The case of a 43-year-old woman who was found dead in a Brooklyn apartment in mid-December when cops responded to a call of a bad smell has been ruled a homicide, authorities say, and police are now searching for her killer.
The NYPD identified the victim Thursday as Tamara Graham. She was discovered unconscious in the living room of her eighth-floor Troy Avenue apartment in the Albany Houses before noon on Thursday, Dec. 15.
Her body was left decomposing in her Crown Heights apartment for weeks, leading to a horrific odor coming from the apartment.
Initially, police said they didn’t find any obvious signs that Graham was beaten or murdered. But now, the medical examiner and police say that someone strangled Graham — a shock for neighbors who said they thought there was nothing suspicious about her death.
"It smells like rotten meat and fish market together – with feces. That’s a bad smell," said a neighbor who did not wish to be identified. "That’s sad that she was strangled, that’s very sad. I thought she had a drug overdose...I didn’t know that’s what took place next door. It's scary."
The neighbor said that Graham was a caretaker for an elderly man who passed away years ago, and added that Graham lived by herself.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
Neighbors are left wondering when she was killed, and how long her body may have been left in the apartment. The NYPD is working with the coroner to determine when in late 2022 Graham was killed. But friends who knew her were still in shock at the news.
Local
"She was a good person, she wasn’t that type of person, not to be in trouble, not to be a person who goes and starts trouble," said Drexel Dash, who knew Graham. "That really took a lot of me when I heard that...I just hope they catch the person who did that to her, because she didn’t deserve that."
The investigation is ongoing. The city's medical examiner did not respond to a request for comment.
