Toronto Police forensic officers investigate a murder in Toronto. (Jack Boland/QMI Agency)

TORONTO - A former prostitute recently working as a “spiritual adviser” lay dead in her rented Parkdale room for more than a day before worried relatives discovered her body.

Toronto Police homicide investigators on Tuesday identified Rita Adams as the victim in a Maynard Ave. roominghouse.

Residents on the street in the King St.-Jameson Ave. area said she occupied a room vacated by Ricardo Morrison when he was charged 16 months ago with second-degree murder and five counts of assault after a series of attacks on mentally disabled adults.

Relatives of Adams, 59, went to her room just before 1 p.m. Monday because “they hadn’t heard from her for a couple of days,” Det.-Sgt. Hank Idsinga said.

Her death was declared a homicide after an autopsy a day later revealed “multiple stab wounds” to her head and torso, Idsinga said.

Police believe Adams, a tenant in the 21-unit century-old, brick building, was killed “sometime early Sunday morning, perhaps between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m.,” Idsinga said.

Adams, who Idsinga called “a spiritual adviser,” worked out of her room and elsewhere. “I’m really looking for where she’s been and where she’s been operating from,” he said. “She’d go to people’s houses and they’d come to her.”

A source said Toronto’s 46th murder victim of the year used several names when she was a sex-trade worker, and was known to police.

Adams likely knew her killer, Idsinga said, adding the roominghouse murder is not believed to be linked to other recent slayings.

Elsewhere in the city, a man died after he was shot in the head in the Denarda St.-Weston Rd. area north of Eglinton Ave. around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Witnesses told 12 Division officers that several shots were fired before the victim, believed to be in his 20s, was located.

Later, around 8 p.m., officers from the same station were dispatched to a double-shooting on Falstaff Ave. that left two men in hospital.

ian.robertson@sunmedia.ca