03 February 2023 , 12:00
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A woman has been charged after police found the body of her 96-year-old mum in a freezer.
Eva Bratcher, 69, was arrested shortly after emergency services found the body of Regina Michalski in a freezer surrounded by rubbish at their Chicago home in the US.
The suspect had been telling neighbours conflicting stories such as she was in a nursing home in a a different state or that she was at home and doing fine.
The two lived had lived for years on the first floor of a two-bed flat with Bratcher acting as the building's landlord.
It was Bratcher's daughter Sabrina Watson who called the police after having an "intuition" something was wrong.
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She said: "I just said, I’m calling [the police] and just having them do a welfare check.
The outside of the apartment building piled high with rubbish (Zuma Press/PA Images)"What could go wrong? Apparently everything."
Bratcher has been charged with with concealing a death and possessing a fraudulent ID card.
Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Michael Pekara, said: "She did admit that after her mother died, she purchased the freezer approximately a week later and placed her mother in the freezer."
An autopsy to determine how the pensioner died is pending and it is not known how long Regina Michalski had been dead.
Eva Bratcher is accused of keeping her mother's dead body in a freezer for nearly two years (Uncredited/AP/REX/Shutterstock)Sabrina added: "My heart is broken. I miss her very much."
Bratcher, who also went by Eva Michalski, had been arrested multiple times between 1997 and 2005, according to Cook County court records.
In January 2006, she pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery, records show.
She was later found guilty of misdemeanour counts of battery and violating an order of protection in two other cases.
She has also faced a range of other charges that were dropped, including battery, assault, retail theft, criminal damage to property, and reckless and disorderly conduct, reports Fox32.
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Another of Regina Michalski’s grandchildren, Diane Michalski, who used to live above her grandmother at the flat, said her grandmother was a Polish immigrant.
"I remember being a kid, and she’d bring some work home and show me the little technology and all the little intricate details that she had to do for her job," Diane Michalski said. "I mean, if you want to talk about women in STEM, she was it."