LAS VEGAS (AP) - A Las Vegas man apparently shot himself at his
home after sending a letter to police that led investigators to his wife's body in a freezer at the residence.

Authorities said they discovered the apparent murder-suicide Thursday in the gated Peccole Ranch community after receiving the suicide note in the mail from Mark Helwig. He wrote that he had killed his wife two years earlier and couldn't stand to move her body from the house.

According to a copyright story in Saturday's editions of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, police think his wife's body had been in the freezer for 18 to 24 months, and that has hampered efforts to determine her cause of death.

The body was frozen for so long that it will take two to three days for it to thaw out, investigators said.

Helwig was found in a closet of the master bedroom with a gunshot wound to the head, while his wife was found stuffed in a freezer in an adjoining bedroom.

"We have no idea why he did it," police Lt. Lew Roberts said.

The wife's name wasn't immediately released by police. The couple's ages also were not immediately available, but neighbors described them as older.

Neighbors said Helwig had a job with the government or a government contractor that would take him to Southeast Asia for months at a time. He was absent so much that his neighbors talked about it.

"We always would wonder, `What's going on over there?"' said 71-year-old Leonard Cardella, who lives across the street. "The guy bought a house and was never home."

It was the fourth murder-suicide or attempted murder-suicide around Las Vegas in less than two weeks.

Police said the economy could be a factor in the string of cases. Nevada has the nation's second-highest unemployment rate at 13.2 percent and the nation's highest foreclosure rate.

"Many people are starting to feel the pressure of not working," Roberts told the Review-Journal. "And when you're out of work, you have financial problems. And when you have financial problems, you have relationship problems."