Police are trying to find the three young children of a Shorewood woman who prosecutors say killed her boyfriend and stuffed his body in a freezer.

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said Monday that jailed murder defendant Jetaun Helen Wheeler had her children “in hiding” and that police are trying to find them to make sure they are safe.

“We don’t know what these children went through,” Freeman said. He said his office believed the children are ages 10, 8 and 7.

Officials have had concerns about the children before. In October, Wheeler allegedly told a worker at a church-run organization that she planned to leave her kids at a hospital because she “wanted to give all of this up” and they’d be better off without her, according to a misdemeanor complaint filed in February.

She had entered a not-guilty plea in that case Wednesday morning. Later that day, police following up in the missing-person case searched her home, found a man’s body wedged in a new chest freezer in her garage, and arrested her on suspicion of killing him.

Wheeler, 29, was charged Monday with second-degree murder in the bludgeoning death of her 58-year-old boyfriend. She is to make her first appearance before a judge Tuesday.

She is being held in the Hennepin County Jail; her bail is $2 million.

Prosecutors have not named the victim; friends and family told investigators that they had last heard from him July 31 and that he’d planned to be back in Chicago by Aug. 1.

In that conversation, the man allegedly told a friend he was having domestic trouble with Wheeler.

“He said that the defendant had assaulted him the week before leaving scratches and that she was crazy,” the friend told police, according to a criminal complaint written by Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Judith Hawley.

Police had gone to Wheeler’s residence Aug. 13 to look for the man, but the woman claimed she had dropped him off at a bus terminal Aug. 3 and that was the last she’d seen or heard of him.

When investigators canvassed the neighborhood, they found a man who said he’d seen the victim and Wheeler two weeks earlier and they were in the midst of “a loud argument.”

“He could not make out what they were saying but they were yelling at each other,” Hawley wrote of the witness.

Police got enough probable cause to convince a judge to issue a search warrant, and they returned to the home on Wednesday. Their first grim discovery was under Wheeler’s mattress: a piece of rolled-up carpeting that appeared to be soaked with blood.

Investigators were also suspicious about what they didn’t find — there were no items of men’s clothing in the home, even though the man had lived with Wheeler for some weeks. Nor could they find any of his personal belongings, Hawley wrote.

Police noticed what they thought was blood spatter and made their way to the garage.

“Behind two mattresses they found what appeared to be a brand new freezer,” the complaint said. “An old box of Christmas decorations was on top of the freezer. Investigators opened the freezer and observed the body of an adult male.”

The victim had been wrapped in plastic, secured with duct tape and frozen, the complaint said.

When forensic pathologists with the Hennepin County Medical Examiner studied the body, they found the victim had “blunt force trauma injuries to his face and head including significant lacerations to his left eye and the left side of the head,” Hawley wrote.

He also had bruises on both upper arms, as well as what appeared to be defensive wounds on the back of his hands as he tried to protect himself.

After the autopsy, police searched the home again and found a broken closet rod on a closet floor. “It was broken in two and tested positive for the presence of blood,” the complaint said.

The medical examiner concluded the death was a homicide, but is awaiting results of toxicology and microscopic exams before determining cause of death. The complaint said the delay stemmed from “the complex nature of his injuries and the difficulties associated with the rapid decomposition of a frozen body.”

Wheeler had bought the freezer Aug. 5, police discovered.

“We don’t know whether she purchased the freezer in anticipation of killing him or after his death,” Freeman said.

He said the victim “had been there awhile.”

The second-degree murder charge accuses Wheeler of intentionally causing the man’s death, but not acting with premeditation. A conviction on the charge can carry a sentence of 40 years in prison.

Wheeler was taken into custody Thursday, and Freeman said officials are trying to find her children.

The welfare of her children has been a matter of legal concern in the past. She is scheduled for trial in December on a gross misdemeanor charge of obstructing the legal process in a case in which she allegedly told someone she was going to drop her kids off at a hospital because they’d be better off without her.

A criminal complaint filed Feb. 27 claims Wheeler told a worker at a church-run foundation that helps needy families “that she was going to drop her kids off at the hospital because she ‘wanted to give all of this up.’ ” When the worker checked the children’s school, she found they hadn’t shown up that day.

Police went to her Shorewood home to check on the children, but Wheeler would not let them in, the complaint said.

When the officers told her they wanted to speak to the children to make sure they were OK, “Wheeler stated she would not allow the police in the house,” the complaint said. A police sergeant told her the officers weren’t leaving until they could see the children.

The sergeant tried to take her house keys so he could go inside, and the woman “began screaming that the police were abusing her and refused to cooperate,” the complaint said.

When officers told her she was under arrest, she allegedly kicked them.

She has a Dec. 30 trial date in that case.

David Hanners can be reached at 612-338-6516.