Deceased Utah Woman Kept Her Husband Body In Freezer For Decade

Police in Utah are saying, a man's body was in his wife’s refrigerator for the past ten years. The authorities found it while searching the apartment last month during a welfare check of the woman.

They found her dead of apparent natural causes. She was 75 years old.

The police are now looking into how the 69-year-old Paul Edward Mathers met his end and whether his wife had assistance putting his remains into a freezer, which was in a utility room.

The woman was confined to a wheelchair before she died but was vertical when her husband was still alive. Mathers was not a heavyset individual, according to Sergeant Jeremy Hansen of the Tooele Police department.

Investigators in Tooele are also estimating that Mathers’ remains may have been there for any length of time between 1.5 and 11 years.

Hansen stated that police had regularly checked on Souron Mathers at the Remington Park Retirement Apartments. They were tipped off that she had not been seen in two weeks by one of the maintenance workers at the apartment complex.

He went on to describe how the routine check suddenly devolved into something more insidious after they found her deceased with no trauma injuries they could see.

Apparently, when the police questioned residents about whether they had seen a man living in the apartment, they gave varying responses on the times, and this is why it became harder to narrow down the timeline of Mather’s death.

The body was found on November 22, though investigations are now in earnest on why Souron Mathers kept the body.

It is not the only similar story where a spouse kept the remains of their deceased partner in the freezer. Just last month, Barbara Watters, 67 of Joplin, Missouri, kept her husband’s dead body in the home freezer for almost a year after his death.

When questioned the reason why she did so, she claimed she feared that doctors would use his remains for research. She was subsequently charged with abandonment of a corpse. The charge is punishable by up to four years in prison.

The only difference is in this scenario; Souron Mathers is already deceased, so she will not be held answerable. That being said, the police are interested in the cause of the death of her husband.

The authorities claim a possible motive for hiding the body was to continue collecting his social security and veterans affairs checks. Detectives are still searching for records from relevant agencies.