A 30-year-old Florida woman was arrested by police on Tuesday night, accused of having burned a dead body "beyond recognition" in an alleyway dumpster last month.
Cree Daniela Worley, a resident of Pinellas Park, is accused of having burned the body of a 31-year-old woman, identified by St. Petersburg Police as Heather Elizabeth Olmstead. Olmstead's body was found by authorities when police responded to a call about a dumpster fire at about 12:42 a.m. ET on August 18, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Firefighters reported that the body had been set ablaze with a flammable substance.
Once the fire was extinguished, the body of the 31-year-old woman emerged, with "most of her upper and lower extremities destroyed" by the flames, according to the newspaper. It was identified as that of the victim only four days later, when the medical examiner's office found a single usable thumbprint, according to court records.
Security camera footage from around the neighborhood where the body was found showed a white Ford pickup pulling away from the dumpster fire whose license plate was registered to Worley's mother, according to WTVT. Another pickup on the scene, a black GMC truck, was registered to the man whose cellphone was found by officers near Olmstead's body, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Footage showed both pickups pulling up to a home in the 3300 block of 10th Avenue South about 16 minutes before the fire started at the dumpster, and a man left a gas can in the bed of the black GMC pickup.
On Tuesday, the man living in the home where the two pickups stopped told police that Worley came to his house with her mother and the owner of the black GMC to buy crack cocaine. He also confirmed that the can he left on the man's pickup was full of gasoline.
While the cause of Olmstead's death is still unknown, Worley is now facing a felony charge of abuse of a dead body, as well as three charges of driving while her license was suspended, according to Pinellas County Sheriff's Office's records. She's been held at the Pinellas County Jail on $20,513 bond.
Worley has been the only person arrested so far in connection with the death of Olmstead.
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