MYSTERIOUS

Autopsy Report of Burned Georgia Mom Debbie Collier Reveals More Severe Injuries

The report shows 80 percent of Debbie Collier’s body was burned when authorities found her.

Police ruled Georgia woman Debbie Collier’s death a suicide in November, two months after she she was found dead, burnt and naked in the woods, but the murky surroundings of her death continue to unravel. While police initially disclosed the charring on Collier’s stomach, an autopsy report—newly obtained by the New York Post—details a much more severe mutilation, saying her body was 80 percent burned when authorities found her. Authorities ruled her death a suicide in November following a two-month investigation after Georgia Police initially called the death “personal and targeted.” In the fallout of the case, Collier’s son Jeffrey Bearden called for the sheriff to step down as residents grappled with the odd circumstances of her death. Still, the unsealed report’s listed cause of death of “inhalation of superheated gases, thermal injuries and a hydrocodone intoxication” remains consistent with what authorities told The Daily Beast in November. “It’s pretty evident that she started the fire,” Habersham County Deputy Coroner Ken Franklin told Now Habersham in November. “From what I saw and what I considered to be the case is that this was a self-inflicted death.”