how things were going to be divided.

A property they had,

they would switch back and forth.

She would want to stay one place and he'd be like, okay.

And they would move.

Dad would set on in and he'd start fixing the place up.

After a few months, she would come up and say, no, I want to go back to the, you know, the townhouse.

They finally settled with a lawyer, and

he took the townhouse, and that was it.

That's where my dad was residing when everything happened.

While speaking to Kenny, investigators must cut the interview short.

We spoke for a little bit.

They got an urgent phone call and they let they had to go.

They had found his explorer.

The location of the vehicle points detectives to a familiar name, Wanda Hayscock.

A member of Wanda's family ended up calling police and reporting that Wayne's vehicle was parked behind a home on Johns Island.

It seems that when news of Wayne's death finally reached the Charleston area, Wanda's family grew uneasy.

They had found his explorer

at Wanda's sister's house.

Wanda had taken it there and asked her sister for permission to park park it on her property.

Apparently, her sister didn't feel good about it, so she called the Charleston County Sheriff's Department.

The vehicle is impounded and soon searched by authorities.

Police didn't find anything incriminating in the search of the vehicle, but it's still suspicious that the vehicle was there to begin with.

The fact that she had possession of Wayne's vehicle tells us that she is most likely the last person to be with Wayne when he was alive.

A few days after the discovery of Wayne's body, investigators are eager to speak to Wanda Hayescock directly.

But there's a problem.

As soon as it was announced on the news that a body had been found at that location, Wanda went and checked herself into a million hospital.

Unable to question Wanda, investigators quickly realize that details about Wayne and Wanda's relationship are hard to come by.

As charming and outgoing as he was, he kept his personal feelings to himself.

He was pretty much private when it came to his feelings.

After their last interview was cut short, detectives meet with Kenny again.

He wanted to provide as much information as possible.

He came down to the police department several times.

He was instrumental.

He wanted to find out who had done this to his dad.

According to Kenny, he'd noticed a shift in his dad's personality prior to his death.

My dad, he seemed kind of distant at times.

He didn't seem like my regular dad, you know, happy and easygoing, you know, cracking jokes and stuff.

Kenny believes Wanda had a lot to do with Wayne's change in demeanor in the last months of his life.

He had stated to me that she was harassing him.

Coming up, evidence recovered from Wayne's phone may help solve his own murder.

He is recording phone conversations, so apparently he was wary of something.

I am not letting you go in that house again by yourself because you have stole everything.

And the son makes a solemn vow.

I went outside and I looked up this guy, and I promised him and God that she wouldn't get away with it.

Authorities in Horry County, South Carolina, are zeroing in on their prime suspect in the murder of Wayne Coates, his ex-girlfriend, Wanda Hathcock.

Everything pointed to Wanda.

She was up to something.

I said, if you want to find out what's going on, you need to find out what's going on with Wanda.

She had been very volatile.

She was known to have done some things that were out of the ordinary, committed some petty crimes against Wayne.

According to Wayne's son, Kenny, the first incidents began in 1999, shortly after Wayne and Wanda broke up.

She would constantly call him and harass him.

She stole his golf club.

He was just a bank person.

Kenny explains his father had been so suspicious of Wanda that he'd begun to record their conversations.

All right, you know, he left alone and I'll see you next.

I can't ask him what can't be.

I don't know exactly his motive for doing it.

I guess he was just trying to cover himself.

Got two locks on the door at the house, so you can't get in there.

My stuff is still there, Wayne.

All you got to do is tell me what you want.

I'll meet me up there and you can have it.

But I am not letting you go in that house again by yourself because you have stole everything.

Who I stole it

and clothes.

Yeah, I did pick some of your search.

That's not the only evidence Wayne kept on hand.

My dad had a stack of these pink papers.

Where she had been charged for assault.

She threw the iron at him right in front of the cop.

She got arrested.

She was violent, I could tell.

She was, without a question, described by many as the crazy ex-girlfriend.

Kenny says every time his father would push her away, Wanda would come back with more demands.

As far as I knew, the title deeds on the property were all settled.

But she was always wanting more, more and more.

She didn't want to work.

She wanted somebody to just give her money all the time.

And my dad, he was done with that.

Wanda was very dependent on Wayne to provide for her.

It appeared from what we were able to glean at the time that she wanted to maintain a relationship with him

and that he was not interested in continuing or maintaining a relationship with her.

He knew that she could get violent.

She was just stalking it, plain and simple.

With a potential motive coming into focus, investigators look for evidence tying Wanda directly to Wayne's murder.

For detectives, that begins by piecing together Wanda's whereabouts in the days and weeks surrounding the crime.

From speaking with Wanda's sister Cynthia Pryor, police learned that Cynthia dropped Wanda off at her mother's home on January 25th after they parked Wayne's vehicle on Johns Island.

When detectives reach out to Wanda's mother, they learn Wanda had left behind a damning piece of evidence.

Wanda's mother turns those items over to police, and when they search them, they find a receipt.

They had found the receipts for the 25 caliber handgun.

On January 29th, 24 days after Wayne Coates was last seen alive, detectives execute a search of Wanda's residence.

I located several items when executing that search warrant, and the most important item was

on a bookshelf in the living room.

I located a live round of ammunition that was 25 caliber and matched the same brand that was located at the crime scene.

We never found the gun, but I think that really solidified our position.

On February 1st, 2001, detectives obtain a warrant for Wanda's arrest.

I was with the detectives down at the police department.

