A woman found dead in her home in Como is believed to have died more than two years ago, with nobody noticing until neighbours wanted trees in the garden to be cut down as they had overgrown.

Italian media report that Marinella Beretta, 70, died suddenly at least two years and half ago.

Her body was found only last Friday by the fire brigade, on a chair in the living room, in a more than advanced state of decomposition.

The woman lived alone in a villa in Como and it seems that no one had seen her since at least September 2019.

Alone, without relatives or friends, she had literally disappeared from community life: she had sold her house to a Swiss man, maintaining the right to continue living there.

She would not have been found were it not that the neighbours reported the overgrown trees in the woman’s garden.

The owner, receiving no answer from the pensioner, called the police who made the grim discovery.