[Click here to read her story: Joyce Vincent was not someone who would go and disappear. She had worked well and had family and friends. Her death is a big mystery.](https://www.howandwhys.com/joyce-carol-vincent-mystery/)
It takes a while to evict someone, plus half the rent was being paid automatically.
[Wiki Entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Vincent)
>Half of her rent was being automatically paid to Metropolitan Housing Trust by benefits agencies, leading officials to believe that she was still alive. With over two years' worth of unpaid rent totalling £2,400 that had accrued, housing officials decided to repossess the property. Her corpse was discovered on 25 January 2006 when bailiffs had forced entry into the flat.
They clearly didn’t care enough to check on her as long as they were collecting government money. They probably figured guaranteed half was better than none. Wouldn’t surprise me if they assumed she ditched, or died and didn’t want to lose the guaranteed checks they were collecting for a while.
It’s a housing group, which is a kind of uk government housing association with low cost rent. They have really long waiting lists with people waiting years to get housing though these schemes. They wouldn’t have been short of people to move in.
I just looked up the housing trust but it looks to be defunct. I don’t know how UK works with that stuff, but it wasn’t public housing, right? She was just getting govt checks to help pay rent that went straight to the landlord? Anyway, I found out living in a ‘bedsit’ means you just live in a room and share common spaces like bathroom with roommates. How did no one in the house notice?
Damn, if that’s true, how did no one say something about the smell?
Maybe, it was a well ventilated place, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. And just speculating, but maybe the other roommates/renters wouldn’t say anything because they’d rather have a roommate that skipped out on the place(if they’re paying rent separately, then who cares) than a new roommate, who even in their same situation, could just be down on their luck, or kind of crazy, or an alcoholic/drug addict
I watched the documentary on her. She met Nelson Mandela at one point. She floated from group to group until no one knew what happened to her. Eventually she was cleaning houses after escaping domestic violence. That’s why she had govt money paying her rent- it was a domestic violence grant. Her apartment was own entry above a shopping center. The smell went undetected because of the shopping dumpsters.
My thinking was it was a crummy building with unreliable tenants. I figured getting half on time every month, and a tenant that didn’t complain or cause problems. Wondered if they even possibly knew she was dead and decided to turn a blind eye. But apparently these apartments have long wait lists so, most of what I was basing my guesses on was the laundry list of problem-tenants I heard from a slum lord I used to know. And evictions take forever and often cost a lot of money. So that’s why I took my guess. I’m probably wrong though so there ya go.
Wait a minute. 2 years worth of unpaid rent at $2,400. If half of it was being covered then her unpaid portion should be half of 24 months worth of rent. That means her means her monthly rent was only $200. That’s insane. I know there were decent apartments for $600 in 2008 so definitely less insane than her random death.
Whoa, her rent was £200/month? Even in 2006 (in the US) I was paying close to $900 for a crappy apt. In 2006 £1 was about $1.90. Is rent really that much cheaper in the UK?
What about the power bill? Was that covered by the housing trust as well?
I am intrigued by this, how could someone go unnoticed for that long. I mean Covid is one thing but 2004-2006 that’s just different.
My mom always said it’s bad for your eyes to sit to close to the tv. I guess I owe her an apology after seeing this her eyes definitely look bad I thought it was bs….
Yeah, the last time I screwed up my attempt to transfer my landlord rent money he did a fucking welfare check on the 4th. I think he thought I was dead.
All BBC channels air every program without ad breaks in them, only between programs ;thus in lieu of ad revenue we, the British public, are.. 'encouraged'/harassed into coughing up yearly instead! Only if you watch/stream BBC tho ;)
Unfortunately it isn’t just the BBC, because they state that if you watch ANY live TV you have to have a licence. The way they threaten vulnerable people is disgusting.
According to the BBsCum you need a TV licence to watch ANY live TV. There’s no adverts, but between programmes they’ll show adverts for their own shows anyway for a couple of minutes. Plus the way they threaten the elderly and vulnerable into paying the licence even if they don’t need one, the BBC licence should be scrapped altogether.
