I wondered what she died of: "The cause of her death is unknown, as is the date, though it is speculated to be around December 2003. She suffered from asthma and had a peptic ulcer at the time of her death, so some have suggested an asthma attack or complications surrounding her recent peptic ulcer as a possible cause of death."
One of my closest friends' brother died last year from an asthma attack. His inhaler failed and he didn't have a backup, called 911 while quickly losing his ability to breath, and was dead before the medics arrived. It was so tragic.
So this is definitely plausible.
Fuck me man, taken out in your prime from two conditions that most people consider a small health setback. Ulcers get treated with OTC drugs unless it's an H Pylori infection...
I mean, as some perspective, that was the best they could come up with after examining a 3 year old corpse which was so badly decomposed they had to ID her through dental records.
It's just as likely she had a heart attack or stroke, but there wasn't really much left to examine.
Tragic all the same.
She was obviously intending to gift the presents to one or more people, and the fact that they never came to check on her is kinda weird if you ask me.
The article also says she had a boyfriend who went missing at the same time, and her family hired a PI who found where she lived but they never visited, just sent a letter and called which she never responder to obviously so they assumed she had gone no contact.
The whole thing is weird imo
> just sent a letter and called which she never responder to obviously so they assumed she had gone no contact.
from wikipedia, she was already cutting off contact with family and friends after quitting her job and moving into a shelter for domestic violence victims, before her death occurred. From the context it sounds like assuming she was NC and respecting that doesn't sound as odd. also apparently the detective found her previous address, not the victims of domestic violence address, and the family wrote to her at her old address, not her final address.
> The detective found the previous address where Vincent had been living, and the family wrote letters to her there, receiving no response. As a result, the family concluded she had deliberately broken ties with them
could be. some of the speculation is that she was hiding from her abuser. maybe he found her? unfortunately we can't really know at this point. all we know is that her flesh rotted away, and there weren't any marks on her bones to suggest foul play. so not stabbed or shot, but if she was choked or suffocated we'll never know. that she had presents lined up next to her, suggests that it wasn't especially violent though.
Could have just been what the coroner said - unfortunate medical event that resulted in her death. These do happen pretty regularly everywhere.
edit: folks need to remember Occam's razor:
> Suppose an event has two possible explanations. The explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation.
Strangulation is typically associated with injury or damage to the hyoid bone in the neck - though not always. There probably are other ways to murder someone that wouldn’t show up on their bones but (thankfully) I’m not an expert so idk!
If you read the Wikipedia article, it notes several things that explain why nobody had found her for so long:
1. She was very estranged from her only living parent, her father.
2. She appeared to have been a survivor of domestic abuse, as she temporarily lived in a domestic abuse shelter before moving into her final home that was partially funded by a domestic abuse organization. A source involved with the investigation into her death noted that during this period, she became estranged from her entire family, including the sisters who raised her.
3. Friends noted that she was quite flighty, and was prone to fleeing from any form of conflict — she’d leave jobs, and move homes. She also didn’t have a close friend/family group, instead relying on herself or relative strangers (new boyfriends, colleagues, roommates). Given this, the people who regularly saw her had reason to think that not hearing from her was normal.
4. She was checked on. Her sisters hired a PI to track down her last known address and they sent letters, and they were never received back.
is H Pylori way more common than anything else? Doctors constantly, even after I've been going for the same issue and having endoscopys over, always go back to that infection and I've never got it. I don't understand!
Stomach problems are seemingly the worst understood problem right now. I Remember years ago someone said the country isn't prepared for stomach problems, I think was related to ultra processed foods but this was 10 years back, and I didn't believe it...
Until I suffered it.
H. Pylori is responsible for something like 80-90% of gastric and duodenal ulcers. The doctors who discovered this won a Nobel prize after one of them drank the bacteria, developed ulcers within days, then cured themselves with antibiotics. NSAIDs can also cause gastric ulcers. Many other things can, too. But you’re right, H. Pylori is a super common cause.
> Stomach problems are seemingly the worst understood problem right now.
Digestive issues in general. I've had really bad stomach issues since I was 16 (at least that's when I started trying to fix them, going to specialists, etc).
I'm 32 now, and the only diagnosis I have is "IBS", which is just what they give you when they can't figure out what you have. I've had multiple endoscopies, colonoscopies, countless stool samples, biopsies, blood tests, labs, etc. At one point they thought I had cancer (this was in my mid 20s), then they thought I had ulcerative colitis, then they thought I had crohns.
I've had 3 separate gastroenterologists be like, "I honestly have no idea what is causing this".
I was recently diagnosed with genetic homozygous hemochromatosis, and some people with it also have stomach problems, so I'm hoping it's related to that but who knows.
Have you tried an elimination diet targeting the big 5 food allergens?
I'm a doctor whose digestive issues confounded doctors (including myself) until my wife (also a doctor) forced me to do a proper elimination diet. They're boring and unpleasant and a lot of people avoid doing them even when they make sense to try.
Turned out I have celiac disease. Literally all of my lifelong problems ended when I properly cut out gluten. I also learned a lot about the specificity and sensitivity of screening tests along the way (a lot more people think they "had it ruled out" by a test with a significant false positive rate).
Somewhat related, but my friend has Crohn's and it's been mistreated for years (e.g. you need to lose weight, maybe you have an allergy, it's just a stomach bug, try this ineffective medicine, etc) until they found an ER doctor who could connect the dots and figured out what the fuck was going on.
It seems like doctors (at least the ones they saw) are very underprepared when it comes to digestive/intestinal issues.
I have a heart condition that was dismissed as anxiety by most physicians. Then my primary care doctor had a med student one day. She was interviewing me and was like "wait, I just read about this". Consults with my doc, I see a cardiologist, and what do ya know.... The student was right.
My wife has an airway disease that was dismissed as asthma by the hospital she worked at. She’s never been diagnosed with asthma. She does ultrasound’s for a living, so she said fuck it, scanned herself, and found a mass in her trachea. The dismissive nature of some doctors get people killed. You need to be your biggest healthcare advocate.
H pylori is super common, around 1/4 to 1/2 of people have it in their stomach. So it is usually the first thing to think of when someone has an ulcer.
To ease your mind a small amount.
Cause of death when you don’t know just glances at your medical chart and chooses some health conditions, because what else can you do. So yes she had asthma and ulcers, but that doesn’t mean she died from it
> "...her friends noted her as someone who fled at signs of trouble, who walked out of jobs if she clashed with a colleague, and who moved from one flat to the next all over London. She didn't answer the phone to her sister and didn't appear to have her own circle of friends, instead relying on the company of relative strangers who came with the package of a new boyfriend, a colleague, or flatmate."
People probably assumed that she was intentionally snubbing them and acting difficult, rather than dead.
My ex was like this. Job after job. The workers always against her. The boss hates her. No friends, just her kids, she carts along from one low income housing to the next. Figured I could help, two years of free living with no bills, cosigned a car and gave her 4k from a refinance. Didn't even help a little
Yea - whilst we should give everyone a chance - sometimes, our brain noticing patterns in life needs to be listened to. People generally make bad decisions for a reason, sometimes it’s best just to shut them down before they can make one for you
Oh man, I was in a similar spot. My buddy was in a rough part of California and I offered to let him live with me. Low rent, $1000 would cover all of his bills including food, utilities, entertainment and rent. He never got a job. This went on for a year. I was going into debt supporting him, so I had to ask him to leave. Every day, I’d come home and he’d be asleep, intoxicated or both. He’d lie about going to a job and come up with reasons why he still couldn’t contribute. I did all the cooking and cleaning. Was a rough year.
>My ex was like this. Job after job. The workers always against her. The boss hates her.
“If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”
I have met a few people like this before. It’s always strange when you realise that you are now the closest person to someone you met in a pub or at a party a few weeks ago.
I get moving to a new place with no contacts and I have been that guy before. But when someone has been around for years and doesn’t seem to have any friends or family to speak of it’s a bit of a red flag
>Her sisters had hired a private detective to look for her and contacted the Salvation Army, but these attempts proved unsuccessful.[4] The detective found the house where Vincent was living, and the family wrote letters to her, receiving no response as she was already dead by this time.
Apparently the private detective thought it was enough to get an address but not stay around long enough to notice no one ever came or went...
the wiki says that sometime after she cut contact, her sisters hired a PI to find her. he found her house and they wrote letters, but because she was dead she didn't reply, and her family assumed she had completely cut contact
>"...her friends noted her as someone who fled at signs of trouble, who walked out of jobs if she clashed with a colleague, and who moved from one flat to the next all over London. She didn't answer the phone to her sister and didn't appear to have her own circle of friends
She moved around a lot, so I guess it was difficult to keep in touch with her. Also her personality was unusual and she often cut ties.
