I'm Craig Melvin,
and this is "Dateline:
Secrets Uncovered".
- If you admit that she's
never coming home,
it's like you're admitting
defeat or that she's dead.
- A hardworking wife,
a loving mother,
a woman with a complicated
love life.
- She was having affairs.
- They worked in the same
office areas.
They spent some time
after hours together.
- Kathy was trying to break
off the relationship.
- Now the secret was out,
replaced by a mystery.
- She never
returned from lunch.
- We did consider that her
husband may have known
that his wife was
having an affair.
- Where was she?
- There were
just no answers.
- Nearly 30 years,
60 investigators,
and it all kept coming back
to one elusive suspect.
- He just very
calmly said,
"I know how to get
rid of a body
"so it would never,
ever be found."
- To him, I think murder is
something that can be done
over a lunch hour.
We were just a heartbeat
away from not having a case.
It was basically a
now-or-never situation.
**
- Hello and welcome to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
When Kathy Heckel vanished,
police did not know
if they were dealing with
a missing person case
or cold-blooded murder.
They quickly discovered
the doting mother
was keeping scandalous secrets
from her husband,
but it would take
nearly 30 years
to unravel the mystery
behind her disappearance.
Here's Josh Mankiewicz with...
- Time can be
like a river,
a long stream
of events rushing by.
Most barely make a ripple,
but a few,
like the sudden loss
of a close friend,
a child, or a parent
have a way of circling
back upon us
in a ceaseless loop
of memory and regret.
That's the way it's been
for John Heckel
and his sister Alicia Talbot
ever since that completely
normal morning in 1991
when their mom, Kathy Heckel,
kissed them goodbye,
left for work,
and never returned.
Do you remember her
leaving that morning?
- Yeah. I-I mean,
like any other day.
- Yeah.
- Same routine all the time.
Every time she left us,
she kissed us goodbye.
- It was a July morning.
Alicia, 13,
and John, then 9,
were home for
summer vacation.
A little after 9 a.m.,
Alicia says her mom called
from her job.
- We discussed having dinner
and having pork chops.
- Mm-hmm.
Yeah, 'cause that was
one of my favorite things
she cooked.
- Later, they tried to contact
their mom at work.
- One of the times we tried
to call her
was around lunchtime.
- Mm-hmm.
- And she had left,
um, for lunch.
- Yeah.
- Um, and then we waited
and called after lunch,
and she still wasn't
back to work yet.
- At 40, Kathy Heckel had
spent half her life
working at the local paper plant
in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
- I can't remember who I was
speaking to at the office,
but you could hear
in their voice
that there was
some concern there
that she hadn't
come back yet.
- And you picked that up.
- Yeah.
It was not typical for her
to not come back
and not tell anybody.
- With their dad
out of town,
they kept trying
to reach their mom.
Nothing.
At about 6:30
that evening,
Alicia called her grandparents
Clarence and Margaret Dolan.
- I answered the phone,
and it was Alicia.
She said, "Gram, can
you get us some milk?"
And I said, "What do you mean
can I get you some milk?"
She says, "Well,
mom didn't come home yet,"
and she says,
"We don't have any milk."
And I said, "Alicia,
I will be right there."
- And you're thinking what?
- I didn't know
what to think.
But as a mother, you know
that this is something bad,
something very bad.
- That night,
Kathy's mother and father
contacted everyone
they could think of.
- No one had heard from her,
and that was--
I remember picking up
on that--
That they seemed--
They seemed worried.
- I mean,
you could just tell.
- Your grandparents were
acting differently.
- Mm-hmm.
- Their dad John was in
Upstate New York that Monday
training with his
National Guard unit.
He didn't learn his wife was
missing until the next day.
- You get that phone call.
It's your mom.
- Yeah.
- What'd she say?
- The gist of
the conversation
was that Kathy didn't come home
from work on Monday night
and they didn't know
where she was.
- And now it's Tuesday.
- And now it's
Tuesday evening.
- And you think what?
- I said, tell them to call
the State Police.
- With the permission
of his commanding officer,
John Heckel immediately
left for home.
He had plenty
of time to think
on that
5 1/2-hour ride.
He thought about the time
Kathy donated a kidney
to save her brother's life
and about the December day
in 1972
when he first
gazed at Kathy Dolan.
- She just had the biggest
brown eyes
you could look into.
- Six months later,
they were married.