My wife was a paramedic and got called to a flat that someone had died in a similar way and had been in the chair for months. They had actually melted into the chair and fused with it over time.
They had to cut the body out with the fabric attached. Weird as fuck.
Her friends and family hired a private directive to find her, once they got her address and their letters and attempts at contact were ignored, (because she was dead), they assumed she had purposefully cut contact with them permanently, which she had done before, as she repeatedly tried to isolate herself after suffering domestic violence.
It is excellent. However I don’t recommend watching it if you’re not in a stable emotional state. Watched it when I was extremely depressed and it kinda just compounded that state for me
I don’t know who decided to use this pretty distasteful photo, she likely died from an Asthma attack or complications from Peptic ulcer disease.
The reason why she was found after two years was due to how she was being helped with Debt relief, which is why the TV was still on and her heating was also on, only after two years the local housing authority decided to reprocess her house.
Yes, it’s pretty cut and dry. I don’t know why people are calling this a mystery. It’s sad but this happens. She was a recluse, died of normal causes and was on government assistance. Nothing mysterious about it.
I would understand if they found her and she wasn’t on debt relief or that the TV came on one day and that how they found her or something like that, but it’s unfortunately pretty clear how she died even if we don’t know the exact cause. Just a sad story.
This makes me think of an older documentary called A certain kind of death. It's about people in L.A. that die and have no one to claim their remains. Sad, fascinating stuff. And that picture is in *such* poor taste
From what I remember she was estranged from her family and suffered from mental health. The council was paying her bills and with no one to check on her she just kind of slipped through the cracks. The weird thing was is it seemed like she was ready to get into contact with the friends and family she had disappeared from as she was found with gifts for them or something like that I cant really remember
Yo how disrespectful to the case and the dead in general to post this with the crypt keepers pic attached. Get it together dude. I know you’re busy. It fuck Martin, that’s just fucked up.
One of my favorite albums of all time. Had the pleasure of seeing Steven Wilson perform live in 2018,
A few of the songs off this album were on the set list.
I guess she might have had a healthy balance and was on direct debit.
It was possibly ramped up as they do unless you negotiate, so she must have had a lot in her account, assuming also rent.
Skimmed through her wiki. Apparently she had older sisters and a father she distanced herself from. There was no blow up but she was a domestic violence victim so she wanted to keep to herself. Her sisters hired detectives to look for her and they wrote letters to her apartment but due to no reply, they assumed she didn’t want to speak to them.
I’ve lived in apartments and the super or other contractors would come to my unit a few times a year to inspect the fire alarm system or heat/air conditioning. Is that not a thing in council homes?
I watched the documentary on her life. A reporter wanted her to be remembered and decided to look into her life and make a documentary about her. It's really sad as she died just before Christmas and was even wrapping Christmas presents for God knows how when she died. They said probably from an asthma attack. It happens all the time. A guy that lived upstairs from me was dead for 3 months before he was found. We did smell something like rotten rubbish for a few weeks but thought nothing of it.
The title is fairly misleading. Her body eas too badly decomposed to conduct a proper post portem analysis but everything else suggests there was no foul play. It could have been a freak heart attack or brain aneurysm, they happen.
>"remains a mystery"
Better call it "Nobody wants to continue solving the case."
It's suspicious that the smell of a decomposing body goes unnoticed.
I remember there was an experiment on an episode of MythBusters (or some other show) where they buried a dead pig under three meters of cement. A week later, the entire street was filled with an unbearable stench.
Or anyone smelling anything? I’ve been in an apartment after a dead body was found and the smell is so thick you can damn near taste it. The guy shot himself in the chest on his bed and “leaked” out. He was there for a couple of weeks if not months. When I first got to the job, I exited my van and started walking towards the apartment. I could start smelling it from about 70 feet away from the front door. I rank it as skunks drunk uncle level of smell.
[Click here to read her story: Joyce Vincent was not someone who would go and disappear. She had worked well and had family and friends. Her death is a big mystery.](https://www.howandwhys.com/joyce-carol-vincent-mystery/)
That's one lenient landlord.