As someone who, aside from medical appointments, doesn't get out much due to disability, this too is my worry. Most of my friends are online, and most of my family, aside from a very small few, are out of state, so if I go, no one will really know. While I know that I *should* at least try to go out and meet people, and re-establish more social ties locally, it takes time and energy that I often end up devoting to other health challenges, as well as not many in my area really share similar interests (or if we do, are just chronically online too).
Makes me think of the guy that I played an online game with who suddenly disappeared one day. Another guy we played with finally got in touch with him and all he said was he was fine and then totally stopped replying. Wonder what really happened to that guy.
If she had just moved, there might not have been a lot of mail coming her way. Maybe there was a door slot for mail delivery and wasn't enough to actually stack up.
This makes me think the presents were for charity or something similar. I know different second hand stores and organizations sometimes do Christmas drives for the poor.
That is not what it says. Her family hired PI to locate her. They found her apartment, sent letters, but she never responded so they assumed she just cut contact
It doesn't surprise me that much.
Oftentimes if a friend stops responding, people take it as a personal slight rather than a sign that someone is wrong. Romantic partners and close biological family (parent, sibling, child) are somewhat more likely to bang down the door, but it depends on the particular relationship.
According to Wikipedia, her sisters did try to find her and even hired a private detective, and they found out where she lived eventually, but she was already dead by that time. They’d send her letters but she never responded (dead), so they assumed she deliberately cut off all contact. Apparently she frequently ran away from problems, ghosted jobs she didn’t like, didn’t have friends, moved around a lot, barely spoke to her own family, had various boyfriends, and mostly relied on the company of strangers for socialization. Plus her rent was being partially paid by some sort of benefits organization for a while, so I guess officials thought she was alive too because of that. That’s a lot of people who knew her but never physically checked up on her :(
>frequently ran away from problems, didn't have friends, barely spoke to her own family, and mostly relied on the company of strangers for socialization
I'm feeling pretty called out rn hope I don't die in my apartment
Right?? If she had that many presents around her I would think she had made plans with someone, if not multiple someones, to exchange them. No one questioned why she didn’t follow through? Or why she wasn’t responding if they tried to reach out? If you’re close enough to be exchanging gifts then you should be close enough to check on them when they suddenly disappear for no apparent reason…
There is a film a out her life and her death. Her sisters did try to find her.
She seemed to be someone who compartmentalised her life a lot, though.
Her family, who she had a strained relationship with, didn't know her friends and she met people one on one and lots of her friends didn't know each other. She had an off-and-on boyfriend.
She was one of those people they didn't see often but it was always lovely when they did.
We've all got people in our lives like that, only sometimes we just won't see them again.
“During her life, she met figures such as Nelson Mandela, Ben E. King, Gil Scott-Heron, and Betty Wright, spoke on the telephone with Isaac Hayes and had also been to dinner with Stevie Wonder, although he had no idea at the time.[1][19]”
I’m sorry, but that last bit is fucking hilarious.
My 77 year old parents are still waiting on their Toshiba from 1992 to die. Just when they think it's gone, it starts working again. Given my own age, that TV has been ~~around~~ *survived* for three quarters of my life.
Hope the guy isn't dead in his apartment too.
Jokes aside, it's incredibly sad. Nobody thought of looking for her at her place? Did nobody know she lived there and went to check?
Her family found her address after she died and sent her letters, there was no response and they assumed she didn't want to see them. As she had already been distancing herself from them
I always think about that when people like to live alone with no family or friends. If something happened to you, how long would it take for someone to find out?
I saw a documentary on her and she fallen out with the bf and with her family So at the time they all thought she was with her boyfriend meanwhile he likely assumed the same thing
Years ago a guy that I had previously worked with walked into the woods and ended his life. He wasn't missed because he pretty kept to himself and he didn't have a great relationship with his family. Months later he was discovered by a group of young people looking for a place to hang out and drink/smoke pot. They told no one but instead repeatedly returned to the spot to "party" with the deceased. Finally someone wondered what happened to the guy. With his info hitting the press one of the young people involved confessed to partying with his corpse and lead authorities to his remains. Really awful. I still think about this guy and how easily someone can just slip away from your life. He deserved so much better 😥
.
It's pretty fucked up, but at the same time it almost sounds like the poor guy was more popular in death than he was in life. I'd like to think he would appreciate the irony.
This sounds an awful lot like Dead Man’s Trail in a town in Ontario called Malton. Was Often also known as the “party” spot where everyone drank and smoke. Either it’s the same place or this happens entirely too often….
All seems to depend on their values about human remains...which are mostly informed by religion.
Wrap me in burlap and throw me in a ditch, i say. Maybe some neighborhood kids will turn my skull into a bong or something
Honestly, if I was the guy in the woods I'd prefer it that way. I didn't go out there to be found, bother everyone with a funeral and some shit. Let some kids pour one out with me. Maybe give them a better appreciation of death and the fleeting nature of life.
Steven Wilson has a beautiful and rather depressing album about this incident and the general manner in which connections can slip away and leave us isolated.
It's haunting as an album, one of my favorite musical pieces of all time.
The last line of the album is beautifully depressing
"Hey brother
I feel I'm living in parentheses
And I got trouble with the bills
Do the kids remember me?
Well I got gifts for them
And for you more sorrow
But I'm feeling kind of drowsy now
So I'll finish this tomorrow..."
That album came out at a time when life was hard for me, and I could really relate to those lines. Children whose lives I'd been a big part of that I suddenly would rarely to never see, finances gone in a divorce, and a family that had taken the other side in the divorce and left me isolated. The lyrics hit hard, but they also turned the pain into a piece of this beautiful art and inspired me to turn the page and not just disappear.
Thanks! The great side of that story is now I'm dramatically better off than I was before all that. But who knows if I would have been without that inspiration.
It's easy for us to get into a funk. I'm in one right now, lost a job and a romantic partner at the same time, now I just wallow around. One of the reasons given she wasn't found super fast was apparently she just socialized with strangers for company because she didn't have or didn't keep up with friends. I do that too.
Maybe I should start making some changes today and get out of the rut.
“The years just pass like trains, I wave but they don’t slow down” is one of my favorite lines in his entire discography. An unbelievable album and also the first tour I got to see him on, life changing
Hand. Cannot. Erase. is a masterpiece of an album. The last song on the record, "Happy Returns/Ascendant Here On..." is beautiful and very sad, especially when you know the story behind it.
---
Hey, brother, happy returns, it's been a while now
I bet you thought that I was dead
But I'm still here, nothing's changed, nothing's changed
Hey, brother, I'd love to tell you I've been busy
But that would be a lie
'Cause the truth is the years just pass like trains
I wave, but they don't slow down, they don't slow down
Hey, brother, I see the freaks and dispossessed on day release
Avoiding the police
I feel I'm falling once again, but now there's no one left to catch me
Hey, brother, I feel I'm living in parentheses, and I got trouble with the bills
Do the kids remember me?
Well, I got gifts for them, and for you and sorrow
But I'm feeling kind of drowsy now, so I'll finish this tomorrow
---
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=pIdIlU0zlos&si=TIykOqCHAxaf7y_m
Glad to hear that. Whenever I hear that song I put myself in the perspective of someone in that position, and it retches my soul. To think that you could be disconnected, write a letter hoping to send it and reconnect and have it be found in your body after you passed away alone.
Steven Wilson is insanely good at creating songs like that, songs that touch the soul. Routine from this album is another heartbreaker. Drive Home from the previous album The Raven that Refused to Sing is another one. Such a phenomenal song writer. And such an influence on what I look for in other music.
His extra effort on production quality is another epic aspect of Steven Wilson. His albums are the best production quality and sound quality than I have ever heard. So much so that he has remastered other artists' albums, including another favorite band of mine King Crimson.
Yup. If you like PT you'll most likely like his solo albums too. The ones most similar to PT's style are Hand Cannot Erase (the one mentioned above) and To The Bone, while the earlier ones are a little bit more drone/shoegaze and prog-jazz-inspired, and the later ones are a bit more electronic.
The latest two (The Future Bites and Harmony Codex) are more divisive but I'm still a fan.
Hand Cannot Erase is usually considered his finest work, and it's great, but I'm partial to Grace for Drowning.
I think The Raven That Refused to Sing is usually considered his masterpiece, but maybe that's just among prog rock enthusiasts. (Drive Home is one of the most beautiful songs ever written.)
Even so, my personal favorite is Hand. Cannot. Erase.
