Police on Tuesday identified the man whose body was found in a Tooele freezer as the husband of the elderly woman also discovered dead in the couple’s apartment.
Investigators still don’t know how or when Paul Edward Mathers died — his body could’ve been in the freezer for anywhere from 18 months to 11 years, said Sgt. Jeremy Hansen of the Tooele City Police Department.
“It could be weeks before we narrow down that timeline,” Hansen said.
Officers were initially called to Remington Park Apartments, 495 W. Utah Ave., after a maintenance worker reported he hadn’t heard from one of the tenants, a 75-year-old woman, for some time. When police arrived Friday, they found the woman, Jeanne Souron-Mathers, dead.
A detective on the scene found Mathers’ body in a deep freezer in a utility room of the small apartment, Hansen said. Medical examiners and the state’s crime lab identified Mathers, who would’ve been 69 today, by his fingerprints, the Tooele police spokesman said.
The decade-long window for when Mathers could’ve died is based on interviews with neighbors about when they last saw a man in the apartment, police said.
Hansen said “foul play” is suspected and that it’s still under investigation whether Souron-Mathers was involved in her husband’s death. Now that law enforcement has identified the man, police can begin to look into his history, Hansen said.
