‘The lady in the fridge’ identified in California cold case after almost 30 years, officials say

Authorities in California have identified the remains of a woman discovered inside an abandoned refrigerator nearly 30 years ago, and are now asking the public for help finding her killer in the cold case. 

Amanda Lynn Schumann Deza was 30 years old in March 1995 when scavengers found her body inside a fridge submerged in a canal in Holt, California, a remote community just over an hour east of the San Francisco Bay Area, according to Lieutenant Linda Jimenez, a detective at the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office. 

Investigators said they believed Deza’s body had been stored in the fridge for at least six months, placing the time of her disappearance and death sometime in 1994.

Medical examiners concluded that Deza died from blunt force trauma, Jimenez said.

The cold case had been dubbed “the lady in the fridge,” Jimenez said. 

New technology helped ID Deza

“We’ve identified her through modern technology as is happening all over the state in the country now,” San Joaquin Sheriff Patrick Withrow said at a press conference last week. 

The office worked with Othram Inc., a forensic genealogy company that helps solve cold cases, which in 2022 produced a lead for investigators. Authorities then obtained DNA samples from Deza’s mother and daughter, Othram said in a post on its site. The DNA was a match. 

Deza’s life circumstances still a mystery

“Speaking with the family, she was last seen at an unknown apartment complex in the city of Napa with an unidentified male she met in a rehabilitation facility,” the company wrote in its post. The firm added that Deza had been separated from her husband and had three young children at the time of her disappearance. 

Still, investigators said much mystery shrouds Deza’s circumstances before her death, and they hope members of the public who knew her would come forward and offer even a glimpse of her life before she was murdered. 

“It’s kind of hard to investigate who killed someone if you don’t know who they [the victim] are,” Jimenez said.  

Withrow said a missing person’s report was never filed, and her family was shocked to learn that her remains were identified. 

“She was a 30-year-old woman and out on her own and had her own life,” Withrow said. “So the family just didn’t know.” 

A $10,000 reward was being offered for information leading to her murderer’s arrest, officials said.