Grieving mum found pushing daughter’s body around London 14 months after she died

An elderly, grief-stricken woman was found pushing the severely decomposed body of her daughter in a wheelchair around a town centre, a court has heard.

Joan Kathleen Turnell, then 77, was found by police as she pushed her adult daughter Tracey’s remains around Walthamstow, east London, an estimated 14 months after she died.

Tracey had been deceased for so long that all her organs, including her brain, had turned to powder, an inquest was told.

Neighbours had complained for months of ‘horrendous’ smells and a fly infestation, but when housing association officers knocked on their door on the morning of November 7, 2023, Ms Turnell refused to let them in.

In an effort to convince officers her daughter was still alive, she wrapped up her body and took it out for a walk in her wheelchair.

Suspicious housing association officers followed and, as she passed, they detected a ‘vile’ smell from the wheelchair and alerted police, who stopped Ms Turnell and discovered the ‘heavily’ decomposed body.

DC Emma Roberts told the inquest in a statement that the body was very decomposed and Ms Turnell was sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Ms Turnell asked officers at the time: ‘Why can’t they just leave us alone? We have been fine and I have been looking after her.’

The mother and daughter’s flat, near Whipps Cross Hospital, was ‘extremely hazardous’.

Ms Turnell was diagnosed with prolonged grief disorder and found to be suffering from a brain tumour.Mr Irvine told East London Coroner’s Court she had ‘severe’ mental health problems.

‘I found it inhumane to summon Mrs Turnell here today to give live evidence,’ he said. ‘I don’t think the nature and quality of her evidence would have assisted me.’

Mr Irvine also criticised Waltham Forest Council for not heeding previous warnings about the squalid conditions of the pair’s flat and their wellbeing, citing missed opportunities to safeguard the young woman.

‘It is a truly, truly appalling case. A horrific case,’ he said. The body was so decomposed by November 2023 that a pathologist couldn’t identify any cause of death.

‘I haven’t the first clue how Miss Turnell died and therefore will have to leave that as an unascertained conclusion,’ Mr Irvine said.

Ms Turnell was never prosecuted for preventing the lawful burial of her daughter’s body, and wrote in a statement that she kept Tracey because she ‘couldn’t bear to part with her’.

Tracey, born in October 1971 at Walthamstow’s Thorpe Coombe Hospital, had attended Highams Park School.

Suffering from a curved spine, a damaged knee and deformed arms, Ms Turnell said her wheelchair-bound daughter had no friends and had never had any romantic partners. She lived an ‘internalised, withdrawn’ life with her mother.

The court heard the pair weren’t registered with GPs, didn’t have government documents and had no internet access.

Tracey didn’t own a phone and police never found a single photograph of her; with her body having to be identified by DNA.

Her mum said Tracey died around September 2022, when they watched a film. By the time a pathologist looked at her body in late 2023, her body was severely decomposed.

Mr Irvine added: ‘At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, this is a death in which I reflected on that because it seems to me there were multi-factorial issues on various aspects of society that meant if something different had been done earlier, this tragic set of circumstances may have been avoided.’

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