KEY POINTS:
Police are conducting forensic tests on the car of an elderly woman killed in a killed in a violent attack at her North Shore home.
The 77-year-old woman was found by friends yesterday morning, covered in blood in the bedroom of her home in Eskdale Rd, Birkdale.
This morning her car, a 1996 green Rover hatchback, was found abandoned in Santiago Cres, Meadowood.
At a press conference at 2pm, Detective Inspector Steve Wood said forensic tests are now under way and the finding was a agood breakthrough.
"This development is vital in our continuing investigation into who is responsible for the killing of this 77-year-old woman," he said.
Today police would not say whether they knew of any motive for the attack or whether there had been a sexual assault.
Last night, Mr Wood told the Herald: "We're confident some form of attack has taken place and it is a homicide ... due to the nature of the injuries that we've seen."
He would not say if a weapon was used. But this morning he told Newstalk ZB that there were signs of a "physical beating".
It is understood the couple who found their friend's body also discovered a back door open and a gate at the front of the house wide open.
A neighbour said the gate was usually closed and was difficult to open from the street side.
The dead woman, whose husband died in 2001 and who had no children, lived alone and was in poor health.
Police were called to her house just after 1pm yesterday. They cordoned off the property and began a scene examination which is expected to continue today.
Forensic scientists spent several hours at the house.
Police want to hear from anyone who saw suspicious activity around the property in the 24 hours before the woman was found.
Next-door neighbour Cheryl Cox, who cared for the woman when she had surgery last year, spoke to her on Friday and asked how she was.
"She said, 'I'm okay. Just plodding along'."
Mrs Cox said the woman was "very independent" but was security conscious, and always shut a ranchslider to her deck about 7pm to 7.30pm.
Mrs Cox said her son had fixed the gate to the woman's property so that it was difficult to open from the street-side.
"For me it's very, very sad," she said. "She was next to me, and we were at home."
She did not notice anything suspicious on Saturday, and said the woman's garage door was closed yesterday.
She could not recall if she saw her neighbour after they spoke on Friday, but said her 15-year-old daughter had told police she heard a strange sound in the early hours of Saturday.
The couple who discovered their friend dead had tried to contact Mrs Cox on Saturday to see if she could check on her neighbour.
The woman bought the home in 2002.
Mary and Neil Morgan, who live across the road, said it was not unusual for her to spend days inside her home when she was not well, not collecting mail and keeping the curtains closed.
She would drive the Rover to go shopping, but also took taxis, Mr Morgan said.
She used a remote door opener to get into her garage, and placed a sheet over her car before entering her house through an internal door, he said.
She once owned a hairdressing business in Devonport and appeared to have travelled a lot.
"She was a very English lady and set in her ways," said Mrs Morgan. "She was a polite lady ... very well-to-do. She wouldn't believe the end of her life would be so traumatic."
Devonport hairdresser Robert Letcher recalled the woman as the owner of a salon next to the State theatre in Victoria Rd. She worked as a hairdresser but her business closed at least 20 years ago.
Police were trying to contact her relatives and have not named her.
