How did popular young woman end up lying dead in flat for three years with TV still running and no one had a clue?
TO her friends, Joyce Vincent was a popular young woman with the world at her feet.
She had a steady job at a multi-national corporation and no end of admirers wishing to get to know her better.
Despite her wide circle of pals, Joyce was found dead aged just 38 in the most tragic of circumstances.
On January 25, 2006, police entered her home in Wood Green, North London, to find her “mostly skeletal” remains on the sofa.
Joyce’s body was surrounded by wrapped-up Christmas presents and the TV was still on.
It was clear she had been dead for some time due to how decomposed her remains were but no one could have suspected exactly how long she had been lying on the sofa rotting.
The first clue was the food in her fridge, which had expired in 2003.
After some digging, it emerged Joyce had likely suffered an asthma attack while watching TV in December that year.
The shocking circumstances of her death horrified the nation as questions began to mount.
How was it that a vibrant young woman who was once so popular was able to lay dead in her flat for three years before anyone noticed?
Joyce had been born in Hammersmith in 1965 to immigrant parents.
Her mum died when she was 11 and she was raised by her four older sisters in South West London.
Joyce attended Fulham Gilliatt School for Girls but left when she was 16 with no qualifications.
In the 1980s, she surrounded herself with a group of friends from the music industry and spent her days sailing and evenings partying in glitzy nightclubs.
Through her connections, Joyce had dinners with megastars such as Stevie Wonder, dated an MP and lived with singer Betty Wright’s tour manager, Alistair.
He previously revealed how Joyce had an “aura” about her that was deepened by a mystery surrounding the past she kept so guarded.
By 1985, she settled down and got a job at an investment trust company before joining Ernst & Young in their treasury department.
When she was 25, Joyce attended the concert, Nelson Mandela, International Tribute for a Free South Africa, at Wembley.
Through Alistair, she was able to go backstage and meet the freedom fighter – surrounded by a sea of A-listers.
But 11 years later, Joyce’s life had changed entirely.
In 2001 she quit her job for unknown reasons and spent time living in a domestic abuse shelter where she worked as a cleaner in a budget hotel.
It was during this time that Joyce became estranged from her family and began cutting ties with her once-close friends.
She was moved in February 2003 to a bedsit above Wood Green shopping centre known as Sky City.
Her flat was owned by the Metropolitan Housing Trust and was used to house domestic abuse survivors.
The first suggestions Joyce was unwell came a month before her death when she was admitted to hospital after vomiting blood.
She was diagnosed as having a peptic ulcer and returned home two days later.
Nothing more was heard from Joyce until January 25, 2006, when staff from the housing trust drilled her front door open.
The workers, who had gone to the flat to investigate thousands unpaid rent, were greeted by piles of mail – including some marked from 2003.
Joyce was found lying on her back on the sofa with her TV and the heating still on.
A post mortem was unable to establish a cause of death because the remains were “largely skeletal” but she is believed to have suffered an asthma attack.
Left to die alone
Joyce had to be identified by comparing dental records with a photo of her smiling on holiday.
An inquest heard how neighbours had assumed her flat was unoccupied and blamed the smell of her body decomposing on nearby waste bins.
Joyce’s windows were positioned so no one could look in and the block of flats was noisy so locals did not question the sound from her television.
Even when bugs began to creep into neighbouring homes, residents just kept their windows shut.
The electricity and heating were able to still run as her bills were continually being paid.
As her rent was paid automatically to the housing trust, officials believed Joyce was still alive.
It was only when her benefits stopped covering the rent and arrears built up that something seemed amiss.
At the time, the trust said: “Ms Vincent moved into the property, which is general needs rented accommodation, in February 2003.
“Housing benefit was in part paying Ms Vincent’s rent, therefore, given her age, there was no reason to suspect anything unusual had happened.
“During this period our records show MHT were not contacted by neighbours or family to raise any concerns and so we were only alerted when significant arrears built up and we tried to gain access.”
In 2011, film Dreams of a Life starring Zawe Ashton as Joyce thrust her story back into the spotlight.
How Joyce became victim of isolated society
DESPITE living in a city of eight million people, Joyce's tragic death went undetected for almost three years.
Neighbours at her sprawling “Sky City” estate shut their windows to the bugs that invaded the home where her rotting body lay.
They also ignored the smell of decomposition – instead blaming nearby bins for the stench.
Even the housing association had no clue she had died until her rent money eventually dried up.
Bills were paid automatically through her benefits – meaning the TV was able to stay on for three years.
Sadly, just as Joyce turned her back on the world, the world also appeared to turn its back on her too.
Director Carol Morley spoke with friends and former partners to understand how Joyce’s death was able to go unnoticed for so long.
One former friend John Ioannou told her: “The trouble with Joyce was she was very fanciable.
“It was a burden that she was so beautiful and she was very clever, a lot more intelligent than she let on. I think she had several lives.”
Although she shut herself away from the world in the final months of her life, Joyce was never far from the minds of her sisters.
They were so worried about Joyce, they hired a private detective to track her down but when they received no response, they concluded their sister had deliberately cut ties with him.
Tragically Joyce never got the chance to read the letters they sent as she was already lying dead in her flat.