We drew up the arrest warrant for Wanda, and it was just a couple of days later before it was served on her when she was released to the mental hospital.

When they finally said that Wanda was arrested for the murder of Wayne Coates, we all went, yeah, we knew it the whole time.

This was Wanda.

Coming up, Wayne's friends and family endure the slow wheels of justice.

I just at some point lost a lot of hope.

It was like an ominous sign that she was going to get off.

In the spring of 2001, while prosecutors prepare a case against 48-year-old Wanda Haithcock for the murder of Wayne Coates, his son Kenny is overwhelmed with emotion.

I made a vow.

I went outside and I looked up this guy.

And I promised him and God that she wouldn't get away with it.

Over the next few years, I've dedicated myself to that.

I left school.

I was never able to return to that.

I quit my job.

There was just so much to do trying to tie up the loose ends with this.

As prosecutors build their case, their first hurdle is Wanda's purported struggle with her mental health.

The trial, it got postponed a couple of times because she would go check herself back into a mental hospital and she was on medication for depression, anti-anxiety, et cetera.

The Department of Health expert came down.

and had determined that she was unfit to assist her attorney in the the trial of the case because she had not been under the effects of her medication and that she would not be able to understand

what was going on in the courtroom.

The results of Wanda's mental health evaluation put pretrial proceedings on pause.

Naturally, there was no way I wanted to go forward under those conditions and the law specifically prohibits it.

But what we were trying to do was get Ms.

Hafecock a fair trial.

So we all agreed that the best thing to do, Ms.

Hafecock was going to remain in custody, but yet would be in a mental health facility.

And we could give an attempt to see if she could regain her ability to understand what was going on and assist her counseling her defense.

I hoped that things would go quickly, that I would get my guilty verdict and she would get punished.

And it just seemed to drag on and on, you know, almost three years.

Finally, in 2003, Wanda is deemed competent to stand trial.

She just continued to maintain the counseling and things like that.

They did the same evaluation.

She would find she was able to assist her counsel in her defense.

Inside an Horry County courtroom, prosecutor Bert von Herman begins to plead his case.

Wayne's recordings of his conversations with Wanda help illustrate the conflict within their relationship.

I'm so sad at the Jews.

While prosecutors don't need a motive to prove their case, Those following the trial have their own theories.

She is the only one that really knows what happened.

Nobody knows but Wanda.

She knew how much money he had.

It was bonus time and that he probably had his bonus in his pocket.

And she killed him in cold blood for money.

The motive was jealousy.

Wanda wanted Wayne all to herself and she felt that he was not there for her anymore.

And I think he possibly could have broken it off completely with her just prior to the crime.

She was very possessive of Wayne.

I think Wanda was angry that my dad didn't want to be with her.

He wanted to live an easy life, but wanted my dad to be the one to provide it, and he wasn't going to do that.

Prosecutors present their theory of how Wayne's murder played out.

Prosecution basically told the jury that Wanda had taken my dad out there, you know, that abandoned house.

She had lured him out there on the pretense of possibly sex.

She decided that if I can't have it, nobody will.

And so she killed him.

She took him inside

and she shot him first in the back of the neck

and then he fell down and then she went and shot him to be gum between his eyes and shot him in the forehead.

I think that we were able to build and show with the purchase of the magazine, obviously that was purchased for a reason.

The gun, the bullets, you combine all of those things, the entire lifestyle facts and temperament, that certainly pointed an awful lot towards her.

Wanda's attorneys disagree.

As far as the defenses, they claimed it was all circumstantial.

Their defense was she didn't do it.

She's not guilty you can't prove

on october 23rd 2003 a jury retires to determine wanda's fate the outcome of the very first trial was a hung jury

i didn't know if there was a technicality we were pretty frustrated over the fact how can it be a hung jury how can everybody not see these facts that this is how it happened and she did it

it was like the ominous sign that she was going to get off.

I just, at some point, at that point, lost a lot of hope.

Wanda's second trial gets underway a month later in November.

Prosecutor Burt von Herman lays out his case against Wanda once again with the help of a ballistics expert.

The ballistics expert testified that the second trial, bent bullet casing, they found under the scene and a bullet they found at her house that hadn't been fired, but cycled through the weapon, and you know, they matched up.

This time, it's enough to convince the jury.

On November 5th, 2003, Wanda Hathcock is found guilty of the murder of Wayne Coates.

I did get up in front of the judge for sentencing, told him that

she showed my father no mercy when she

executed him and asked that he show her no mercy when he sensed her.

and to my surprise he gave her the the minimum sentence he had to serve every day of for 30 years

even now wanda's sentence troubles wayne's friends and family especially in light of all she took away from them

you know it's not just me that was hurt by this.

You know,

a lot of lives were hurt, destroyed.

Wayne, I don't think he ever met anybody that wasn't his friend.

So that's something we miss.

The biggest thing I missed most about Wayne was you could talk to him about anything.

And

his engaging smile, he shared it with everybody.

And if you were sitting there having a beer and he looked at you and he would joke and he would, you know, smile at you and we'd go play a game of pool.

And he's just, you just miss being with him.

He was just a good, good guy.

Losing my dad

forever changed my life.

I mean, it'll, it just, it's totally different.

It's nothing like it could have been, you know, things just had to happen.

It just forever altered my life.

Wanda Haithcock is currently incarcerated at a correctional facility in Columbia, South Carolina.

She will be released from prison in October of 2033.

She will be 80 years old.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our top.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.