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| This combination of Associated Press file photos shows, left, an undated driver's license photo distributed by police in 2002 of Brenda Heist, and right, an April 26, 20013 photo of Heist taken by the Monroe County, Fla. Sheriff's Office and released by the Lititz Borough, Pa. Police. 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. |
HARRISBURG, Pa.
(AP) -- The teenage daughter of a woman who just revealed she
abandoned her family 11 years ago said Thursday the disclosure has
angered her and she is not eager to restart their relationship.
Morgan
Heist, who learned last week Brenda Heist had surfaced in the Florida
Keys, said the news has made her recall with bitterness the years of
mourning she endured when she assumed her mother was dead and feared
she'd been murdered.
"I ached every birthday,
every Christmas," said 19-year-old Morgan Heist, a freshman at a
community college outside Philadelphia. "My heart just ached. I wasn't
mad at her. I wanted her to be there because I thought something had
happened to her. I wish I had never cried."
Brenda Heist's mother, Jean Copenhaver, said Thursday that her daughter "had a real traumatic time" but was doing OK.
Brenda
Heist was released from police custody on Wednesday and is staying with
a brother in northern
Florida for now, Copenhaver said.
Copenhaver,
of Brenham, Texas, said she had spoken with Heist several times since
Friday, when the 54-year-old woman turned herself in to police in
Florida and was identified as a missing person.
"She
just said she thought the family wouldn't want to talk to her because
of her leaving," Copenhaver said.
"And we all assured her that wasn't
the case and we all loved her and wanted to be with her."
Morgan Heist said she's not sympathetic, partly because her mother had a choice, unlike the family she secretly abandoned.
"It's
definitely very selfish," Morgan Heist said. "She clearly did not think
of me or my brother or my dad at all with that decision. She thought of
herself."
Heist told police she made a
spur-of-the-moment decision in 2002 to join a group of homeless
hitchhikers on their way to Florida, walking out on Morgan, 8, and her
brother, then 12.
Brenda and her husband, Lee,
were living together but going through an amicable divorce when she
learned she had been denied housing support, police said. She was crying
about that in a Lancaster park when three strangers befriended her and
offered to let her join them.
Morgan Heist
said her parents had agreed to live near each other once they divorced.
Brenda Heist had been a bookkeeper at a car dealership.
"It's more of a mystery than ever," she said. "Her life was not hard at all."
Brenda
Heist told police she slept under bridges and survived at times by
scavenging food from restaurant trash and panhandling. But Lititz Police
Detective John Schofield said Thursday he is looking into reports that
have come in over the past day suggesting Brenda Heist's time in Florida
included much less miserable periods.
"We're
getting several calls from people down in Florida that knew her who want
to say she's not being truthful with us," Schofield said.
Heist
told a detective with the Monroe County Sheriff's Office that she had
recently been arrested in the Tampa Bay region and might be in violation
of probation. She told the detective she used the name Kelsie Lyanne
Smith and provided a date of birth.
Jail and
court records show Kelsie Lyanne Smith, with a matching birth date, was
arrested in January on misdemeanor charges of marijuana possession,
possession of drug paraphernalia and providing false identification to
law enforcement. After pleading guilty, Smith was sentenced to time
served and was released on Feb. 13. She was also ordered to pay court
costs but failed to do so and was found delinquent on April 15.
Copenhaver
said she has not pressed her daughter about what led her to walk away
from the life she knew in Pennsylvania and then live underground for
more than a decade.
"We haven't gone into that
with her," Copenhaver said. "She just needs time to recover, and have
some peace and that. She'll tell us when she's ready."
She agreed to pass along a message from The Associated Press, asking Brenda Heist for an interview.
Heist told police she contacted them after feeling like she was at the end of her rope and tired of running.
"She's doing OK," Copenhaver said. "She's got a long way to go. She had a real traumatic time, but she's doing OK."
She
said Heist was born in South Carolina, then moved as her father was
transferred by the Air Force to Italy and Missouri before ending up in
San Antonio, where she graduated from high school.
When
she vanished, Lee Heist, was investigated but was cleared as a suspect.
He raised the children without her and got the courts to declare her
legally dead. He has since remarried.
Police
erroneously said on Wednesday that daughter Morgan Heist was a sophomore
at West Chester University. She is a freshman at Montgomery County
Community College.