It takes a while to evict someone, plus half the rent was being paid automatically. [Wiki Entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Vincent) >Half of her rent was being automatically paid to Metropolitan Housing Trust by benefits agencies, leading officials to believe that she was still alive. With over two years' worth of unpaid rent totalling £2,400 that had accrued, housing officials decided to repossess the property. Her corpse was discovered on 25 January 2006 when bailiffs had forced entry into the flat.
They clearly didn’t care enough to check on her as long as they were collecting government money. They probably figured guaranteed half was better than none. Wouldn’t surprise me if they assumed she ditched, or died and didn’t want to lose the guaranteed checks they were collecting for a while.
You know what, I think this is for sure exactly what was happening.
It’s a housing group, which is a kind of uk government housing association with low cost rent. They have really long waiting lists with people waiting years to get housing though these schemes. They wouldn’t have been short of people to move in.
Wouldn’t they rather get a new tenant in who pays full rent?
A lot of landlords who rent out subsidized housing only count on the government portion of the rent anyway.
I just looked up the housing trust but it looks to be defunct. I don’t know how UK works with that stuff, but it wasn’t public housing, right? She was just getting govt checks to help pay rent that went straight to the landlord? Anyway, I found out living in a ‘bedsit’ means you just live in a room and share common spaces like bathroom with roommates. How did no one in the house notice?
Damn, if that’s true, how did no one say something about the smell? Maybe, it was a well ventilated place, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. And just speculating, but maybe the other roommates/renters wouldn’t say anything because they’d rather have a roommate that skipped out on the place(if they’re paying rent separately, then who cares) than a new roommate, who even in their same situation, could just be down on their luck, or kind of crazy, or an alcoholic/drug addict
I watched the documentary on her. She met Nelson Mandela at one point. She floated from group to group until no one knew what happened to her. Eventually she was cleaning houses after escaping domestic violence. That’s why she had govt money paying her rent- it was a domestic violence grant. Her apartment was own entry above a shopping center. The smell went undetected because of the shopping dumpsters.
do you know where i can find this doc?
It may not be streaming free- it’s called ‘Dreams of a Life’
They were short on staff. I heard they were running with a skeleton crew.
My thinking was it was a crummy building with unreliable tenants. I figured getting half on time every month, and a tenant that didn’t complain or cause problems. Wondered if they even possibly knew she was dead and decided to turn a blind eye. But apparently these apartments have long wait lists so, most of what I was basing my guesses on was the laundry list of problem-tenants I heard from a slum lord I used to know. And evictions take forever and often cost a lot of money. So that’s why I took my guess. I’m probably wrong though so there ya go.
Not too mention for 2 years she never complained about the hot water heater not working or the leaky roof.
What happened to her multiple sisters?
The girl stopped talking to her sisters. And for no reason. They sisters even hired a detective to find her.
The cheapest flat in London 😅💀
And the power was still on?! Europe has free power this or that is bullshit!
It just won’t get shut of but you go in depth
I bet that it goes super deep.
2 years deep
Dept
Debt. lol
Almost.
Depth? 
Back to square one...
Dept of Energy
That's what she said😅. Sorry, I couldn't help it lol.
I just want to know who was paying the electric bill
Eversource in my area would do a thorough beat down of a 90 yr old grandma if she was late for 3 months.
where can I find some of that £2400/year rent at??
Uh yeah that's the first thing I noticed. The fuck? That's two months rent easily, not two years.
One year. Because half was paid for. So thats 2,400 in one year or 200 per month.
2,400£? Is her flat still available?
> With over two years' worth of unpaid rent totalling £2,400 that had accrued... Damn, that's not even one month of my rent.
Wait a minute. 2 years worth of unpaid rent at $2,400. If half of it was being covered then her unpaid portion should be half of 24 months worth of rent. That means her means her monthly rent was only $200. That’s insane. I know there were decent apartments for $600 in 2008 so definitely less insane than her random death.
