California detectives determine who put the body of an 81-year-old woman in a freezer, but mysteries remain

When the body of 81-year-old Mary Margaret Haxby-Jones was found a year ago folded up in a freezer at an Allied Gardens home, questions swirled: How had she died? Was there foul play? How and why did she end up in a freezer?

A year later, major answers remained elusive even as additional information came to light.

On Thursday, the San Diego Police Department said it had received the autopsy report regarding Haxby-Jones’ cause of death. Her manner and cause of death are undetermined, the Medical Examiner’s Office concluded, police said.

However, detectives have unraveled one mystery.

“Detectives did determine that Haxby-Jones’ body was unlawfully placed in the freezer by her husband, Robert Haxby,” San Diego homicide Lt. Jud Campbell said in a release.

Haxby died in February — just weeks after his wife’s body was discovered.

Haxby-Jones’ body was found by out-of-town relatives related to the resident of the home on Dec. 22, 2023. Police said that Haxby-Jones, a longtime former nurse anesthetist at the Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center down the street, may have been dead for as many as nine years but that there were no obvious signs of trauma on the body.

While the medical examiner’s investigation was ongoing, detectives worked to investigate a potential financial motive for hiding the body.

“Homicide detectives reached out to financial investigators at the federal level (Social Security and Veteran’s Affairs) suspecting that, even if the death was not a homicide, it might have been concealed so that Haxby-Jones’ benefits would continue to be paid,” Campbell said.

But again the case went cold.

“At this point, a criminal case of benefits fraud cannot be substantiated because it is unclear beyond a reasonable doubt exactly when Haxby-Jones died,” police said.

Police said that in light of the medical examiner’s conclusions and detectives’ findings, “the suspicious death investigation is inactive pending any additional or new information brought forward.”

The development brings little closure to a mystery that rocked the Allied Gardens neighborhood.

Little appears to have changed in the year since at the home, where rusted vehicles and trash cans still block the front porch.