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Man Found Dead in Wife’s Freezer Left Notarized Letter Saying She Didn’t Kill Him

Cat Leigh
True Crime by Cat Leigh
4 min readDec 30, 2024

Police believe Paul Mathers, a military veteran, was kept in a freezer for ten years so his wife could collect his benefits.

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

On the morning of November 22, 2019, police in Tooele, Utah, were asked to conduct a welfare check on a 75-year-old woman who hadn’t been seen for two weeks.

Jeanne Sourone-Mathers lived in an apartment at Remington Park Retirement on 495 W Utah Avenue. Police had visited her before, with one welfare check conducted just weeks before.

This time, Tooele City Police entered the home to find Jeanne deceased in her bed. Her death did not strike them as suspicious, but a detective was brought in as required by protocol.

As the detective looked around the home for an indication of how long the woman had been dead, they came across a deep freezer in the utility room. Inside was an intact human body wrapped in a garbage bag.

Freezer in which Paul’s body was found / KUTV

Jeanne’s death was soon confirmed as natural, and the body in her freezer was determined to be of her husband, Paul Edward Mathers. The military veteran would have been 69 years old, but investigators…

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