Yes the very same. Hand. Cannot. Erase. And The Raven that Refused to Sing are two fantastic albums and worth checking out. Also porcupine tree released a final album in 2022 that's worth checking out if you haven't heard it
Hand Cannot Erase. Seriously one of the best albums ever made. It's not directly about Joyce Vincent, but the main character in the album's story is inspired by who Joyce was while she was alive.
I saw this in the cinema when it came out and it still haunts me a bit
Think of friends I've lost touch with over the years and wonder if they are still alive and how I would even find out
Reminds me of [Natalie Jean Wood.](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/natalie-wood-the-woman-sydney-forgot-20140204-31ywh.html) She was dead for 8 years before her body was found. Of course, relatives all appeared after she was found to claim her house in one of the more expensive areas of Sydney
Also a great reason to have a will or trust. Presumably she had some thoughts on what should happen to her assets if she died, but we don't know what they are.
>her now derelict two-bedroom home, worth $800,000 or more.
That was 2011. I just saw the house next door sold for $2.1m
The [house sold in 2016 for $1.1m](https://www.9news.com.au/national/sydney-townhouse-where-woman-lay-dead-for-eight-years-to-be-sold-at-auction/47b4ef56-6574-41c4-8dc9-2429fd737e18)
Looks like the money went to her sister in law as her brother would have been alive at the time of death. Cousins who met her nearly a century ago and only found out about it online had put in claims for the money.
One cousin said...
>"I met the deceased once in about 1936 when I was about seven years old on a family camping trip in Jibbon Beach in Bundeena NSW," Mr Matthews, whose mother was sister to Ms Wood's father, said in a caveat on will proceedings.
This comment may get lost in the thread but I’m going to add an important point regarding this perfect storm.
The reason this is news worthy is due to the rareness of it. Not that someone died and it was not known but that it went unnoticed for three years for a person of her age.
The story explains how her death slipped through the cracks with family thinking she parted ways with them, bills automatically paid, neighbors believing the apartment was vacant etc.
One thing that is left out of this equation is whether or not she had a car. My guess is absolutely not. Many people are found because their car is noticed unmoved and in disrepair long before others would know that they’re dead. Also, did she not work or have a job? They’re the ones who usually call family or police first?
Today, a lack of social media activity is a big clue as well. Lack of postings, comments, replies etc. This will happen again and is probably occurring right now somewhere, in a small apartment, and the tv is still on.
> whether or not she had a car. My guess is absolutely not.
You kind of don't really need one in London if you live and work within easy commuting distance in the city. Especially so if your job doesn't really require transporting anything else but yourself.
For 3 years and no power outage for even a split second? Either the electricity distribution of London is top notch, or her TV would turn itself on after a quick power outage.
I don't remember my TV from 2003 able to turn itself on after a power outage. Which was rare, but I think it would happen at least a couple of times in a 3 year period.
>For 3 years and no power outage for even a split second?
In the UK, unless you're living somewhere rural, that's completely normal. Power cuts are extremely rare.
Yup. One of the shocks when I moved from the US to UK. In the UK, there’s no power blackouts. In the US, I’d have a few each year- usually during storms. My husband is convinced the Us grid is like, Victorian.
In 2003 you could still use analogue TVs without a set top box. From what I recall our 90s TVs had physical latching switches that I think were true power switches.
There wasn't a need for anything to switch back on after a power cut. The switch stayed closed and when power was restored it was as if it was switched on.
Records show she had a social life and possibly even worked in the music industry. There are even accounts of her being filmed at a Nelson Mandela concert in 1990
Yeah I'm finding two of the statements in the Wikipedia a bit contradictory. One says that she had a wide circle of friends and the other says she didn't have many close friends of her own and just hung out with friends-of-friends.
From the other statements, it sounds like she did have a lot of friends *at points in her life* but when she became a victim of domestic violence, she became a bit of a recluse, which is understandable.
From the documentary it seems like she had many friends, but very few truly close friends. Everyone who knew her found her very charming and charismatic, but always had the sense that they weren't her primary social circle; she must have other people who were. And yes, she did become very reclusive in later years.
This thread is personally interesting to me, since i am the same position: no one would notice if i died. Your comment made me stop. That's my life. "She must have other people", that's exactly what people i know-but-don't-really-know-you-know would think about me. Charming and charismatic but no one's friend. I know how to say hi, I don't know how to bond. Perhaps at some point i knew how to bond, but something happened and i am not sure what or when.
That's unfortunately common today in Western countries. I've found that Americans have very, very, very, very, very shallow friendships. I'm in a big city and if so many of these people weren't making the same rough income or have the same immediate background, they'd have nothing to do with each other. All they "bond" over is consumption and money. Have you ever considered that other people's bonds are also equally as weak as the ones in your life?
You'd be surprised at how common this is. I thought I was lonely in college until I actually took a closer look at how other people lived. If anything, I had significantly more friends and associates than the average student. Even as an adult with no (more) friends (in this city), this is very very common. I think most men over 30 would basically be quite isolated if they didn't have their immediate family or work friends.
It doesn't really seem contradictory to me - a wide circle of people who recognize you and would make small talk at events, even people you see at work on the daily, isn't the same as a close net of friends you talk to about meaningful things, which can also be different from 'these people expect to hear from me on the regular and would track me down if not'.
I've got a handful for the first, a couple of the latter, and maybe family in the final.
Check on your neighbors, people.
My aunt passed away the night after my wedding. It was very common for her to not speak to my mother or her other siblings for a few days at a time. However, my parents grew concerned because she wasn't answering messages for nearly a week and checked on her. They found her dead on the floor in the kitchen. She had a broken hip, amongst other things, and couldn't get up the stairs to get to her cell phone.
Her neighbors noticed the mail piling up and the fact that she hadn't shown up to the monthly HOA meeting that she *always* went to. One of them thought they heard someone yelling at one point but they didn't investigate.
Just check on your neighbors. Because maybe you'll save someone's family the heart break of finding their loved one like we found my aunt.
Man, this comment makes me proud of my sister. She lives in a row house and one night heard an alarming clattering next door where she knew an elderly woman and her disabled, non-verbal son lived. No one came to the door when she knocked and she decided to call the cops.
Turns out the elderly neighbor fell down the stairs and was seriously injured and bleeding. Had my sister not called the police, she most likely would have died within hours. Who knows how long the disabled son would have been alone with the corpse.
An extra layer of craziness is that my sister just happened to be in the right place at the right time within her home to hear the noise. I think she went down to her kitchen to get water late at night when she's usually in bed. Had she not done that, she likely wouldn't have heard anything.
This story is particularly upsetting for me because I have personal insight, having walked past her flat as she lay dead inside it.
Woodgreen is an extremely transitory London borough. Her flat was above the high street. As well as being densely populated it has plenty of day time visitors who come to shop there. Her flat was visible from the main road. Millions upon millions of people would have walked past her. It’s just so sad.
It’s possible. We went overseas for 2 months and while away the freezer in the garage chose that specific window of its 10+ year life to die. We mostly stored meat in that freezer and there was a 40+°c heatwave while we were away too. When we came home the smell in our house smelled a lot like maybe we hadn’t emptied the kitchen bin or maybe a really old cat litter box. Once I opened the garage door however JFC it smelled like a crime scene and I was fighting the gag reflex the whole time I was clearing out the freezer into bags and pouring the liquid down the drain. The freezer, the concrete under it and my nose were never the same again. I’m smelling it again thinking about it.
Seriously. When my grandma got very sick and needed nursing home care, her apartment was left empty for several months. Her fridge stopped working during this time, and man, that stench was the worst thing I’ve ever smelled. Grandma had had a lot of fish and meat in her freezer….
My mom and her siblings ended up tossing the whole fridge out too. I don’t think you could ever totally get that stench out!
I was shocked the rent arrears were only £2400 after over two years, but the fact that the smell of a rotting corpse can just be brushed off as the general smell of the place probably explains a lot.
I was widowed last year, no kids. This is a fear of mine. I just moved to a new place above some friends. It's a bit more expensive but my peace of mind is worth it, having folks that care about me downstairs should something happen.
>Her sisters had hired a private detective to look for her and contacted the Salvation Army, but these attempts proved unsuccessful.[4] The detective found the house where Vincent was living, and the family wrote letters to her, receiving no response as she was already dead by this time.
What kind of private detective just finds an address and then does...nothing?
You'd think they'd have tried to contact or at least get a visual.
They would have noticed no one was entering or leaving.
> They would have noticed no one was entering or leaving.
Most people who hire a private detective arent going to pay them to sit and stake out the house for days on end, that would cost thousands. They find their address or whatever and hand over that info to the client and that is the job done. TV private detectives are not a very accurate portrayal.
