This is an old story but i just stumbled across it and it hasn't left my mind since then...How can something like this happen in a developed country like the UK?Its almost unbelievable.
On 25 January 2006, officials from a north London housing association repossessing a bedsit in Wood Green owing to rent arrears made a grim discovery. Lying on the sofa was the skeleton of a 38-year-old woman who had been dead for almost three years. In a corner of the room the television set was still on, tuned to BBC1, and a small pile of unopened Christmas presents lay on the floor. Washing up was heaped in the kitchen sink and a mountain of post lay behind the front door. Food in the refrigerator was marked with 2003 expiry dates. The dead woman's body was so badly decomposed it could only be identified by comparing dental records with an old holiday photograph of her smiling. Her name was revealed to be Joyce Carol Vincent.
how could someone's absence go unnoticed for so long? Who was Joyce Vincent? What was she like? How could she have been forgotten?
TV was on for 3 yrs? Non stop hmmmm Electricity coy didn't cut it off since she hasn't paid? And it's council and prolly pre paid metre hmmm
ReplyDeleteNawaoo,don't she have children or relatives?this kinda thing cannot happen in naija.btw,Stella,I will be coming to frankfurt on sunday.make we hook up nau
ReplyDeleteThat's really sad, no relatives, friends, loved ones. She must have been very lonely.
ReplyDeleteShe must av lived and died as a very LONELY WOMAN.
ReplyDeleteHian! Me I dey rep, does get irritated wen u ear a very loud knock on your door early saturday mornin!
I do not like visitors all d time, I tire easily, most times I love to be by myself, all by myself.
That's London for you, everyone minds there own business and things like this is the down side, she probay stayed alone and in this country, you can't just show up to people's houses without calling first, so I believe its possible, that's why most of them go into depressed...that's why its good to socialize, so at least if people don't see you, they will look for you...#may God help us#
ReplyDeleteOk first, Gid punish auto correct...see all my blunders..chai..
DeleteThat's UK 4 u. I remember 2yrs ago when Mr Sam's wife passed on. No one in d neighbourhood knew abt it. He goes every morning 2 put flowers on her grave side. One morning me and my man ran in2 him in the hall way and out of curiosity I asked him where he takes the roses 2 every morning. He tld us his wife passed on 5mnts ago!! WAT!!!!! 5what? And u no tell ur neighbours and good frds??
DeleteWhite people sef. But 3yrs sha...that's long tho.
May God help us all ijn.
ReplyDeletewow just googled her all I can say is 'na wa' such a beautiful lady but na wa for the neighbors ooo dis is why I love naija ... after two days somebody must shout ur name
ReplyDeleteTwo days too far for naija na.
DeleteA person died in a flat and the neighbors didn't smell a thing, I refuse to beleive that. I know the body will smell for 7 days during decomposition, unless it is cold, but if it is hot, the whole building go die. What about nosy white neighbors? Hian abeg.
ReplyDeleteIt was probably winter she died.They found a pile of unopened xmas presents so it must have been around December when winter is in full blast.
DeleteStranger than fiction.
ReplyDeleteWicked world her family conspired and killed her, if she doesn't have family then its her friends cos she is definitely not a lonely woman and their silence isa strategy for the case to remain unsolved.has anybody watched pain and gain a true life story of a fitness instrutor by name Daniel Lugo please watch it and see stupidity in its height. The strategy Daniel used for that Mexican man might be used in carol's case.
ReplyDelete@anonymous 10:38am, this one is small. There are tons of stories like this on oddee
ReplyDeletecom. Just Google people who were found dead years after declared missing/order
There is a compilation of such sad occurrences all over the world.
Apart from that, whites are loners, they don't socialize like us. Some of these women who died. a terribly lonely death were known as aggressive women who never allowed visitors or visited anyone. They just loved isolation. Abeg use Google.
im not surprised..i live in d uk and i cnt wait to goo home cuz life here is so broing, u cant even knock on d door of ur next door neighbour to say oh i just came to visit u. people like to be on their own most of d time and if u try to talk to them they get get irritated. thats y a lot of them end up being depressed. im always in my room here. once in a while i go out with my friend. cant wait for december when i return to naij, if i have to stay another year here, hmmm, only God can help me
ReplyDeleteHa! We lost a friend last year just the exact same story, but she was dead 2 weeks before anyone found out she was popular in the SE of london,pleasant and humble vicki always has a smile on, we called her all d time but assumed she had travelled to naija as she does that sometimes, the thing is here you cant just show up at peoples door even some people will be offended, anyway she was found on her bed by her landlord after he used the key to open the door as she was late on her rent. SIGH! People are so busy with their lives that checking on orders is very hard to do, everyone assumes everyone is ok. We still dont know what happened sha but we knew she was diabetic she was 25 or so. RIP vicky we still dey miss you our lady Gaga
ReplyDeleteI heard about this! Saw her pix and thought what a beautiful lady. Kai, can't believe her death is still a mystery :(
DeleteNo smell for 3 whole years? I mean even a dead rat smell is enough to disturb a whole block of flats, how manage? What really killed her? Hmmm. This world
ReplyDeleteVery strange but then again not that strange. England could be very depressing without close family and loved ones. I do not know this person but I am trying to piece a few things that could be one of many possibilities. First of all, she looks half Indian. Even though it is said that her parents were Caribbean of Grenada, there really is no solid proof of that. S he might have been been born under Jam type of circumstances, whereby the mother feels she is old enough to ' Have a baby' as a lot of Jamaica / Caribbean' s do and maybe the father was absent. A Indian no dey gree accept pikin wey no be arrange marriage and half for that matter. Another possibility is that she might have grown up in the system (home) and had always been a loner. Carribean people do not really keep in touch as such with family members like Africans do. So, there's the possibility this lady had to depend on relationships to really have some type of "family" thus the abuse, again if any, since she was said to have lived in a shelter for battered women at some point. She was said to have worked at Ernst. & young at one point and had walked away from that job. I find that hard to believe. She probably was made redundant - a nicer way of saying you are fired in England- after which she might have fell into deep depression coupled with the fact that once you are out of a job in England, your so called close Pub friends move on and might even ignore you on the streets. It's likely the television became her closest companion and due to the nature of people as a whole, she probably rarely went out. She might have fallen sick and just gave up on life l, sitting there thinking about how miserable her life was and with no heater on just dried up leaving next to no detectable Odour for the outside world to know that a soul had departed a lonely woman. Thus the lack of decomposition. She might have paid off the Council for her flat payments or if not, someone just slacked off at her borough.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I feel very sorry for her but hopefully she is in a better place. Loneliness can kill especially in England and that cold and the nature of the people which has its good and bad sides. Check on your friends from time to time en if it's once a week. I am not being Poirot but I do know what people go through in England and I know many people have fled due to the weather that keeps people indoors.
