By Pat Maurer
Correspondent
Terrell York, of Deerfield Township in Isabella County, will be spending from two to eight years in prison for keeping his dead wife’s body in a freezer in his home to continue to collect her Social Security.
York was sentenced Tuesday by Isabella County Circuit Judge Mark Duthie, who reportedly called the facts surrounding the case “horrible.”
Officers conducting a wellness check last April 18 found the body of 67-year-old Patricia York in a chest freezer in the couple’s home in the 800 block of West Baseline Road. He had reportedly kept her body there for months.
A release from Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main last April said his office was contacted by a daughter of the deceased woman saying there hadn’t been any contact with her mother for the “last couple of years.”
Family members said there was a “falling out” between them, but that they had become more and more concerned about her. Reportedly Patricia had Alzheimer’s Disease.
Deputies responding to the home contacted her husband. He told officers she no longer lived in the home and that he didn’t have a current address for her.
Reportedly in a jail interview, he claimed his wife had moved out a year ago and went to live with family in Newago. The couple’s landlord said Patricia had told him she had cancer about a year and a half ago. Since that time, she hadn’t been seen.
Investigators were able to get a search warrant for the home. When the search warrant was executed, they discovered the body of the woman in a chest freezer in the kitchen. Detectives said it appeared that the woman had been deceased for an “unknown amount of time.”
The Michigan State Police crime lab was called in to process the scene.
York was held in custody on an unrelated outstanding warrant and on charges of financial fraud, the failure to report a death and, reportedly, the mutilation of a body.
He was arraigned in Isabella County Court on felony charges of concealing the death of an individual.
York appeared in front of Isabella County Court Judge Mark Duthie last October and pled guilty to the felony charge of concealing the death of an individual and as a fourth-time habitual offender. He admitted that he kept his wife’s body frozen in order to continue to receive her Social Security checks, which he used to pay for food and pay bills.