ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- Someone burned a woman alive outside her home near Bithlo early Friday morning, but deputies don't even know if it was a crime. The victim died in the hospital Friday afternoon after she was burned on Marsh Creek Lane (see map).

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A neighbor rushed to help 55-year-old Rachel Ratcliff after she heard the screams. She said the screaming was so intense at first she thought it was cats fighting.

There are new questions about how the woman was burned and whether the woman could've done it to herself. The neighbor, who only wants to be identified by her first name Marta, said she woke up when she heard her neighbor screaming for help.

"'Help me! Help me! I'm burning! I'm gonna die,'" Marta said Ratcliff was screaming.

Marta brought out a blanket to cover up Ratcliff, but said her neighbor of several years was almost unrecognizable.

"The skin from the arms, head was dark black and the l saw the knees, they was kind of pinkish," Marta said. "She kept saying, 'They.' I don't know who she was referring to 'they,'"

Crime scene investigators collected evidence and looked for clues inside Ratcliff's mobile home and around the Deerwood Mobile Home Park for hours. They even towed Ratcliff's minivan and took away a bicycle.

Authorities initially thought two suspects dragged the woman from her home and set her on fire, but after questioning one person of interest for hours, they let him go and mysteriously announced they were no longer treating the case as a homicide.

"I'm speechless now," Marta said after hearing it wasn't being considered a homicide, but she said she could never imagine Ratcliff hurting herself on purpose.

"That she would do that to herself, burn that way? I don't know what to say," she said.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office is now only calling the incident a death investigation. No one will elaborate beyond that, but Friday afternoon Eyewitness News was told investigators now believe Ratcliff may have been home alone when it happened.