Husband’s ‘fully intact’ body may have been in wife’s freezer 11 years, Utah cops say
Police discovered a woman dead in her Tooele City, Utah, apartment last week during a welfare check — and found something more surprising in her freezer, according to local news reports.
Police found the 75-year-old woman, Jeanne Souron-Mathers, dead at the home on Nov. 22 after a maintenance worker reported that it had been weeks since he had seen Souron-Mathers, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.
“A detective was called to the scene and started looking around, and opens up a deep freezer and finds an unidentified adult male that is deceased,” said Sgt. Jeremy Hansen, according to the Tribune.
Tooele City police identified the man in the freezer on Tuesday as Paul Mathers, Souron-Mathers’ 69-year-old husband, FOX 13 Salt Lake City reports.
The Tribune reported that police guessed “the body had been in the freezer for at least a year, and possibly up to 11 years. That estimate is based off interviews with residents, he said, who have very different recollections of when they saw a man in that apartment.”
Mathers was found in a “chest freezer,” ABC4 News reports, and his wife was found dead in bed. Mathers’ body was “fully intact” inside the deep freezer and his fingerprints helped identify him as the dead woman’s husband, CNN reports.
“At this time, foul play is suspected and the case is in the early stages of investigation,” police said, according to CNN.
There was “no apparent trauma” to the wife’s body, but causes and times of death for both are still being investigated, according to FOX 13.
CNN reported that police said they’re investigating “Mathers’ financial records, including his Veteran Affairs and Social Security checks, in hopes to determine where the payments were sent and whether they ever stopped.”
Authorities said it wasn’t the first time a welfare check had been done for Souron-Mathers.
“We had a history of checking on this female, making sure she was fine,” Hansen said, remembering a check from just weeks earlier, according to FOX 13.
This story was originally published November 28, 2019 at 12:24 PM with the headline "Husband’s ‘fully intact’ body may have been in wife’s freezer 11 years, Utah cops say."
