Heather Ann Lacey disappeared six years ago, they found their remains in a refrigerator

Authorities in Florida are investigating how Heather Ann Lacey, who disappeared almost six years ago, found herself in a freezer that was taken to a recycled metal warehouse. and was identified through his fingerprints.

The macabre discovery was made On March 15, Lilian Argueta, owner of the company, went to a scrap yard in Margate.

The remains would not have been discovered without the death of Jonathan Escarzaga, 36 years old. The decaying corpse of Escarzaga was found in February in a nearby apartment in Hollywood County, Florida.

The apartment manager hired the company of Argueta to remove the freezer and other household appliances. Argueta stored the machines in a warehouse and opened the freezer a month later.

The Hollywood police said that Escarzaga was an aircraft mechanic. The coroner did not say how he died. The autopsy did not detect any drugs in his body.

When Lilian Argueta opened a vertical freezer used in her scrap shop and saw a woman's body inside, I was so scared that he started shouting.

"I thought she was a witch or a dummy", said Argueta to Sun-Sentinel. "I thought:" He can not be a person. "But there was a bad smell.".

Argueta, 55, began to cry Friday by describing in Spanish how he found the body of Heather Anne Lacey in the freezer on a March night in the warehouse of her store located northwest of Eighth Street.

The woman who found it was surprised to learn that Lacey was blonde when she was alive and noticed that the body she had seen was shrunken and that her skin was blackened, as if it was a mom.

In the improvised coffin, Lacey's face was on the side, her arms were raised as if her hands were pressing against the freezer doorHis legs were squeezed to the top of his body in the small space, they said.

"I feel bad," said Argueta, "she was a woman and something bad happened to her."

A divorced mother with several problems

The last contact of Lacey's family with her took place in the fall of 2013; his last message on social networks was in November of this year.

"My father talked to him every day until Thanksgiving," says Amber Lacey, Heather's younger sister. "I needed this phone for business and when I was disconnected, I knew something was wrong."

Lacey was raised by her parents in Pembroke Pines, attended Chaminade-Madonna, a Catholic high school in Hollywood, and for a few years, the Florida International University in Miami.said his family.

The eldest of the three sisters I was divorced and I was a mother of two children.

Amber says her sister went to college, but left when she became pregnant.

Although Lacey was very bright and maintained good grades, the parents said that After having a Caesarean section when one of his children was born, the chronic pain was so severe that he started taking painkillers, as well as cocaine and other narcotics..

From 2006, at the age of 23, Lacey began to rack up arrests. in Miami-Dade and Broward counties non-violent crimes of possession of drugs and prostitution. She spent a year and a day in a state prison for falsifying a check and identifying the robbery.

"She was a very smart girl and had a lot of things in her favor and, unfortunately, her loss was due to drugs and her addiction," said Patti Palumbo, Lacey's mother. "He placed it in a cycle that brought us here."

For her badual work, Heather Lacey was walking on the Federal Highway, in the counties of Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and Dania Beach, Florida., according to his sister and the police.

When Lacey was sober, she was able to keep jobs simple, like working in a call center, said his family.

In December 2013, Randell Lacey filed a complaint regarding her daughter's disappearance at Sheriff Broward's office and informed officers that her daughter was living on the street and that she was bipolar, according to the report.

Amber Lacey (Heather's sister) said that when she and her father began their research in the months following her disappearance, Hallandale Beach motels maintainers told them that they thought something had happened to him, since they had not seen him. In the neighborhoods where Heather was going to buy drugs, the vendors encouraged them to leave.

Despite her addiction, Heather's family stayed in touch even He was close to his children and did not stop calling them, they lived with other parents.

"(When Lacey disappeared), we immediately understood," said Palumbo. "For Thanksgiving and Christmas, she had not called, it was not her" .

The incognito of the two corpses

Jonathan Escarzaga, 36, was last seen alive around 10 February and found dead a week later. in his appartment.

A neighbor's complaint about a foul odor has led to firefighters from Hollywood to Escarzaga Apartment located at 1500 Street in Polk Street February 17. His body was inside and had begun to break down, according to a report from the Broward County Coroner.

Escarzaga was an independent mechanic who had a tattoo that said "I do not regret" in his left arm.

Afterpolice investigated inside Escarzaga apartment, the building administrator hired a Margate home appliance restoration company remove all appliances, including an old vertical freezer.

The company took the freezer to its warehouse in Margate, said the building manager. She later found herself in the scrapyard of Lilian Argueta and her husband, Pedro Rodríguez, who is nearby.

A month after Escarzaga's death, the freezer was opened and Lacey's body was found.

The police did not specify whether Escarzaga knew Lacey or what role she might have played, if any, in her death. Lacey's family said they did not know Escarzaga.