People That Vanished And Were Eventually Found Alive: Brenda Heist, Back From The Dead.

It was February 8th, 2002, forty-three-year-old Brenda Heist and her husband,  Lee, lived in Lititz Borough, a small Lancaster County town in southeastern Pennsylvania. They were going through an amicable divorce.They had two children together, a eight-year-old daughter named Morgan and a twelve-year-old son named Lee Jr. Brenda worked as a bookkeeper at a local car dealership. She was trying to get her own apartment by applying for government assistance, but didn't qualify. 

Brenda had dinner defrosting and was midway through the laundry when she left to take her kids to school. She was feeling depressed, overwhelmed, and distraught, so after she dropped of her kids at school Brenda drove to a nearby town and parked her car in a bus station lot. From there she walked to a park where she sat on a bench and cried. Two strangers approached her and asked her if she was alright. 

Four days later, police found Brenda's car parked in the bus station lot. The police assumed that she was abducted. Days went by without any word from or sighting of Brenda. Detectives began to think that she may have been murdered and her disappearance turned into a homicide investigation. Lee became the number one suspect.

Despite being under suspicion Lee tried to maintain a positive relationship with his children. “There were people in the neighborhood who would not allow their children to play with my children,” Lee said. Lee had to quit his job and because of this he eventually lost his home.

After several years, investigators cleared Lee Heist of wrongdoing in the case. 

In 2008, the Lancaster County Major Crimes Unit began investigating Brenda's disappearance as a cold-case murder. 

In 2010, Lee petitioned a Lancaster County Court and had Brenda declared dead. Now Lee was able to collect on Brenda's life insurance policy. He also remarried.

It was Friday, April 26th, 2013 and Brenda had been missing for 11 years. 54 year old Kelsie Lyanne Smith surrendered herself to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office because she thought that there were warrants out for her arrest. She told the Monroe County deputies that she was at the end of her rope, and tired of running. She informed the officers that eleven years ago she had walked out on her family in Lititz Borough, Pennsylvania and that her name was Brenda Heist.

While Lee and his kids were wondering what had happened to Brenda for the past 11 years, she had been safe and sound in Florida. 

It turns out that the people that approached a distraught Brenda sitting on a park bench were hitchhikers and after listening to her troubles, they invited her to go with them to Florida. She took their offer and spent two years in Key Largo, Florida where she lived under bridges and ate from garbage cans. She then moved into a camp trailer with a man she met on the street and for the next seven years Brenda lived with this man in Key West. They both worked as day laborers cleaning boats and doing odd jobs.

In 2011, Brenda's relationship had fallen apart and she was back on the street.  She worked odd jobs and hung out on the beach. 

In December 2012, under her alias Kelsie Lyanne Smith, Brenda got a job as a live-in housekeeper for a family in Tampa Bay. A few months into the job, a police pulled Brenda over for driving with an expired license plate and found drugs in her car. She served two months in Jail on the drug possession offense. 

After she was released, she went back to jail for a few weeks on an identify theft charge. After that she lived in a tent community run by a Florida social service agency. 

This brings us to April 26th, 2013 and Brenda's surrender. The Florida authorities called Sergeant John Schofield at the police station in Lititz Borough. They informed him that Brenda Heist was not dead, and no longer missing. 

Brenda's children were college students now. Her daughter was 20 years old now. Morgan was shocked that her mom had abandoned them and said that Brenda had been a good mother before she disappeared.  Morgan said that Brenda doesn't deserve to see her and that she has no plans to see her mother. Morgan hopes one day she can forgive Brenda. "I hope to eventually forgive her one day for myself, not for her," she said.

Brenda's son, who is 23, doesn't want anything to do with her either.

Lee said that he doesn't see where it would do any good for either to see each other ever again, but he is working on forgiveness.

On May 3, 2013, Brenda was sent back to the Santa Rosa County Jail on various theft related charges.

On June 11, 2013 a judge in Pensacola, Florida sentenced Brenda, known in the Santa Rose court system as Kelsie Smith, to one year in jail in connection a probation violation. She pleaded no contest to failing to check in with authorities after leaving the Pensacola area following her release from jail in April. She'd been on probation for using someone else's identification during a traffic stop.

After her release Brenda moved in with her brother.