Nearly a year after an elderly woman was found dead in a freezer in Allied Gardens — having last been seen nine years earlier — San Diego police provided a significant update on the case on Thursday.
Among the most startling revelations was that detectives believe that Robert Haxby — the husband of Mary Margaret Haxby-Jones, who would have been 81 when she was found last Dec. 22 — was the one who put her in the freezer, and that, he, too, has since died. Haxby himself died last Feb. 3, police said in a news release sent out Thursday afternoon. They did not disclose his cause of death.
Police believe Haxby-Jones was missing or dead for nine years when her body was discovered.
County officials told NBC 7 this week that the medical examiner's office had closed the case and completed its report. While those documents are, for now, still sealed, police did say Thursday the coroner had "concluded that the manner and cause of death are undetermined."
As part of their investigation, SDPD contacted the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs to determine whether Haxby-Jones' death had been concealed so that her benefits would continue being paid.
However, "a criminal case of benefits fraud cannot be substantiated because it is unclear beyond a reasonable doubt exactly when Haxby-Jones died," police said in the news release.
NBC 7 asked San Diego Police Lt. Jud Campbell about whether the couple's son, who neighbors reported seeing in the home during the time she was missing, had been investigated in connection to the case.
"Our investigation did not show that a son was living there or develop any information to arrest/charge him for anything whatsoever," Campbell said in an email. "To be totally clear, he is not a suspect."
While police have not officially closed the case, they did say that it has gone "inactive pending any additional or new information brought forward."
An update from Allied Gardens neighbors
In June, about six months after Haxby-Jones was found and first reported to police at year's end, NBC 7 went to Allied Gardens and spoke to neighbors.
Half a year after Haxby-Jones' body was finally moved after its long interment, the topic was still front of mind for the neighbors of the home, where little, if anything had changed at the home in the 4900 block of Zion Avenue. The weeds out front have gone brown, wind rustled through the yard, sun-faded crime-scene tape was still visible and three abandoned vehicles, including Haxby-Jones maroon Prius, were parked in the drive — and still were this week, though much of the trash had been cleared and the dead vegetation cleared. A pile of mail sat on the stoop in June, though, an SDG&E bill bearing the name Mary M. Jones in plain view. Nobody answered a knock.
A few doors down, a woman who asked to be identified as Patricia, was tending her yard with the sun overhead. She was sorrowful about the situation.
"It's sad," said Patricia, who met Haxby-Jones a few times and said she seemed like a very nice lady. "It's very sad. I feel so bad for Mary."
A woman's body is discovered in a freezer in Allied Gardens
The events of Dec. 22 were shocking to Patricia.
"I remember that day," Patricia said. "The police and the ambulances. They were [carrying] everything off ... I don't know what happened. We can only assume that something personal happened in that house, really bad."
Patricia was unaware what happened to Haxby-Jones's husband, Robert "Bob" Haxby, after the body was found, but she did share some startling information about what she believes happened to Haxby, whom she would see often in the neighborhood.
A review of Google Street of the home on Zion Avenue shows a tidy lawn outside in 2008, 2009 and 2011, but in 2014, the last year Haxby-Jones is believed to have been alive, the grass had died, with what seems to be little maintenance since. Patricia told NBC 7 she thought Haxby may have hired landscapers to help out.
"He was unable, physically, I think — he couldn't do a lot of the labor around his house," Patricia said, adding later that she had said that only "because he seemed to be a little frail walking around."
Patricia said the situation inside the home in Allied Gardens began to unravel before the body's discovery when Haxby was taken to the hospital, which she witnessed.
"There were relatives, after Bob went into the hospital, some relatives came by — if to clean the house or whatever — and that's who found the body in the freezer, when they were going around the house and that's when it all blew up," Patricia said.
Another neighbor told Patricia that Bob had had a stroke, information echoed by two other neighbors on Tuesday.
Who was in the house while the body was in the freezer?
Earlier this year, another neighbor, who asked NBC 7 not to publish her name, told NBC 7 she regularly observed Haxby at the home in the past nine years while Haxby-Jones was in the freezer.
The neighbor, who has lived in her home for decades, said she would sometimes see Haxby-Jones sitting in the backyard. Since the body was found, the neighbor said, she hadn't seen the man she called "Bob."
The neighbor described the home as "a hoarder's paradise" and said she called the city in the '90s about "trying to do something about the rats": "The back of the house is gone. They had the birds that squawked all the time." Her stepson said that the back of the house was not gone but that sliding doors had been left open to the elements for years.
The Allied Gardens woman also told NBC 7 that in addition to Haxby, who neighbors described to NBC 7 as a white-haired man in his 70s, another, younger man was occasionally at the home while Haxby-Jones was missing.
"There's a son," the neighbor said. "He was there the day-of. He stayed and sat in front while the police talked to [his father]."
The woman told NBC 7, though, she didn't think the son lived there but had been seen a couple times at the home after the body was discovered.
Also in June, the information about Haxby and the couple's son being at the home while Haxby-Jones was missing was confirmed by the neighbor's stepson, who lived with his stepmother in her Allied Garden for the past three years.
The woman said there were about 20 officers there the night the body was reported.
"… I had driven by lookie-loo," the woman said. "There was nobody behind me, so a detective guy in a suit came over and I said, 'Do I need to be afraid?' And he said no."
In fact, the woman told NBC 7 the "detective guy" laughed when she asked.
"I guess, to me, that meant the husband, Bob, was gone," she said. "It's like, 'There's nobody here to be afraid of,' was the impression I got," adding, "but he said, if we want to talk to you, we'll knock on your door. So I just left it at that."
Anybody with information about the case can call tips in anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 619-235-8477.