- Like any marriage, I think
we had our ups and downs.
But, uh, overall,
I was happy about the fact
I didn't have to worry
about my family with Kathy.
- You thought you were going
to stay married forever?
- Yes.
- The problem was
John was already married
to the military.
John's career frequently
took him away from home,
sometimes for
weeks at a time.
Kathy didn't like that,
and John says his wife
of 18 years
seemed to have that
on her mind
when she dropped him off for
his latest guard assignment.
- She asked me why
I had to be there so early,
which didn't
make sense to me,
because I was always
the first one there,
and I said,
"It's my job."
- She didn't
want you to go.
- She didn't say,
"I don't want you to go."
- But you felt it.
- I could feel that
something was wrong.
The look on her face
when she said it,
it just didn't
set right with me.
- Now Kathy was missing,
and her disappearance
would eventually
drag into the open
secrets
that some in
and around Lock Haven
would have rather
kept hidden.
A wife and mother,
but also a woman who was
sometimes lonely.
- I asked her mom
if she was seeing anyone,
and she said that she had
reestablished contact
with an old friend
from school.
- And that old friend
had a confession to make.
- He did admit that they had
had a physical relationship
and it had only been a few days
before she disappeared.
By the time John Heckel
returned home
from National Guard training
in New York State,
his wife Kathy had been missing
for about 36 hours.
- When my dad came back,
he was the one who told us,
"We can't find your mom.
"We don't know
where your mom is."
And, um, that was
the first time
I've ever seen
my dad cry.
And, um...
I-I knew the worst had
definitely happened
if he was
that worried.
- And that was the first time
I saw my dad cry, too.
And, you know, he was always
this big, strong man,
and-and when you
see that, you--
It's like, okay, this is--
This is not good.
- That's got to be a terrible
thing to tell your kids,
because they want--
they want you to tell them
this is going to be okay.
- Dad always had
all the answers.
- And you can't tell them
this is going to be okay.
- Mnh-mnh. No.
You don't want fabrication.
- Across town that morning,
Pennsylvania State Trooper
Fred Caldwell was on the case.
His first call had been to
Margaret Dolan, Kathy's mom.
- I remember asking her
if she, um,
had noticed any
changes recently
or anything in her demeanor
that was unusual,
and she said that in the
last 4-6 weeks or so
she just wasn't herself.
- Then the trooper asked
one of those probing
and indelicate questions
that cops have to ask.
- I asked her mom if she,
um, had any indication
that she was seeing anyone,
and she said that she had
reestablished contact
with an old acquaintance,
an old friend from school.
- That man's name
was Dennis Taylor.
He and Kathy had recently
reconnected at a wedding.
Taylor had been singing
and playing guitar.
The trooper jotted down
the name Dennis Taylor
with the idea
of calling him later.
Next, he dialed
the paper plant
where Kathy
was last seen.
One of Kathy's coworkers
picked up the phone.
- She kind of corroborated
what her mom had said,
that she'd been a little
different in the last few weeks.
Her personality just seemed
a little quieter maybe.
- Then he asked
question number two.
- I also asked her
if she felt that there
was the possibility
she may have been having
an affair or seeing anyone,
and she said
she had no evidence,
but she suspected that
she may have been.
- The coworker wasn't
talking about
Kathy's friend
Dennis Taylor.
She was talking about a man
at the plant named Loyd Groves.
- They both played
on the same volleyball team.
They spent some time
afterhours together.
Um, and I think just
the closeness of the two,
and she just kind of suspected
that they may be.
- The trooper learned Groves
was the quiet type,
married with children.
Sometimes he led
plant tours
and gave papermaking
presentations
at local schools.
A call to Groves' office
revealed he wasn't in yet,
so the trooper left
a callback message
and not long after,
the trooper says,
Mr. Groves showed up in person
at the State Police barracks.
- He was very calm.
He said that, um,
he knew her.
They shared-- They worked
in the same office areas.
He, um, said they
were friends.
I did ask him if he had
any type of physical
relationship with her,
and he said no.
- Shortly after Loyd Groves
left the State Police barracks,
the other man
on Trooper Caldwell's list
walked in--
Dennis Taylor,
the guitar man.
Like Groves, Taylor was
a married man with children,
and right off the bat,
he told the trooper
he had a confession
to make.
- He did admit
that they had
had a physical relationship
briefly,
and it had only been
a few days
before she disappeared,
as I recall--
the first contact--
phyiscal contact.
