Inset: Chad Stevens (Collin County Jail). Background: The home where the remains of Heather Schwab were found in McKinney, Tex. (YouTube/WFAA).
A North Texas man will spend the next several decades behind bars for hiding his dead girlfriend’s body inside a refrigerator for over a year.
The Collin County District Attorney’s Office announced on Tuesday that Chad Stevens, 43, has agreed to a plea deal concerning one count of tampering with a corpse, resulting in a swift sentencing of 30 years in state prison.
McKinney Police Department arrested the defendant back in November 2023 after discovering the body of Heather Schwab, 35, a person of small stature, concealed inside an appliance.
According to a probable cause affidavit, during the execution of a Search Warrant, law enforcement found a refrigerator wrapped in excessive amounts of plastic wrap in the kitchen. The kitchen’s only entrance had been suspiciously closed off and hidden from the rest of the house with a piece of sheet rock.
As Law&Crime previously reported, the affidavit says Stevens quickly “admitted to hiding Heather’s body after she died in his residence.” This formal admission, the first but not the last, came after being Mirandized during a police raid on his home in McKinney — a large city and suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
“Chad stated that when Heather died, he didn’t know what to do so he put her body in the refrigerator, and this occurred on July 26, 2022,” the court document continued, although police noted that Schwab may have actually died sometime in August 2022.
This was a distinct change in the narrative.
During an earlier missing persons investigation, the defendant told a detective Schwab ” had left him roughly a year prior and that he has not seen or heard from her since then,” according to the affidavit.
Prior to the day of the raid, Stevens had made at least one other comment about his girlfriend’s death.
While Schwab had not been heard from for several months, the efforts to locate her — initiated by her estranged mother — had stalled out until a conversation between the defendant and his daughter.
Briana Stevens admittedly did not communicate much with her father, according to the affidavit. But, in early November 2023, she called to tell him that she was pregnant. He allegedly advised her to get an abortion and when she refused, he allegedly threatened to kill both the mother — his daughter — and her unborn child, police say.
“During the argument, Briana stated to Chad that he can’t and shouldn’t be making threatening stating statements because people will believe him and take him seriously,” the affidavit reads. “Briana stated that Chad responded by stating that he was serious.”
The daughter countered that her father should not be saying things about killing people because of the then-ongoing search for Schwab.
“Oh so you think I killed her?” Chad Stevens replied, according to the affidavit. He then asked his daughter how she knew about his backyard, how it had been dug up, and how Schwab was there. Briana Stevens said she did not know anything about that.
“Chad then continued to ask Briana how she knew that Heather was in the back yard,” the affidavit says. “Briana stated that she did not know any of that information, but then Chad ‘sarcastically’ stated ‘oh yeah, I definitely did that.’ When asked, Briana stated that Chad on several occasions mentioned Heather being buried in his back yard.”
This conversation was later relayed to the deceased woman’s mother. She, in turn, relayed the conversation to a detective. Later, a living ex-girlfriend alleged that Chad Stevens had attacked her in January 2023 — finally giving investigators the combination of allegations necessary to obtain a search warrant from a judge in Collin County.
A grim discovery made, the defendant, for his part, was admittedly both violent and threatening toward Schwab before she died, law enforcement noted. He told investigators about “multiple physical altercations” between the pair and confessed that “on several occasions he threatened to kill Heather.”
But he insisted the woman’s death was not his doing.
“Chad stated he would choke Heather during sex that her veins would protrude from her neck,” the affidavit reads. “Chad also stated that he believes that Heather sustained a head injury in the shower three days prior to her death. Chad stated he was having an argument with Heather during that time and claims Heather slipped in the shower.”
While police at the time suspected “Chad was not completely forthcoming,” prosecutors opted out of a homicide charge.
The defendant was met with blistering impact statements during his sentencing hearing this week, according to a courtroom report by Dallas-based Fox affiliate KDFW.
“You are evil. Evil and soulless,” the woman’s mother, Tammra Schwab said — addressing Stevens directly. “What you and only you committed and did to Heather is evil. Your worthless life has not served a single purpose. Your life has only brought fear, pain and destruction.”
Prosecutors reportedly noted that the medical examiner was never able to determine Heather Schwab’s precise cause of death due to the condition her body was in.
Her mother does not believe her daughter simply slipped and fell.
“It is devastating to our family that Heather is no longer here to experience life with,” Tammra Schwab went on. “Heather had dreams and a purpose in life. When she met Chad Stevens, he took her down such a long, dark road that included mental, emotional, psychological and physical abuse. We were never able to get her back.”
A neighbor previously described Chad Stevens as “awkward” in comments to Fort Worth-based NBC affiliate KXAS.
“He was like up at all times,” the neighbor told the TV station. “Like anytime I was going out leaving the house or coming in, like he was always outside. Just walking around doing stuff around the yard.”
