Inside the hoarder home of missing Colorado teen Amanda Overstreet whose severed head was found in freezer as she is pictured for the first time

By Josh Boswell For Dailymail.com 18:06 16 Oct 2024, updated 20:47 16 Oct 2024

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Nauseating photos reveal the filthy, trash-filled interior of the Colorado 'hoarder house' where the disembodied head of 16-year-old Amanda Overstreet was found.

Amanda, who disappeared two decades ago, is pictured here for the time time.

A cleanup crew discovered Amanda's head and hands in a chest freezer in the garage of her mother's home in Grand Junction, Colorado, in January – but authorities only identified her via DNA last week.

Now, DailyMail.com has exclusively obtained shocking photos of the Pinyon Avenue home's interior, posted online by a local realtor – as well as the first pictures to emerge of the alleged murder victim.

Boxes were piled high and trash was scattered across the floor in each room. The backyard was littered with old wood, skeletons of electrical goods and other detritus.

Barely any surface was clear in the kitchen, with empty soup cans, gravy packets, and unwashed cooking ware littering the oven hobs and countertops.

The toilet in the bathroom was full of brown matter, with more sprayed around the floor.

One room, once emptied, revealed dark stains all across the wood floor, in the photos shared by Grand Junction Remax realtor Joe Silzell, who helped renovate the home this year.

The home was previously occupied by Amanda's mother, Leanne Overstreet Imer, 55, her husband Bradley who died age 61 from Covid-19-related illness in 2021, and their kids Anthony, 29 and Elsie Belle Imer, 21.

Bradley was not Amanda's biological father.

Neighbors described them as 'hoarders' who piled up food and junk in every room, rarely washed, and said that the stench from the house would drift into neighbors' lots.

Leanne sold the home on January 12 this year. The cleanup crew hired by the new owners were clearing it out the same day when they found the body parts in a chest freezer in the garage.

Police swooped in and took the remains for an autopsy – but warned it could take time to get the DNA processed.

It wasn't until last week that Mesa County Sheriff's Office revealed Amanda's identity.

In a statement, the Sheriff said she was last seen in April 2005, and 'is believed to have been approximately 16 years old at the time of her disappearance.'

The county coroner said last week that Amanda was 'resident of both Grand Junction and Harris County, Texas areas.'

DailyMail.com obtained photos of Amanda as a teenager, shared by old school friends and taken from a yearbook at her high school in Texas.

Emily Leftwich, 32, told DailyMail.com she was neighbors with the Imers in Grand Junction from 2014 to 2016 and had been inside their house several times.

She says the freezer was inaccessible and covered with junk – as was the rest of the 'hoarder house'.

'I'd been in their house a handful of times. Knowing now that the body was in the house the whole time is super creepy,' she told DailyMail.com.

Leftwich said Leanne nonchalantly mentioned having an older daughter once in passing, but didn't say that she was missing or dead.

'You could smell their house from my house,' Leftwich told DailyMail.com. 'They smelled something terrible. You could tell they never showered.

'They were extreme hoarders, specifically of food. You would walk into the house and it would just be stacked up to the ceiling, and they had a maze system so they could get around the house. It was just crazy.

'They were obviously well-fed. The kids seemed really happy. We could hear them laughing and stuff. They all seemed to get along really well.'

Leftwich said Leanne was 'super sweet' to her, babysitting Leftwich's kids and bringing her home-cooked meals after she found out Leftwich's then-partner was starving her and her kids.

'But I was always way too afraid to eat anything because of the condition of her house,' Leftwich said.

'And I'm so glad I didn't now, because, who knows what it was actually made out of.'

Another former neighbor, Jon Martinez, said he would often see the Imers moving several coolers around their 'junkyard' backyard, and would hear them having screaming fights with each other.

'They seemed like they wanted to be friendly and helpful neighbors. But there was yelling. They would yell a lot, and fight with each other,' Martinez, 45, told DailyMail.com.

'Out in public, out in the street, on their front porch yelling at each other. It was mostly the dad and the son, then the mom would join in. There was a lot of hostility.

