Sunday, October 9, 2011

Mystery for a Sunday Morning

I love a mystery. Always have. While browsing through the Sunday Guardian I came across this story:

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/oct/09/joyce-vincent-death-mystery-documentary

A woman named Carol Morley became captivated by the story of  Joyce Vincent. Joyce was found dead in her bedsit when the authorities came to repossess her apartment. She'd been dead for three years.

Nobody seemed to have missed her; her neighbors, her friends...her family. Somehow she'd fallen from radar and died alone, sitting on her couch, wrapped Christmas presents around her. The television was still running- BBC1- and the groceries were 3 years out of date. Her skeleton was all that remained; a window was open, leading the decomposition smell to be blamed on the garbage cans below.

Joyce Vincent was a beautiful, talented woman who'd moved in posh circles. And at 38, she died alone in social housing and nobody noticed. There wasn't even enough left of her to determine a cause of death.

Carol Morley traces her life back through the 80s, when she was riding high, into the 90s and then the string breaks. Joyce had quit a good job, had spent time in a shelter for abused woman, and then...nobody seems to know. Perhaps, when the film comes out in the US in March of 2012, I'll know more. Right now, I'm pretty intrigued at how such a stunningly beautiful, remarkable young woman could end as she did, and nobody even noticed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is amazing that there was no one who missed her and wondered and checked...very strange indeed.

Austan said...

Lawless- what gets me is that she had presents wrapped for someone- and they didn't wonder what was up? To disappear at the holidays? It's so strange...

CarrieBoo said...

That is quite freaky, Laura. And so young. Makes you shiver. The presents really do make it all the more "mysterious".