Joanna Yeates Murder: Chris Jefferies, 10,000 Reasons And A Strange Couple

JOANNA YEATES: What Chris Jefferies saw – and what the news reported.

The Sun (front page): “MYSTERY PAIR AT JOE FLAT”

“Landlord saw them with victim”

The landlord is Chris Jefferies.

Neighbours of Jo, 25, yesterday said their landlord saw her leaving home with two strangers just minutes after she returned from drinks with workmates.

Sky News’s Martin Brunt tells us:

“It would appear to be a key bit of evidence. The landlord of the flat Ms Yeates shared with her boyfriend said he was parking his car outside the building, where he also lives. He told police he saw three people leaving her flat and one of them may have been Joanna Yeates.”

Again we see a photo of Chris Jefferies.

So. What did he tell police?

But Mr Jefferies yesterday declined to say exactly what he saw – and said that any suggestion he had reported seeing Miss Yeates was “a serious distortion of what I said to the police…Mr Jefferies said: “I made some comment which was very, very, very much vaguer than that. I definitely cannot say that I saw Joanna Yeates that evening.”

And:

Another resident of 44 Canynge Road, Geoffrey Hardyman, 78, said: “He saw people coming out after dark as he was parking his car. “I don’t think he was really paying any attention but just assumed they were from flat 1 – Joanna’s flat.

“He didn’t know if they were male or female. It was after about 9pm and he thought they must have been her with friends, or just friends of hers.”

But the Sun says the pair are strangers? A commenter on the Sun’s pages puts Mr Jefferies’s position well:

Landlord is quite right saying nothing to the press or public, thats how stories grow arms and legs, as long as the police have all the information thats what matters.

Here’s Steve Hughes in the Star adding a small but vital twist to Mr Jefferies’s apparent statement:

MURDER detectives are hunting a mystery couple seen leaving Joanna Yeates’s flat with her on the night she went missing.

A couple?

The mansion house’s landlord has told police he saw three people – one of whom he believes was Joanna – leaving the flat she shared with her boyfriend.

Did he say he believed it was Joanna? The Mail reports:

Wearing a long coat with fur collar and carrying a Waterstone’s shopping bag, he told reporters: “I definitely cannot say that I saw Joanna Yeates that evening. No. Everything I am aware of I have told the police and I really don’t want to talk about it.”

Still, who needs facts? Here’s the Express’s headline:

POLICE HUNT PAIR LAST SPOTTED WITH JOANNA YEATES

The mystery deepens. This is Bristol conjures up the most spurious evidence so far:

Matt Alexander, 36, landlord of the Brunel Pub, in The Mall, says police have removed his CCTV tapes.
His father Dave Alexander said his wife had often walked their dog along the golf course, near where Joanna’s body was found. He said: “The dog died just before Christmas but that is the route my wife would take when she went for a walk. She would meet so many people it makes me think that if she was only found on Christmas Day she might only have been put there on Christmas Eve, either that or the snow had covered her body.”

Still. If all else fails, money can get to the truth – maybe. A £10,000 reward has been posted.