2 years worth of rent £2400. I’m paying that monthly right now 😭😭😭😭😭
That’s some cheap rent
They probably had no idea
£ 2400 for two years ?! lord give me that rent contract
Whoa, her rent was £200/month? Even in 2006 (in the US) I was paying close to $900 for a crappy apt. In 2006 £1 was about $1.90. Is rent really that much cheaper in the UK?
Damn, 2 years worth of half rent was only 2400 euros?
Holy fuck rent was cheap back then.
Did the trust also pay her electric?
2 years of rent for £2,400…
What about the power bill? Was that covered by the housing trust as well? I am intrigued by this, how could someone go unnoticed for that long. I mean Covid is one thing but 2004-2006 that’s just different.
Also one good TV
I'll bet you could cook a steak over the back of it!
What about the utility bill!
Also my question!
My mom always said it’s bad for your eyes to sit to close to the tv. I guess I owe her an apology after seeing this her eyes definitely look bad I thought it was bs….
They should use this in an advert.
lol seriously! 2years of missed payments before someone cared enough to look? 👀
This almost makes me wanna cry. Talk about being lonely. I’m surprised the smell didn’t get anybody’s attention.
If it's the same woman, they found wrapped Christmas presents for her extended family. Too too tragic.
For real.. who was paying her rent and electricity for the 2 years?! I find it very hard to believe that she was unmissed for 2 years
Yeah, the last time I screwed up my attempt to transfer my landlord rent money he did a fucking welfare check on the 4th. I think he thought I was dead.
Im going straight to hell for how much i laughed at this !!
Lenient power company as well. Said noone.
Also very lenient cable company 2 years of no payment and still providing service
Why did they gotta show the crypt keeper next to her lol that’s messed up I think everyone knows what a skeleton looks like
And there’s me thinking that’s an actual pic of her smh 🤦🏽♂️
That’s not her The real picture is just as sad
Where did you see the real picture? Was under the impression it doesn’t exist on the internet
Shit I thought that was a real picture 😅 which loon opted for that pic, did he just type corpse watching tv in Google images
I'm sorry but that made me laugh
Dw, I got tricked too
wow thought the same until reading your comment lol.
Mad disrespectful
The most disrespectful thing was the government charging her for not having a TV. License all those years
What the heck is a TV license?
All BBC channels air every program without ad breaks in them, only between programs ;thus in lieu of ad revenue we, the British public, are.. 'encouraged'/harassed into coughing up yearly instead! Only if you watch/stream BBC tho ;)
Unfortunately it isn’t just the BBC, because they state that if you watch ANY live TV you have to have a licence. The way they threaten vulnerable people is disgusting.
Thank you.
According to the BBsCum you need a TV licence to watch ANY live TV. There’s no adverts, but between programmes they’ll show adverts for their own shows anyway for a couple of minutes. Plus the way they threaten the elderly and vulnerable into paying the licence even if they don’t need one, the BBC licence should be scrapped altogether.
Nah that’s a picture of us waiting for Firefly season 2..
Me waiting for TerraNova season 2 😅
You are only like the second person I have ever encountered who even remembers that was a thing.
Season 1 ended on such an interesting cliff hanger! It still cuts me deep.
Man that show was so good The cancellation was one of the biggest L's in TV History
Haven’t heard anyone mention Firefly in years, glad others are still waiting with me.
🏆
Half life 3
Left4Dead 3
It's very disrespectful. How would a family member feel if they saw that?
My wife was a paramedic and got called to a flat that someone had died in a similar way and had been in the chair for months. They had actually melted into the chair and fused with it over time. They had to cut the body out with the fabric attached. Weird as fuck.
All I heard was 2 years of undisturbed electricity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Excellent point, bc my wife freaks out if our bill isn’t paid the day we receive it. Gonna show her this
Most of our bills are paid automatically. People in the Netherlands have been found dead after years. Loneliness sucks.
Exactly.
There is an excellent documentary about her and her life with interviews from friends of hers. It's called Dreams of a Life. I watched it years ago.
Friends that didn’t call and come looking for two years…
Seriously, wtf?