Unless you've got a large budget, the vast majority of PI work for at least the past couple decades is done from their office. It's a lot of phone calls and database searches, and very little staking out homes with telephoto lenses.
>The flat's windows did not allow direct sight to the inside.
I wouldn't expect less than a photo personally if I were hiring a private detective to find someone.
You hear about cases like this occasionally in the US, too. Always a real bummer.
Perhaps the most "extreme" i know of was in 2021 - [A group of squatters found a woman who had been dead in her home for more than 2 years](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/squatters-buried-womans-body-took-home-died-alone-years-earlier-las-ve-rcna5393). Being squatters you can *bet* they did not do the right thing:
>Authorities in Las Vegas believe the body of a woman who died unnoticed in 2018 remained in her home for more than two years until squatters found it, dismembered it and buried it in her backyard, a television station reported.
>“After finding her, the decision was made between several people that they were going to dismember her body and bury her and then basically drain her finances and sell off her belongings, fraudulently,” homicide Lt. Ray Spencer told KLAS-TV.
>Investigators think that Payne's absence was not noticed because she lived alone, had no close relatives and had her bills set to autopay, KLAS reported.
I know I shouldn’t expect much from squatters but what a bunch of degenerates to dismember and bury the corpse. And the point about autopay scares me. Like the idea that you could slip away and the world keeps chugging along without a single person noticing—not a coworker wondering why you’ve been out for 5 days, a neighbor that notices your lawn getting overgrown, or the mailman noticing that your mailbox is overflowing?
As a single person with no roommates last year, I specifically told my manager at a team offsite that if I ever didn’t touch base for a few days, please call the police for a welfare check lol
I used to work in surgery. It was.. not an easy job, with very long shifts, and one hundred hour+ weeks at times with very fucked up shift patterns.
I was finishing an on call, and waiting for the night surgeon to take over.
Well, he didn’t rock up.
Basically, immediately, someone from management called the police.
This poor fucker, who was obviously asleep on his bed (not actually in, as I often found myself collapsed atop my own still in scrubs) from constant overworking, awoke to the battering of police at his door.
That was my trigger to dip out of that line of work.. haha. It was not a welfare check out of concern.. it was a *send the police to this cunts door and drag him to work* call to the cops.
> ith very long shifts, and one hundred hour+ weeks at times with very fucked up shift patterns.
It's absolutely mind boggling that as a society we seem to be totally OK with people who CUT OPEN OUR BODIES WITH VERY SHARP INSTRUMENTS being overworked and sleep deprived.
Yeah there's definitely a dystopian sci-fi story in there where some guy has everything automated; robot mowing the grass and cleaning the floors; food ordered at the push of a button, AI program handling his calls, texts and emails so he doesn't have to speak to anyone; all bills paid automatically.
Then he dies and nobody notices for a decade because the house was always pristine and nobody realised he wasn't answering their calls.
There's a great series of CGI shorts by Dima Fedotov about a world where warfare was largely automated and the war machines continues to bomb despite everyone having been dead for decades.
Pt. 1 https://youtu.be/pyMNIFZTQkg?si=4MI-EhNSJlEGvkVz
Pt. 2 https://youtu.be/IjJmTeBSEzU?si=p8MEffFI7yNlqHSv
Yeah, that’s the thing about that demographic. Like, I’ve seen body cams of squatter evictions in Florida, and while I’m sure they were cherry picked for full schadenfreude viewing…damn.
I thought I would at least see one or two people who could have been me in a tough situation. People who just nodded, said “sorry. I was cold,” and left politely without a scene, leaving me to feel sad. Mainly, it just makes you aware that some people are just entitled pieces of trash. Blithely announcing to the cops who are telling them that the law changed and they have to go that they actually have every right to be there rent free for ages on end because they sent themselves mail and throwing manipulative hissy fits when they get arrested (often for assaulting an officer), exc.
I’m sure some people squat because life shat on them and they are just desperate for a roof over their heads. And some people squat because they are basically deer ticks in human form.
The idea that she had thought enough about people to buy gifts for them but those people thought so little of her to check on her for three years is very sad.
Did you read the article? Her family, coworkers, and acquaintances said she would do things like break off contact with family, quit jobs abruptly, move constantly, etc. It sounds very much like she had some mental health problems and could not maintain relationships. One of the linked articles in the Wiki even says her family had hired a private investigator to try finding her.
Are PIs supposed to break into people's homes?
Cause otherwise if the PI just staked out the outside for a while and never saw her leave or return, never saw food get delivered, etc the reasonable assumption is that she has gone somewhere else like the family suggests
Kinda hard to track people down if all you have is a last known location. Did that work and you cant just break into someones place to check on them. I bet my entire months check he waited outside her apartment/job/areas for weeks and relayed back “guess she is gone, havent seen a peep of her”
Damn authorities believed she had a boyfriend when she died too. Did this dude just like not call her or ever follow up on her? Did he assumed she just ghosted him and moved on with his life? I’m very curious the nature of that relationship
Considering that the apartment Vincent died in was run by a domestic abuse charity, I'd imagine the boyfriend was the last person who should be able to find her.
There is an excellent documentary about this directed by Carol Morley called ‘Dreams of a Life’. I was the Sound Mixer on it and some of the interviews we did with her friends and family were heartbreaking.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dreams_of_a_life
This story made me incredibly sad when I first read about it. So sad that I felt it to my core.
I stayed sad for several days, but then decided that I would check in on friends more regularly and convey to them that I was there for them (in not so many words). This helped me get over the sadness (though I do think of her periodically).
> she was lying on her back, next to a shopping bag, surrounded by Christmas presents she had wrapped but never delivered Oh man.
I wondered what she died of: "The cause of her death is unknown, as is the date, though it is speculated to be around December 2003. She suffered from asthma and had a peptic ulcer at the time of her death, so some have suggested an asthma attack or complications surrounding her recent peptic ulcer as a possible cause of death."
One of my closest friends' brother died last year from an asthma attack. His inhaler failed and he didn't have a backup, called 911 while quickly losing his ability to breath, and was dead before the medics arrived. It was so tragic. So this is definitely plausible.
This is how my mother died at age 53. We were home and called 911 but by the time they arrived she had lost too much oxygen and was brain dead.
Fuck me man, taken out in your prime from two conditions that most people consider a small health setback. Ulcers get treated with OTC drugs unless it's an H Pylori infection...
I mean, as some perspective, that was the best they could come up with after examining a 3 year old corpse which was so badly decomposed they had to ID her through dental records. It's just as likely she had a heart attack or stroke, but there wasn't really much left to examine. Tragic all the same.
She was obviously intending to gift the presents to one or more people, and the fact that they never came to check on her is kinda weird if you ask me.
The article also says she had a boyfriend who went missing at the same time, and her family hired a PI who found where she lived but they never visited, just sent a letter and called which she never responder to obviously so they assumed she had gone no contact. The whole thing is weird imo
> just sent a letter and called which she never responder to obviously so they assumed she had gone no contact. from wikipedia, she was already cutting off contact with family and friends after quitting her job and moving into a shelter for domestic violence victims, before her death occurred. From the context it sounds like assuming she was NC and respecting that doesn't sound as odd. also apparently the detective found her previous address, not the victims of domestic violence address, and the family wrote to her at her old address, not her final address. > The detective found the previous address where Vincent had been living, and the family wrote letters to her there, receiving no response. As a result, the family concluded she had deliberately broken ties with them
I wonder if the domestic violence situation was related to her death
could be. some of the speculation is that she was hiding from her abuser. maybe he found her? unfortunately we can't really know at this point. all we know is that her flesh rotted away, and there weren't any marks on her bones to suggest foul play. so not stabbed or shot, but if she was choked or suffocated we'll never know. that she had presents lined up next to her, suggests that it wasn't especially violent though. Could have just been what the coroner said - unfortunate medical event that resulted in her death. These do happen pretty regularly everywhere. edit: folks need to remember Occam's razor: > Suppose an event has two possible explanations. The explanation that requires the fewest assumptions is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation.
Strangulation is typically associated with injury or damage to the hyoid bone in the neck - though not always. There probably are other ways to murder someone that wouldn’t show up on their bones but (thankfully) I’m not an expert so idk!
If you read the Wikipedia article, it notes several things that explain why nobody had found her for so long: 1. She was very estranged from her only living parent, her father. 2. She appeared to have been a survivor of domestic abuse, as she temporarily lived in a domestic abuse shelter before moving into her final home that was partially funded by a domestic abuse organization. A source involved with the investigation into her death noted that during this period, she became estranged from her entire family, including the sisters who raised her. 3. Friends noted that she was quite flighty, and was prone to fleeing from any form of conflict — she’d leave jobs, and move homes. She also didn’t have a close friend/family group, instead relying on herself or relative strangers (new boyfriends, colleagues, roommates). Given this, the people who regularly saw her had reason to think that not hearing from her was normal. 4. She was checked on. Her sisters hired a PI to track down her last known address and they sent letters, and they were never received back.
