Pembroke Pines, Florida. Heather Anne Lacey was a 30-year-old woman from Pembroke Pines, Florida. She was pretty, but she was also very intelligent.
She had two young children. She had been married. She worked in a call center for AT&T.
Heather’s future was bright from the get-go, but then she got lost along the way and started struggling.
Suddenly, her life took a turn down a dark path.
Facebook; Heather smiles in the photo above
Following a challenging c-section gone wrong with one of her children, Heather picked up painkillers to cope.
She soon became addicted and started experimenting with other substances. She began sleeping with men for money. Her children went to stay with some of her family members.
It was towards the end of 2013 that Heather’s family simply couldn’t get a hold of her. She wasn’t returning their texts or their calls.
When she wasn’t doing so well, this kind of behavior was somewhat typical of her, but only for short amounts of time. As the days went by, her family became worried about where she was.
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She stopped posting on social media, which was something she did on a consistent basis.
Her last post was on November 12th, 2013, when she snapped the selfie below with the caption, “My ‘lil hideaway… I go here sometimes to give my mind a break…”
She missed Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. She failed to contact her children to wish them a happy birthday. This wasn’t like Heather at all.
No matter how much she was struggling, she still was close to her family and talked to them frequently.
Heather’s dad reported her as missing before 2013 was over, but more time started to go by and still, there was no sign of Heather.
Heather’s family expressed disappointment in the local police department, stating they didn’t really try to help find her because of the kind of life she was leading.
Heather disappeared for six long years, and how she ended up being found was in such a bizarre and tragic way.
Facebook; Heather is pictured above in her last social media post
On February 17th, 2019, people living in an apartment complex located in Hollywood, Florida got in touch with the police to make a complaint.
There was a disgusting smell coming from an apartment located in the complex, and it belonged to a 36-year-old man named Jonathan Escarzaga.
Police entered his apartment and discovered Jonathan’s decomposing body. He had been dead for days and nobody knew.
When they conducted an autopsy on him, the medical examiner couldn’t figure out how he had died.
The autopsy report states that Jonathan had no visible injuries, no evidence of drug use, no nothing. No leads.
As the investigation into Jonathan’s death wrapped up, the manager of the apartment complex had Jonathan’s apartment deep cleaned.
This included hauling off all the appliances and replacing them with brand new ones. One thing that left Jonathan’s apartment was a very large, standing freezer.
Nobody had looked inside of the freezer until it ended up at a scrap metal yard nearly 30 miles away from the apartment.
Facebook; Heather smiles in the black and white photo above
Jonathan’s freezer was delivered to a scrap metal yard, where it sat untouched yet again for about a month.
Lilian Argueta is the woman who owns the scrap metal yard the freezer arrived at, and eventually, she decided to take a peek inside.
What she found was something she never would have expected. There was a mummified woman inside of the freezer.
It appeared as if she had tried to find her way out, pushing against the freezer door, due to the position of her arms.
Could she have been alive while inside? It’s certainly possible, though it has not been confirmed by authorities.
The only way she was able to be identified was through a set of her fingerprints.
Sure enough, it was Heather. Heather was the mummified woman inside of the standing freezer. But how on earth did she get there?
Facebook; Heather is pictured above in front of a fountain
It’s not clear if Heather even knew Jonathan, but her loved ones say they have never seen the man in their lives.
Did Jonathan murder Heather? That’s something that’s not for certain either, as authorities have given very little information out so far about how and if they were connected in some way.
Jonathan’s neighbors say he kept to himself, and they never heard or saw anything disturbing…anything to lead them to believe he was capable of violence towards another person.
To this day, no details have been released on how exactly Heather died, and the investigation into what happened to her is still continuing.
If you know anything about Heather’s strange death, please reach out to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office at 954-321-4268.
