Brooklyn tenant charged after severed head, body parts of alleged drug dealer found in apartment freezer
The Brooklyn woman living in the Flatbush apartment where cops found a severed head and body parts stashed in the freezer has been charged with concealment of a corpse — as cops ruled the grisly case a homicide.
Heather Stines, 45, was arrested around 3 p.m. Wednesday after undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, police said.
Cops previously said Stines claimed her husband killed Kawsheen Gelzer, 39, in September during a dispute over drugs and chopped up and stored in plastic bags inside the freezer.
But Stines’ husband, Nicholas McGee, 45 — who is currently jailed in Chesapeake, Virginia on an identity fraud case — has not been officially tied to the body.
Neighbors and sources confirmed to The Post that Gelzer was the man whose severed head and dismembered body were found inside the Nostrand Avenue apartment Monday.
“Everybody in the building knew it,” tenant Dorothy Williams said Thursday.
“Everybody knew he went in there and never came back out. We all talked about it.”
She and other tenants said that Stines would occasionally allow the missing drug dealer to sleep in the apartment in the past — but in recent months wouldn’t let visitors near her fridge.
“She would never let anyone in her kitchen, never,” Williams said. “She let me in her apartment but never the kitchen. She never let the super in her kitchen, only the bathroom.”
Williams said the woman had lived in the building for about six years and was originally from Kentucky.
She said a caseworker would occasionally check in on the couple — but was not thorough.
“She just told me that her caseworker was just here,” Williams claimed of the woman. “But their caseworker, they don’t come in and look through everything. They just kind of stick their head in and say everything’s OK in here and then leave.”
Police finally found the grisly scene when they responded to the Nostrand Avenue apartment at around 6:15 a.m. Monday on a tip about a body stashed inside, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press briefing on the case on Tuesday.
Cops found the refrigerator taped shut and took Stines into custody when she tried to stop them from looking inside — where the head and other body parts were on ice, the sources said.
She was already wanted on outstanding petit larceny warrants, police said.
Stines later allegedly identified the drug dealer from a photograph and said a tattoo on the dismembered body matched one worn by the missing man.
The Post has reached out to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office for more information.
A makeshift memorial for Gelzer has since been set up in the lobby of the building, with candles and photos.
“It’s like a terrible thing,” Williams, the building tenant, said Thursday.
