Missouri Man Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison After Storing Wife’s Dead Body in Freezer

A Missouri man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, six years after he pleaded guilty to storing his wife’s dead body in a freezer.

Local news station KYTV reports Larry Dinwiddie, 59, of Marshfield, MO, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder on Monday. Prosecutors have dropped a count of abandoning a corpse as a result of Dinwiddie’s plea.

Dinwiddie allegedly killed his wife Cynthia with a hammer after an argument inside the home in 2015. Dinwidde never reported his wife missing, according to Webster County Sheriff Roye Cole.

“There were so many other options besides the one that Mr. Dinwiddie had chosen,” Webster County Prosecutor Ben Berkstresser told KYTV. “The evidence and occurrence of severe abuse. It went the unusual way which was a female against a male in this case.”

Dinwiddie subsequently stuffed Cynthia’s body in a freezer in an abandoned storage unit in Marshfield. Police later found her body in November 2019 after conducting a sting operation. Investigators claim they tricked Dinwiddie to return to the storage unit by asking him to fix the freezer, at which point they found Cynthia’s body.

“What bothered me was that there were so many family and friends that knew about this circumstance,” Berkstresser said. “I would encourage those, when we see abuse occurring, that we lend some of our strength to give them the opportunity to get out.”