Body of 87-year-old woman found in freezer in her California home

The body of an elderly woman was found in a freezer at her California home during a welfare check – and investigators questioned her daughter, police said.

The 87-year-old woman from Riverside has been identified by a relative as Miriam Travis, a retired detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Homicide Department, the Press-Enterprise reported.

Another relative summoned cops to Travis’ home on New Ridge Drive early Sunday to conduct a welfare check, Riverside Police Officer Javier Cabrera told the newspaper.

Travis’s daughter made inconsistent statements about her mother’s whereabouts, which led to cops searching the “dilapidated” house that smelled foul, Cabrera said.

Officers found Travis’ body in a working freezer in his garage. The condition of his body was not clear, but an autopsy was underway to determine the cause of death, the newspaper reported.

Travis’s daughter, who has not been identified by authorities, was questioned by cops and then released until detectives could determine how her mother died and whether she was involved in handling the body of the deceased woman, according to the report.

Travis was identified in the newspaper by Kerri Nickell of Oklahoma, who said the woman was his stepmother. Travis worked as a sergeant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide office from 1979 until his retirement in 1990, an agency spokeswoman told Press-Enterprise.

Travis and her husband moved to Riverside in 1990 after his retirement. Her husband died two years after the move, causing Travis to change the locks on his house and cut contact with his extended family, Nickell said.

“It was like she was my grandmother one day, and then we never heard from her again,” Nickell told Press-Enterprise, adding that Travis and his daughter were “kind of like “hermits.

“She was always quiet and in her room most of the time,” Nickell said of Travis’ daughter. “I didn’t know her at all.

The 64-year-old was living with her mother, Cabrera told the Post. She first told cops her mother was not at home, but inconsistencies in her account led officers to search the residence, he said.

“At the moment, while we are awaiting the autopsy report, she is not a suspect,” Cabrera said while confirming that the woman’s daughter had been released by police. “He’s a person of interest.”

An autopsy should be performed in a few days. A relative said they had not heard from the elderly woman for two months, Cabrera said.