Freddie Maas Autopsy Reveals No Cause of Death at 111, UCLA Finds

Updated at 9 p.m. Jan. 7, 2012

The mystery of longevity has gone to the grave with Frederica “Freddie” Maas, who died at 111½ Thursday at her La Mesa home of a decade.

Researchers at UCLA Medical Center, who examined her body Friday in an autopsy, could find no cause of death, La Mesa Patch has learned. A long series of follow-up tests are planned on tissue samples.

Dr. Stephen Coles of the Gerontology Research Group announced her death Friday. The group validates ages of supercentenarians—people who have turned 110. She was the 44th-oldest person in the world, according to its records.

She is scheduled to be cremated Monday and her ashes shipped back to her guardian, said her great nephew Tony Tovar.

“She asked that her ashes be scattered at sea when we also scatter my mom’s,” Tovar said Saturday via email.  “My mom was her niece, but I think she was more like a daughter to Freddie (who never had any children).”


No one was with Maas—the third-oldest Californian—when she died at 9 p.m. Thursday at Country Villa La Mesa Healthcare Center on Lake Murray Boulevard, Tovar said.

“Her roommates didn’t know either when I arrived,” he said. “I saw her twice last week, but she never spoke to me. There are no plans for a memorial, though we are considering it.”

Tovar says he will miss talking to her because she was so intelligent and funny. She had written a memoir about her days as a Hollywood screenwriter in the Silent Movie Era.

“It wasn’t so much that she was a wise old woman so much as she was someone who I would always have been friends with—regardless of age.”