Joyce Carol Vincent was born on October 19, 1965, in the London part of Hammersmith. Her parents were from Grenada and moved to London shortly before Joyce’s birth. Joyce’s mother died when Joyce was only eleven years old. And her four older sisters took it upon themselves to care for Joyce while she was growing up. Joyce did not have the best relationship with her father because he was unemotional and distant from her.

She went to school at Melcombe Primary School. And Fulham Gilliatt School for Girls, but she dropped out by the time she was sixteen years old without graduating. She was well-liked and had a lot of well-known friends in the music business.

In 1985, she worked as a secretary at OCL in London and later at Ernst and Young. She spent four years in their treasury department. She worked there until 2001 when she quit for reasons that were not known. Throughout that period, she spent some time at a domestic abuse shelter in Haringey while working as a cleaner in a budget hotel.

It was during this time. She stopped talking to her family even though there was no fighting or any disputes between her and her sisters. She just simply decided to stop talking to them. Her family was aware of the relationship that Joyce was in had a history of domestic violence. There was some theorizing that perhaps Joyce had shame that she was a victim of domestic violence or that she did not want the person who abused her out where she lived.

In February 2003, Joyce moved to a bedsit flat above the Wood Green Shopping Center. In November of the same year, she noticed that she was vomiting blood and went to the North Middlesex Hospital for a couple of days and was diagnosed with a peptic ulcer.

Joyce was at her apartment when she died. Some speculate that she passed away in December 2003 due to having asthma and a peptic ulcer. Some theorized that she had an asthma attack or had some prolonged issues surrounding her peptic ulcer that led to her death. However, there was no determined definition of how she passed away.

The weirdest thing about this was that Joyce’s body was not found until three years after her death. Her surrounding neighbors thought that her apartment had no one in there. They also believed that the odor of decomposing was the smell of trash because the trash cans were so close to their residence on the bottom floor. In addition, no one ever questioned the noise of the television being on all the time, and it was just a noisy neighborhood. The neighbors never assumed that they had a deceased neighbor in the bedsit for three years.

Regarding her rent and utilities being paid, she had set up an automatic payment from her bank account for the utilities. And half of her rent was produced by the Metropolitan Housing Trust for about a year. It was not until two years after that it was noticed. The back rent of 2,400 pounds was when the officials in charge of housing went to Joyce’s apartment to repossess the property.

When they entered the property in January 2006, they were shocked to find Joyce deceased. They located her in the living area on the couch while the tv was on. The pathologist at the scene noticed that the refrigerator had expired food as far back as 2003. Joyce was found on her back with a shopping bag next to her and Christmas presents that looked like she had wrapped them but had no labels for who they were. Joyce’s body was severely decomposed. And could no longer have a post-mortem conducted. She was only IDed by her dental records and a photo of her.

It was also speculated that she had a boyfriend at the time of her death, but no one was able to locate or find him. The police concluded that Joyce died of natural causes, and no foul play caused her death. Her sisters were notified of Joyce’s passing and all the details surrounding it. They, in return, told the police that they had been trying to contact her for a while and had even hired a private detective to locate her. However, they had no idea what happened to her and decided Joyce had broken all their connections with them and did not want to be bothered by them.

A documentary about Joyce called Dreams of a Life contains interviews with people who knew her and some of her friends. I was able to rent it and watch it for a better understanding of Joyce Vincent’s life and tragic ending. The trailer is below:

Until next time!