In the summer of 2013, the life of 58-year-old Eddie Frank Sole, a male resident of Shorewood, Minnesota, came to a tragic and concealed end. For about two weeks, his whereabouts were unknown to his family, who had been expecting him to return to Chicago in early August after he expressed intentions of leaving his 29-year-old girlfriend, Jetaun Helen Wheeler. He had confided in friends and relatives that Wheeler had been assaulting him and acting erratically.
When he failed to arrive in Chicago, his concerned family members contacted the police. Wheeler initially misled them, claiming that Sole had indeed gone back to Chicago.
The investigation into his disappearance led law enforcement to Wheeler's Shorewood home on August 21, 2013. Armed with a search warrant, what they discovered was a grim and calculated effort to hide a violent crime. Underneath Wheeler's mattress, investigators found two pieces of carpeting, one of which was saturated with a substance that appeared to be blood. This discovery pointed them towards the garage, where they found a brand-new freezer obscured by two mattresses. Inside the freezer, they found the body of Eddie Frank Sole, wrapped in plastic. An autopsy would later reveal the extent of his injuries, which included blunt force trauma to his head and face, significant cuts to his left eye and the side of his head, bruising on his arms, defensive wounds on his hands, and bleeding in his neck muscles.
Jetaun Helen Wheeler was arrested and charged with second-degree murder in connection with Sole's death. The prosecution built a case alleging that Wheeler had beaten Sole with a closet rod. In a turn of events on the fourth day of her trial, Wheeler pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree unintentional murder. Her defense attorney had argued that his death was not intentional and that she had acted in self-defense during a fight. By pleading guilty, she avoided having her preteen children testify. Prosecutors sought the maximum sentence of 15 years in prison for her crime.
