Brenda Heist of PA, missing 11 years & declared dead is found in FL

[MuffyBee]

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Missing+woman+last+seen+dropping+kids+school+2002+surfaces/8322804/story.html
Missing Pa. woman, last seen dropping off kids for school in 2002, surfaces in Fla.
May 1, 2013


An April 26, 2013 photo taken by the Monroe County, Fla. Sheriff's Office and released by the Lititz Borough, Pa. Police, is of Brenda Heist. Lititz Borough Police in central Pennsylvania say Heist, who disappeared after dropping off her children for school 11 years ago has been located in Florida after traveling there with homeless hitchhikers and sleeping under bridges. (AP Photo/Lititz Borough Police)

LITITZ, Pa. - A central Pennsylvania woman who mysteriously disappeared after dropping off her children for school 11 years ago has surfaced in Florida, telling police she travelled there on a whim with homeless hitchhikers, slept under bridges and survived by scavenging food and panhandling, authorities said Wednesday.

Brenda Heist, 53, had been declared legally dead, Lititz Borough Police Det. John Schofield said. The detective said he met with her in Florida on Monday and she expressed shame and apologized for what she did to her family.

Heist was going through an amicable divorce in 2002 when she was turned down for housing assistance, which led her to despair. She was crying in a park when two women and a man befriended her, then invited her to join them as they began a monthlong hitchhiking journey to south Florida, Schofield said.

Her ex-husband Lee Heist, who got the courts to declare her legally dead two years ago and has remarried, said at a news conference Wednesday that he was angry because of the effect her disappearance had on their son and daughter. Lee Heist was looked at as a suspect, but co-operated with investigators, took a polygraph and was eventually cleared.

He was able to maintain a bond with the children.

"They knew that I was there, and I loved them and would take care of them," he said.
More...

[MuffyBee]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/04/us/pennsylvania-woman-reappears/?iref=obinsite
Friend tells different story of life of woman who reappeared after 11 years
May 4, 2013

CNN) -- The tale of Brenda Heist, the Pennsylvania mother who abandoned her two children only to turn up in Florida 11 years later, has taken another unlikely turn.
On Saturday, she remained jailed on a Santa Rosa County warrant for alleged violation of probation, forgery and giving a false name to law enforcement, said Art Forgey, a spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff's Office.
Heist, who used the assumed name Kelsie Lyanne Smith, is awaiting extradition, Forgey told CNN affiliate WJXT. She turned herself in Friday.
Heist, meanwhile, may not have spent most of those 11 years homeless, as she told police last week when she turned herself in, saying she'd abandoned her family because of stress.
Sondra Forrester says she knew Heist in 2010. At that time, Heist cleaned her Florida home and went by the name Lovey Smith.
"She actually moved in with me, moved in with me about six months after she started cleaning the house," Forrester told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Friday.
 
Forrester asked more questions about Heist's past when she moved into the house, "but not a whole lot. But when I did ask, she made it clear that she never had kids and she didn't want any."
Heist also claimed to be a widow.
"She said she had been married for, like, 20 years to a man named Lee and he had worked for the Marriott and they had traveled around and visited amazing places and he had died," Forrester said.
More...

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[cookie]

Will the husband have to repay insurance money? She should be the one who has to repay it! I had heard that he had collected insurance money. Also, will his new marriage be declared not legal since the first wife reappears and they were never divorced....
She looks like a meth queen.

[Sister]

Will the husband have to repay insurance money? She should be the one who has to repay it! I had heard that he had collected insurance money. Also, will his new marriage be declared not legal since the first wife reappears and they were never divorced....
She looks like a meth queen.

I suppose he will, although she was legally declared dead -- so it may be up to her to repay it.
Those poor children!

[MuffyBee]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/missing-pa-mom-found-fla-jail-19380126
Missing Pa. Mom Who Was Found in Fla. Gets Jail
June 12, 2013

A mother who disappeared from her central Pennsylvania home in 2002 and was later declared legally dead before resurfacing in Florida has been sent to jail on a probation violation.

The Pensacola News Journal reports ( http://on.pnj.com/11eQTdg ) that Brenda Heist, who's known in the Santa Rosa County court system as Kelsie Smith, was sentenced Tuesday to a year in jail.

She pleaded no contest to failing to check in with authorities in the Tampa area after leaving the Pensacola area following her April release from jail. She'd been on probation for using someone else's identification during a traffic stop.