87-Year-Old Mother's Remains Found Decaying In Refrigerator; Daughter Nabbed

A woman has been detained after her 87-year-old mother's remains were reportedly found decaying inside a refrigerator in her Riverside home in California on Sunday, Sept. 19.

The gruesome discovery was made after concerned family members contacted Riverside police for a welfare check on the elderly woman as they had not heard from her in recent weeks. Responding law enforcement rushed to the woman's residence at the 6600 block of New Ridge Drive at around 9:30 a.m and made contact with the woman's 64-year-old daughter, according to The Seattle Times.

"Once they began speaking with the daughter, there were some inconsistencies with her story as to her mom's whereabouts," said Officer Javier Cabrera, a spokesperson for the Riverside Police Department. "The officers detained the daughter and ultimately went inside the residence."

As the police officers searched the residence, they found the home to be in hoarder-like conditions and eventually discovered the woman's body inside a refrigerator in the garage.

“I’ve been doing this for 19 years, but I’ve never seen anything like this,” Cabrera said.

Homicide investigators are trying to determine whether the woman died of natural causes before she was placed in the refrigerator by her daughter. They believe that the pending autopsy will answer their questions and provide a direction to the investigation, ABC7 reported.

Initially, the police identified the victim as a 97-year-old woman but later updated her age.

Neighbor Randy Hayes said that the two women were generally quiet neighbors who kept to themselves. He added that he hadn't seen either of them in a while.

“I mean it doesn’t look good putting a body in a freezer,” Hayes said.

The daughter who lived with her mother as her caretaker has been detained and brought into the station for questioning. However, she was not arrested and was released after the interrogation.

The authorities have not confirmed the identities of the woman and her daughter.

In a similar but unrelated incident, a man named Shivprasad Pathak, a retired military officer and a resident of Majhauan village, reportedly kept the body of his son Shivank Pathak, 32, in a deep freezer at his home for 22 days after the young man died on Aug. 1 under mysterious circumstances, Latin Times reported.

Pathak refused to perform the last rites for his son, alleging that his boy was murdered for money, and demanded a second post-mortem investigation be conducted on the body to rule out foul play.

Following the first autopsy in Delhi, he reportedly took his son's body to his home in Sultanpur and kept it in a deep freezer for the past 22 days claiming that his family will perform the last rites only after they get justice. He also claimed that even though his son was murdered, the police did not register a case and handed the body over to him after conducting a bogus post-mortem examination.

Pathak only agreed to cremate the body after officials reportedly assured him that they are making arrangements to conduct the second post-mortem on Shivank's body at a hospital in Sultanpur.