SAN DIEGO — A family member is speaking out about an elderly woman found dead in a freezer one year ago in Allied Gardens, revealing that the woman's husband suffered from dementia and couldn't remember how she ended up there.
Wendy Edick, the step-daughter of Mary Haxby-Jones, described the discovery as "completely shocking."
Haxby-Jones, a retired nurse, would have been 81 when her body was found inside a freezer at the house she shared with her husband, Robert, on Zion Avenue.
"It was a very upsetting day, the day her body was found," Edick said. "And also to know that nobody had missed her."
Police later said Haxby-Jones could have been dead for up to nine years. An autopsy showed her cause of death was undetermined.
Edick admits she was estranged from her father but says both Robert and Mary were veterans and had been married for decades. "He was a master welder. He was really, really good at it, so much so that he was a contractor with the military, and he fixed F-18s and F-16s on Coronado Island," she said of her father.
The discovery came after Robert suffered a stroke in December last year, prompting family members to fly in from Kentucky. A friend of Robert's informed the family that Mary's body was in a freezer in the backyard.
Detectives investigated the possibility that Robert put Mary in the freezer to continue collecting her Social Security or VA benefits. However, because they could not prove exactly when Mary died, no criminal charges were filed. Then, Robert Haxby died in February, two months after his wife's body was found.
Edick says police questioned her father about financial fraud, but due to his dementia, he had no memory of putting her body in the freezer.
"That's all speculation. I mean, you can't prove it," Edick said. "He couldn't be tried for it, you know, because he had dementia, so he legally couldn't defend himself. He died, so they just dropped everything."
A neighbor reported that the house is currently vacant, although there was a police call last week after a report of squatters living in the house.