New Charges For Woman Who Stuffed Body In Trash Can: Sheriff

BRADENTON, FL — After being arrested for stuffing her roommate’s body into a trash can at a Bradenton mobile home park in December, Michelle Haney faces additional charges, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release.

Deputies say the 48-year-old woman hid the body of Jon Christopher Leonard, 39, after he passed away from natural causes and continued to collect his disability income.

After investigating Leonard’s bank records and purchase history, they determined that Haney spent more than $6,300 in disability income that should have ended when he died, MCSO said.

In addition to the charge of abuse of a dead human body, Haney has also been charged with criminal use of personal identification of a deceased individual and scheming to defraud, deputies said. She remains jailed from her original arrest in December.

In July, Haney, who was renting a unit at Windmill Manor Mobile Home Park at the time, came home to discover Leonard had died, Sheriff Rick Wells said at a December press conference.

"Instead of doing the right thing, instead of calling law enforcement or EMS, she decided she would just leave him on the bed for several days," Wells said.

From there, she moved Leonard's body into the closet for three weeks before purchasing a trash can to store his body in her yard "like a piece of garbage," Wells said.

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During this time, Haney used the $1,200 that Leonard received monthly through Social Security, the sheriff said. The money was downloaded to his Social Security debit card, to which she had access.

When she moved out of the mobile home in September, she asked her neighbor to store the trash can under his covered porch, Wells said. She told him that clothes, dishes and other personal items were in the container and she would pick it up in a few weeks, but she never returned.

On Dec. 8, the neighbor emptied the trash can, intending to put the items stored inside on the side of the road, the sheriff said. That's when he noticed a foul smell coming from the container and discovered Leonard's body.

"It's just unconscionable to me that she could have done this, and it's a sad day when you treat someone like a piece of trash when he deserved a proper burial, when he deserved to have his family with him and to mourn," Wells said.