- Like a balladeer
who knows
his audience is hanging
on every lyric,
the guitar man
kept singing to the cops.
Taylor told the trooper
Kathy Heckel had
called him at work
the day she disappeared.
Her voice, he said,
had a strange tone.
- She called him
just before lunchtime
and was upset
or anxious
and said that
she had something
she wanted to talk
to him about.
And he was busy
and he said, "I can't talk,
I'll call you back."
And hung up.
He did try to call back
then sometime later
and she had gone
for lunch.
- Taylor said he played golf
with friends that afternoon
and had planned to meet up
with Kathy later that night.
- Then he goes to her location
where they're going to meet.
Kathy doesn't show up.
He was concerned that
something may have happened.
- It was then the guitar man
struck a familiar chord.
Kathy Heckel, he said, had
also been seeing another man,
a guy named
Loyd Groves.
According to Taylor, this fellow
Groves was a bit of a stalker.
- He said that he had met Kathy
at a park, a nearby park.
He said that there was
a gray van parked nearby.
He recalled
seeing the van.
And the next time he talked
to Kathy, she said,
"Did you see that van?"
That was Loyd,
and he was following her.
- Was the guitar man
being helpful
or was he trying
to implicate a rival
to save his own skin?
The trooper
knew this much:
if Kathy Heckel
had been juggling
simultaneous affairs
with married men,
there could be
a lot of people
who might have
wanted her to disappear,
including her husband.
- He was definitely
a person of interest.
- Exactly how much
did John Heckel know
about what was going on
in his wife's life?
- Detectives are ready
to confront John
with an ugly truth
and want to know,
are they looking for
a runaway wife or her killer?
- There were just no answers.
- Um-hmm.
- And that was-that was
the worst part.
- We did consider
that John may have known
that his wife
was having an affair
and that he may have
taken some action on his own.
- Did you feel like
you were ever a suspect?
- Never worried about it.
I knew they were trying
to find where Kathy was
and what had happened.
And if that included
questioning me,
I had no problems
with that.
Any investigation in which
someone goes missing
or turns up dead
just about guarantees
family members will be
considered suspects.
Kathy Heckle's husband,
John, was no exception.
- We did consider
that John may have known
that his wife
was having an affair
and that he may have taken
some action on his own.
- Did you feel like you
were ever a suspect?
- Never worried about it.
I knew they were trying
to find where Kathy was
and what had happened.
And if that included
questioning me,
I had no problems
with that.
- At some point,
somebody said to you,
"We believe she was having
a relationship
with some
other people."
Was that shocking to hear?
- It was surprising
because that wasn't
the way Kathy was.
- In his interview
with Trooper Caldwell,
John Heckel said
he'd noticed a change
in his wife's demeanor
in recent weeks
and wondered if she might be
having an affair.
- He--
he was emotional.
There were times when
John and I just sat together
with my arm around him
and he would cry.
He was concerned
about his wife.
And I felt very bad
for the man.
- John Heckel's alibi
checked out
and police found
no evidence
he paid anyone
to hurt his wife.
By now, Kathy had been
missing for two full days
and John Heckel
feared the worst.
- Kathy Heckel
would never...
On this earth
abandon
those two children.
- Trooper Caldwell
still didn't know
if he was working
a missing persons case,
an abduction,
or a homicide.
Then on the evening
of the third day,
investigators
got a big break.
They found
Kathy Heckel's car
parked behind
the local hospital.
The keys were missing.
- I think they
recovered one print,
but I don't know
that it was ever identified.
It was from the exterior
of the car.
- Investigators were now
pretty sure that someone,
possibly her killer,
had moved Kathy Heckel's car
to the hospital
parking lot.
And then, the case
hit a dead end.
Days turned to weeks.
Those weeks stretched
into months.
Kathy Heckel was
somewhere in the wind.
- We had cadaver dogs
come down often
and we would have troopers
go out and search the area
looking for remains
or whatever.
- While some investigators
focused on finding Kathy Heckel,
others concentrated on finding
evidence of a crime.
As far as investigators
could tell,
the guitar man, Dennis Taylor,
had been honest,
confessing his affair
with Kathy Heckel.
Loyd Groves, on the other hand,
had seemed a bit dodgy.
Troopers had searched Loyd
Groves' home, office, and van.
