![]() She and Reardon moved in at the start of October 2010 and he left for a business trip in California on 6 November, only returning on 11 December, six days before the killing. He was able to say he did not know Yeates. He told her he was in all evening before driving in the early hours of the morning to pick up Morson after a work party. On Christmas Eve, Detective Constable Karen Thomas, a member of the police's major crime investigation team, spoke to Tabak by telephone about his movements on the night of Yeates's disappearance. Tabak and Morson, the daughter of a Harvard-educated lawyer, then left Bristol to spend Christmas in Cambridge at her parents' home. He joked to friends that they must have thought he had stashed her in a drawer. On 23 December police revisited Tabak and carried out a routine search of the flat he shared with his girlfriend, Tanja Morson, to check Yeates was not there. Over the next seven days police and family issued a series of increasingly desperate appeals for help in finding her. His denial led to – in Tabak's own words – a "week of hell" for Yeates's family and friends. Yeates's boyfriend, Greg Reardon, returned from a weekend away on the evening of Sunday 19 December to find Yeates missing, though her mobile phone, keys, purse and coat were there.Īt 12.45am he dialled 999 and less than four hours later a police officer banged on the door of Flat two. Within moments – at about 8.50pm – partygoers heading to a nearby house heard two screams. Police believe she got back to her Clifton flat, which was already decorated in readiness for Christmas, at about 8.45pm. Yeates bought a tomato, mozzarella and basil pizza from a supermarket and picked up two bottles of cider from an off-licence. It was cold and snow and ice lay thick on the pavements. She vanished eight days before Christmas after leaving the Ram pub on Park Street in Bristol, where she had been enjoying after-work drinks with work colleagues. ![]() Not at all sketchy are the last known moments of Yeates's life. ![]() The bottom line is that nobody apart from Tabak can say what happened – and he claims his memory of exactly what happened remains sketchy. ![]() A sample of Tabak's DNA was found on her chest, however scientists could not establish what it came from. Though her jeans had not been tampered with, her T-shirt had been pulled up above her breasts and part of her right breast exposed. She had suffered 43 injuries, including wounds to her face, throat and arms. Certainly, according to the prosecution, there was a delay of more than an hour before he put her body into the boot of his car and drove it away.įinally, what police and pathologists discovered when they examined Yeates's body suggested more went on than Tabak admits to recalling. There is also the possibility that something may have happened after Tabak carried Yeates's body back to his own flat. It could have continued in the bedroom: one of the earrings Yeates is thought to have been wearing was discovered beneath the duvet. ![]() The attack may have started in the hallway, which was found in a chaotic state. They have suggested Tabak might have been spying on Yeates and may have found an excuse to knock on her door that night rather than being spontaneously invited in. They think this was a sex attack and that Tabak might have derived a thrill from the act of strangling his neighbour, from having her at his mercy and under his control. The police and prosecution believe there are huge holes in Tabak's account. After about 20 seconds she slumped lifelessly to the floor. He claims Yeates invited him into her flat and made a flirty remark as they chatted in the kitchen, which encouraged him to make a pass at her.Tabak says she screamed, and to stop her he gripped her throat with his right hand and put his left over her mouth. Tabak waited until the last possible moment – when he was in the witness box – to offer his version of events. To the torment of her loved ones, however, the truth about exactly what happened on the night of 17 December last year in Flat one, 44 Canynge Road, Bristol, may never be known. The solution to the mystery turned out to be simple: the 25-year-old landscape architect was killed by her neighbour, the Dutch-born engineer Vincent Tabak. ![]()
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