Tooele Welfare Check Leads To Discovery Of Body On Bed, Body In Freezer
Nov 25, 2019, 2:30 PM | Updated: Nov 26, 2019, 4:59 pm
TOOELE, Utah — A simple welfare check led to the discovery of two bodies — including one inside a freezer, according to officials with the Tooele Police Department.
Sergeant Jeremy Hansen said a maintenance worker called officers to the Remington Park Apartments near 500 West Utah Avenue in Tooele on Friday.
The worker reported that 75-year-old Jeanne Souron-Mathers had not been seen for close to two weeks.
“Jeanne was an elderly woman who was my neighbor,” said neighbor Emily Walker. “Just a sweet, little old lady.”
Upon entering her apartment, an officer discovered the woman dead on the bed with no “apparent trauma,” according to Hansen.
“We were all as a community grieving the loss of this sweet lady who lived here with us,” Walker said.
But the grief was soon accompanied by speculation after the “unattended death” lead to an investigation in which a detective began to search Souron-Mathers’ apartment.
“(The detective) opens up a deep freezer or a chest freezer that’s, you know, roughly three-feet wide, four-feet wide, opens it up and there’s an unidentified male deceased inside,” Hansen said.
On Tuesday, Hansen said the body was identified as 69-year-old Paul Edward Mathers, who was Souron-Mathers’ husband.
“The conversation around here has been … how did she even get a man into her freezer?” Walker said, speaking of her apartment complex.
Walker described Souron-Mathers as a small woman who used a wheelchair.
“We don’t know how it got there,” she said of Mather’s body. “We don’t know what involvement she had in it.”
Hansen said investigators preliminarily suspected foul play in Mathers’ death.
Souron-Mathers’ body did not appear to have trauma, according to Hansen, and foul play was not suspected in her death.
Detectives said Mather’s body was believed to have been inside the freezer for anywhere from one-and-a-half to 11 years.
“We’re estimating a year-and-a-half to 11 years simply because when the detectives were making contact with the different people at the apartment complex, they recalled seeing a male, but when the detective asked how long, everybody had different answers,” Hansen said.
