The "Missing Mom" Story

Missing Person's Poster

It was an ordinary day.  Watching Dr. Phil and 54 year-old Brenda Heist on television.  It was only about three weeks ago, when Carol and I had just come into the villa after a dip in the pool to take a shower and head to Orient Village for supper, that Carol turned on the CNN evening news and there on the screen was a double photo of a woman named Brenda Heist from Lititz, PA.  "Hey, look there.  Someone from Lititz is in the news," Carol said to me.  As we watched we discovered that the woman had disappeared on February 8th, 2002 and just now surfaced in Florida.  I can remember when she was the big news  eleven years ago back in Lancaster, PA.  Everyone, including myself, thought she was the victim of foul play and that it may have been her husband who was responsible for her death.  Brenda and her husband Lee were going through a divorce and Brenda had applied for housing assistance through the state so she could keep her children, a daughter 8 and a son 12, with her.  She had just learned that she had been denied the assistance and was sitting on a park bench in Lititz Springs Park when she was approached by strangers who asked if they could help her.  Seems they were homeless vagrants and they offered her the chance to travel with them if she cared to.  She was in such a state of despair that she accepted their offer.  Later, her car was found in neighboring York County with all her personal belongings.  For months people searched for her.  Finally the police started looking into her death as a homicide, thinking that maybe her husband had someone kill her.  He cooperated with the police, finally taking a polygraph test, and was eventually cleared.  In 2010 Lee had her declared legally dead and collected her life insurance.  As for Brenda, she traveled with the the homeless hitchhikers towards Florida sleeping under bridges and surviving by scavenging food and panhandling.  Eventually she made it to Florida and ended up living with a handyman by the name of Jim Stewart whom she met at an Outback Steakhouse.  They lived in a camper in Key West, working odd jobs.  Only one time did she try to reach family by calling her brother.  Call didn't go through so she never tried again.  Eventually she changed her name to Kelsei Smith and later gathered the nickname of "Lovie."  Heist eventually left Stewart, cleaning out his bank account and claiming that his drug and alcohol problems were too much for her.  For years she left her family in Lititz believing that something terrible had happened to her.  This past January she was arrested on misdemeanor charges of marijuana possession and providing false identification.  She eventually plead guilty, sentenced to time served, and released.  Three days before she turned herself in to the police in Florida, she attempted suicide by swallowing two bottles of pills.

Brenda Heist as she appeared in 2002 on left and now.

 Then, eleven years after she had vanished without a trace, Brenda Heist approached police in Key Largo, Florida and explained that she had abandoned her husband and two children on the spur of the moment in Lititz, Pennsylvania and became a vagrant.  She told them she was on probation and had recently been arrested under a different name.  The Florida police placed a call to Lititz Police Detective John Schofield who traveled to Florida to meet with her. He said in a news release that, "She has a birth certificate and a death certificate, so she's got a long ways to make this right again.  She's got to take it slow with her family, I'm sure, and it's going to be a long process."  Her daughter's twitter outburst after finding that her mother was alive said "You deserve to rot in hell for what you have done to me."  She also wrote, "I don't think anyone could understand my pain for the past 11 years.  But I am strong and nothing like Brenda Heist will tear me down."  Gonna be a long road ahead for everyone.  As I sat there watching Dr. Phil interview Brenda, I couldn't help but think that this woman is mentally ill.  Who could do that to their family?  She said over and over that she felt her family would be better off without her.  She did get to renew her relationship with her mother on the show, but I'm not sure how I would feel if she were my mother.  How can a person do that to their children?  And, how can she resurface and expect those children to take her back into their lives?  To leave her children so all along during their formative years and tormented with not knowing what happened to their her ..... to me that is so cruel and inexcusable.  I know that time cures most everything.  But this?  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.