Hope this woman finds peace on the other side.
Instead of guessing why not google her name and read what actually happened? Her case is online...#oversabi#
DeleteMiss Google, I knew you'd say Oversabi but the point I am clearly trying to make is the fact that there are many missing links here. Someone is trying to make a movie about this person' s life. So, even though you just became aware of GOOGLE, clearly GOOGLE isn't giving enough details. Open your eyes and read and decipher before concluding that people are Oversabi. It might just save you life someday. UNDERSABI. I kinda think I know who you are and no one's trying be Lord over your domain but educate. Thank you.
DeleteYou obviously love your keyboard.
DeleteU really have time, ha!
DeleteMaybe she lived as a recluse!
ReplyDeleteNever caring about her neighbours and never had friends, so they too didn't care!
I saw the documentary like story 2 years ago ...... Her friends came together to do d documentary ... No family noo boyfriend ......I cried for daysss .... Ladies liveeeeeeee don't let the struggle of life weigh u down ...just keep living she was a troubled soul ....
ReplyDeleteThat is serious!!! She no get family?? What of friends??? Very strange indeed!!!
ReplyDeleteNa wa oh! Thank God I dey naija oh! Me that I like staying on my own, my own for be 10yrs! God forbid!
ReplyDeleteVisit koolblend.blogspot.com for true life stories you can't afford to miss
I remember this story years back and l saw the documentary. A film maker Carol Morley saw the story on Metro newspaper on the tube here in London and decided to follow it up. She made the documentary- Dreams of a life. Pls google or go on YouTube . Truly sad stuff. Apparently, all her friends thought she was somewhere having a good time.
ReplyDeleteWhen she died, she was in a bedsit in Woodgreen mall shopping centre ( flats above the mall). Her bedsit was overlooking some refuse bins hence pple assumed the smell of her corpse was from the rubbish. This was a beautiful lady who had loads of friends and even met Nelson Mandela and Denzel Washington!
No one can really say what led to her demise . All we know is that she cut off contact with friends and family( she had about 5 sisters and a father ) and moved to a bedsit where no one knew her. People assumed she was in a violent relationship and she didn't want the man to find her. She was only found because the housing association wanted to repossess the bedsit owing to rent affairs. Her skeleton was lying on the sofa and the television was still tuned to BBC. She was wrapping up Christmas presents in 2003( food in the fridge had 2003 expiry dates on it) when she died!
I've lived in London for over 10 years . It's a beautiful city with diverse cultures and backgrounds. BUT it can get cold; everyone is self involved . If you don't have family, good friends and colleagues and belong to a good church, you are in trouble . I remember when l first arrived years ago; l read a story about a burglar who called the police when he stumbled into a body as he was trying to rob a flat. It turned out that the body had been there for 5 YEARS!!! Abeg, l caught the next flight home for Xmas that year o!!
It simply beggars belief. She was wrapping Christmas presents for people and these same people couldn't be bothered to look for her in 3 years ?! Her sisters were interviewed though they didn't want to be filmed in the documentary. They stated they had hired a private investigator to find her when she cut off contact . Her mum had died years back but her father was still alive then( he died a year after she passed on).
DeleteIt's easy to fall through the cracks her in the UK. It could be depression, being a workaholic or simply that you are an introvert. Unlike Naija where people can come to your house 20 times a day( I have over a 100 paternal and maternal cousins not to talk of Uncles, Aunts, nieces, nephews etc. And don't get me started on family friends!), here in London people have to call before they visit . In cases where they call once or twice and you don't pick up, they simply assume you have travelled or are too busy. Only very close friends or family will seek you and find out if you are okay.
I remembered this story just a few months ago and said a little prayer for her soul. It reminded me to get in touch with people more. Reach out to family, friends, neighbours and colleagues. You never know; you might save a soul
ReplyDeleteI remember watching the documentary on this lady and all i could deduce from it based on the interviews had with so many people pointed to the fact that there was more to her than meets the eye.
ReplyDeleteBritain is such a cold lonely place, where your family will need permission before they can visit you. No one lives an inclusive life here, there is that ''do not disturb sign'' invisibly stamped on foreheads so its no wonder that people live solitary lives and end up with no one when they need help.
I still believe there is a conspiracy somewhere, very sad though
ReplyDeleteThis is sad, so sad, lord God pls I beg 4 her if she had no 1 on earth pls do not deny her of eternal njoyment, grant her peace andd love in the after life, if she is in hell please send her to heaven. Sad, I'm touched
ReplyDelete