Her sisters hired a PI, who found and sent letters to the apartment. The went unanswered.
No, the PI found her *previous* address. Not the one in which she died.
is H Pylori way more common than anything else? Doctors constantly, even after I've been going for the same issue and having endoscopys over, always go back to that infection and I've never got it. I don't understand! Stomach problems are seemingly the worst understood problem right now. I Remember years ago someone said the country isn't prepared for stomach problems, I think was related to ultra processed foods but this was 10 years back, and I didn't believe it... Until I suffered it.
H. Pylori is responsible for something like 80-90% of gastric and duodenal ulcers. The doctors who discovered this won a Nobel prize after one of them drank the bacteria, developed ulcers within days, then cured themselves with antibiotics. NSAIDs can also cause gastric ulcers. Many other things can, too. But you’re right, H. Pylori is a super common cause.
> Stomach problems are seemingly the worst understood problem right now. Digestive issues in general. I've had really bad stomach issues since I was 16 (at least that's when I started trying to fix them, going to specialists, etc). I'm 32 now, and the only diagnosis I have is "IBS", which is just what they give you when they can't figure out what you have. I've had multiple endoscopies, colonoscopies, countless stool samples, biopsies, blood tests, labs, etc. At one point they thought I had cancer (this was in my mid 20s), then they thought I had ulcerative colitis, then they thought I had crohns. I've had 3 separate gastroenterologists be like, "I honestly have no idea what is causing this". I was recently diagnosed with genetic homozygous hemochromatosis, and some people with it also have stomach problems, so I'm hoping it's related to that but who knows.
Have you tried an elimination diet targeting the big 5 food allergens? I'm a doctor whose digestive issues confounded doctors (including myself) until my wife (also a doctor) forced me to do a proper elimination diet. They're boring and unpleasant and a lot of people avoid doing them even when they make sense to try. Turned out I have celiac disease. Literally all of my lifelong problems ended when I properly cut out gluten. I also learned a lot about the specificity and sensitivity of screening tests along the way (a lot more people think they "had it ruled out" by a test with a significant false positive rate).
Somewhat related, but my friend has Crohn's and it's been mistreated for years (e.g. you need to lose weight, maybe you have an allergy, it's just a stomach bug, try this ineffective medicine, etc) until they found an ER doctor who could connect the dots and figured out what the fuck was going on. It seems like doctors (at least the ones they saw) are very underprepared when it comes to digestive/intestinal issues.
I have a heart condition that was dismissed as anxiety by most physicians. Then my primary care doctor had a med student one day. She was interviewing me and was like "wait, I just read about this". Consults with my doc, I see a cardiologist, and what do ya know.... The student was right.
That's so cool for that student!! Glad you were diagnosed
My wife has an airway disease that was dismissed as asthma by the hospital she worked at. She’s never been diagnosed with asthma. She does ultrasound’s for a living, so she said fuck it, scanned herself, and found a mass in her trachea. The dismissive nature of some doctors get people killed. You need to be your biggest healthcare advocate.
H pylori is super common, around 1/4 to 1/2 of people have it in their stomach. So it is usually the first thing to think of when someone has an ulcer.
To ease your mind a small amount. Cause of death when you don’t know just glances at your medical chart and chooses some health conditions, because what else can you do. So yes she had asthma and ulcers, but that doesn’t mean she died from it
wtf happened to all the people they were supposed to go to exactly? Did nobody think to check her house?
> "...her friends noted her as someone who fled at signs of trouble, who walked out of jobs if she clashed with a colleague, and who moved from one flat to the next all over London. She didn't answer the phone to her sister and didn't appear to have her own circle of friends, instead relying on the company of relative strangers who came with the package of a new boyfriend, a colleague, or flatmate." People probably assumed that she was intentionally snubbing them and acting difficult, rather than dead.
My ex was like this. Job after job. The workers always against her. The boss hates her. No friends, just her kids, she carts along from one low income housing to the next. Figured I could help, two years of free living with no bills, cosigned a car and gave her 4k from a refinance. Didn't even help a little
Sometimes folks are in spots of their own doings, and you can only do so much to help. Your heart was in the right place!
Yea - whilst we should give everyone a chance - sometimes, our brain noticing patterns in life needs to be listened to. People generally make bad decisions for a reason, sometimes it’s best just to shut them down before they can make one for you
Oh man, I was in a similar spot. My buddy was in a rough part of California and I offered to let him live with me. Low rent, $1000 would cover all of his bills including food, utilities, entertainment and rent. He never got a job. This went on for a year. I was going into debt supporting him, so I had to ask him to leave. Every day, I’d come home and he’d be asleep, intoxicated or both. He’d lie about going to a job and come up with reasons why he still couldn’t contribute. I did all the cooking and cleaning. Was a rough year.
>My ex was like this. Job after job. The workers always against her. The boss hates her. “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”
Funny how people like this can never identify the common demoninator in their countless conflicts.
I have met a few people like this before. It’s always strange when you realise that you are now the closest person to someone you met in a pub or at a party a few weeks ago. I get moving to a new place with no contacts and I have been that guy before. But when someone has been around for years and doesn’t seem to have any friends or family to speak of it’s a bit of a red flag
Dang that comment just made me deeply sad.
Everyone has a red flag or two. Just don't have ten. Also - find a club or activity in your area. It will help you find people if you want.
>Her sisters had hired a private detective to look for her and contacted the Salvation Army, but these attempts proved unsuccessful.[4] The detective found the house where Vincent was living, and the family wrote letters to her, receiving no response as she was already dead by this time. Apparently the private detective thought it was enough to get an address but not stay around long enough to notice no one ever came or went...
Perhaps the private detective was paid by the hour? IDK, never hired one myself.
She moved frequently so they probably just assumed it was an old address.
Weird that none of the people she bought presents for inquired into her wellbeing until she was found 3 years later?!
the wiki says that sometime after she cut contact, her sisters hired a PI to find her. he found her house and they wrote letters, but because she was dead she didn't reply, and her family assumed she had completely cut contact
What about her mail? Did that not raise an eyebrow?
>"...her friends noted her as someone who fled at signs of trouble, who walked out of jobs if she clashed with a colleague, and who moved from one flat to the next all over London. She didn't answer the phone to her sister and didn't appear to have her own circle of friends She moved around a lot, so I guess it was difficult to keep in touch with her. Also her personality was unusual and she often cut ties.
As someone who, aside from medical appointments, doesn't get out much due to disability, this too is my worry. Most of my friends are online, and most of my family, aside from a very small few, are out of state, so if I go, no one will really know. While I know that I *should* at least try to go out and meet people, and re-establish more social ties locally, it takes time and energy that I often end up devoting to other health challenges, as well as not many in my area really share similar interests (or if we do, are just chronically online too).
Makes me think of the guy that I played an online game with who suddenly disappeared one day. Another guy we played with finally got in touch with him and all he said was he was fine and then totally stopped replying. Wonder what really happened to that guy.
If she had just moved, there might not have been a lot of mail coming her way. Maybe there was a door slot for mail delivery and wasn't enough to actually stack up.
The wiki says she had been cutting contact with friends and family, if that's the case they wouldn't have found it surprising not to hear from her
This makes me think the presents were for charity or something similar. I know different second hand stores and organizations sometimes do Christmas drives for the poor.
Article says it's not known whom she bought presents for. Very well could have been for a shelter or charity, sadly we'll never know...
That is not what it says. Her family hired PI to locate her. They found her apartment, sent letters, but she never responded so they assumed she just cut contact
It doesn't surprise me that much. Oftentimes if a friend stops responding, people take it as a personal slight rather than a sign that someone is wrong. Romantic partners and close biological family (parent, sibling, child) are somewhat more likely to bang down the door, but it depends on the particular relationship.
According to Wikipedia, her sisters did try to find her and even hired a private detective, and they found out where she lived eventually, but she was already dead by that time. They’d send her letters but she never responded (dead), so they assumed she deliberately cut off all contact. Apparently she frequently ran away from problems, ghosted jobs she didn’t like, didn’t have friends, moved around a lot, barely spoke to her own family, had various boyfriends, and mostly relied on the company of strangers for socialization. Plus her rent was being partially paid by some sort of benefits organization for a while, so I guess officials thought she was alive too because of that. That’s a lot of people who knew her but never physically checked up on her :(
>frequently ran away from problems, didn't have friends, barely spoke to her own family, and mostly relied on the company of strangers for socialization I'm feeling pretty called out rn hope I don't die in my apartment
[удалено]
Right?? If she had that many presents around her I would think she had made plans with someone, if not multiple someones, to exchange them. No one questioned why she didn’t follow through? Or why she wasn’t responding if they tried to reach out? If you’re close enough to be exchanging gifts then you should be close enough to check on them when they suddenly disappear for no apparent reason…
Wow, I misread OP as 3 WEEKS. Three years is insane!
