What Happened To Amanda Overstreet? Missing Teen's Head Found In Freezer - Newsweek

Former classmates of Amanda Overstreet, the teen whose head and hands were found in a freezer in Colorado and recently identified, told Newsweek there was no indication that the then-16-year-old high school student who went missing in 2005 would disappear.

In January, the new owners of a home on Pinyon Avenue in Grand Junction listed four freezers left behind by the previous owners for free on Facebook. Upon taking meat out of one freezer, they found human remains, which through DNA testing, were confirmed this month to be Overstreet.

Overstreet's biological mother Leanne Imer, previously lived at the residence where the remains were found.

Despite being last seen at age 16 in 2005, Overstreet was never reported missing, the Mesa County Sheriff's Office says.

The rest of Overstreet's body has not been recovered.

Ashton Knox spoke to Newsweek about her memories of Overstreet when they attended middle and early high school together in Kountze, Texas.

"She was extremely loud, quirky, spunky, and unapologetically herself in a way that most 15-year-old girls are not. She wasn't a loner. She was strange and quirky, but she was known," she said of Overstreet.

"She wore really bizarre, just sarcastic, smart-ass sayings on her T-shirts," Knox remembered. "She was very unique."

Knox said she lived across the street from Amanda Overstreet who was raised by her grandmother Nelda Overstreet, a math teacher at the nearby Warren High School in Warren, Texas, from fourth to eighth grade.

"Her grandmother was kind of quirky as well, but seemed very understanding. Her grandmother was very, very religious, and I don't necessarily know that Amanda fit into that world, but I don't think her grandmother chastised her or made her feel inferior or anything. I really saw a loving grandmother raising her and never saw anything that made me uncomfortable or worried about her."

Another former classmate, Rachel Valentine, told Newsweek that she went to Warren High School with Amanda Overstreet during the 2004-2005 school year.

"She had gone to school her whole life in Kountze, Texas, in Hardin County, and then she had transferred to Warren," Valentine said.

"She was super bubbly, loud, and a fun girl," Valentine continued. "You wouldn't know that she had dealt with everything she had in her life. We would sit together every day in geography class. She was a super nice, sweet girl."

Months before Nelda Overstreet died of cancer in July 2005, Amanda Overstreet went to live with her mother, Leanne Overstreet, in Colorado. Leanne Imer was married to Bradley Imer, who died of COVID-19 in 2021, according to a Facebook fundraiser created by Leanne Imer.

Amanda Overstreet was last seen in April 2005.

"I don't, personally, remember her being like, 'Hey, I'm moving to Colorado.' Was it a last-minute thing?" Valentine said to Newsweek.

"One of the strangest components of this is that Amanda didn't make it back to Texas for her grandmother's funeral," Knox added.

Leanne Imer's daughter, Elsie Imer, and son, Anthony Imer, seemingly lived in the Pinyon Avenue home at the time of Bradley Imer's death.

There is no mention of Amanda Overstreet on the Facebook fundraiser or Leanne Imer's personal account.

The Mesa County Sheriff's Office in Colorado declined to provide any further details as the investigation into Overstreet's remains is ongoing.

Knox is a moderator of the Searching For and Remembering Amanda L. Overstreet Facebook Group founded by Overstreet's school friends Tasha Hester and Jennifer Wyler in 2017.

"Years went by after we graduated and then everyone started to get on Facebook, I'd say around 2015," Knox explained about the origin of the group's creation.

"We all started finding each other and started figuring out how everybody was doing, either directly or indirectly through each other classmates, but every time Amanda's name came up, the answer was, 'Oh my gosh, I don't know. I've not heard from her, either.'"

"That's when it became clear that something didn't feel right," Knox remembered. "With how extremely social Amanda was in her quirky, very spunky way, she would have definitely utilized social media."

Knox said the Facebook Group's founders started reaching out to Overstreet's family members only to find "strange reactions" to their inquires.

"As soon as those reactions were weird, they said, 'I think we need to do something here. We need to show Amanda that we're looking for her,'" Knox said.

Valentine recently joined the Overstreet Facebook Group.

"Up until a week ago, it only had like 57 people in the group. Now, there's like 2,000 people," Valentine said, crediting national interest in Overstreet's case due to her remains being identified.

However, not everyone is pleased with the online search efforts. Valentine claims Leanne Imer has contacted the group on an unspecified date, asking them to stop.

"She reached out to them and said, 'You need to stop looking. She just ran away,'" Leanne Imer told the group about Overstreet's disappearance.

"Why would you do that? Your daughter is missing," Valentine said. "Even if she did run away, wouldn't you want to know where?"

Newsweek has contacted Leanne Imer multiple times and has not heard back.

Leanne Imer, Overstreet's biological mom, was believed to be a hoarder, as seen in home remodel photos from RE/MAX 4000 realtor Joe Silzell.

The realtor tells Newsweek that he bought the fixer-upper early this year after the remains were found to flip and resell it.

Posted in March, before photos inside of Imer's home show trash and cardboard boxes piled nearly to the ceiling in many rooms of the residence.

"All the stuff was gone within a week and a half but it took about two months to remodel," Silzell said of the project.

"It didn't smell good because it was pretty much exposed sewer," Silzell said the inside of the home. "At some point, they had been using the bathtub as a restroom and there was old food laying out."

Silzell said the inside of the home was mostly a cosmetic remodel including new paint, carpet, and also adding luxury vinyl plank flooring.

Outside, the front yard was covered with large kitchen appliances, furniture, and more trash.

"The yard was cleaned up pretty extensively. I think they took four or five dump loads to the dump, and those are like 30-foot roll-off bins," he said.

Silzell stressed several times that he never met any members of the Imer family or knew anything about Amanda Overstreet.

Presumably referring to Elsie Imer, Sizell told Newsweek, "One of the neighbors had said something about a daughter that had come back and forth that was off at college. That's what the son (presumably Anthony Imer) had told them."

When Newsweek contacted Elsie Imer for comment, the Prodigy Consulting Group responded with the following statement:

"Ms. Imer has no comment on the investigation at this time and requests that you please respect her privacy during this trying time for her and the entire family."

The Prodigy Consulting Group also represents Laurel Imer, a candidate for Republican National Committeewoman of Colorado who appears to be a relative.

The firm declined to comment on Overstreet's case on Laurel Imer's behalf as well.

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