'They were all overweight, badly. The dad was in a scooter. The mom was too, half the time,' he added.

'The stuff in the back yard was the weirdest stuff. There were a lot of coolers back there that they kept moving around. It was an organized junk yard back there.

'Inside their house was the same thing: wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, stuff in there. I've seen people hoard things. I only took a few steps inside and I was like, wow, this is crazy.

'There were boxes, shelves, newspapers, stacked up. They formed artificial walls. You couldn't see the walls, there was so much stuff. They made new ways to walk around the house, like a maze.

'It was dirty, for sure.'

Martinez said he felt a chill knowing he'd let his young son knock on their door, and he himself had stepped foot in the house where body parts were hidden for years.

'I was shocked. I was like wow, that's creepy,' he said. I felt bad that I let my son go next door and even talk to those people. It made me feel a little scared. And holy cow, I could believe it, because these people seemed like something weird was going on.'

Police say they are treating the case as a homicide, but have not made any arrests.

'On January 12, 2024, the Mesa County Sheriff's Office responded to a call regarding a suspicious incident in the 2900 block of Pinyon Avenue,' the Office said in a statement.

'Upon arrival, Deputies found the head and hands of a human had been discovered in a freezer by someone who arrived to claim the free appliance offered by the new owner of the recently sold home.

'On October 11, 2024, the Mesa County Coroner's Office released the identity of the victim of the Pinyon Avenue Homicide case. Through DNA testing, the victim is identified as Amanda Leariel Overstreet.

'Amanda is believed to have been approximately 16 years old at the time of her disappearance. Overstreet has not been seen or heard from since April 2005.

'Amanda Overstreet was the biological daughter of the previous owner of the home. The circumstances surrounding her disappearance remain under investigation, as well as ongoing forensic testing of evidence. There is no record that Amanda Overstreet was ever reported missing.'

Mesa County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Wendy Likes told DailyMail.com that Amanda was the biological daughter of the widowed homeowner Leanne, 55 – and Leanne's late husband Bradley was Amanda's stepfather.

Likes declined to comment whether the biological father had been identified or interviewed by police.

The spokeswoman said Amanda was 16 when she was last seen in 2005.

Likes said no arrests have been made in the murder probe, and that Leanne is still a resident of Grand Junction, Colorado.

'The remainder of her body has not been recovered at this time,' the coroner's office said. 'The manner of death is being investigated as homicide. The case remains an active investigation, and no further details will be released at this time.'

Bradley died age 61 on July 7, 2021, from a cardiac arrest after getting a bad case of Covid-19, according to local reports.

The next day, Leanne posted a fundraiser for his funeral and hospital bills on Facebook.

'Bradley D. Imer came down with Covid last month and was admitted to the ICU on June 27th. He passed away July 7th. Our family is trying to raise money to pay for his burial and medical expenses,' she wrote.

'We had a flood in our home a couple of months ago and have been living in a hotel since May 3rd, while trying to work with our homeowner's insurance and contractors to complete the repairs.

'Our daughter is started her senior year in a couple of weeks and her father's passing has just devastated her, they were best friends.

'Bradley had many friends & family who he touched during his life. Bradley was loved and respected by many. He lived his life to the fullest with no regrets. Bradley would give the shirt of his back and no one left our house without a meal and good conversation.

'Bradley was (still is) the love of my life, my best friend, the greatest father, a wonderful husband, and the best man I will ever know. I just don't know what we are going to without him. Bradley was our rock and the heart and soul of our family. No man will ever live up to his memory because he was just a great man, loved by all who knew him.'

She added that she and her son Anthony were 'going to stay in the motorhome in the front yard until the repairs [to their flooded house] are made.'

Neighbors said they saw a young male living with Leanne and described them as 'hoarders'.

One local, posting anonymously on a blog, wrote: 'Does anyone know anything about a daughter that lived at that house? We live around the corner and used to see her around the neighborhood but haven't seen her in years.'

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