And while some items
of interest were found,
the local prosecutor
didn't think
police had enough
to make an arrest.
- There was a big hole from
an investigative standpoint.
- Ted McKnight
was Clinton County
District Attorney
at the time.
- If you can imagine
a yardstick,
and "probable cause" is
probably at the 2-inch mark,
and "beyond
a reasonable doubt"
is probably
at the 34-inch mark,
then everything else
in-between
is the difference
between
are you going
to get a conviction
or aren't you?
- Which means
you don't go forward
unless you're reasonably sure
you have the evidence
for a conviction.
- Correct.
- He says that fact
that Kathy Heckel's body
had not been found
was a big problem.
- How do we prove
beyond a reasonable doubt
that she is dead?
If she was killed,
where did the killing occur?
In what county did it occur?
- So, maybe it's not even
in your jurisdiction.
- Correct.
- For the Heckel family,
Kathy's disappearance
was a defining event.
- I remember
being depressed.
I didn't know what that meant
when I was 9 years old,
but just thinking about
how low and sad
I felt all the time.
- I think people deal
with things differently
and I certainly chose,
I think, the avoidance method.
- Not think about it.
- And not think about it.
- There were just no answers.
- Um-hmm.
- And that was-that was
the worst part.
- In 1998, seven years
after Kathy disappeared,
John Heckel had his wife
declared legally dead.
That did not make
the mystery
any easier for him
to understand.
- Can you accept the idea
that maybe there were needs
that you felt
that she had to meet
with men who were not you,
but that she still loved you?
- Oh, no. I-I believe
she did love me.
- She had a secret life that
she wasn't showing anybody else.
- But you don't know
how long that secret life was
and neither do I.
It could have been her plan
to want to end that
the day when she asked me
why I had to leave so early.
I don't know. But I'm not going
to hate her for being human.
- Do you blame yourself?
- A little bit.
- 22 summers
came and went.
John Heckel remarried.
The kids grew up.
They started
new lives out west.
Alicia became a ski pro,
John a fishing guide.
But through it all,
their mother was never far
from their thoughts.
- She missed all those
childhood memories.
I mean, things like going
to the prom, and boyfriends,
and kisses and just--
just everything.
- She missed
our-our weddings.
I mean, she missed
our graduations.
She doesn't know
her only grandchild.
- And you probably thought
about her at each one of those.
- Mmm-hmm.
- Clinton County never
forgot Kathy Heckel either.
She'd become a part of history
that just wouldn't go away.
And as one generation
of lawmen retired,
another rose to take up
the unfinished business
and discovered enticing details
buried in a very old file.
- When I, uh,
obtained this case,
it was 22 years old.
- And it had passed through
a lot of other hands.
- 60 other investigators.
- 60?
- 60.
- He was 8 when
Kathy disappeared.
Now, he was in charge
of her case.
- What I remember growing up
is where was she?
Where was Kathy at
during all this time?
- And the leading suspect
suddenly leaves town.
- About three weeks after
the disappearance of Kathy,
he moved his family
back to Beaver, PA.
Welcome back to
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Craig Melvin.
Detectives believed Kathy Heckel
and Loyd Groves were lovers
and that Loyd knew more
about her disappearance
than he
was letting on.
But with no body
and little evidence,
the case
went into a deep freeze.
Now, decades later,
a new detective
was about
to turn up the heat.
Here again is Josh Mankiewicz
with "She Didn't Come Home".
- For more than 20 years,
Kathy Heckel's children
lived with a feeling
of unfocused fear.
- It's an unsettling
feeling that--
an unsettling
feeling of fear
that essentially
something great
in my life
can be taken away
at any-at any moment.
- And you think that can all
be traced back to your mom?
- Absolutely.
- For their father John,
those were years
spent struggling
to let go and move on.
- I talked to Kathy
a lot about it.
- What do you say to her?
- Just talk.
Just ramble on.
- And you just start
talking to her out loud?
- Yeah.
Something will come up
that will remind me
of something we did.
- Law enforcement had not
forgotten Kathy Heckel.
In the summer of 2013,
a native son
inherited the case.
State Police Investigator
Curtis Confer.
- When I, uh,
obtained this case,
it was 22 years old.
- And it had passed through
a lot of other hands.
- 60 other
investigators.
- 60?
- 60.
- And you thought
I'm going to close it
or I'm going
to be the 61st.
And in a little while,
there will be a 62nd.
