Matthew Zoladz Pleads Guilty to Dumping Heather Strickland's Body in the Gulf Off Egmont Key, Nearly Four Years After Fishermen Found Her

Nearly four years after fishermen pulled a garbage bag holding a woman's body from the Gulf of Mexico off Egmont Key, Matthew Zoladz has admitted he put it there. Zoladz, 37, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Tampa to charges that he violated laws regulating burials at sea and prohibiting pollution from ships, the Tampa Bay Times reported. Prosecutors say he dumped the body of 34-year-old Heather Rose Strickland, a Pinellas County woman, from a commercial fishing boat in December 2022 after she died of a drug overdose while she was with him.

Zoladz was not accused of homicide or of causing Strickland's death. The case against him rested on federal environmental law, and the two counts he admitted carry a combined maximum of 15 years in prison. His sentencing is set for Jan. 20.

A plea days before trial

Zoladz had pleaded not guilty and was scheduled to go before a federal jury on Wednesday, Nov. 4, in a trial expected to last two to three days. Strickland's parents, John and Sherrie Strickland, were listed among the government's witnesses.

The change of plea came during what was supposed to be a routine pretrial hearing on Monday, shortly after U.S. District Judge Thomas Barber denied a defense request to suppress some of the evidence, according to the Times. Barber accepted the guilty plea and allowed Zoladz to remain free on bond until sentencing.

"He is very remorseful for what happened," his attorney, Ben Stechschulte, said in an email to the Times.

The penalty Zoladz ultimately receives could fall well short of the 15-year maximum. Federal sentencing guidelines take into account factors including a defendant's criminal history and acceptance of responsibility, and Barber will weigh those before deciding on a sentence.

The federal charges

A federal grand jury indicted Zoladz in February 2026 on one count of violating the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act and one count of violating the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida, which identified him at the time as a 36-year-old Palmetto man. The indictment alleged that on Dec. 8, 2022, he disposed of a body in ocean waters.

Strickland was not named in any of the public charging documents. The court records referenced dates matching the period between when she was last seen alive and when her body was found, and a pretrial filing by Zoladz's defense last week identified her as the victim by name for the first time, the Times reported. Prosecutors referred to her in their filings as "Victim 1."

Because the body was recovered in international waters, the FBI, rather than a local sheriff's office, led the investigation into her death.

What prosecutors say happened

According to a court document written by Assistant U.S. Attorney Abigail King, Zoladz and Strickland spent the night of Dec. 7, 2022, together in Pinellas County and used drugs. Zoladz fell asleep, and when he woke up, Strickland was unconscious and he could not wake her, the document states.

Investigators later found a 44-second video on his phone, recorded at 11:45 p.m. that night, that prosecutors say shows Strickland in the passenger seat of his Mazda3. Her face is not visible, but prosecutors said a tattoo on the passenger's thigh matched a rose tattoo Strickland had, and the woman in the video wore a black rubber bracelet like the one Strickland was wearing when she was found. In a filing on Monday, King wrote that Strickland "is either passed out or deceased" in the footage, and that Zoladz can be heard swearing and complaining about having to deal with her.

Within hours, Zoladz was due to work aboard the Big Dog, a 31-foot commercial fishing boat built in 1980 and registered to a Madeira Beach business, for a trip of several days. Prosecutors say he wrapped Strickland's body in a black plastic trash bag, carried it aboard and hid it where the captain would not see it. Once the boat was at sea and the captain took a turn sleeping, leaving Zoladz in charge, he retrieved the body and threw it overboard, according to the prosecution's account.

Two days later, on a warm Saturday, a group of fishermen spotted the bag bobbing about 13 miles off Egmont Key, the island at the mouth of Tampa Bay. They pulled it aboard and found a woman's body wrapped in bedding.

Who Heather Strickland was

Agents identified Strickland within days. She grew up in North Florida but had lived in Pinellas County for several years, and she had five children, all of whom have been adopted. She was last seen on Dec. 5, 2022, leaving HCA Florida Largo Hospital; the Times reported it is unclear why she had been there.

Her family said she struggled with mental illness, and public records show she was arrested more than a dozen times in the decade before her death, mostly on drug-related charges. In 2021, a Pinellas sheriff's deputy found her wandering in the Bardmoor neighborhood of Seminole and she was taken into custody under the Baker Act, the Florida law that allows people to be involuntarily committed for mental health treatment. Investigators were unable to determine her exact cause of death, but records state she had a "wide variety of narcotics" in her body.

"I think the hardest thing is the way she was thrown out," her mother, Sherrie Strickland, told the Times in 2022. "She was a person."

How investigators found Zoladz

After the FBI released Strickland's photograph and asked the public for information, an anonymous tip pointed investigators to Zoladz less than a week later, according to a Pinellas County Sheriff's Office report cited by the Times. Agents found him at Fishbusterz, a Madeira Beach seafood market where he had worked. While he was being questioned, he dropped his phone into the water beside a dock, and a dive team was called to retrieve it, the report states.

A search of his car turned up a container of Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal drug, in the glove box, according to court records. Prosecutors also cited witnesses who said Strickland died of an overdose while with Zoladz and that he did not know what to do.

An earlier overdose death

Part of the government's case centered on another woman's death about seven months earlier. That woman, identified in court records only by the initials "C.F.," died April 28, 2022, of a fentanyl overdose after Zoladz brought her to a Pinellas County hospital, according to court records. Zoladz told police she had injected fentanyl he had prepared for himself, that he gave her Narcan without success and then took her to the emergency room. He told officers he was worried about criminal charges, and the investigation remained open, the records state.

Prosecutors argued that Zoladz still believed he was under investigation in that case when Strickland died in his company months later, and that this was part of his motive to hide her body. Zoladz was never charged with any homicide offense in either death.

The defense challenge

Before the plea, Zoladz's lawyers had asked the court to exclude the cellphone video, suggesting there was no proof the passenger was Strickland. A defense filing described the footage as "dark and shaky," with a blurred image of a tattoo visible for about two seconds. The defense said FBI efforts to enhance the image left it uncertain whether it was Strickland's tattoo, and that forensic tests of Zoladz's car found no trace of her DNA. King argued the video was relevant to show Strickland was with Zoladz the night she died. The judge's denial of the suppression request preceded the guilty plea.

Zoladz's own record reflects struggles with addiction. About a month after he was first questioned about Strickland, a St. Petersburg police officer found him asleep behind the wheel at a green light at Tyrone Boulevard and 22nd Avenue North, with needles, straws and a bag of white powder in the passenger seat, according to an arrest report. He later pleaded guilty to DUI and drug charges and is serving a three-year probation sentence.

What's next

Zoladz remains free on bond ahead of his Jan. 20 sentencing hearing before Judge Barber in Tampa. Prosecutors and the defense are expected to address the guideline range, including Zoladz's prior record and his acceptance of responsibility, before the judge imposes a sentence of up to 15 years on the two environmental counts.