JOANNA Yeates was a 25-year-old who was tragically murdered in Bristol in 2010.
Her murder rocked England and became one of the most high-profile crimes of the 21st Century, something which is explored in Channel 5’s Body in the Snow.
Living in Bristol
Joanna was born on April 19, 1985, and grew up in Hampshire.
She received a postgraduate degree in landscape architecture at the University of Gloucestershire, before moving to Bristol in 2009.
Joanna moved in with a fellow architect named Greg Reardon.
On December 19, 2020, Greg returned home to find Joanna missing from their flat.
He became worried when she didn’t return his text messages and when he discovered her phone was still in the flat.
At half past midnight, he contacted the police and reported Joanna as missing.
It was revealed that Joanna had spent the evening with her colleagues at the Bristol Ram pub, before heading home at 8pm.
The search for Joanna
After she vanished, Greg set up a website with Joanna’s friends which was dedicated to finding her.
On December 23, 2010, Joanna’s family took part in a live broadcast where they spoke out about their daughter’s disappearance.
Her father said: “I think she was abducted after getting home to her flat … I have no idea of the circumstances of the abduction because of what was left behind … I feel sure she would not have gone out by herself leaving all these things behind and she was taken away somewhere”
Sadly, Joanna’s body was found on a golf course on Christmas Day 2010.
Then, the search for the architecture student’s killer began.
Crime Stoppers offered a £10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the murder, where The Sun offered an eye-watering £50,000.
Joanna’s cause of death was revealed to be strangulation.
Witnesses who lived near the 25-year-old said that they heard someone scream “help me” on the night of her death.
The wrong man
On December 30, 2020, Christopher Jefferies, Joanna’s landlord was arrested on suspicion of murder.
He was detained as a suspect for 96 hours before being released on bail.
The landlord was cleared as a suspect on March 4, 2011, and successfully sued several newspapers for publishing defamatory articles about him following his arrest.
The killer is caught
On January 20, 2011, the then-32-year-old Vincent Tabak was arrested after an anonymous tip prompted by someone who saw the BBC programme Crimewatch.
Tabak moved to the UK from the Netherlands in 2007 after taking a job at an engineering consultancy firm in Bath.
He was Joanna’s neighbour and claimed that he had murdered her because she had screamed when he kissed her.
Tabak claimed that he dumped her body because he was in a “state of panic”.
He received a life sentence with a minimum term of twenty years for his crime.
On March 2, 2015, he pleaded guilty possessing more than 100 indecent images of children and received a 10 month prison sentence.
Body in the Snow
Joanna’s tragic murder and the effect that it had on the UK is examined in Channel 5’s Body in the Snow.
The programme includes testimony from key witnesses and detectives.
Body in the Snow will air on December 12, 2024, at 10p
