The woman who lay undiscovered for THREE years: Tragedy of Joyce Vincent who was left to rot in her London council flat with the TV and heating turned on after nobody noticed she had died

It’s the haunting story that continues to send shivers down spines even 20 years later: the case of Joyce Vincent.

This once-vibrant young woman was left to rot for three years in her north London bedsit before anyone noticed.

Astonishingly, the TV and heating were still on when on 25 January 2006, housing association officials – who were repossessing the tiny flat in Wood Green due to rent arrears – made the grim discovery.

Lying on the sofa was the skeleton of a 38-year-old woman who had been dead for almost three years.

In the corner of the room the television set was still on, tuned to BBC1, the central heating was also on and a small pile of Christmas presents lay scattered on the floor. 

A pile of washing-up was in the kitchen sink and a small mountain of unopened post and junk mail lay against the front door. All the food in the fridge was marked with 2003 best-before dates. 

The body could only be identified by comparing dental records with an old holiday photograph of her smiling. Her name was Joyce Carol Vincent.

Details of her sad life began to emerge after the initial publicity, but the story fascinated film-maker Carol Morley, who made a disturbing docu-drama about Joyce’s life called Dreams of a Life, starring Fresh Meat’s Zawe Ashton in 2011.

In turn, the film would inspire Paloma Faith to write her song ‘Lost and Lonely’ which featured on the album The Architect.

Prior to Joyce’s death, she had cut off nearly all contact with those who knew her. She resigned from her job in 2001, and moved into a shelter for victims of domestic abuse.

She also began to reduce contact with friends and family.

Her death was estimated at some time in December 2003 and her cause of death was believed to be either an asthma attack or complications from a recent peptic ulcer, though an inquest recorded an open verdict.

Carol Morley recalled in The Guardian the moment when she read about the case in a discarded newspaper on the Underground.

‘The paper reported the gothic circumstances of her death – “Woman dead in flat for three years: skeleton of Joyce found on sofa with telly still on” – but revealed almost nothing about her life. There was not even a photograph of her.

‘The image of the television flickering over her decomposing body haunted me as I got off the train on to the crowded platform. 

‘In a city such as London, home to 8 million people, how could someone’s absence go unnoticed for so long? Who was Joyce Vincent? What was she like? How could she have been forgotten?’

In Joyce’s case, neighbours paid little attention to the signs of what had happened behind the closed front door of her flat.

At an inquest, it emerged that Joyce had been placed in the women’s refuge accommodation as a victim of domestic violence.

The flat is part of a complex build above a shopping complex in Wood Green. Neighbours said whenever they knocked at the door, no-one answered, so they assumed it was unoccupied.

Michael Dobbs, who moved in in summer 2004 said: ‘I always thought it was an empty house. It’s a shock to think that she had family and nobody came.

‘It’s also a puzzle how her electricity was not cut off because her TV was on all this time.’

He told the Guardian it was a noisy building frequented by drug addicts, which could explain why no-one noticed the noise from the TV.

He said he had discovered someone dead, clutching a bottle of drink, in the lift some weeks previously.

He added: ‘I did notice a kind of rotten smell but the bins downstairs are strong and the stairwells smell with junkies.

‘I did get a few bugs coming into my house so I had to keep the windows closed.’

After Carol Morley made enquiries about Joyce, she was able to trace some of her relatives and build a much clearer picture of the woman who died alone.

She tracked down Martin Lister, an old boyfriend, who had met when they worked together in the 1980s.

He told Morley: ‘You look back and think, I wish I’d asked more, wish I’d understood more.’

The couple enjoyed racing at Goodwood, tennis at Wimbledon, classical music and opera, as well as dining out in restaurants.

He recalled: ‘She always wanted to improve her mind. Actually, she told me she’d had elocution lessons and she sounded – I wouldn’t say posh, but you wouldn’t know she was from London, she just sounded very well-spoken, almost BBC really.’

Other former colleagues who had worked with Joyce at blue-chip accountancy firm Ernst & Young in their treasury department also spoke to Morley.

During that time, she became engaged for two years, but the fiancé remained anonymous.

In 2001, Joyce quit her job, telling friends that she was going travelling with 20 people, but told others she had been headhunted.

A work friend Dan told Morley: ‘It seems like we’re talking about two different people. I just can’t connect the Joyce who died to the Joyce that we knew.’

Another former colleague, Kim nodded in agreement: ‘I mean she gave this impression of being a happy, bubbly person but it does make you wonder what was really going on.’

Other friends told Morley that Joyce had a wonderful singing voice and became involved on the fringes of the music industry, even once dressed up as a maid and served tea to punk star Captain Sensible.

It turned out that she’d even had dinner with Stevie Wonder on one occasion, thanks to her friend, US disco singer Judy Cheeks.

Cheeks told Morley on the phone: ‘I had no idea where she was heading. It appears no one did. I often thought of her and always assumed she had finally found her ideal husband, had a few kids and was happy.’

Another boyfriend tracked down by Morley told her that Joyce had dated an MP and a baronet before him.

Then she discovered that Joyce had known American soul singer Betty Wright. Wright’s former tour manager and another former boyfriend of Joyce’s, Alistair Abrahams, told Morley how they lived together for two years in London in the 90s and house guests included Jimmy Cliff, Gil Scott-Heron and Isaac Hayes.

But in fact, the nightmare phenomenon so brutally summed up by Bridget Jones: ‘found three weeks later half-eaten by Alsatians’ is not so rare.

In Britain, more than 9,000 people were found alone more than a week after their deaths in 2023. The Japanese even have a word for ‘lonely deaths’: kodokushi, and there more than 60,000 such cases are recorded annually.