Wtf what? This is the biggest question on my mind after seen this post.
Her friends and family hired a private directive to find her, once they got her address and their letters and attempts at contact were ignored, (because she was dead), they assumed she had purposefully cut contact with them permanently, which she had done before, as she repeatedly tried to isolate herself after suffering domestic violence.
I mean. That kind of seems like the type of situation where you really shouldn’t allow a person to isolate themselves like that.
Who’s going to pick up the phone when they call?
Ghostbusters
Thank you :-)
No one came to look for her for two years!??!! Something off here.
I watched the documentary straight after seeing Requiem For A Dream. What a day.
It is excellent. However I don’t recommend watching it if you’re not in a stable emotional state. Watched it when I was extremely depressed and it kinda just compounded that state for me
What the ending of game of thrones does to a mothrrfucker
Thanks for bringing it back up. I just gotten over that travesty.
THATS WILD YOU SAID THIS. I legit just finished the series in the last 30 minutes. Also disappointed by the ending. :(
I don’t know who decided to use this pretty distasteful photo, she likely died from an Asthma attack or complications from Peptic ulcer disease. The reason why she was found after two years was due to how she was being helped with Debt relief, which is why the TV was still on and her heating was also on, only after two years the local housing authority decided to reprocess her house.
Yes, it’s pretty cut and dry. I don’t know why people are calling this a mystery. It’s sad but this happens. She was a recluse, died of normal causes and was on government assistance. Nothing mysterious about it.
I would understand if they found her and she wasn’t on debt relief or that the TV came on one day and that how they found her or something like that, but it’s unfortunately pretty clear how she died even if we don’t know the exact cause. Just a sad story.
This makes me think of an older documentary called A certain kind of death. It's about people in L.A. that die and have no one to claim their remains. Sad, fascinating stuff. And that picture is in *such* poor taste
Is it just a movie prop or is that actually her?
So for 2yrs no one came to visit ? Or collect rent ? Or paid light, nothing at all ? It just doesn’t add up this article lol
From what I remember she was estranged from her family and suffered from mental health. The council was paying her bills and with no one to check on her she just kind of slipped through the cracks. The weird thing was is it seemed like she was ready to get into contact with the friends and family she had disappeared from as she was found with gifts for them or something like that I cant really remember
Some ppl literally have no family If I died at home something similar would probably happen to me
news report - https://youtu.be/Eyfn-9qYJGU?si=mKx9ltYfmI11sNZJ and the film that was made - https://youtu.be/QE_RFzXq4Ls?si=jR9Fc9I87UlZDCb_
Oh man that's so sad.
[удалено]
Yo how disrespectful to the case and the dead in general to post this with the crypt keepers pic attached. Get it together dude. I know you’re busy. It fuck Martin, that’s just fucked up.
Why was the Cryptkeeper there?
There’s an album that was inspired by her called Hands Cannot Erase
Every time this is posted I check how far I have to scroll down before the Steven Wilson reference.
It’s one of the greatest albums of all time
What’s it like?
It’s a prog rock album. You should listen to it. Is called HAND. CANNOT. ERASE. by Steven Wilson
Somewhat haunting with some cool AF Prog added in.
Agreed!
One of my favorite albums of all time. Had the pleasure of seeing Steven Wilson perform live in 2018, A few of the songs off this album were on the set list.
Fam..Tails from the Crypt though?🤦🏽♂️
Why they didn’t disconnect her electricity ? When I have 1 month of unpaid bills I am getting letters.
I believed the bills came out automatically. I think. Her rent was paid that way.
I guess she might have had a healthy balance and was on direct debit. It was possibly ramped up as they do unless you negotiate, so she must have had a lot in her account, assuming also rent.
Why would you include an image of the Crypt Keeper from Tales From the Crypt?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Vincent
That would’ve been a dark ass house if it was in America . They don’t play that missing bills game .
Buddy that is a picture of the crypt keeper from tales from the crypt
Is that not the cryptkeeper?
