Overview
- Brenda Heist vanished in February 2002 after dropping her children at school in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
- Police briefly treated her husband, Lee, as a suspect after her car was found four days later, then cleared him for lack of evidence after a polygraph.
- After seven years, in 2010, Lee had a court declare her legally dead, a step state law allows after a prolonged disappearance, and he later remarried.
- She reappeared in 2013 living under the alias Kelsie Lyanne Smith, taking cash cleaning jobs across Florida and spending seven years in a partner’s camper van.
- She served several months in jail in 2013 for offenses including stealing a driver’s license, was released in November 2013, moved to Texas to live with her mother, and has had no contact with her children since.