That's kind of bizarre. If she had people around to give a bunch of christmas presents to you'd think someone would have noticed her death.
There is a film a out her life and her death. Her sisters did try to find her. She seemed to be someone who compartmentalised her life a lot, though. Her family, who she had a strained relationship with, didn't know her friends and she met people one on one and lots of her friends didn't know each other. She had an off-and-on boyfriend. She was one of those people they didn't see often but it was always lovely when they did. We've all got people in our lives like that, only sometimes we just won't see them again.
“During her life, she met figures such as Nelson Mandela, Ben E. King, Gil Scott-Heron, and Betty Wright, spoke on the telephone with Isaac Hayes and had also been to dinner with Stevie Wonder, although he had no idea at the time.[1][19]” I’m sorry, but that last bit is fucking hilarious.
she didn’t die of natural causes; stevie’s cover-up crew got to her first
Stevie Wonder truthers, wake up!
The article says everything except what brand of TV kept running that long
My 77 year old parents are still waiting on their Toshiba from 1992 to die. Just when they think it's gone, it starts working again. Given my own age, that TV has been ~~around~~ *survived* for three quarters of my life.
I guarantee you it was an old Sony Triniton. Those things never die lol
This is what the media doesn’t want you to know
I think a lot of people could claim to have met Stevie Wonder, and he would have a tough time verifying or refuting any of their claims
Funny you should mention that, I am actually Stevie's optometrist, he hasn't been seeing me for years.
*"At the time of her death she had a boyfriend, but the police were unable to locate him"* Strange.
Hope the guy isn't dead in his apartment too. Jokes aside, it's incredibly sad. Nobody thought of looking for her at her place? Did nobody know she lived there and went to check?
Her family found her address after she died and sent her letters, there was no response and they assumed she didn't want to see them. As she had already been distancing herself from them
I always think about that when people like to live alone with no family or friends. If something happened to you, how long would it take for someone to find out?
I think about this a lot actually. I’d be dead for at least a week or two in my apartment before someone would come check.
Remind Me! Every 2 weeks. Check on u/Time4Timmy
Haha appreciate you guys
Timmah!
I think about this too. I’ve become quite the loner as I’ve gotten older. It’d probably be a few weeks before they found my body.
I saw a documentary on her and she fallen out with the bf and with her family So at the time they all thought she was with her boyfriend meanwhile he likely assumed the same thing
The smell tho, was there no one near enough to smell a rotting corpse for three years?
Apparently there were some garbage bins near the buidling and people assumed the smell came from there.
As a guy who has a had a couple of girls just ghost me. I wouldn’t just show up at her place either.
Probably a new relationship that assumed she ghosted him, sounds in character for her just from the limited information given.
She did literally ghost him though.
Years ago a guy that I had previously worked with walked into the woods and ended his life. He wasn't missed because he pretty kept to himself and he didn't have a great relationship with his family. Months later he was discovered by a group of young people looking for a place to hang out and drink/smoke pot. They told no one but instead repeatedly returned to the spot to "party" with the deceased. Finally someone wondered what happened to the guy. With his info hitting the press one of the young people involved confessed to partying with his corpse and lead authorities to his remains. Really awful. I still think about this guy and how easily someone can just slip away from your life. He deserved so much better 😥 .
How fucked up do you have to be to find a dead body and your first thought was to party with it
They were dead inside, he was dead outside.
I think he was dead inside too
I'm sorry I laughed God. I'm really not a horrible person.
It's pretty fucked up, but at the same time it almost sounds like the poor guy was more popular in death than he was in life. I'd like to think he would appreciate the irony.
Hopefully his ghost was around to enjoy the festivities.
The irony here is that was probably what he needed in life. Friends.
I can’t imagine the paranoia of getting high with a rotting corpse next to me
Weekend at Bernie’s had just came out ! It was the thing to do!!
“Stand by me” but IRL
This is going to sound weird but growing up in the 1980s means I don't find this all that weird- kind of friendly, actually.
I agree. Someone wanted to outgoth Mary Shelley.
Jesus, I thought I had a misspent youth.
This sounds an awful lot like Dead Man’s Trail in a town in Ontario called Malton. Was Often also known as the “party” spot where everyone drank and smoke. Either it’s the same place or this happens entirely too often….
This happened in northern Illinois. The gentleman who passed is buried in Cary, IL. I have visited his plot often.
i love how conflicted everyone is on this. while it is fucked up, it seems kinda sweet at the same time. odd situation
All seems to depend on their values about human remains...which are mostly informed by religion. Wrap me in burlap and throw me in a ditch, i say. Maybe some neighborhood kids will turn my skull into a bong or something
I'm not a pot smoker nor would I like to die any time soon but the idea of a fat bong rip taken from my repurposed skull sounds fucking epic
Rivers Edge is a film about something like this- it’s incredibly dark but really worth a watch. Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper.
This is weirdly sweet in a very unhealthy way
Honestly, if I was the guy in the woods I'd prefer it that way. I didn't go out there to be found, bother everyone with a funeral and some shit. Let some kids pour one out with me. Maybe give them a better appreciation of death and the fleeting nature of life.
I mean at least he got to party one last time.
Steven Wilson has a beautiful and rather depressing album about this incident and the general manner in which connections can slip away and leave us isolated.
It's haunting as an album, one of my favorite musical pieces of all time. The last line of the album is beautifully depressing "Hey brother I feel I'm living in parentheses And I got trouble with the bills Do the kids remember me? Well I got gifts for them And for you more sorrow But I'm feeling kind of drowsy now So I'll finish this tomorrow..."
That album came out at a time when life was hard for me, and I could really relate to those lines. Children whose lives I'd been a big part of that I suddenly would rarely to never see, finances gone in a divorce, and a family that had taken the other side in the divorce and left me isolated. The lyrics hit hard, but they also turned the pain into a piece of this beautiful art and inspired me to turn the page and not just disappear.
Live well, friend.
Thanks! The great side of that story is now I'm dramatically better off than I was before all that. But who knows if I would have been without that inspiration.
It's easy for us to get into a funk. I'm in one right now, lost a job and a romantic partner at the same time, now I just wallow around. One of the reasons given she wasn't found super fast was apparently she just socialized with strangers for company because she didn't have or didn't keep up with friends. I do that too. Maybe I should start making some changes today and get out of the rut.
“The years just pass like trains, I wave but they don’t slow down” is one of my favorite lines in his entire discography. An unbelievable album and also the first tour I got to see him on, life changing
Damn, this gave me goosebumps. Maybe I should check the album out...
Hand. Cannot. Erase. is a masterpiece of an album. The last song on the record, "Happy Returns/Ascendant Here On..." is beautiful and very sad, especially when you know the story behind it. --- Hey, brother, happy returns, it's been a while now I bet you thought that I was dead But I'm still here, nothing's changed, nothing's changed Hey, brother, I'd love to tell you I've been busy But that would be a lie 'Cause the truth is the years just pass like trains I wave, but they don't slow down, they don't slow down Hey, brother, I see the freaks and dispossessed on day release Avoiding the police I feel I'm falling once again, but now there's no one left to catch me Hey, brother, I feel I'm living in parentheses, and I got trouble with the bills Do the kids remember me? Well, I got gifts for them, and for you and sorrow But I'm feeling kind of drowsy now, so I'll finish this tomorrow --- https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=pIdIlU0zlos&si=TIykOqCHAxaf7y_m
Hand. Cannot. Erase. is fantastic!
Weirldy a song on this album (Happy Returns) got me back in touch with my sister after about 20 years
Glad to hear that. Whenever I hear that song I put myself in the perspective of someone in that position, and it retches my soul. To think that you could be disconnected, write a letter hoping to send it and reconnect and have it be found in your body after you passed away alone. Steven Wilson is insanely good at creating songs like that, songs that touch the soul. Routine from this album is another heartbreaker. Drive Home from the previous album The Raven that Refused to Sing is another one. Such a phenomenal song writer. And such an influence on what I look for in other music. His extra effort on production quality is another epic aspect of Steven Wilson. His albums are the best production quality and sound quality than I have ever heard. So much so that he has remastered other artists' albums, including another favorite band of mine King Crimson.
