Sheila Seleoane, South African solitary spinster whose body lay undiscovered for more than 2 years after she died in London flat

Before authorities found the decomposing skeletal remains of a 61-year-old South African lady in her London apartment, she had been dead there for more than 2.5 years.

This is the sole known image of Sheila Seleoane, a reclusive spinster whose body was not found for 2.5 years after she passed away in her London apartment. She is shown posing seriously for her passport photo.

It was supplied to the Mail by her long-lost relatives in South Africa, who used it to show the sequence of events at her funeral in her ancestral home. It was published here for the first time.

Her coworkers, the police, the utility companies, the Peabody Trust, and the affordable housing organization from whom she rented her apartment, are on the list of people who should have looked into her disappearance far sooner.

The Met asserts that they are confident her death was natural and that nothing suspicious happened; nevertheless, it is uncertain if a pathologist will be able to determine the exact cause of death after such a protracted time of decomposition.

Residents only raised alarm when Miss Seleoane’s balcony windows, which had been closed for more than two years — began to bang open and shut.

Police arrived to find her white-painted door locked from the inside, with a months-old notice warning that gas contractors were about to be cut off Sellotaped to it.