Without a trace: 1 year after Lititz woman vanishes, family, friends and authorities still wonder what happened
Intelligencer Journal
Lancaster New Era
Lancaster New Era
Updated May 01, 2013 09:59
Lititz
Originally Published Apr 30, 2013 09:55
Editor's Note: This story was originally published on Feb. 5, 2003
Her clothes have been given away to charity.
Her family moved out of their home.
Her kids now attend schools different from the one where she was a room mother and her daughter's basketball coach.
All that seems to survive of Brenda Heist is a dated photograph that hangs on the wall of her family's townhouse outside of Denver.
The 42-year-old woman vanished a year ago this Saturday from her Lititz home, leaving behind laundry neatly separated into two piles, breakfast dishes stacked in the kitchen sink and pork chops thawing in the refrigerator.
In the past year, no one has reported seeing her or hearing from her. Not her two children, whom, by all accounts, she loved intensely. Not her husband, whom she was about to leave. Not her mother or her brothers, who live across the country but regularly talked to her on the telephone.
The world she left behind has changed dramatically in the past 12 months.
Mrs. Heist's father, Paul Copenhaver, died six weeks ago, without ever finding out what happened to his only daughter.
Her husband, Lee, and children, Morgan and Lee IV, slid into financial problems because, Heist says, he had to quit his job soon after his wife's disappearance to help his kids cope with the loss. He has yet to find another job.
Her daughter has started going to counseling. Her son talks only to his father about his missing mother.
They grieve and they wonder if they will ever know what happened to her.
"Not a night goes by that I'm in bed that I don't think about what if, how, why," Heist, 56, says. "That takes up the first half-hour of sleep time. There are so many unanswered questions."
Mrs. Heist's mother, Jean Copenhaver, says, "I think about her every day but I don't dwell on it. The first two weeks, waiting for a phone call, we hardly left the house. Then we said we've got to go on with our lives."
Officers with the Lititz Police Department say they are still actively investigating Mrs. Heist's disappearance but have no good leads at this point.
Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/844409_Without-a-trace--1-year-after-Lititz-woman-vanishes--family--friends-and-authorities-still-wonder-what-happened.html#ixzz2SF2RHv9v
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