Loss of child drove woman to tragic end

Her children say the woman found off SR 54 was once happy, but grief changed her.

By HELEN ANNE TRAVIS, Times Staff Writer
Published October 31, 2007

ZEPHYRHILLS - She graduated with straight A's from a Lutheran high school in Wisconsin. Later, as a single mom with little money, she lit candles at the dining room table so her kids could still draw when the electric company shut off the power.

She was a good mom, said her 23-year-old daughter, Megan Garland. She made sure her five kids had square meals, clean clothes and a safe place to sleep.

But her life took a tragic turn with the death of one of her children. In September, after she called to say she was on her way home with a plate of spaghetti, Lori Heine, 48, wrapped a shoelace around her neck and hung herself from a tree in a patch of dense woods off State Road 54.

Tree trimmers found Heine's body last week. Deputies released her name on Tuesday.

Heine's tragic end was in direct contrast to a woman who was once quite happy, said Garland, who lives in Hillsborough County.

But in 2005, Heine's oldest child, Justin Garland, was killed in a construction accident in Gainesville. He was 25. Heine never recovered. "The depression and alcohol got the best of her," Megan Garland said.

Heine started lying and drinking and hiding the beer bottles from her children. She quit her job at a plant nursery. She changed.

"She kind of started a second life," Garland said.

Three months after she lost Justin, Heine - the same woman who would forgo time off from work so she could earn more money for her children - dropped her youngest son off on the side of the road.

Get lost, authorities said she told the 7-year-old boy.

Police found him a few hours later. Heine was charged with child neglect.

"That's not our mom," Garland said, looking back at the incident.

Ted Heine, 56, said that was the day he realized his little sister wasn't suffering from normal grief.

"We tried to get her help after that," Heine said.

Lori Heine told her brother she felt her oldest son was killed because she loved him too much.

"It wasn't rational," Ted Heine said. "(It was) almost like she felt God took Justin away because she loved him more than God."

Her children and siblings knew Heine was depressed. But they never thought she would kill herself. They've pored over her journals, Garland said, and there was no indication of her plans. She never spoke of harming herself.

In 1993, Heine's older brother committed suicide, Ted Heine said. The remaining siblings - 10 in all - promised they would never put the family through that pain again.

Garland doesn't know what drove her mother to the woods that day, a little more than two years after she lost her first child.

"Everything just ate her up inside. Depression is a horrible thing," Garland said. "Everyone has their breaking point.

Times staff researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

[Last modified October 30, 2007, 21:53:34]