A 96-year-old woman survived Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II and an abusive marriage, but she did not survive the abuse of her daughter.

Authorities released new details about the death of 96-year-old Regina Michalski. A Chicago woman was accused of hiding her mother Michalski’s body in a freezer for almost two years.

Seventy-year-old Eva Bratcher made her first court appearance on Thursday after being charged with hiding her mother’s death, and having a fake ID card with her own photo and her mother’s information.

Police found the 96-year-old’s body hidden in a freezer in a garage near an apartment the mother and daughter shared in Portage Park.

Detectives believe Michalski died on March 4, 2021. The medical examiner performed an autopsy on Thursday, February 2.

Prosecutors said officers found a receipt inside the house, proving Bratcher bought a freezer around two years ago.

A judge set Bratcher’s bond at $20,000 after rejecting a request from the woman’s lawyer for a lower bond amount. The judge said the allegations were “very disturbing.”

Assistant State Attorney for Cook County Michael Pekara said that police recovered a fraudulent ID card with Michalski’s name and a photo of Bratcher, and investigations are underway to determine if the defendant was cashing her mother’s social security checks after her death.

Bratcher’s estranged daughter, Sabrina Watson, alerted police to her mother’s possible actions. 

Watson, a Kentucky resident, called police and asked them to do a wellness check on her grandmother, who she had not heard from for a long time.

Watson told the police that she wondered about her grandmother’s safety, and that she had not been in good health the last time she saw her. She said Bratcher blocked her number when she phoned, and no one answered the door when she tried to visit her grandmother.

Watson and her mother had been estranged for many years, and Watson wrote on Facebook that her mother was a “dangerous criminal.”

She alleged that Bratcher’s motive in concealing her grandmother’s death was for financial gain, and said that there was nothing her mother wouldn’t do for money, including putting her own mother’s body in a freezer.

According to court records, Bratcher had previously been convicted of forgery and sentenced to four years in prison.

Bratcher, a retired US Army veteran, hid her mother’s death from neighbors by telling them she was in a nursing home in Wisconsin.

Bratcher’s next court appearance is on February 21.