New developments were made Thursday night in the Heidi Todd kidnapping case. The suspect Thomas Lawton Evans had ties to a woman in the Spartanburg County area.
Evans is charged with kidnapping 4-year-old Heidi Todd from her Johns Island home after her mother was brutally attacked.
Police say Thomas Evans was spotted with a car registered to a woman who lives in Boiling Springs, S.C. ABC News 4 tracked down her address and spoke to her neighbors.
Neighbors say they both had run-ins with Evans when he asked to use their phones.
We spoke to one of Sharon Hayden’s neighbors who asked not to be identified. She says during the first week of February, Thomas Evans came over asking to use her husband’s phone.
This encounter would have been just a few days after Evans was released from prison.
According to the neighbor, “He came over and wanted to use our cell phone and stated that he was her husband and had just gotten out of jail and looking to contact his sister in Charleston that maybe he was going to go stay with her because they were arguing.”
Another neighbor Terry Hall said Evans had also made a disparaging comment about Hayden when he asked to use his phone also to call down to Charleston a week later.
“And then he did make some kind of snarky comment about his girlfriend I just don’t recall what it was but in process of using the phone he bad mouthed her in a sense like he was mad at her,” said Hall.
We now know that early Sunday morning, February 11th, Berkeley County Sheriff’s deputies were called out to Mendels River Road. That’s where Evans was spotted with Hayden’s black Honda civic. According to the report, Evans was walking alone looking for gas. Hayden was apparently not with him.
“All the sudden she disappeared - he was gone and then she was gone, and then they were gone what seemed like a week and then all of a sudden two days of police being here researching the property and looking for whatever,” said a neighbor.
Both neighbors say on Valentine’s Day, law enforcement showed up at Hayden’s house looking for something or someone and then a car drove up, she says with Hayden in the car. She says she reported it to the FBI.
“They were looking for her, she all the sudden showed up again. It was Friday or Saturday night 8:30 to 9 o’clock and she just showed up in a car that wasn’t hers went to try to get into the apartment and couldn’t get in and left,” a neighbor said.
We’re still waiting for Thomas Evan’s extradition to South Carolina. Officials with the case say he is expected to face more charges related to Heidi Todd’s kidnapping.