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Woman found murdered in rolled up carpet at abandoned home on east side

By FOX 2 Staff
Published  June 13, 2019 12:21am EDT
News
FOX 2 Detroit

DETROIT (FOX 2) - While Detroit police are investigating a string of murders on the east side - another woman's body is found in a vacant house.

Police do not believe this victim is connected, but we are learning more about her.

"She thought she would be okay in the streets but I knew one day I would get this call," said Angela Colon.

Angela Colon got that call Tuesday when police asked her to identify the remains of her oldest sister. 44-year-old Yvonne Cobern. 

"She was wrapped up in a carpet." Colon said.

It would be the first time she would see her sister in over two years, when she offered to let Yvonne stay with her. 

"When I came home she was gone and stole my daughter's change jar," Colon said. "She had never stolen from me before."

She said she would head right back to the streets of Detroit, sometimes selling her body but mostly begging for change to feed her addiction to crack. 

"She was on drugs bad, real bad," Colon said.

Yvonne or 'Angel' as she was known on the streets, would panhandle at Seven Mile and Woodward and would occasionally call from time to time.

"And I would be like are you okay? She would say yeah. I love you," Colon said.

Yvonne was a tormented soul who left home at the age 14. 

"She did really have a rough life," Colon said. "My dad would beat her real bad. That's the only life she knew."

A life that would end with her body found in abandoned home near Seven Mile on the east side.  The family says they were told she had been there for months. 
 
"We need close to $2,500 to get her cremated because she was only a skeleton," Colon said. "So I can't do a casket or anything like that."

To do that the family set up a GoFundMe page, you can find it here.

"It would really help out if you knew her or us," said Amie Cobern. "It would help a lot."

The death is being investigated as a homicide. The family fears it could possibly be the work of a serial killer although police say outside of where the body was found, nothing else links it to that.