Chicago Woman Charged After Mother's Body Found In Freezer: Cops

CHICAGO— A 70-year-old Chicago woman faces felony charges in connection with the discovery of her 96-year-old mother's body inside a freezer this weekend at an apartment on the city’s Northwest Side.

Eva Bratcher, who lives on the 5500 block of West Melrose St., was charged on Wednesday with concealing a person’s death and moving a body, plus one felony count of being in possession of a fraudulent identification card, Chicago Police announced on Wednesday.

Bratcher, who lives at the same address where the elderly woman’s body was found in the freezer on Monday afternoon, was arrested shortly after the body was discovered, police said. Bratcher was in court on Thursday and bond was set at $200,000 with electronic monitoring.

Police have not released further details of the investigation, but prosecutors said on Thursday that police were called to the apartment after the 96-year-old woman had been reported missing. The woman's estranged daughter contacted police and asked them to do a well-being check at the Melrose Street address.

On Thursday, prosecutors said that police had a search warrant for the apartment on Monday night when they conducted a wellness check. They found a document with the deceased mother's signature but learned that the woman had died in 2021 while living at the residence with her daughter, according to court documents.

Authorities said the woman's date of death — March 4, 2021 — was noted on a calendar found inside the home the mother and daughter shared.

Detectives found a receipt for the freezer, which prosecutors said Bratcher moved into the garage with her mother's body inside, court documents indicate. Detectives also found a fraudulent ID card with Bratcher's photo but her mother's name, court documents indicate. Detectives also found a document bearing the deceased woman's signature but said it was dated after the woman died, documents show.

Prosecutors said that Bratcher purchased the freezer a week after her mother's death and that the body was in the freezer for the past two years while Bratcher continued to collect rent from tenants, as her mother had owned the building, prosecutors said.

Residents of the building said the landlord was taken into custody and told detectives that Bratcher insisted that her mother was in a nursing home in Wisconsin, prosecutors said.

Family members told reporters this week that the 96-year-old woman was Regina Michalski. Police went to the Melrose St. address to do a wellness check on the woman after neighbors said that Bratcher had given them conflicting reports about her mother’s whereabouts and well-being.

An autopsy to determine Michalski’s cause of death is still pending, as the coroner was unable to conduct the autopsy due to the body being frozen.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Wednesday that Bratcher has been arrested nearly 12 times between 1997 and 2005 and that she also goes by Eva Michalski but had used Eva Bratcher in some records. Court documents indicate that Bratcher has previously been convicted three times on felony forgery charges.