Google – AFP, 6 February 2014
A ferry
commutes between Circular Quay and Manly Beach in front of Sydney's
central
business district skyline on December 18, 2013 (AFP/File, Saeed Khan)
|
Sydney — An
elderly lady lay dead in her inner city home for nearly eight years before her
skeletal remains were found, an inquest heard Thursday, in a case dubbed
"the woman Sydney forgot" by local media.
Natalie
Wood was discovered by police in July 2011 having died in early 2004. She is
believed to have fallen in her bedroom and then found herself unable to get up.
Her terrace
house, just metres from the city's bustling Central Station, appeared abandoned
by the time she was found, with cobwebs everywhere, water damage and even a
tree growing through the top windows.
Detective
Senior Constable Andrew Wills told the Glebe Coroners Court there was no
mattress in the house, which is estimated to be worth almost Aus$1 million
(US$890,000), no television and no fridge.
While no
purse or wallet was found, rings and other valuables lay untouched.
Wills said
Wood, who had lived in the house since she was born in 1924, was a recluse.
"She
kept to herself," he told the inquest. "It got to a point she
answered the door with a special knock."
Neighbours
told police they thought she had moved away and the house was vacant.
Wood had no
will and her sister-in-law Enid Davis and four distant cousins are making a
claim on her estate.
A frail
Davis, whose husband -- Wood's brother -- died in 2009, told the coroner she
last saw her from a bus window on January 30, 2004.
"There
was no reason (we stopped talking) other than my husband had dementia and got
very sick," she said.
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