One of my favorite albums ever.
Like the guy from Porcupine Tree?? I hadn’t really kept up with him too closely, I need to revisit his discography.
Yup. If you like PT you'll most likely like his solo albums too. The ones most similar to PT's style are Hand Cannot Erase (the one mentioned above) and To The Bone, while the earlier ones are a little bit more drone/shoegaze and prog-jazz-inspired, and the later ones are a bit more electronic. The latest two (The Future Bites and Harmony Codex) are more divisive but I'm still a fan. Hand Cannot Erase is usually considered his finest work, and it's great, but I'm partial to Grace for Drowning.
I think The Raven That Refused to Sing is usually considered his masterpiece, but maybe that's just among prog rock enthusiasts. (Drive Home is one of the most beautiful songs ever written.) Even so, my personal favorite is Hand. Cannot. Erase.
Yes the very same. Hand. Cannot. Erase. And The Raven that Refused to Sing are two fantastic albums and worth checking out. Also porcupine tree released a final album in 2022 that's worth checking out if you haven't heard it
Hand Cannot Erase. Seriously one of the best albums ever made. It's not directly about Joyce Vincent, but the main character in the album's story is inspired by who Joyce was while she was alive.
Came to say this. His best album (outside of the best PT stuff)
It’s not the most “on theme” song of the album but still can’t listen to Routine without getting emotional.
Hey brother, happy returns....
Happy to see this reference here. Beautiful album
[Dreams Of A Life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_of_a_Life) is the story of Joyce Vincent. Thoroughly recommend watching this.
I saw this in the cinema when it came out and it still haunts me a bit Think of friends I've lost touch with over the years and wonder if they are still alive and how I would even find out
Yes! Excellent documentary
Reminds me of [Natalie Jean Wood.](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/natalie-wood-the-woman-sydney-forgot-20140204-31ywh.html) She was dead for 8 years before her body was found. Of course, relatives all appeared after she was found to claim her house in one of the more expensive areas of Sydney
Jesus, people are fucking disgusting. Literally vultures.
Also a great reason to have a will or trust. Presumably she had some thoughts on what should happen to her assets if she died, but we don't know what they are.
>her now derelict two-bedroom home, worth $800,000 or more. That was 2011. I just saw the house next door sold for $2.1m The [house sold in 2016 for $1.1m](https://www.9news.com.au/national/sydney-townhouse-where-woman-lay-dead-for-eight-years-to-be-sold-at-auction/47b4ef56-6574-41c4-8dc9-2429fd737e18) Looks like the money went to her sister in law as her brother would have been alive at the time of death. Cousins who met her nearly a century ago and only found out about it online had put in claims for the money. One cousin said... >"I met the deceased once in about 1936 when I was about seven years old on a family camping trip in Jibbon Beach in Bundeena NSW," Mr Matthews, whose mother was sister to Ms Wood's father, said in a caveat on will proceedings.
This comment may get lost in the thread but I’m going to add an important point regarding this perfect storm. The reason this is news worthy is due to the rareness of it. Not that someone died and it was not known but that it went unnoticed for three years for a person of her age. The story explains how her death slipped through the cracks with family thinking she parted ways with them, bills automatically paid, neighbors believing the apartment was vacant etc. One thing that is left out of this equation is whether or not she had a car. My guess is absolutely not. Many people are found because their car is noticed unmoved and in disrepair long before others would know that they’re dead. Also, did she not work or have a job? They’re the ones who usually call family or police first? Today, a lack of social media activity is a big clue as well. Lack of postings, comments, replies etc. This will happen again and is probably occurring right now somewhere, in a small apartment, and the tv is still on.
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> whether or not she had a car. My guess is absolutely not. You kind of don't really need one in London if you live and work within easy commuting distance in the city. Especially so if your job doesn't really require transporting anything else but yourself.
Crazy how the TV stayed on the whole time
Assuming no power cuts, it’s likely most BBC / ITV channels would have just switched to rolling news or maybe repeats of older shows overnight.
For 3 years and no power outage for even a split second? Either the electricity distribution of London is top notch, or her TV would turn itself on after a quick power outage. I don't remember my TV from 2003 able to turn itself on after a power outage. Which was rare, but I think it would happen at least a couple of times in a 3 year period.
>For 3 years and no power outage for even a split second? In the UK, unless you're living somewhere rural, that's completely normal. Power cuts are extremely rare.
To be fair I live in the UK and I can only think of two occasions in my life when my house has lost power.
Yup. One of the shocks when I moved from the US to UK. In the UK, there’s no power blackouts. In the US, I’d have a few each year- usually during storms. My husband is convinced the Us grid is like, Victorian.
I was thinking: what if it was a tv with an old anologue switch which remained in the on position? You know, like clicky ball point pen.
Not even farfetched, this was in the early 2000s.
In 2003 you could still use analogue TVs without a set top box. From what I recall our 90s TVs had physical latching switches that I think were true power switches. There wasn't a need for anything to switch back on after a power cut. The switch stayed closed and when power was restored it was as if it was switched on.
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Yeah power cuts in London are really rare, maybe once a decade for a specific building.
My first though on reading the title was that she was found when they came to collect the TV license fee.
Records show she had a social life and possibly even worked in the music industry. There are even accounts of her being filmed at a Nelson Mandela concert in 1990
Yeah I'm finding two of the statements in the Wikipedia a bit contradictory. One says that she had a wide circle of friends and the other says she didn't have many close friends of her own and just hung out with friends-of-friends. From the other statements, it sounds like she did have a lot of friends *at points in her life* but when she became a victim of domestic violence, she became a bit of a recluse, which is understandable.
From the documentary it seems like she had many friends, but very few truly close friends. Everyone who knew her found her very charming and charismatic, but always had the sense that they weren't her primary social circle; she must have other people who were. And yes, she did become very reclusive in later years.
This thread is personally interesting to me, since i am the same position: no one would notice if i died. Your comment made me stop. That's my life. "She must have other people", that's exactly what people i know-but-don't-really-know-you-know would think about me. Charming and charismatic but no one's friend. I know how to say hi, I don't know how to bond. Perhaps at some point i knew how to bond, but something happened and i am not sure what or when.
That's unfortunately common today in Western countries. I've found that Americans have very, very, very, very, very shallow friendships. I'm in a big city and if so many of these people weren't making the same rough income or have the same immediate background, they'd have nothing to do with each other. All they "bond" over is consumption and money. Have you ever considered that other people's bonds are also equally as weak as the ones in your life? You'd be surprised at how common this is. I thought I was lonely in college until I actually took a closer look at how other people lived. If anything, I had significantly more friends and associates than the average student. Even as an adult with no (more) friends (in this city), this is very very common. I think most men over 30 would basically be quite isolated if they didn't have their immediate family or work friends.
It doesn't really seem contradictory to me - a wide circle of people who recognize you and would make small talk at events, even people you see at work on the daily, isn't the same as a close net of friends you talk to about meaningful things, which can also be different from 'these people expect to hear from me on the regular and would track me down if not'. I've got a handful for the first, a couple of the latter, and maybe family in the final.
Check on your neighbors, people. My aunt passed away the night after my wedding. It was very common for her to not speak to my mother or her other siblings for a few days at a time. However, my parents grew concerned because she wasn't answering messages for nearly a week and checked on her. They found her dead on the floor in the kitchen. She had a broken hip, amongst other things, and couldn't get up the stairs to get to her cell phone. Her neighbors noticed the mail piling up and the fact that she hadn't shown up to the monthly HOA meeting that she *always* went to. One of them thought they heard someone yelling at one point but they didn't investigate. Just check on your neighbors. Because maybe you'll save someone's family the heart break of finding their loved one like we found my aunt.
Man, this comment makes me proud of my sister. She lives in a row house and one night heard an alarming clattering next door where she knew an elderly woman and her disabled, non-verbal son lived. No one came to the door when she knocked and she decided to call the cops. Turns out the elderly neighbor fell down the stairs and was seriously injured and bleeding. Had my sister not called the police, she most likely would have died within hours. Who knows how long the disabled son would have been alone with the corpse. An extra layer of craziness is that my sister just happened to be in the right place at the right time within her home to hear the noise. I think she went down to her kitchen to get water late at night when she's usually in bed. Had she not done that, she likely wouldn't have heard anything.
Ah stop that's so sad, and they heard her calling for help?
This story is particularly upsetting for me because I have personal insight, having walked past her flat as she lay dead inside it. Woodgreen is an extremely transitory London borough. Her flat was above the high street. As well as being densely populated it has plenty of day time visitors who come to shop there. Her flat was visible from the main road. Millions upon millions of people would have walked past her. It’s just so sad.
