Was Joanna's body hidden next to her flat? Murder police quiz 'nutty professor' with a blue rinse
By Luke Salkeld, Ryan Kisiel and Arthur MartinLast updated at 10:51 AM on 31st December 2010
- Jefferies' flat now being extensively searched by forensic teams
- Landlord was Head of English at public school nearby
- Former pupils say he would get angry, shout, and throw books
- Police given extra 12 hours to quiz Jefferies over killing
- Jo and boyfriend ate in a pub hours before she disappeared
Arrested: Christopher Jefferies is being held on suspicion of murder
Meanwhile, forensic teams are continuing an inch-by-inch search of the four-storey building where Jo rented an apartment.
They have also torn apart the flat of the landlord, Christopher Jefferies, a Neighbourhood Watch organiser and former private school master who lives in the same building and was arrested at dawn yesterday.
Described as a ‘nutty professor’, the bachelor used to dye his hair blue and has an obsession with Christina Rossetti, a 19th-century poet who often wrote about death.
It is thought possible that Miss Yeates' body was hidden just yards from her flat for up to a week before it was found.
Last night, the parents of the 25-year-old landscape architect said they met Jefferies when they helped her move into the flat.
He was arrested at dawn yesterday after neighbours became concerned he was failing to pass on to police what he knew about events of December 17 - when his tenant was last seen and a witness heard a series of screams.
Jefferies told only friends and neighbours that he had seen a mystery trio, possibly including Miss Yeates, that night.
On Wednesday, however, he appeared evasive and attempted to contradict reports that he had seen Miss Yeates on the night she was last seen alive.
Officers then approached him for a statement – although they are believed to have spoken to him informally after she was reported missing.
It also emerged that just hours before his arrest Jefferies contacted his neighbours begging them not to repeat what he had told them.
Mystery: The property in Clifton at the centre of the case, which police are searching extensively
‘He seemed very worried and when I asked why not he got very flustered and quickly ended the call.’
Yesterday two vehicles – a silver Chrysler and a Volvo saloon – were removed from the street in the affluent area of Clifton in Bristol, while numerous bags were taken away from the flat itself.
Police are still trying to find out what happened to Miss Yeates in the eight days between her disappearance and Christmas morning, when her body was found on the verge of a country road in Failand, North Somerset.
Murder inquiry: Forensic teams removing potential evidence from the flats in Bristol yesterday
Brown paper bags of evidence from Joanna's flat are taken back to the police lorry yesterday
It is not yet known at precisely which point she was killed, and whether her body was kept concealed in a building or vehicle before it was dumped. But officers are increasingly convinced the answer lies at the house in Canynge Road, Clifton.
Sources have pointed out that the body was left in a spot at which it would be expected to have been found quickly.
Miss Yeates was reported missing by her boyfriend, 27-year-old Greg Reardon, when he returned to the flat they shared from a trip to Yorkshire on December 19.
Two days earlier, before he left to visit his family in Sheffield , he and Miss Yeates had shared a last meal at their local pub - the Hope and Anchor in Clifton where they drank coke and ate cheesy chips.
Then Jefferies had helped Mr Reardon get his car going for the journey.
Peter Stanley, who runs the area’s Neighbourhood Watch scheme with Jefferies, said: ‘Chris rang me and asked if I could get the jump-leads out for Greg. I had rescued a lady in the street earlier that day.
‘I was there with Chris, and Greg said he was leaving for Yorkshire to be with family. Chris definitely knew he was travelling to Yorkshire that night alone.’
Towed away: A silver Volvo is removed from outside the block of flats where Joanna Yeates lived
Jefferies’s name was linked to the investigation into Miss Yeates’s death on Wednesday, after it was reported that he had seen her leaving her flat with two unknown people.
Later that day he appeared in front of news cameras wearing a long coat with a fur collar, carrying a Waterstone’s shopping bag. He tried to distance himself from the inquiry and, before walking to the car that was seized by police yesterday, added cryptically: ‘I definitely cannot say that I saw Joanna Yeates that evening. No.’
Other residents suggested Jefferies had been very willing to discuss the mystery of Miss Yeates’s disappearance.
One neighbour said: ‘He started coming up to all of us and telling us everything about it.
‘He said he had seen two to three people at the flat. When I asked him if he had told the police – he said not yet.
‘I was shocked and had to ring up the police myself and I was told he was reinterviewed about it.’
Mr Jefferies, a 65-year-old bachelor, was arrested on Thursday morning
Retired English teacher Mr Jefferies entering his flat earlier this week
Neighbours said yesterday that private CCTV on residents’ houses had not been checked by police until late last week.
One homeowner, who lives along the route Miss Yeates may have used to walk to her flat, said his device recorded over itself every four days and the footage from the night Miss Yeates disappeared had been deleted.
