Man whose body was found in a Tooele freezer left a notarized letter for police

TOOELE CITY, Utah – Tooele City Police say 69-year-old Paul Mathers may have left a notarized note for law enforcement before he died, which happened more than a decade before his body was found in his wife’s freezer.

According to a search warrant, the note says his wife, Jeanne, was not responsible for his death.

Sgt. Jeremy Hansen says they have interviewed the notary.

“[But] she told us that she doesn’t look at the letters if they’re personal in nature. She just simply stamped it and signed it,” Hansen says.

But investigators may look into the letter more.

“We haven’t conducted handwriting analysis yet. That’s something that we may look into in the future…we’ll just have to see how the case plays out,” Hansen says.

Jeanne Sourone-Mathers’s body was found in her Utah Avenue apartment during a welfare check last month. That’s when police also found her husband’s remains in a freezer on the property.

Jeanne Mathers appears to have died of natural causes, while her husband was being treated for an undisclosed but fatal illness before he died sometime between February and March 2009.

Police have also addressed rumors the couple had planned to keep Mr. Mathers’s body in the freezer so his wife could collect his Social Security and Veterans Administration benefits.

“We did hear tentative information from the VA that Ms. Mathers would have collected…in the minimum [of] $177,000,” Hansen says.

However, investigators have not conclusively established how much money Mrs. Mathers may or may not have received during that time or even that they had such an agreement.