One local described the man as a “tortured soul”
Mark Watters
An image has emerged of a Dublin man who may have lain dead in his flat in Cork for six months, beside an unopened Christmas card.
Mark Watters (61) originally from Walkinstown in Dublin, was found deceased in the hallway of his flat at the Courtyard, just off Main Street in Castletownbere on Tuesday afternoon.
Maintenance staff who called to check on the building made the grim find.
Gardaí were alerted and the scene was sealed off for examination, which found no signs of trauma on the body, and no signs of forced entry or disturbance in the flat.
The remains were later removed to Cork University Hospital for an autopsy. It is believed this may determine a cause of death and determine when death occurred.
It is reported that gardaí found an unopened Christmas card with a December 18 date stamp in Mr Watters flat.
Mr Watters was a screenwriter who lived in the West Cork area for several years.
One local described him as a “tortured soul”.
It is understood that Mr Watters was in receipt of social welfare from the Department of Social Protection but is not believed to have collected any social welfare payments for several months.
Gardaí have notified Mr Watters’s relatives of his death and it is expected that his body will be released to his family shortly, following the completion of the postmortem.
The case echoes that of Joyce Carol Vincent in England, whose life was subsequently turned into a movie; ‘Dreams of a Life.’
Ms Vincent was an English woman whose death went unnoticed for more than two years as her corpse lay undiscovered at her bedsit in north London.
Prior to her death, she had cut off nearly all contact with those who knew her.
Her skeletal remains were eventually uncovered by council staff in 2006 who noticed letters piling up inside her doorway and the television still on since the moment she passed, over 24 months previous.
