Woman's Mummified Body Went Unnoticed In Flat For Three Years With TV Still On When Found

Credit: FindAGrave.com

For over two years following her death, the mummified body of a woman in north London remained undetected.

When Joyce Carol Vincent was eventually located, the television was still on because bailiffs had broken in to take possession of the apartment because she owed rent.

Only by comparing dental records could the 38-year-old's identity be determined because her skeletal remains had decayed so severely.

The terrible circumstances of her death shocked the nation, leaving many confused as to how she had managed to remain unrecognized for such a long time.

Credit: FindAGrave.com

After her parents left Grenada, Joyce was born and raised in London; however, her mother tragically passed away when she was only 11 years old.

At that point, her four elder sisters took parental responsibility for her upbringing.

According to The Herald, friends said she frequently "walked out of jobs if she clashed with a colleague and moved from one flat to the next all over London."

After four years of employment in the treasury department, Joyce abruptly left Ernst & Young, an accounting firm, in March 2001.

Later on, the former secretary resided in a Haringey domestic abuse shelter.

Her sisters even hired a private investigator to attempt to discover Joyce's whereabouts during this time, since she grew distant from them.

She came from a "very nice family," according to an informant working on the case, and at the time, she was living in an abusive relationship, the Herald Scotland claimed.

In February 2003, Joyce moved into a bedsit apartment above Wood Green Shopping City that belonged to Metropolitan Housing Trust and was intended for abuse victims.

According to a police inquiry, she had a peptic ulcer and was hospitalized for two days in November of that year after vomiting blood.

After that, she passed away in December, but her body was lost for almost three years.

Tragically, Vincent was lying on her back with Christmas gifts that she had wrapped but never delivered, all arranged around a shopping bag.

Her neighbors blamed the smell of her decaying body on the neighboring trash cans, believing the apartment was empty.

Joyce's flat was in a 'noisy' building, so no one was alerted by the constant hum of her television, a resident told the BBC at the time.

At the time, the spokesperson for Metropolitan Housing Trust stated that there was "no reason to suspect anything unusual had happened" because benefits agencies were also automatically paying half of her rent.

Housing officials, however, chose to take possession of the house after her part was not paid for more than two years.

On January 25, 2006, bailiffs forced entry and discovered the horrific scene.

It meant that it was impossible to determine her official cause of death because so much time had gone.

After ruling out any foul play, the police determined that she died of natural causes.

The 2011 movie Dreams of a Life portrayed her tragic experience.