Conway. (WPDE) — 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson's conference room is small, by almost every standard.
A wooden table takes up the majority of the space, accompanied by a handful of chairs. The clutter around the edges of the room didn't help.
"Ten thousand pages," 15th Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson said, pointing to one of the walls.
Shelves resting against it were stuffed to the brim with boxes and binders, each carefully numbered and labeled for easy access. All dedicated to one trial centered around two suspects and a missing woman.
This was not just a conference room. This was a war room.
"All heading to storage," Richardson confirmed. Some of it, he said, had never been used in any of the four trials it was meant for.
Another staff member said the binders would be preserved for as long as records aren't digitized.
In his office, Richardson began the conversation jovially, talking about his Clemson Tigers and the career of their head football coach.
They were conversation topics fit for a man who had gotten a six-year weight off his shoulders, and who at times seemed like he wasn't sure if he was still dreaming.
Then, his voice grew quieter and more serious. The solicitor leaned back in his tall chair, holding himself almost still.
"Justice is a poor substitution for having it not happen," he admitted, haltingly.
After nearly six years of being silenced by a gag order, Richardson and his prosecutors, Nancy Livesay and Chris Helms, were finally able to reflect publicly on the Sidney and Tammy Moorer trials and offer a glimpse into their world. Richardson, as the face of the office, was up first.
"It was really tough," he recalled, adding that the mood in his office when the jury made their guilty verdict resembled more of relief than celebration. "There was more than enough [evidence]. I knew we were beyond a reasonable doubt."
Taking the discussion back to the end of the first trial, Richardson revealed that his team knew the jury would come back deadlocked, at best.
What mattered most, he said, was that the verdict was anything except not guilty.
Through the years, he explained that there were times he wished the gag order wasn't in place.
"Some of them are true," he said, of the rumors flying around social media and true crime blogs. "Some of them are dead wrong."
At the end of the day, he said his team requested the order to protect the Moorers' right to a fair trial, and prevent judges from moving the case to another county.
"We knew early on that there was no way we would be able to pick a jury if this was constantly on in everybody's house," he said.
Even still, his team had to call 800 potential jurors to fill the 15 seats, including an extra alternate. The sheer number caused traffic jams around the Justice Center parking lot and lines to form in the hallway outside his office.
Richardson also answered one of the most asked questions from last week's trial, stemming from a video showing Sidney and Tammy Moorer power washing their truck days after Heather Elvis disappeared.
Richardson said prosecutors have had the video all along. In one trial, a judge blocked them from using it, he explained. In another, it simply didn't fit.
"The case has to play out and become relevant one way or the other," he said. "It wasn't relevant until Ashley [Tammy Moorer's sister] took the stand."
Then, the topic turned to the missing woman.
"I do not believe there's any chance that Heather is alive," Richardson stated, flatly. He disclosed that there were some things he knew that he would not repeat publicly.
"I am burdened with a lot of knowledge that I can't drop," he explained. "That knowledge gives me hope that that ultimate goal of returning Heather to her parents and to her sister is still possible. I am not going to say that it's 100%, or that it's even probable, but I have hope."
A hope, he clarified, that rested on two people's cooperation and a ticking window of time under relatively new state law.
"Sidney now has 364 more days to provide substantial assistance," he said, mentioning a legal requirement that would enable Moorer to reduce his sentence if met. "What I mean by that is to provide us with the body or some portion of it."
Tammy Moorer's window, he pointed out, was days away from closing for good.
He said he'd entertain a deal with them because prosecutors' ultimate goal was not to put the Moorers behind bars, but to bring closure to the Elvis family.
"If we are unable to do that, there will be a sense of failure," he explained.
Even among the sense that the job was unfinished, that the boxes and binders were being put away a little too soon, Richardson didn't belittle the accomplishments of his team.
Livesay and Helms had been given the day off, and he declared a future lunch would be on his dime.
"It felt like a thousand pounds had been lifted," he said.
