Woman who lost sister in horrific crime has warning for Facebook users

Posted 6:19 pm, October 15, 2019, by Jack Shea, FOX8 Cleveland

RAVENNA NORTH CANTON, Ohio-- Each year, Andrea Lazardis Lazarides posts her thoughts on Facebook about the death of her sister, Theresa Andrews.

In her most recent tribute to her sister, she wrote, "Some years the enormity of what happened to my family hits me very hard. The defense mechanism we have in ourselves when tragedy occurs lifts as the year pass and the memory of tragedy starts to grow dim."

Twenty-three-year-old Theresa Andrews, of Ravenna, was nine months pregnant when she was kidnapped in 2000 by 39-year-old firstname lastname. lastname then murdered Theresa, removed her unborn baby son by C-section, and buried Theresa's body in her garage.

At the time, investigators said lastname tried to present the infant as her own child, but days later, took her own life when authorities realized the truth and closed in.

The baby, named Oscar, was saved and went home to be raised by his father, Theresa's husband Jon Andrews.

Her sister posted on Facebook, "19 years have passed since my sister was taken from us and yet life continued on, so much has changed. One thing that never changes is that the world lost an amazing woman who had so much left to live."

Lazarides said her tributes to her sister have helped her cope with the overwhelming pain.

"It was very, very difficult. I was angry, didn't understand why this happened to my family, didn't understand why it had to happen to her, and you know, I carried that anger for a while, I really did. It was really up until recently honestly that I was able to kind of put that aside," she said.

The tributes to Theresa are also a way for Lazarides' nephew to learn more about his mother. Oscar is now 19 years old.

"It's just so hard to imagine what a child thinks, especially when they're growing up and they learn about those different kind of things, you know, how do they process it. But that's why we're all here for him, we're all a phone call away. He's a wonderful teenager and he is a very, very, happy bright spot in my life, and I'm just very happy that I'm able to have a relationship with him," she said.

Lazarides said two weeks ago, her Facebook page containing all of those tributes to her sister was suddenly blocked because of "suspicious activity."

She said the trouble began when she accepted a friend request from what she thought was an old teacher. When she accepted, she received a message in Facebook Messenger and it was only after she clicked on the message, that she realized that her account had been hacked it was not her teacher. She quickly "unfriended" the fake account and reported it to Facebook, later that morning she found that she was locked out of her account for what Facebook called "suspicious activity".

"It's devastating because, you know, those are things that you can't reproduce easily," she said.

Lazarides said she tried repeatedly to get help to unlock her account.

"Facebook has absolutely zero customer service. There's no support. We went to use the help files, the help files are not very good, very, very difficult," she said.

Then on Monday, after numerous attempts to convince Facebook that she was who she said she was, Lazarides was finally able to access her page and her tributes to Theresa. It was a relief, but the whole experience has been eye opening.

"We're putting all of our information out there, we're trusting them to keep that safe and, you know, I found out, it's not."

In her most recent tribute to her sister, she wrote, "I love you Theresa and I'll miss you forever, like the stars miss the sun in the morning skies, you will forever be in my heart."

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