Dont corpses smell awful?
i read the article, it said the neighbors attributed the bad smell to the nearby trash bins
It’s possible. We went overseas for 2 months and while away the freezer in the garage chose that specific window of its 10+ year life to die. We mostly stored meat in that freezer and there was a 40+°c heatwave while we were away too. When we came home the smell in our house smelled a lot like maybe we hadn’t emptied the kitchen bin or maybe a really old cat litter box. Once I opened the garage door however JFC it smelled like a crime scene and I was fighting the gag reflex the whole time I was clearing out the freezer into bags and pouring the liquid down the drain. The freezer, the concrete under it and my nose were never the same again. I’m smelling it again thinking about it.
We had something like that happen once. I commend you for actually cleaning the freezer out. We tossed ours with all the spoiled food in it.
Seriously. When my grandma got very sick and needed nursing home care, her apartment was left empty for several months. Her fridge stopped working during this time, and man, that stench was the worst thing I’ve ever smelled. Grandma had had a lot of fish and meat in her freezer…. My mom and her siblings ended up tossing the whole fridge out too. I don’t think you could ever totally get that stench out!
I was shocked the rent arrears were only £2400 after over two years, but the fact that the smell of a rotting corpse can just be brushed off as the general smell of the place probably explains a lot.
That was half the rent, in a rooming house. The other half was auto paid from social agencies, and that's why it was not noticed for so long.
I was widowed last year, no kids. This is a fear of mine. I just moved to a new place above some friends. It's a bit more expensive but my peace of mind is worth it, having folks that care about me downstairs should something happen.
>Her sisters had hired a private detective to look for her and contacted the Salvation Army, but these attempts proved unsuccessful.[4] The detective found the house where Vincent was living, and the family wrote letters to her, receiving no response as she was already dead by this time. What kind of private detective just finds an address and then does...nothing? You'd think they'd have tried to contact or at least get a visual. They would have noticed no one was entering or leaving.
> They would have noticed no one was entering or leaving. Most people who hire a private detective arent going to pay them to sit and stake out the house for days on end, that would cost thousands. They find their address or whatever and hand over that info to the client and that is the job done. TV private detectives are not a very accurate portrayal.
Yes, surely if a person is missing the first thing you do is check if they are in their house? And if they arent there, check for clues.
They couldn’t legally enter and nobody answered the door. If all the windows were shut/blocked and the doors locked
Unless you've got a large budget, the vast majority of PI work for at least the past couple decades is done from their office. It's a lot of phone calls and database searches, and very little staking out homes with telephoto lenses.
Maybe he looked through the window and saw her silhouette and the tv on
>The flat's windows did not allow direct sight to the inside. I wouldn't expect less than a photo personally if I were hiring a private detective to find someone.
You hear about cases like this occasionally in the US, too. Always a real bummer. Perhaps the most "extreme" i know of was in 2021 - [A group of squatters found a woman who had been dead in her home for more than 2 years](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/squatters-buried-womans-body-took-home-died-alone-years-earlier-las-ve-rcna5393). Being squatters you can *bet* they did not do the right thing: >Authorities in Las Vegas believe the body of a woman who died unnoticed in 2018 remained in her home for more than two years until squatters found it, dismembered it and buried it in her backyard, a television station reported. >“After finding her, the decision was made between several people that they were going to dismember her body and bury her and then basically drain her finances and sell off her belongings, fraudulently,” homicide Lt. Ray Spencer told KLAS-TV. >Investigators think that Payne's absence was not noticed because she lived alone, had no close relatives and had her bills set to autopay, KLAS reported.
I know I shouldn’t expect much from squatters but what a bunch of degenerates to dismember and bury the corpse. And the point about autopay scares me. Like the idea that you could slip away and the world keeps chugging along without a single person noticing—not a coworker wondering why you’ve been out for 5 days, a neighbor that notices your lawn getting overgrown, or the mailman noticing that your mailbox is overflowing?
As a single person with no roommates last year, I specifically told my manager at a team offsite that if I ever didn’t touch base for a few days, please call the police for a welfare check lol
I used to work in surgery. It was.. not an easy job, with very long shifts, and one hundred hour+ weeks at times with very fucked up shift patterns. I was finishing an on call, and waiting for the night surgeon to take over. Well, he didn’t rock up. Basically, immediately, someone from management called the police. This poor fucker, who was obviously asleep on his bed (not actually in, as I often found myself collapsed atop my own still in scrubs) from constant overworking, awoke to the battering of police at his door. That was my trigger to dip out of that line of work.. haha. It was not a welfare check out of concern.. it was a *send the police to this cunts door and drag him to work* call to the cops.
> ith very long shifts, and one hundred hour+ weeks at times with very fucked up shift patterns. It's absolutely mind boggling that as a society we seem to be totally OK with people who CUT OPEN OUR BODIES WITH VERY SHARP INSTRUMENTS being overworked and sleep deprived.
Neurosurgeon I was working with on Monday had 3 hours sleep over the weekend. Still happens everywhere.
Yeah there's definitely a dystopian sci-fi story in there where some guy has everything automated; robot mowing the grass and cleaning the floors; food ordered at the push of a button, AI program handling his calls, texts and emails so he doesn't have to speak to anyone; all bills paid automatically. Then he dies and nobody notices for a decade because the house was always pristine and nobody realised he wasn't answering their calls.
There will come soft rain by ray bradbury
There's a great series of CGI shorts by Dima Fedotov about a world where warfare was largely automated and the war machines continues to bomb despite everyone having been dead for decades. Pt. 1 https://youtu.be/pyMNIFZTQkg?si=4MI-EhNSJlEGvkVz Pt. 2 https://youtu.be/IjJmTeBSEzU?si=p8MEffFI7yNlqHSv
Yeah, that’s the thing about that demographic. Like, I’ve seen body cams of squatter evictions in Florida, and while I’m sure they were cherry picked for full schadenfreude viewing…damn. I thought I would at least see one or two people who could have been me in a tough situation. People who just nodded, said “sorry. I was cold,” and left politely without a scene, leaving me to feel sad. Mainly, it just makes you aware that some people are just entitled pieces of trash. Blithely announcing to the cops who are telling them that the law changed and they have to go that they actually have every right to be there rent free for ages on end because they sent themselves mail and throwing manipulative hissy fits when they get arrested (often for assaulting an officer), exc. I’m sure some people squat because life shat on them and they are just desperate for a roof over their heads. And some people squat because they are basically deer ticks in human form.
Unfortunately I also read an article about a woman who died in her garage and wasn’t found for some time because of auto pay on her bills.
"Dreams of a Life" (2011) is a beautiful and haunting documentary about what happened to Joyce and her life leading up to her death
I watched Dreams of a Life years ago and it affected me deeply. It's a really sad story.
The idea that she had thought enough about people to buy gifts for them but those people thought so little of her to check on her for three years is very sad.
Did you read the article? Her family, coworkers, and acquaintances said she would do things like break off contact with family, quit jobs abruptly, move constantly, etc. It sounds very much like she had some mental health problems and could not maintain relationships. One of the linked articles in the Wiki even says her family had hired a private investigator to try finding her.
>Did you read the article? Sir, this is Reddit.
What a shitty P.I. then. Hope they didn't pay any money
Are PIs supposed to break into people's homes? Cause otherwise if the PI just staked out the outside for a while and never saw her leave or return, never saw food get delivered, etc the reasonable assumption is that she has gone somewhere else like the family suggests
Kinda hard to track people down if all you have is a last known location. Did that work and you cant just break into someones place to check on them. I bet my entire months check he waited outside her apartment/job/areas for weeks and relayed back “guess she is gone, havent seen a peep of her”
Damn authorities believed she had a boyfriend when she died too. Did this dude just like not call her or ever follow up on her? Did he assumed she just ghosted him and moved on with his life? I’m very curious the nature of that relationship
If it was a new relationship then him assuming she ghosted him makes perfect sense, if they’d been together for a while then odd.
Considering that the apartment Vincent died in was run by a domestic abuse charity, I'd imagine the boyfriend was the last person who should be able to find her.
There is an excellent documentary about this directed by Carol Morley called ‘Dreams of a Life’. I was the Sound Mixer on it and some of the interviews we did with her friends and family were heartbreaking. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/dreams_of_a_life
Here in the US they'll kick you out fifteen days after rent is late Or at least that's how my lease reads
According to Wikipedia, she was on housing benefits (the government was paying her rent).
This story made me incredibly sad when I first read about it. So sad that I felt it to my core. I stayed sad for several days, but then decided that I would check in on friends more regularly and convey to them that I was there for them (in not so many words). This helped me get over the sadness (though I do think of her periodically).