Convicted kidnapper says he killed woman; no body found yet

CHARLESTON, S.C. — During his guilty plea in September to kidnapping a 4-year-old girl, a South Carolina prosecutor said Thomas Evans told the FBI he stabbed his girlfriend days before and left her to die.

But three months later, no one has found 40-year-old Sharon Hayden's body. She hasn't been heard from since February. Her family promises to keep looking and keep pressure on police not to drop the case at the very least to honor a final request from Hayden's mother who died from an illness this summer.

"I made her mom a promise ... that I would try to do what I could to find her and have her properly buried," one of Hayden's uncles, Pat Follin, told The Post and Courier . "I just wanna make sure that she's not laying in the woods somewhere alone."

Investigators are still looking for Hayden, said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Donald Wood, who didn't share any details.

Evans said he stabbed Hayden during a fight in her Spartanburg County home, prosecutors said.

Evans said he chased his girlfriend as she ran into the woods where she collapsed and he thinks she died, according to prosecutors during the guilty plea in federal court where he admitted following a James Island woman and her 4-year-old daughter home after they dropped other siblings off at school.

Hayden's car was found not far from that home, where Evans said he beat the mother so severely she had to be hospitalized for facial fractures, then drove off with the girl.

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The kidnapping and attack were not discovered until police checked on the mother after her other children weren't picked up from school, prosecutors said.

The girl was rescued safely in Alabama and Evans was arrested in Mississippi.

Evans is awaiting sentencing in the federal case. He faces 30 years to life in prison.

Hayden's family considered putting money in Evans' prison account to see if he would give more information, but decided against it.

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Associated Press