Remains of a missing Texas woman who disappeared more than a year ago found in a refrigerator in her ex-boyfriend’s home
November 21, 2023
Heather Schwab, 35, was reported missing by her mother, Tammra Schwab, on 23 June 2023. At the time, Heather Schwab had been missing for more than a year, but since she and her mother had issues in their relationship due to Heather’s drug use, communication between Heather and her family members was few and far between. Although the mother and daughter had not spoken for over a year, Heather’s neighbor would keep in touch with Tammra to let her know they had seen Heather and that she was doing okay. At the time Tammra reported her daughter missing, the neighbor admitted that she had not seen her for several months.
During a conversation with police, Tammra stated that the relationship between Heather and her partner, Chad Christopher Stevens, 42, was “full of abuse,” adding that Heather was unable to leave him. Tammra said that Heather had said to her on more than one occasion, that she believed Stevens would eventually “kill her and hide her body somewhere”- a prediction that tragically came to be, and that Heather’s family strongly suspected, but could not yet prove.
Detectives attempted to locate the missing woman but could find no phone number to call her on, nor locate any friends who had seen her in the past several months. They questioned Chad Christopher Stevens, and he told them that Heather had walked out on him around a year prior and he had not seen her since- something Tammra said Heather found too difficult to do. Chad Stevens was described as being 6ft tall and 210lbs, compared to Heather Schwab who was small in stature.
Several months passed before there was any movement in the case, but on 03 November 2023, Tammra Schwab showed up to the police department again with new information in hand. Chad Stevens’ ex-wife, Alisha Matthews, who resided in Oklahoma, had informed Tammra that Stevens had told her he had killed Heather and buried her body in the backyard of his home. Police questioned her and discovered the information had come from their daughter, Briana Stevens after she called her father to tell him she was pregnant. In the phone call, Chad Steven’s was angry about the news, told her to get an abortion, and even threatened to kill her. During the argument Briana accused Chad Stevens of burying his missing girlfriend in the backyard, to which he repeatedly questioned her about how she knew he had been digging in the backyard.
A search warrant was obtained on 06 November 2003, to take aerial photographs of Stevens’ property via a drone. The images that came back showed “several anomalies.”
On November 08, 2023, a detective from the McKinney PD contacted a woman named Katelynn Monk, who met Chad Stevens at Lucky’s Game room in the summer of 2022. She did not know him prior to this evening, but Stevens began interacting with her after giving her $20 to play the slot machines. They met several times from June to September, when Monk broke up with her boyfriend and moved out of their place to move in with Stevens. Although Monk said she and Stevens were not a couple, they did engage in sexual activity with each other while living together. When she attempted to leave and rejected his proposal that they make their relationship official, she said Stevens got angry, assaulted her, and locked her inside the residence. When she desperately tried to smash a window with a nearby chair, she said Stevens ripped it out of her hands, physically grabbed her and slammed her into it.
Detectives reviewed calls they had received in the area and discovered that on 12 August 2022, a call had been made regarding a scene at Stevens' home, which was described as a woman "waving around a firearm" and a man screaming.
A search warrant was executed on 12 November 2023 at Chad Steves residence, where he was arrested for an outstanding assault warrant and taken into custody of the McKinney Police Department. Media outlets report that Stevens had previously been booked for driving while intoxicated, theft, and assault.
When officers searched Stevens’ home, they found that the only entrance to the kitchen had been closed off with what was described as a piece of sheet rock. Inside, they found a refrigerator thickly wrapped in plastic. Officers worked to open it, and inside, found the body of a female whom they quickly identified to be the missing Heather Schwab. Back at the McKinney Police Department, Stevens had confessed to concealing her body in the refrigerator for almost a year. He further admitted that the pair had fought often, physically, and that he had threatened her life several times. While being questioned he told police that the pair had "rough sex", including choking, and that on the day she died, she had fallen in the shower and hit her head.
Stevens has been booked at the Collin County Detention Facility, where he is being held on a bond of $150,000.
