Coroner identifies man whose wife was found in freezer

By Mary Manning

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2009 | 9:51 a.m.

The man who shot himself after telling Metro Police he killed his wife and put her in a freezer for almost two years has been identified as 60-year-old Mark Byron Helwig of Las Vegas, the Clark County Coroner's Office said this morning.

Helwig sent a note to Metro Police's Records Section and officers went to check on the couple's welfare after receiving the mail last week.

When officers arrived about 1:52 p.m. Thursday to the home in the 1500 block of Willowbark Court near West Charleston Boulevard and Fort Apache Road, they received no response to a knock on the door, police said. Officers called a locksmith and found Helwig's body in a bedroom closet. The coroner said he died of a gunshot wound to the head and ruled it a suicide.

Police then searched the house and discovered a woman inside a freezer in a nearby room. Homicide detectives said that the woman had been in the freezer for up to two years.

There have been no reports filed with Metro Police noting the dead woman as missing, probably because she has no relatives living in Southern Nevada, detectives said.

The woman has not been identified, the coroner's office said.

This was the fourth murder-suicide case in the Las Vegas Valley in a 12-day period.