Strangled by her ‘lonely’ neighbour
When 25-year-old Joanna Yeates said goodbye to her boyfriend, Greg Reardon, on Friday 17 December 2010, it was only supposed to be for a few days. The landscape architect lived in Bristol with Greg, and he was going to Yorkshire for the weekend.
POLICE SEARCH
That night, Joanna had drinks with colleagues before heading home. But when Greg returned on Sunday night, she was missing. He called the police and a huge search ensued.
Eight days later, on 25 December, Joanna’s body was found dumped in the snow, three miles from her home. She’d been strangled.
In the days that followed, Joanna and Greg’s neighbour Vincent Tabak contacted police to accuse another person of the crime. But investigators found traces of Tabak’s DNA on Joanna’s body, and her DNA in his car.
In October 2011, Tabak, then 33, was jailed for life for murder. In court, he said that he’d been passing Joanna’s window on his way to Asda when she’d invited him in.
SICK IMAGES
‘My girlfriend was away at a Christmas party and I felt a bit lonely,’ Tabak said. He made a pass at Joanna, but she rebuffed him. ‘She started to scream quite loudly. I panicked and put one of my hands over her mouth.’ The jury didn’t believe that he’d ‘accidentally killed her’. Joanna had suffered 43 injuries, and Tabak had a perversion for violent pornography and was obsessed with images of women being strangled during sex. After murdering Joanna, Tabak put her body in the boot of his car and dumped her in a secluded lane. In December 2021, Jo’s mum, Teresa, then 69, told how she visits her daughter’s grave along with her husband, David, 73, and said, ‘There is sorrow in my heart every day. We just want her back.’