Woman lay dead in her home for eight years

AN ELDERLY Australian woman lay dead in her home for eight years before her body was discovered.

When she vanished from view in Sydney in 2003, no one called the police. Not her relatives, her neighbours, or government officials, who kept paying her welfare benefits into a bank account that sat untouched.

New South Wales state police said that they discovered the woman’s skeletal remains on Tuesday, after her sister-in-law finally called them to report that she had not heard from the woman — who would have turned 87 next month — since 2003.