- Well, Josh, what was
interesting was
it was 400 pages
of reports,
and I just read it.
- To this 61st investigator,
the reports were riveting.
He'd heard the story
as a child,
and even had a connection
to Loyd Groves,
whose name was
all over that file.
- He came to
my elementary school
and did a presentation
on making paper.
- You saw a photo
of him giving these.
- Yeah, and I went,
you know what?
I remember him doing
our-our school.
- Confer was now convinced
that at the time
this picture was taken,
Loyd Groves was having
an affair with Kathy Heckel.
Only two months later,
investigators considered Groves
a suspect in her disappearance.
- What I remember growing up
is where was she?
Where was Kathy at
during all this time?
John Heckel was
my brother's soccer coach.
- The case files were
chock-full of details--
a gun found in Loyd Groves'
desk drawer,
ammo found in his van,
a curious chunk
of carpet missing
from the back
of the van.
- What was Loyd's
explanation
for cutting the carpet
out of the van?
- In 1991, he said that the kids
were playing with tar and oil,
and they got tar and oil
in that section of the van.
- That confirmed by anybody?
- No, it was not.
- That wasn't the only thing
to jump off the page.
The original investigators
had a witness
who'd reported seeing
Kathy Heckel and Loyd Groves
together in his parked van
many times in the weeks
before she disappeared,
and there was evidence
that on the day Kathy Heckel
never returned from lunch,
Loyd came back so late,
he missed a 2 PM meeting.
- Something that the original
investigators found was
that Loyd Groves
wrote a letter to his wife
announcing to the family
that he was going to be arrested
for the murder
of Kathy Heckel.
- This is right after
the disappearance?
- This is right after
the disappearance,
and he wrote detailed notes
to his wife
how to take care
of the tractor,
how to take care
of the car.
- This is a guy
who likes to plan.
- He is a planner, yes.
Meticulous.
- But he's not arrested.
He was wrong.
- Yeah.
He was not arrested.
About three weeks after, uh,
the disappearance of Kathy,
he moved his family back
to Beaver, PA,
and then eventually selling
his home, leaving a--
leaving a lot of his personal
items at his home.
- When he finished reading
the case file,
Confer called
the local FBI office
looking for some items
connected to the case.
It was then that he
connected with Mike Hutson,
a veteran state trooper
assigned to a joint
terrorism task force.
After Confer explained
what he was after,
Hutson asked
to see the file.
- I thought it was
a very good case.
I felt that there was, you know,
a very real suspect.
- When Hutson's partner,
FBI agent and former
prosecutor Kyle Moore,
read the file,
he, too, was hooked.
- This was something that
we wanted to do something about.
We wanted to see if there
was any way that, you know,
we could actually bring
it to a conclusion.
- So within days
of getting the case,
investigator number 61
had a team to help him.
- They had so much knowledge
that I didn't have.
It was by the grace of God
that they helped me
with this case.
- Time, it became clear,
was not on their side.
- It was basically
a now-or-never situation.
I always felt we were
just a heartbeat away
from losing a witness
to not having a case.
- As they worked the case,
the investigators knew
they had one ace in the hole.
In 1991, specks of blood
had been found
in Loyd Groves' van.
Advanced DNA tests
were done in 2004.
- Based off the fact that
there wasn't a DNA sample
from the victim,
they essentially
had to construct one
from the victim's mother
and father, you know,
essentially building
the victim's DNA profile.
- That DNA test proved
the blood was Kathy Heckel's,
but Trooper Confer says
it seems that bit of evidence
fell through the cracks,
because the lead investigator
and primary prosecutor
at the time
took medical leave.
One thing was clear
to all three
of the new investigators.
This case needed
more resources
and more prosecutorial muscle
than Clinton County possessed.
- We requested, uh,
that the district attorney
relinquish the case to
the attorney general's office
and, uh, the DA
at the time agreed.
- In early 2014,
a grand jury was empaneled
to review the evidence.
Hutson, Moore, and Confer
hit the road.
- So, we did interviews
in different states
and traveled the-the country
a little bit.
- The new investigators
tracked down old witnesses
and even found a new one,
a man who remembered
an argument
between Kathy Heckel
and Loyd Groves
on the day
she went missing.
The question was,
did police have enough
to make an arrest?
- I got to know
this family.
I was worried
a lot about them,
because I knew this would be
an ugly trial.
