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Forensic Files

Pressed For Crime

Forensic Files

HLN

Society & Culture, True Crime

4.63.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode originally aired April 18, 2019. A brutal murder, lots of suspects, and conflicting evidence... but the forensics were clear on one thing: The killer knew his victim. And that alone gave investigators a head start. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

A brutal murder.

0:04.3

Lots of suspects and conflicting evidence.

0:07.2

But the forensics were clear on one thing

0:09.6

that killer knew his victim.

0:12.4

And that alone gave investigators a head start. For many young women, the allure of the stage, theater, and the arts is difficult to ignore.

0:33.2

19-year-old Heather Stigliano thought she might have what it takes to succeed.

0:38.1

She liked to pose and model and be on stage, and she had a beautiful voice.

0:43.6

After high school, Heather planned to pursue her dreams, but put them on hold for a year as a favor to her mother.

0:50.7

I had just gone through a divorce, and she promised to stay with me for a year until I got

0:56.5

my legs. And when that year was up, she made her plants, and she moved. Her destination was

1:02.0

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she had some friends. She wanted to be in the entertainment

1:08.0

industry. I knew she loved singing. And I think that's one of the reasons

1:11.6

why she moved down to the Myrtle Beach area, because this area has a lot of entertainment.

1:17.2

Heather rented a small apartment in this house near the beach and took a job as a waitress.

1:23.9

But Heather found it difficult to get work as a singer, and she told her mother she was discouraged.

1:30.5

She wanted me to come down. She was feeling homesick, and things were not going as well as she wanted to go down there.

1:39.5

It would be the last time Susan heard her daughter's voice. A week later, friends found Heather's body in her

1:47.7

apartment. She had been beaten, stabbed, and strangled to death with an electrical cord. The crime

1:55.3

was one of the most brutal crimes that I've seen as a prosecutor. Next to Heather's body investigators found broken pieces of plastic.

2:06.6

Small black plastic pieces, particles found some on her body, some scattered around the room

2:14.1

and laying next to her body, which we could not identify.

2:18.3

There were no signs of forced entry, but the motive appeared to be robbery.

...

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