A man who lived next door to a woman who kept her daughter’s corpse for a year and then wheeled it around a busy town centre has revealed he still suffers from ‘nightmares’.
The neighbour reported a “death stench” emanating from the flat repeatedly, but claims “no one did anything”. Joan Kathleen Turnell, 77 at the time, was intercepted by police on November 7, 2023, as she pushed the decaying body of her daughter, Tracey, in a wheelchair through the town. A neighbour witnessed authorities removing the body from the ground-floor flat in Whitehouse Mews, Walthamstow.
Kiri, 60, expressed his horror to the Daily Star, saying: “I still having nightmares and flashbacks of seeing the body”, and labelled the flat a “s*** hole.”
An inquest into Tracey’s death revealed her elderly mother suffered from prolonged grief disorder and a brain tumour, leading her to live with her daughter’s decomposing body for over a year. When discovered, Joan reportedly told officers: “Why can’t they just leave us alone? We have been fine and I have been looking after her.”
Due to the advanced decomposition, pathologists could not determine Tracey’s cause of death, though she had multiple health issues, including a curved spine and deformed arm. Joan has been sectioned under the Mental Health Act since the incident.
Neighbours of the woman alerted their housing association, LandQ, about a foul odour, but Kiri claims they did “nothing” for months. He recounted: “I asked the caretaker, ‘What’s that smell? What’s that rotting smell? ‘. I kept complaining about the death stench, no one did anything.”
Kiri detailed how the flat’s condition worsened over time, with the smell seeping into the lobby and his own apartment.
“You couldn’t walk in here without holding your nose,” he said. “It was a s*** hole. They were both always in dirty clothes. I asked where Tracey [the daughter] was as I’d not seen her for months and she [Joan] said she was alright.”
He also noticed signs of neglect, saying: “I saw there was human faeces on the floor when I looked through their garden, it might have been from her daughter but she said it was fox poo. You could tell they both had mental problems and she always told me the smell was nothing.”
The experience took a toll on Kiri’s mental health and he revealed: “I saw them taking the body out of the flat. It was me who kept telling the caretaker W.H.O. told me the body was in there. I had to go on meds because I was having nightmares and flashbacks of seeing the body when I was sleeping. It’s like this isn’t my home, I just sleep here.”
Despite efforts to clean up the flat, Kiri says the traumatic reminders persist: “You can still smell the stench when it gets warm.”
Neighbours were left in the dark about Tracey’s whereabouts until police arrived, with one telling the Star: “One of the neighbours told us they [police] found a dead body and that they brought the skeleton out the house.”
They described Joan as always appearing “dirty and unkempt” and mentioned she was “unwell”. Locals shared that Joan often took her daughter for walks, but then she was seen less frequently.
Another neighbour remarked: “All of a sudden she was not with her daughter so we assumed she went into a care facility. She [the mum] seemed fine and would still say hello, she was friendly. I didn’t see any change in her behaviour.”
Kiri has pointed fingers at LandQ housing association for ignoring the foul smell from the flat, suggesting this tragedy could have been avoided. He also questioned why no carer was assigned to check on the elderly mother who cared for her disabled daughter alone, saying: “This could have been prevented, of course a carer should have been coming – they needed help.”
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