- Will it be Kathy
who ends up on trial?
- Every single indiscretion
of hers
was going to be announced
in open court.
- She was going to be punished
for being murdered.
- When "Dateline:
Secrets Uncovered" continues.
- As a military man,
John Heckel finds solace
on old battlefields.
The past is always
present there.
But for John,
no peace could be found here
as long as his wife's killer
walked free.
- I would always say,
"Where are we?
"How close are we
to getting him arrested?"
- And police would say,
"The DA won't go forward."
- Yeah. No, it's more like,
"We need more."
- The investigators
went looking for more.
They tracked down
new witnesses
and dug deep looking for
Kathy Heckel's body,
which they never found.
Even so, on January 28, 2015,
a grand jury indicted
Loyd Groves for murder,
largely on the strength
of the same evidence
that had been in the files
all along.
- It was literally
just like television.
We got there early, like
5 o'clock, and we set up.
As he was walking to his car,
we rolled right up,
jumped out, and when I put
the handcuffs on him,
I said, "You're under arrest
for the murder of Kathy Heckel."
- Did he say anything?
- Yeah, he, uh, told his son
that he needed to get
a different ride to work.
- So--
- It really didn't faze him.
- Lo and behold,
Loyd Groves is arrested.
What was that like to hear?
- Inner thankfulness that
we were getting somewhere.
- Still a long way to go.
- Yeah, there's still
a long way to go.
- In many ways,
the arrest of 65-year-old
Loyd Groves was the easy part.
Legal maneuvering
delayed his trial
another three-and-a-half years.
For the defense, that delay
gave their investigators time
to poke holes
in the prosecution's case.
- This case had holes
you could drive trucks through.
- Tom Bruno
and his wife Amy
were the defense team's
investigators.
- We were in the case
for nearly four years.
We actually
talked about him--
I would guarantee, every day.
- Every day.
- Tom, a former cop,
knew how to look for flaws
in the police work.
Amy, a Lock Haven native,
had grown up with
the Kathy Heckel story.
- I mean, you talk
to anyone in town,
they would all say
that Loyd killed her,
and he put her in a vat of acid
and dissolved her body.
That was the working
theory for years.
- But Tom says the files he read
didn't prove any of that.
In fact, he says he found
a silver bullet
in those piles of documents.
- We actually discovered
that in the police reports,
in medical records,
that she had cut
her finger at work.
It was bleeding so badly
that she had to get it
treated three times.
And this was at the time
that she was allegedly in her--
in Loyd's van every day.
- So if the prosecution
planned to make a big deal
out of a DNA test
showing Kathy Heckel's blood
in Loyd Groves' van,
the defense response
now would be, so what?
- They think it came from Kathy
because Loyd killed her,
but yet here's Kathy's blood
because she cut herself at work.
- I mean, if this isn't
reasonable doubt, what is?
- As the case went to trial
in November 2018,
Pennsylvania's Senior Deputy
Attorney General Daniel Dye
knew the defense
would do more
than just attack
their evidence.
He feared they would
attack Kathy Heckel too.
- I got to know this family.
I was worried
a lot about them,
because I knew this would be
an ugly trial.
- And that every single
indiscretion of hers
was going to be announced
in open court.
- She was going to be punished
for being murdered.
- The prosecution's case,
almost entirely circumstantial,
began with testimony from
Kathy Heckel's children.
- It was a little difficult,
but it felt good to be
in front of Loyd Groves
and have him look at me
and listen to-to my story.
- And how scary it was.
- Mm-hmm.
- According to friends
and family,
Kathy Heckel was a devoted
daughter, a loving mom.
At the same time,
she was also restless.
Tell me what was going on
in her life at that time.
- Her life at that time
was a lonely life.
Uh, John Heckel
is a good guy,
but his first love
was the military,
and Kathy was, you know,
having affairs,
and one of them was
with Loyd Groves.
- Another lover,
the guitar man Dennis Taylor,
said Kathy had told him all
about that unraveling affair.
- Kathy was trying to break off
the relationship.
We know that.
Loyd did not want
the relationship to end,
and he specifically wanted
to meet for lunch on that day.
- Did Loyd Groves know
about Denny Taylor?
- He did. Uh, we had evidence
in the case
that Groves
was following Kathy.
- Dennis Taylor testified
that Kathy had expressed
some fear about Loyd.
- Right.
