AURORA - When Yong Suk Kirk was beaten to death in her apartment last month, she was living alone as she had for the past nine years.

By all accounts, the 65-year-old Korean woman led a solitary existence. Her only relative was an in-law living out of state who hadn't spoken to her in years.

"She lived in a pretty small world," said Chad Kirk, her brother-in-law.

The investigation by Aurora police has yielded no arrests almost two weeks after she was found dead in her apartment in the 1000 block of Dayton Street.

When neighbors called police on Feb. 16 to report an odor coming from Kirk's apartment, she had been dead for about a week, said Detective Shannon Lucy, an Aurora police spokeswoman.

"This has been a very slow-going process," Lucy said of the investigation.

The woman's apartment did not appear to have been ransacked, Lucy said. "A good deal of this case is going to be based on forensics," she said.

Police said the autopsy found that Kirk had been "severely beaten."

The victim had been living in the apartment since 1995, initially with her husband Theron Kirk, a disabled Army veteran who died in 1998, and then alone.

She didn't have a job and her source of income was her husband's Social Security and Army retirement pay.

Chad Kirk said the last time he talked to his sister-in-law was about seven years ago.

"I know that sounds horrible, but it was pretty much the language barrier thing," he said. "She seemed pretty comfortable, so we didn't force the issue."

Kirk came to the U.S. in 1980 after marrying Theron Kirk in Korea. The only family she had left in Korea was a son taken from her by her first husband's family after his death, Chad Kirk said.

"We're about the only family she had left," Kirk said.

For a while, Yong Suk Kirk was a kitchen worker at Lowry Air Force Base and took care of her husband, who suffered from muscular dystrophy.

Lucy said the 5-foot-2-inch woman almost always would wear black pants, a pink top and a pink coat. Sometimes neighbors would see her sweeping in front of her apartment.

How to help investigation

• Anyone with information about Yong Suk Kirk's death should call Detective Warren Miller at 303-739-6117.

morenoi@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2895