The 20-year-old daughter of the Pennsylvania mom who walked away from her family to live the homeless lifestyle in Florida for 11 years had harsh words for her just-surfaced parent: Get lost again.
Morgan Heist, who was 8 years old when mom Brenda Heist, 54, disappeared, took to Twitter to express her feelings about her mother’s change-of heart and return from oblivion: I hope she “rots in hell.” Her anger was replayed during a Thursday evening interview on CNN, albeit somewhat toned down.
“I don’t think she deserves to see me,” the daughter said, on CNN. “I don’t really have any plans on going to see her.”
Ms. Heist said her mom had been a good mom — and that only added to the anger.
“I can’t believe she would do that because she was a good mom. She was great. But, I mean, I guess something happened. Something snapped in her,” she said, CNN reported.
Lee Heist, the husband and father, said in CNN that he didn’t see the sense in visiting his ex-wife, either.
Brenda Heist took off to Florida in February of 2002, apparently overwhelmed by a looming divorce and the need to provide for her two children. Police even set up a cold case file for her and searched for her whereabouts for years, finally labeling her “missing, presumed dead.”
Meanwhile, she was living a homeless lifestyle in Florida, eating out of trash bins for a couple years, shacking up with a man in a camper and then living back on the streets. She just turned herself in to a Florida police department, announcing she was the long-lost mother and expressing remorse for her actions.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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