- Raise your right hand.
- In a special hearing,
two former paper plant
employees,
who'd been in poor health,
had their trial testimony
prerecorded.
One said he'd overheard
Kathy Heckel and Loyd Groves
arguing the day
Kathy went missing.
- Just loud.
- The other said she saw
Loyd Groves staring daggers
at Kathy Heckel
as she left for lunch
that day.
- His face was so red,
just like he was
terribly angry,
and he was looking
at Kathy.
- Kathy pulls out.
Loyd pulls out after.
We believe that
they did meet,
that somehow,
some way,
Kathy was cajoled
into one last meet
just to hear Loyd out,
and at that point in time,
Loyd shot her,
shoved her in that van,
likely with a head wound.
- According to witnesses,
Groves was back at the plant
some time between 2:00
and 3:00 that afternoon.
- You think Loyd Groves
kills her,
disposes of her body,
and manages to get
back to work that day
and act like nothing is wrong
and gets away with it?
- I think it's because
he's smart and a good planner.
To him, I think
murder is something
that can be done
over a lunch hour.
- The prosecution wrapped up
its case with two witnesses,
people who only surfaced
shortly before trial.
The first was Loyd Groves'
now ex-wife.
- There was something
she had been holding back
on telling for the past
roughly 30 years,
and that was that Loyd Groves
did come home
over the work hour
on July 15, 1991.
- Something he
almost never did.
- Which he never did,
and changed out of his clothes,
and she never saw the condition
that those clothes were in.
- The next person to testify
was this woman, Gayle Taylor.
She also had
a story to tell
that she'd kept to herself
for decades.
It was the mid '90s.
Taylor said she and Groves
worked together in Ohio.
According to Taylor, she went
to Groves one day to vent
after she'd discovered drugs
in her son's room.
- I was like, "I don't know
what I'm going to do
"with this kid.
"He's going to get
into trouble.
"He's going to end up dying.
If he--
"If the drugs don't kill him,
his mother will."
And Loyd was sitting
at his desk,
and he just very calmly said,
"Well, I know how to
get rid of a body
"so it would never,
ever be found."
- The defense's argument
was he was joking.
- I sure wouldn't joke about
being able to dispose of a body
where no one could
ever find it
if I had been investigated
for killing somebody
and they'd never
found the body.
- The prosecution
closed its case by asking,
who but Loyd Groves could have
killed Kathy Heckel?
And in return,
the defense stood ready
to ask a provocative
question of its own.
Could Kathy Heckel
have simply run away?
- Did you really think
she lived past that day?
- I certainly have
a reasonable doubt
as to whether she died
that day.
- Would the jury
have the same doubt?
- It was a nervous moment,
absolutely.
I was nervous, and we
were all holding hands.
Welcome back.
Loyd Groves was on trial
for Kathy Heckel's murder.
Prosecutors leaned on
circumstantial evidence
including testimony from a woman
who said Loyd told her
he could get rid
of a body permanently.
But Loyd's attorneys
were ready to point the finger
at a different man,
someone they believed
had a powerful motive to kill.
Here's Josh Mankiewicz
with the conclusion
of "She Didn't Come Home".
- The Loyd Groves defense team
could hardly wait
to make their case
to the jury.
- It was like you're
playing cards,
and you have four aces,
and you're waiting
to play them.
That's what we felt like
over the last few years.
- George Lepley was one of two
lawyers defending Groves.
- I don't think there was
enough evidence,
and what evidence
they did present had issues
questioning whether
it was reliable enough
to justify taking the rest
of a man's life away.
- For a defense team
that had spent years
reviewing police reports,
one thing
seemed obvious.
- When the police learned of
something that implicated Loyd,
they were
on top of it.
Whenever there was another
avenue to pursue,
it just kind of would fall
by the wayside.
- This was more
about the police
trying to prove that it was
Loyd Groves that did this crime
than it was about them
trying to find out
who killed Kathy Heckel,
if indeed she was killed.
- The defense argued
the guitar man, Dennis Taylor,
should have gotten
a closer look.
- Yes, she had an affair
with Loyd.
But she also was having
an affair with Dennis Taylor.
- Taylor had told police
he played golf
the afternoon Kathy Heckel
went missing.
- They went to check
his alibi out 13 months later,
not right away,
and when they go there,
a log that he has
to write in
to show that he was
golfing there,
the pages were missing.
Isn't that convenient?
