The severed head and body parts found stashed in plastic bags inside a freezer at a Brooklyn apartment are likely the remains of a local drug dealer who went missing last year, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Cops responding to the grisly scene in Flatbush Monday said the woman living in the apartment — who is now a person of interest in the case — claimed her husband killed the dealer in September in a dispute over drugs and stuck his dismembered body in the fridge.
The woman, identified by neighbors and sources as 45-year-old Heather Stines, is now undergoing psychiatric evaluation but has not been charged.
Her husband, whose name is being withheld by The Post, has not been officially tied to the body.
Police responded to the Nostrand Avenue apartment around 6:15 a.m. Monday on a tip about a body stashed inside, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press briefing on the case on Tuesday.
Cops found the refrigerator taped shut and took Stines into custody when she tried to stop them from looking inside — where the head and other body parts were on ice, the sources said.
Police said Stines, who is now under observation at Brookdale Hospital, had several outstanding warrants for petty larceny when cops took her into custody.
According to sources, Stines allegedly identified the drug dealer from a photograph and said a tattoo on the dismembered body matched one worn by the missing man.
Neighbors in the building said Wednesday that Stines would occasionally allow the missing drug dealer to sleep in the apartment in the past — but in recent months wouldn’t let visitors near her fridge.
“She would never let anyone in her kitchen, never,” tenant Dorothy Williams said. “She let me in her apartment but never the kitchen. She never let the super in her kitchen, only the bathroom.”
Williams said the woman had lived in the building for about six years and was originally from Kentucky. She said her husband was jailed in Virginia on an identity theft charge.
She said a caseworker would occasionally check in on the couple — but was not thorough.
“She just told me that her caseworker was just here,” Williams claimed of the woman. “But their caseworker, they don’t come in and look through everything. They just kind of stick their head in and say everything’s OK in here and then leave.”
Another neighbor who lives upstairs said the case reminded her of a more high-profile one.
“It reminds me of Jeffrey Dahmer,” tenant Catherine Montez Acarte said. “Just her hiding the body parts in the fridge. I was shaking. It’s terrifying.”
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods