Original subtitles

[siren blaring]

[phone ringing tone]

[dispatcher] Go ahead, caller.

[man] Okay. Basically, I've gone away for the weekend

and come back to find my girlfriend's not here,

when she was expected to be

and all her important stuff is still in the flat,

such as her wallet, her keys, her phone,

her glasses, everything.

[dispatcher] And what's her name, please?

[man] Joanna Yeates.

[keyboard clacking]

[woman] Joanna was a young, attractive, blonde girl,

from a posh part of town, and nobody has a clue where she is.

By the time her boyfriend Greg reported her,

she'd already been missing a couple of days.

Bearing in mind it was really cold that winter,

she wouldn't just have gone out without her coat,

without her bag, without her phone.

It was obvious that something was wrong.

Both Greg and Joanna's parents were all really concerned.

[man] We know that Jo was last seen on the 17th.

We're already behind the curve.

We've got a lot of catching up to do as police.

[Thomas] So forensically, we were losing evidence,

while time is ticking on.

[Barnston] We had teams retrieving CCTV.

So we know that on the evening of the 17th,

Jo was drinking with friends in Bristol.

8:30, Jo had left Ram's bar to walk home.

[♪ mysterious music playing]

[Barnston] We were able to establish

that she had gone into two different supermarkets

and an off-licence to buy some cider.

[Thomas] Walking to a local Tesco's and buying a pizza.

She's left the store with it. She's gone home.

You know, perfectly normal scenario, normal Christmas activities.

[Barnston] She was from a decent family, decent professional background.

No history of mental health.

No history of drug abuse. A real mystery.

[Barnston] Inquiries conducted into her disappearance were escalated,

so local house-to-house inquiries were done quickly, actually,

after she'd gone missing.

There were a couple of different reports from people that were spoken to

that they heard two distinct screams in the area just before 9:00,

separated by a few seconds' silence.

Our gut feeling was that she had come to some harm.

We made some inquiries with the neighbours of Jo and Greg,

in the other basement flat at Canning Road,

Vincent Tabak and his girlfriend Tanja.

With their permission, I conducted a cursory search,

and they said they'd heard about next door.

I gave them my contact details and asked them, you know,

should they think of anything that might be useful, to give me a ring.

And they let me know that they were going back to Holland

for the Christmas holidays.

And that's how we left it.

Every missing person, you look at any markers or red flags

that may be raised to arouse suspicion on.

[Thomas] So we speak to anybody that has a relationship with that person.

[Brodie McAllister] When Jo went missing,

there was a sense of unease that turned into mild panic.

I was teaching and subject group leader at the university where she studied.

She was, at the time, also working in architectural practice in Clifton.

Jo was tremendously friendly, gregarious, engaging,

and she had a lovely circle of friends.

So she was really in her prime.

She was a really well-liked, well-respected colleague, friend, partner.

[McAllister] She'd got a lovely boyfriend, who was an architect.

And, in fact, he said at one time, "This is the person I'm going to marry."

[Barnston] Greg was alibied quite quickly.

He was with family in Sheffield.

So it was easy to validate him.

It became very obvious, very quickly, talking to friends, family and colleagues

that there was nothing sinister going on in her life.

When you're looking for information from the public,

using the media effectively is really important.

And a decision was made for the family to make an appeal.

You can put lots of cops in front of cameras.

Nothing works like a family member.

[sobbing] It breaks me that I wasn't there to hold her.

[exclaims] It's...

[reporter] Do you believe that Jo is alive?

I've got to believe that she's alive.

She had too much life in her.

When you see Jo's parents and Greg, the emotion is so raw,

and they are so desperate to have her back.

It must have been incredibly difficult to do that.

[both groan and sigh]

[reporter] The abundance of police officers

both in and around Jo's flat

give the sense that this is a major crime scene.

This felt different as a missing person, and the media were all over it.

[officer speaks indistinctly]

[Sejal Karia] It was completely chaotic.

There were camera crews, there were reporters,

there were journalists.

There were just people everywhere.

The police are still searching Joanna's flat.

On the night of her disappearance, she arrived here

at around 8:45 in the evening, having bought a pizza at a Tesco store.

When the flat is searched, the receipt is found for that pizza,

but the pizza is missing.

[Thomas] It wasn't a robbery gone wrong,

because no valuables have been taken, and yet there was a pizza missing.

Everyone was starting to think,

"Has whoever's taken the pizza taken Jo?"

[Thomas] Back in the incident room, we were doing very, very long days.

We have no strong suspects.

It's Christmas Eve. We're still no further forward.

We've got nothing.

[Karia] How can someone just vanish into thin air?

It just didn't seem to make sense.

[♪ choral music playing]

[bells tolling]

[newsreader 1] Forecasters are predicting incredibly cold temperatures

around the UK over the next few days.

[newsreader 2] Some of us have had a white Christmas, but for many,

it's been a bone-chilling cold start to the course of Christmas Day.

In fact, if you've been to the outside,

you probably went back inside for the extra layers...

[Thomas] I was spending Christmas Day in Warwickshire,

and I had a phone call to say they found her.

A couple walking their dog on Longwood Lane in Bristol

discovered a body.

It was the body of a young woman that, you know,

fitted Joanna's age and description,

so it was clear to us all that, you know, tragically, she had been murdered.

[Barnston] Right now we've come over the suspension bridge,

from Jo's flat in Clifton.

We're now entering a bit more of a rural part of Bristol.

And because it's more rural, it's quieter and you're not gonna be disturbed.

We're now in Longwood Lane.

So this is where Jo's body was found. You can see the flowers.

The green fence is a new addition. That wasn't there before.

The wall wasn't so overgrown.

Her body was in this area, on the verge,

covered by leaves and then covered eventually by snow.

From a murderer's perspective, it's an excellent deposition site.

Other side of this wall is an active quarry.

Someone had tried to lift her body over

and perhaps couldn't quite manage it because of the angle and the weight.

And maybe headlights disturbed the murderer

before they could get the body over the wall,

or they couldn't manage it and decided on this area.

[♪ sinister music playing]

[Thomas] When you get the news that Joanna's body has been found,

the whole dynamics of the investigation changes.

[Barnston] The whole of Longwood Lane is locked down as a scene.

It was painstakingly protected and preserved,

to make sure we maximised any forensic retrieval.

[Thomas] There was a lot of snow about,

so potential for footprints, tyre tracks, all manner of things

that could suggest how she came to be there

and potentially who put her there.

[Barnston] What do you do?

Do you wait for the snow to thaw out before you start to do a thorough search?

Do you retrieve the snow in its entirety?

Getting that strategy is absolutely fundamental to success.

The fire brigade were used eventually to come in and lift the body.

They wanted to try and maximise as much of the surrounding snow and leaves

that were covering the body as possible.

[reporter] On a bleak December afternoon,

it was an awful journey for the family of Joanna Yeates.

[McAllister] When she was discovered,

to be honest, it all still seemed so unlikely,

so I think there was a real mix of emotions,

of disbelief, but realisation as well.

It's very upsetting.

A parent's worst nightmare.

[Barnston] Coming back here now makes me think of Jo's parents.

This is where their baby girl was found.

As a father of a daughter,

you feel angry when you stand here,

but as a detective, I wanted to catch this person

that's treated someone's daughter in such a way

and put them away. Put them away for life.

[Phil Jones] The pathologist completed his examination last night.

As a result of the findings of the post-mortem,

we believe that Joanna's body

has been in the roadside verge off Longwood Lane, Failand,

for several days before being discovered on Christmas morning.

The cause of her death was compression of the neck.

In other words, strangulation.

Everybody wanted to know who could be responsible for her murder.

Thank you very much indeed.

[Karia] The police were under huge amounts of pressure.

And they didn't seem to have a suspect at this stage.

And I think that was adding to the pressure.

I arranged to meet my cameraman at Joanna's flat.

And what we were expecting was that the police

were gonna lift off the door and take it away for forensic testing.

And then I get a phone call from my news editor saying

Sky News are reporting that the police want to speak to the landlord.

Now, this is the most significant piece of information we'd had in days.

I saw from the corner of my eye

this man who had just stepped out of his car

walk towards the Sky News reporter.

And we rushed across.

And he was, at that moment in time, talking to Chris Jeffries, the landlord.

Are you able to give us any detail of what it was you told them?

I'm afraid not, no.

Anything that I have said I have said to the police

and I'm not prepared to make any comments to the media.

[reporter] So you didn't see her that evening?

I certainly cannot say that I saw Joanna Yeates that evening, no.

[reporter] Thank you very much.

[Karia] To many people, Mr Jefferies seemed suspicious.

He came across as someone who was described as eccentric,

strange, odd, weird.

[Evans] He was a teacher at local Clifton College,

the prestigious school there.

Quite an eccentric character.

For many people, straight out of central casting as a key suspect.

In the early days Christopher Jefferies was treated as a witness,

because he could have held key information.

[Barnston] He made a statement to the police

regarding his movements that night,

and whether or not he'd seen anybody in the garden,

and then made an additional statement remembering that he had seen someone.

It is a serious distortion of what I said to the police

and I have no further comment to make

because that is almost certain itself to be distorted.

It was an inconsistency that was focused on,

bearing in mind that we had no clues as to what had happened to Jo.

[Evans] Most crimes are committed by people who are close to the victim,

rather than a complete random stranger.

People started to seize on the idea that perhaps

this guy knows more than he's letting on.

[Barnston] He said he stayed at home reading that night.

He didn't have a TV,

so you couldn't validate what he may have been watching to give a timeline.

He had the opportunity, he had keys to her flat.

He's a fair suspect.

Good evening.

A retired head of English at one of Britain's top fee-paying schools

has been arrested on suspicion of murdering

the young landscape architect Jo Yeates.

During the investigation there was very little information

coming out from the police.

[♪ dramatic violin music playing]

That vacuum has to be filled.

There is an appetite from the public, who desperately want answers.

[Jefferies] At that stage I had absolutely no idea

that anything at all had been appearing in the press.

[Evans] He came across as a bit odd,

and so people love to speculate about what they think might have happened.

A lot of it is just so absurd

and just so viciously fictitious.

If the police think that they have arrested the right person,

then no doubt the press think that person is fair game.

When the police told me that I was under arrest

on suspicion of the murder of Jo Yeates,

it was so totally unexpected and such a shock

that it has a kind of numbing effect.

One feels just quite helpless.

[newsreader] After this morning's arrest,

two cars were taken away from Christopher Jefferies' property.

[Jefferies] I didn't intend to say nothing,

because I had nothing to say that could possibly incriminate me.

My whole aim was to convince the police

that whatever was in their mind could not be further from the truth.

[Barnston] Chris Jefferies' flat was then subjected to intense scrutiny.

You're looking for fibres, you're looking for blood,

you're looking for DNA, you're looking for fingerprints, including the victim's.

[reporter] The continuing forensic examination here and elsewhere

will be the key to solving this case.

The detectives are still waiting for that vital bit of evidence.

[Barnston] About a day into the search, they found a pair of trainers

in Chris' flat that appeared to have blood on them.

And a lot of people thought, "This is the missing piece.

"This is what's gonna solve the case."

[reporter] The search of this property is likely to continue

right through the bank holiday weekend.

Its owner is facing a second night in police custody.

By Monday morning,

officers will have to decide whether to charge him or release him.

[mobile ringing]

[Thomas] 30th December I received a phone call on my mobile,

and it was Tanja, Vincent Tabak's partner.

The neighbours of Jo and Greg. They were in Holland for Christmas.

So, Vincent came on the phone and told me that

Jefferies had moved his car overnight at the time that Joanna went missing

on the 17th December.

Christopher Jefferies is being interviewed.

His custody time clock is ticking.

So it was decided that we couldn't wait for Vincent and Tanja to get back

from their Christmas break in Holland.

We needed his witness statement as a matter of urgency.

[Barnston] It was thought prudent to send Karen out to the Netherlands,

and she went out on New Year's Eve.

[Thomas] We've arranged to meet with Vincent

at a hotel on the outskirts of Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam.

So his sister had accompanied him to the hotel.

We met them down in the lobby.

And he explained that on the evening of the 17th

that Tanja was out at a Christmas party.

So he went out in his car,

[♪ dramatic music playing]

to buy some beer and some crisps,

to a big Asda in an area of Bristol called Bedminster.

We spoke about his movements in quite a lot of detail.

He was very forthcoming.

He said that he'd parked in the car park and he went into Asda in Bedminster.

Then he returned home and sat and watched the TV, waiting for Tanja.

When he came back from Asda,

he said he saw Chris Jefferies' car pointing in a certain direction.

And the following morning, he thought, "Oh, it's changed direction.

"Mr Jefferies must have been out doing something untoward

"and to do with Joanna."

If you speak to a lot of detectives, gut feeling is a real, genuine feeling.

Why would you travel to Asda in Bedminster,

which is quite a trek from where he lived,

when I knew there was a local Tesco's just up the road within walking distance?

It seemed an odd journey to make.

I started to build an image in my mind of a man that was hiding something

and was sitting in front of me trying to basically stitch up

the guy that we had in custody.

And at that point Vincent started asking me questions

around the forensics of Jo and Greg's flat.

What sort of things were the police looking for,

and what could that evidence potentially tell the investigation?

But why did he need to know what we might find at the flat

and how someone might have left that evidence there?

They were questions that didn't sit right with me.

He seemed quite concerned by it.

And he did actually offer to the fact that he had been to Joanna's front door

and potentially knocked the door

and we might find his DNA there.

Which, again, I thought was quite bizarre,

'cause he's not mentioned this in the house-to-house inquiries

or when I was searching his flat initially.

He's not mentioned that he's been and knocked on her door.

So that was another massive red flag to me.

[♪ suspenseful music playing]

Inside, my heart was going 10 to the dozen.

I was sitting there thinking, "This could be our guy.

"This could be our killer."

Vincent agreed that he would give us elimination fingerprints,

elimination DNA and a photograph

up in the hotel room that I was staying in.

[lift dings]

[Thomas] And that was standard. We were doing that with all of the witnesses

that potentially had been to Jo and Greg's flat.

[lift dings]

[Thomas] The whole time I'm thinking,

"What if he realises I suspect him?

"Am I in danger?

"And if he does do something, what on earth do I do?"

And although I had his sister with us,

I didn't know his sister. I didn't know what sort of person she was.

He potentially has murdered one girl.

[lock beeps]

So once we were into the hotel room,

I made sure that I stayed nearest the door.

And then I asked for his DNA swab.

And he started to get twitchy. His demeanour changed.

Why did I need his DNA?

And at this point, his sister did say to him,

"What are you worried about? Just give it."

[lift automated voice] Going down.

[Thomas] We went back downstairs after all of that.

It was literally just midnight. The fireworks were starting.

And we actually all wished each other a happy new year.

The doors of the hotel closed, and I just turned to my colleague and said,

"I think I've just waved goodbye to a murderer."

[♪ tense music playing]

[Thomas] I got back to the UK,

went straight to the boss' office and said,

"Have you seen the statement from Tabak?"

I said, "Boss, don't you think he's a suspect, potentially?"

I said, "Have you read his account? It's odd."

And he said, "We've got Christopher Jefferies in custody.

"We're concentrating on that. Get out of my office."

The senior investigating officer was thinking,

"I've got enough to deal with",

and in fairness there's stuff coming from all different angles

and he's trying to keep ahead of everything.

And so I just said to him,

"Boss, if you do nothing else, please prioritise his DNA."

I was approached by Karen, who seemed to be annoyed and frustrated.

She said to me, "Rich, can you read the statement?"

And I got goosebumps.

That, for me, was massively impactive.

My job now was to play catch-up.

I found myself going back to the flat,

trying to get into the mindset of a killer.

[thunder rumbles]

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[Barnston] Testing every possible scenario,

including any potential driving from that premises

to the deposition site where Jo's body was found.

What route would you have taken?

Trying to work out if there was CCTV

to be found that could lead back to a suspect.

Someone's decided on that lane.

It wasn't just a random panic. "I'm gonna dump the body anywhere."

It showed forethought.

This is someone that's quite smart. He's quite calculating.

There's a dangerous killer on the loose.

[♪ dramatic music crescendoes]

[Evans] The police had arrested Chris Jefferies on suspicion of murder,

and journalists at the time thought he was the only suspect

in the frame at that stage.

[Jefferies] I can't remember how many interviews there were altogether,

but certainly they did mention that there had been this call

from Vincent Tabak,

and I was able to explain why the car had been moved.

The Sunday after Jo disappeared,

I needed to back my car out of the parking area

at the rear of the house.

It was quite icy underfoot. The wheels kept spinning.

So I knocked on Vincent Tabak's door

and said, "Would he mind just pushing the car?"

"Yes, of course", he said. "What are neighbours for? No problem."

I never thought there was a motive for Christopher Jefferies

to have killed Jo.

Having said that, we've sat with many people in custody

who we thought maybe are the wrong people and they turn out to be the right people.

And so, as long as there were the grounds to arrest him,

that decision was made and it was justified.

The missing piece of the jigsaw

that people thought was going to suggest that Chris was guilty

was a pair of trainers that appeared to have blood on them.

It was not something that concerned me

because I knew that it certainly wasn't blood from Jo Yeates.

[♪ tense music playing]

It turned out to be cow's blood. So that theory went out the window.

Chris was released on bail.

[Evans] There was a real sense that the police

were struggling with this investigation,

slightly grasping at straws.

Were they ever gonna find the killer?

That must have been a really scary time for people who lived in Bristol.

The police were telling women not to walk alone after dark.

"There is a murderer on the loose and we haven't caught him."

[Barnston] Behind the scenes, the DNA profile

that Tabak had volunteered, reluctantly,

was being worked on and then being compared with Jo's swabs,

swabs taken from her body.

Tabak and Tanja returned to the UK in the new year.

There is now an increasing level of suspicion being put on him.

Is he going to commit another murder?

We were now going to at last arrest Tabak.

[reporter] The arrest happened within a short walk of Jo's Clifton home.

By lunchtime today, it was sealed off

and forensics officers were once again searching for evidence.

[Evans] There's a huge amount of work going on

to try and learn as much as we can about this guy.

So one of my colleagues flew to Holland

to try and speak to friends of his, colleagues, associates.

He'd studied at university in Holland and had done a PHD.

He had been in the UK since 2008.

He worked in Bath at a design company.

He was friendly, quiet, slightly awkward,

but a nice guy.

Nothing in his background or his character that would point to him being a killer.

It's a close family and they cannot imagine such a thing.

So, they are very convinced that this will come to a good end.

Vincent Tabak was arrested, yet Mr Jefferies remained on bail.

[Jefferies] They thought that there might have been some sort of liaison

between myself and Vincent Tabak.

There was suspicion, there was conjecture

that was circulating absolutely everywhere.

[Barnston] I was called in by the senior investigating officer

to be told that I was to be the interviewer,

lead interviewer for the murder.

We knew that we had a decent suspect in Vincent Tabak to question,

so I relished the opportunity to do a proper job for Jo's family.

My reaction was "Here we go again.

"The police have made another wrong arrest,

"and before too long they'll be discovering that, as in my case."

[Evans] They can't really afford to arrest a second guy

and release him on bail.

People are gonna start questioning their competence

and whether or not they really have got a clue of what's going on.

[machine beeps]

[Barnston] There was a lot of pressure to get a result.

When I first met Tabak, he presented as frightened.

Confused. Bewildered, almost.

However, there were subtle things that Vincent did

that seemed to be able to be switched on and off.

We got a prepared statement from Tabak,

who said words to the effect of

"I knew who she was. I'd never met her.

"It's a really sad case. I wish I could help you."

Importantly, he denied ever having met Jo before.

He then essentially answered "No comment"

to every single question for the next two days.

So all the time that I was with Tabak in custody,

there was forensic work going on in the background.

That included work on his motor vehicle.

Work on computers recovered from his flat.

He'd made so many searches on his laptop.

That was hugely significant.

Why would you be researching

"How long does a body take to decompose in the snow?"

Why was he looking at street maps of Longwood Lane?

The fact that he was probably intending to get

the body over a wall into a quarry showed that plan and prep.

Why was he researching "refuse collection in Clifton"?

It was a very strange selection of Internet searches.

But more concerning was his propensity for watching porn,

and quite violent porn, including strangulation and choking.

I mean, wow. This was massive.

[Evans] As time went on, the sense that we were getting

was that this was a very significant development

and that there was every chance

that Avon and Somerset Police had got their man.

[Barnston] Every murder that's investigated,

the forensic side of that part of the investigation is crucial.

[Thomas] The forensic coordinator had approached me

and basically just said to me, "We've got a hit."

[♪ dramatic music playing]

[Barnston] Tabak's DNA was found on Jo's body.

Back of her jeans, on her breast area.

That forensic evidence is damning.

We had him.

I was like, "Thank God. My gut feeling was right."

[Barnston] We were heading now towards the final stages of the interview.

We started to go through what's called a challenge phase.

"You've said you've never met Joanna Yeates.

"We've got your DNA on her breast area and on the back of her jeans.

"How do you account for that?"

He couldn't carry on this act any more.

He couldn't pretend that he'd never met her.

He now had to justify it.

He looked shattered. He looked broken.

The game was up for Tabak.

[reporter] Dozens of cameras outside court this morning,

all trying to get a glimpse of Vincent Tabak.

[♪ sombre music playing]

[Barnston] So Tabak wanted to plead not guilty of murder.

He stated that he misread signals from her,

that she had made a flirtatious comment to him.

Whether it was intended,

he certainly knew that he was strangling someone,

and he didn't have the guts to admit that he'd gone there

and he wanted to kill her. And he did kill her.

[reporter] They did not have to come today,

but Joanna Yeates' parents went into court knowing they were to hear, in detail,

about the final moments of Joanna's life and then her death.

[Barnston] I believe, on the evening that Jo was killed,

Tabak went to her flat for a sexual motive.

I think that Jo resisted his advances.

Tabak's murdered Jo in the flat.

My theory is, the pizza that's disappeared...

I think he was that callous and systematic

and calm following her death that he took the time to finish that meal,

before disposing of all evidence, including Jo.

He's then carried her lifeless body to the boot of his car.

He stopped off at Asda in Bedminster.

He gives himself a clear alibi.

He's got the body of Jo in the boot of his car as he's walking around Asda.

The route that he's taken is to avoid the Clifton Suspension Bridge,

which is full of CCTV.

Transports her eventually to Longwood Lane,

before depositing her body and driving back home,

pretending nothing has happened.

He can present a personality that even those that closest to him

didn't see through and were shocked by.

l think that's extremely scary. I think he's a very scary man.

[Barnston] At the conclusion of the court case,

I just happened to bump into Jo's dad, David Yeates, when he was leaving court.

And he came up and shook my hand.

That's worth a lot.

We took longer than we should have to have finally caught Vincent Tabak.

I think there's always a danger in investigations

that officers can become fixated on who they think might be a suspect

and want the evidence to fit that.

The sad thing for me is

that in amongst all of this frenzy with the press and Christopher Jefferies,

Jo got completely lost in the whole thing.

[Jefferies] As soon as I was arrested,

she was, I think, largely forgotten about by the press.

The whole experience did have quite a powerful emotional impact

on me at the time.

I remember saying, "Somebody has got to be sued for this."

[McAllister] I designed a remembrance card for Jo

quite near to where she lived.

She should be remembered as a bubbly, talented, genuine person

that a lot of people loved,

and someone who had enough talents to go anywhere she wanted in life.

[♪ poignant music playing]