- And, of course,
the defense argued,
Kathy Heckel's affairs
could have also provided
her husband
with a motive for murder.
Weeks after Kathy disappeared,
the defense noted,
John Heckel discarded
some of her personal items.
- Her husband throws away
her purse, her wallet,
her photo ID.
It isn't that he throws it
in a garbage can
in front of his house
where somebody might see it.
It's in a dumpster
in the back of the reserve base.
- You're saying that he
wanted to conceal that?
- What more logical
conclusion is there?
- Did John Heckel have
something to hide?
The defense didn't offer
an answer for that,
and John Heckel says he doesn't
remember much about those days.
- I don't recollect throwing
anything like that out.
- The defense even suggested
that Kathy Heckel may not
have died on July 15, 1991.
- Did you really think
she lived past that day?
- I certainly have
a reasonable doubt
as to whether
she died that day.
- To support that theory,
the defense introduced
statements John Heckel made
more than 20 years ago.
In one, Heckel said
he thought
his wife may have siphoned
thousands of dollars
from a joint bank account.
In another, he asked
investigators
if a woman pictured
in a swinger's magazine
might be his wife.
- Is there any
credible argument
that Kathy Heckel
squirreled away money,
vanished, ran out on
her husband and her family,
and then posed
for pictures
that were put in
a swinger's magazine
that anybody
could have seen?
- I certainly don't think it
has been disproven
beyond a reasonable doubt that
that could have occurred.
- On the stand, John Heckel said
those decades-old statements
had been the frantic musings
of a desperate man.
- I was grasping anything
I could think of
to try to find out what
happened to my wife.
- The defense conceded
Groves did go home that day
to change his shirt,
but said that was because he had
gotten dirty at the plant
where he had to lead a tour for
a group of children
at 3 o'clock
that afternoon.
And that lunch hour
trip home, they argued,
simply made the prosecution's
version of events
even more unlikely.
- If you factored in
all of the witnesses
when they saw him
at the plant,
how does he have
anywhere near enough time
for him to have done
what they claim he did?
- For 27 years,
the question of what had
happened to Kathy Heckel
had hung over
Lock Haven.
Now it was up to
a Clinton County jury
to finally provide
an answer.
- It was, uh, contentious.
- Sean Sanford,
a toddler at the time
Kathy Heckel disappeared,
was the jury foreman.
- The very first vote
we took was seven/five,
eight/four for guilty.
I thought it was going to be
the other way for acquittal.
- Why did you vote for
acquittal on that first vote?
- If you looked at every piece
of evidence individually,
you could poke holes in
all of it piece by piece.
- After breaking
for the weekend,
the jury returned
on Monday morning,
rested, but still
deadlocked.
- There was, uh, one juror,
in particular,
who was voting
for acquittal originally
who couldn't get
over the fact
that he thought the prime
suspect should be John Heckel.
- Over and over, jurors reviewed
and discussed the evidence.
Then, just before 3:00
that afternoon,
jurors notified the judge
they had reached a verdict.
- It-it was a nervous moment,
absolutely.
I-I was nervous,
and we were all holding hands.
- On the charge of first-degree
or premeditated murder,
the verdict
was not guilty.
Then, in what seemed to be
a compromise decision,
the jury found Groves guilty
of third-degree murder,
which is legally considered
a spontaneous act
in the heat of the moment.
- Did you look at Groves
during that time?
- No. I-I spent more time
looking at Kathy's picture
and crying.
- In a letter to "Dateline",
Loyd Groves once again denied
every having had
an affair with Kathy Heckel,
and said he'd been
wrongly convicted.
At the age of 69,
Groves was formally sentenced
to serve 10 to 20 years
in prison.
- Even with the third-degree
sentencing,
he'll still spend the rest
of his life in prison.
- That's enough for you.
- Mm-hmm.
- It's been more than
a quarter century
since the summer morning
when Kathy Heckel kissed
her children goodbye,
And although their wait
for justice is finally over,
they're still no closer to
knowing where their mother is
than they were on that
summer night in 1991
when she didn't come home.
So unless your mom's remains
are found accidentally,
you might
not ever know.
Are you going to
be okay with that?
- We have to live with it.
I mean, it's sad,
and it's disappointing
that we will never know,
or we may never know,
but we have to be
okay with it.
- That's all for this edition of
"Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Craig Melvin.
Thank you for watching.