Foul play has been ruled out in the death of a 61-year-old man whose body was found in a Cork apartment almost six months after his death.
Mark Watters, originally from Walkinstown in County Dublin, had been living alone in the Courtyard complex in Castletownbere and was found dead on Tuesday by maintenance staff checking on the property.
Maintenance staff immediately alerted gardaí, who sealed off the scene and carried out a preliminary investigation.
Gardaí found no signs of trauma on the body and no signs of forced entry into Watters' flat.
Watters's body was removed to Cork University Hospital, where it will undergo an autopsy in the hope of determining a cause of death and shed light on when the death occurred.
Gardaí are conducting door-to-door inquiries in the area to determine when neighbors last saw him alive, while they are also searching through CCTV footage.
The Irish Times reports that gardaí found an unopened Christmas card in Watters' flat with a stamp dated December 18, suggesting that the 61-year-old may have died at some point in December.
Watters received social welfare from the Department of Social Protection and it is believed that he had not collected any payments for several months, according to the Irish Times.
The Irish Examiner reports that Watters has a sister living in England. His former partner and adult son also live overseas and had contacted mutual friends in Castletownbere last August to inquire about his whereabouts.
Locals reported that Watters had become reclusive in recent years and was not often seen out in the local area. Some believed that he had left Castletownbere.
One local described Watters as a "tortured soul".
"It’s a sad end, and it’s sad to think that he died alone, and lay dead and undiscovered for so long but there were often periods where several months would go by without seeing him, and people would ask about him, and then he’d turn up again, so it wasn’t unusual for people not to see him around for months on end," a local man told the Irish Examiner.
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