87-year-old retired soldier’s body found in freezer california Home he shared with his daughter, say police.
Police were asked to conduct a welfare check by relatives in Riverside, who said they did not listen to the woman for two months.
The woman was named by relatives as Mary Travis, a retired angel County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective, press-enterprise report.
The newspaper said that his live-in daughter, who was named simply Carol by neighbors, was questioned by the police about her mother’s death and keeping the body, and she was released.
A spokesman said the Riverside County coroner’s office has yet to publicly announce that the dead woman was Travis.
However, LA County Sheriff’s Representative Deputy Maria Lucero said Travis was a sergeant in the Homeside Bureau from 1979 until he retired in 1990.
After retiring, Travis moved with her husband to the Riverside home, but he died two years later and mother and daughter became increasingly reclusive, Press-Enterprise reports.
Miriam Travis, 87, was found dead in a freezer in the garage of her home on New Ridge Drive in Riverside, California, according to the Riverside Police Department.
Riverside Police Officer Javier Cabrera said another relative asked police to do a health check on Sunday morning because he was not listening to them.
Cabrera said Travis’s daughter made inconsistent statements about her mother’s location to authorities, prompting her to conduct a “disorganized” home search.
Officials said that foul smell emanating from the house, due to which there is a situation of piles of garbage and hoarding.
Travis’s body was found inside a working freezer in his garage.
An autopsy is planned to determine the cause of death.
Neighbor Randy Hayes, 63, said he had been living next to the women for 27 years and was shocked by the news.
‘shocking. Very shocking. Especially because she’s the little old cutie Miriam,’ Hayes told Press-Enterprise.
Keri Nickell, a relative from Oklahoma, told the newspaper that she was Travis’s step-granddaughter.
She honored Travis as a ‘great grandmother’ who took her and 11 of her cousins to Disneyland every year at Christmas.
But Nickell said Travis cut off communication with extended family after her husband passed away in 1992 and even changed the locks on their home.
‘It was like one day it’s my grandmother, and then we never heard from her again,’ Nickel told Press-Enterprise.
She said that Travis and his daughter have become ‘a kind of monk’.
Miriam Travis and her daughter’s home (pictured) had changed significantly over the years, sparking concern from the city’s code enforcement.
A cousin sometimes mailed Travis photos of relatives on his side of the family, who never replied.
Hayes said that despite their affiliations as neighbors, they didn’t know much about Travis and their daughter, leading to no conversation between the three of them.
“I can’t tell you how reclusive he was,” he said.
Hayes said that except for deliveries by Home Depot, he rarely sees guests’ vehicles, whether they be friends or family, in front of the house or on its driveway.
He said the storage units dumped garbage in the backyard and the home alterations raised concerns from the city’s code enforcement.
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