The neighbours didn't know she was pregnant. They knew nothing about her. They didn't know where she worked or where she came from. They didn't even know her name. She was just the pretty young Chinese woman with a big smile and broken English.
"I was horrified when I heard she had been killed," said Andrea Caldwell, who lives next door. "To think she was lying there dead overnight and I was lying in here and only a wall separated us."
Mi Yi Ho (29), a Hong Kong national, came to Northern Ireland nine years ago. There wasn't much for her back home. An only child, her parents were dead and she had relatives in Belfast. She moved to Isoline Street, off the Castlereagh Road, in the east of the city last year. She worked as a waitress at the Dragon Inn in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim.
She was last seen leaving the restaurant late on Sunday night. The manager, George Lee, said she looked very happy when she left. It was her birthday the next day.
It is understood she arrived home in the early hours of Monday morning. Police said there were reports of shouting from her house, but the immediate neighbours heard nothing. Ms Ho's body was discovered by a friend on Tuesday afternoon. She had been strangled. Detectives said she had struggled for her life. She had been dead for at least 24 hours. Her body was fully clothed, and police said there appeared to be no sexual or racial motive for the killing. She was 18 weeks' pregnant.
A murder inquiry has begun. RUC detective George Millar said: "Over the years police have dealt with a lot of deaths but the killing of a lone female, who is also pregnant, is very tragic." It's a loyalist area with red-white-and-blue kerbstones, UVF graffiti on the walls, and Jesus Saves stickers in many front windows. "She was a very quiet girl," says the middle-aged man who lives next door. "Never any loud music or parties. She was pleasant but naive. When she moved in, she put pots of exotic plants in the front garden. They were stolen within days.
"Then she bought a rabbit hutch and put it in the garden. I warned her the same thing would happen." The hutch is still there but the brown-and-black rabbit has long gone.
"I felt sorry for her," says the neighbour. "She seemed very isolated, a bit lonely. Maybe I should have been friendlier but I'm a man on my own and while I wanted to be polite if I was too friendly she might have taken it the wrong way. You don't want to interfere too much."
Ms Ho had a big Alsatian dog but it was locked in the back yard at the time of the killing. "That dog would have taken the hand off any attacker if it had the chance," said Ms Caldwell. "It was very fierce, always barking." In the end there was no one to save Ms Ho. When her body was found, the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals came to take her dog away.