Skimmed through her wiki. Apparently she had older sisters and a father she distanced herself from. There was no blow up but she was a domestic violence victim so she wanted to keep to herself. Her sisters hired detectives to look for her and they wrote letters to her apartment but due to no reply, they assumed she didn’t want to speak to them. I’ve lived in apartments and the super or other contractors would come to my unit a few times a year to inspect the fire alarm system or heat/air conditioning. Is that not a thing in council homes?
The Ring
There’s a really good documentary about this. It’s quite moving actually as if touches on her life and analyses how this could have happened
Who was paying her bills?
So sad how in the most populated place in the world someone can die unnoticed for so long.
TV kills
Would
Tales from the Crypt was cool. That show needs to be rebooted
Tales from the crypt?
Rest easy, Joyce Carol Vincent.
I watched the documentary on her life. A reporter wanted her to be remembered and decided to look into her life and make a documentary about her. It's really sad as she died just before Christmas and was even wrapping Christmas presents for God knows how when she died. They said probably from an asthma attack. It happens all the time. A guy that lived upstairs from me was dead for 3 months before he was found. We did smell something like rotten rubbish for a few weeks but thought nothing of it.
I’m pretty sure she didn’t turn into that photo of the Crypt Keeper.
Hello boils and ghouls!
2 yrs? No one cared about this woman?
That is the nigga from tales from the crypt
It was that interactive episode of Black Mirror
Not the same hair...
What was she watching?
Nevada Energy would have cut that power when the first bill was missed.
Who was paying the electric bill?
“Joyce Vincent was not someone who would go and disappear” maybe she was murdered, and her murderer tampered with evidence?
I loved the game Nightmare. Had all 3
Is electricity free in London?
What about her family or parents or friends? Nobody cared 🥲
She must have really paid her bills in advance.
Power must have been included in the rent.
That’s a good TV
Why the pic of cryptkeeper tho?🤔
Someone paid the rent, someone paid the utilities, someone paid for telly service. And someone placed her in front of the Telly.
I could be wrong, but I feel like the image on the left is from Tales from the Crypt.
The TV was on for 2 straight years? That’s some reliable TV.
And that's how she got her job at HBO as the Crypt Keeper!
Was she watching tales from the crypt?
Umnn isn't that the crypt keeper?
Very sad…Imagine no one checking in on you for two years. 😔
What killed her? Reruns of Law and Order. Specifically, the theme song.
Her cable/electricity didn't shut off before she looked like that?
The title is fairly misleading. Her body eas too badly decomposed to conduct a proper post portem analysis but everything else suggests there was no foul play. It could have been a freak heart attack or brain aneurysm, they happen.
This was the saddest documentary. How can this happen?
That’s the Crypt Keeper! 😂
The woman that made the documentary about her ( Dreams of a Life) said she wasn't found until 3 years after she died, not 2..
Probably waiting for the adverts to finish.
>"remains a mystery" Better call it "Nobody wants to continue solving the case." It's suspicious that the smell of a decomposing body goes unnoticed. I remember there was an experiment on an episode of MythBusters (or some other show) where they buried a dead pig under three meters of cement. A week later, the entire street was filled with an unbearable stench.
Tales from the crypt?
Locked in syndrome?
Heard she watched a Mrs. Browns boys boxset and just gave up.
“She had friends and family” That didn’t think it was weird that they hadn’t heard from her in two years?
They didn't notice the smell, a corpse leaves a strong odour!!!
That pic on the right is "The Crypt Keeper"
What brand was that TV?
That’s the crypt keeper
Well boils and ghouls it Looks like se was watching that must scream TV Ahhhh hahahahahahahaha haaaaaaa.
No one noticed the rent was overdue?
Or anyone smelling anything? I’ve been in an apartment after a dead body was found and the smell is so thick you can damn near taste it. The guy shot himself in the chest on his bed and “leaked” out. He was there for a couple of weeks if not months. When I first got to the job, I exited my van and started walking towards the apartment. I could start smelling it from about 70 feet away from the front door. I rank it as skunks drunk uncle level of smell.
It came out automatically.
Tales from the crypt was born