Authorities released new details about the Chicago woman accused of hiding her mother’s body in a freezer for almost two years.
Seventy-year-old Eva Bratcher made her first court appearance on Thursday after being charged with hiding her mother, 96-year-old Regina Michalski’s death, and having a fake ID card with her mom’s name and her own photo.
Police found the 96-year-old’s body hidden in a freezer in a garage near an apartment the two shared in Portage Park, police said.
Detectives believe Michalski died two years ago, on March 4, 2021. The medical examiner performed an autopsy on Thursday, February 2, but the cause and manner of death have not yet been released.
Prosecutors said officers found a receipt inside the house, showing Bratcher bought a freezer around two years ago.
Judge David Kelly set Bratcher’s bond at $20,000 after rejecting a request from the woman’s lawyer for a lower bond amount. The judge described the allegations as “very disturbing.”
Assistant State Attorney for Cook County Michael Pekara said that when police executed a search warrant on the home, they recovered a fraudulent ID card with Michalski’s name and a photo of Bratcher.
Investigations into whether the defendant continued collecting her mother’s social security checks and other benefits after she died are still underway.
Michalski’s body would never have been found if it weren’t for Bratcher’s estranged daughter Sabrina Watson.
Watson, a Kentucky resident, called police in the area to perform a wellness check on her grandmother, who she had not heard from for a while.
Watson told the police that she had been scanning obituaries for two years, searching for her grandmother’s name because she had not been in good health when they last saw each other. She said Bratcher blocked her number, and no one answered the door anytime she tried to stop by the house and visit her grandmother.
The mother and daughter have been estranged for many years, and at some point, Watson started to warn people about her mother. She created a Facebook page to alert people that her mother is a “dangerous criminal.”
While it has not yet been proven, Watson says that Bratcher’s motive in concealing her grandmother’s death was all for financial gain, adding that there was nothing her mother wouldn’t do for money, including putting her own mother’s body in a freezer.
According to court records, Bratcher was previously convicted of forgery and sentenced to four years in prison.
Bratcher, a retired US Army veteran, hid her mother’s death from neighbors by telling them she was in a nursing home in Wisconsin.
“She is a World War II survivor,” Watson said. “She survived Nazi-occupied Poland. She survived an abusive marriage. But unfortunately, she did not survive my abusive mother.”
Bratcher’s next court appearance is on February 21.