It was also claimed that police looking for the Tesco pizza Miss Yeates bought on her way home, started a door-to-door search on Tuesday – a day after the council’s recycling lorries had collected.
Police have until this morning to finish questioning Jefferies but can ask for further time.
Seventy officers have been assigned to the case.
Carefree: Joanna Yeates is seen smiling as she entered Bargain Booze, in Clifton, hours before she vanished
Stop off: Miss Yeates bought two 300ml bottles of cider from this Bargain Booze shop in Clifton
The teacher they called Mr Strange: He dyed his hair blue, idolised a poet obsessed with death, and threw books and pens in fury
The English master: With Clifton College tutors in 2001
After leaving his position as an English teacher at a top public school with an unblemished record, Christopher Jefferies devoted much of his time to keeping the streets safe from crime.
The grey-haired bachelor spearheaded a Neighbourhood Watch scheme, writing warning letters to residents of the affluent district of Clifton in Bristol.
He even helped organise an annual charity event which senior police officers, local dignitaries and the mayor were happy to endorse and attend.
Among his other passions were theatre, campaigning for the Liberal Democrats and saving school sports facilities from housing development.
As one neighbour put it yesterday, the 65-year-old was a pillar of society. However, not everyone remembers with such fondness the man seen by some as a ‘nutty professor’.
Former pupils at the £28,000-a-year Clifton College referred to him as ‘The Strange Mr Jefferies’.
He was known as CJEJ – a reference to his full name Christopher Jonathan Edward Jefferies – or CJ and objected to being called Chris. During recitals of romantic English poetry he would often clutch the hands of pupils, former classmates claimed. His long grey hair, complete with a blue tint, was often combed over his head in an attempt to disguise his baldness.
‘He was a stickler for discipline and was very traditional,’ one old boy, who was taught GCSE English by the bachelor in the 1990s, said yesterday.
‘He used to get very angry and shout and throw books and pens across the room.
‘You didn’t want him to come near you, he was very unkempt and had dirty fingernails.’
Another said: ‘He is one of those people you never forget.’
Top class: Clifton College, where Chris Jefferies was Head of English until his retirement in 2001
Rossetti often wrote about death. As someone who suffered from chronic physical and mental illness throughout her later years, it was thought she yearned for an end to her own life.
She was prone to apocalyptic visions and romanticising the afterlife.
A former pupil of Jefferies said: ‘He would overemphasise words and kept repeating them in an odd way. He would say things ten-15 times over.
‘The things he taught us were really odd, he loved old English poetry. The way he talked, the way he walked and the way he acted. It was all very strange. He was very flamboyant.’
In the spotlight: Clifton College headteacher Mark Moore. He confirmed Chris Jefferies worked there for years
But he was left substantial legacies. In December 1998 he inherited £234,897 from his mother Kathleen, which in today’s terms would be £314,761. Ten years earlier, he was a substantial beneficiary of his aunt Constance Browne’s fortune of £195,776 – £405,256 in today’s money.
He had moved to Bristol to take up a teaching position in 1967.
Twice a week he was in charge of the boys in Clifton’s School House – one of the boarding houses – where his nickname was Wizard, because of his hair.
Jeremy Wayne, a restaurant critic who was a Clifton pupil in the 70s, said: ‘He was always odd in his manner, turning pink at the least provocation.
‘And I seem to remember he liked to wear a school scarf, which even in 1975 we thought rather cheesy.’
John Heritage, a music teacher at Clifton for 16 years until 2009, said: ‘I remember his hair. He had a blue rinse at times.
‘He ran the theatre and was heavily involved with it. He let it out to outside theatre companies and managed it. I think he was also involved in school plays.’
Former history master Richard Bland, 74, who worked with Jefferies for three decades, described him as an eccentric loner.
Mr Bland, who lives a short walk from Jefferies’s flat, said: ‘He was dedicated to his job, strongly academic and deeply involved.
‘He was respected at the school and his students used to get good results under him.
‘But he was a very strange character, a bit of a loner and a very private individual. He was notorious for his odd hairstyle, it was often poetically long, and definitely had a blue tinge.
‘Mr Jefferies was also famous for his utter dislike of sports. At boarding schools everyone has to chip in and teachers would often referee rugby or football matches, but not him.
‘Mr Jefferies was a bachelor, he never spoke about girls and I never saw him with any, but likewise there was no suggestion he was homosexual as people have suggested.’
Councillor Trevor Blythe, 63, who represents Clifton ward for the Lib Dems on Bristol City Council, said: ‘We were absolutely flabbergasted when we heard he’d been arrested.’
Jefferies took early retirement in 2001 and went to work in the English department at the University of the West of England in Bristol.
He also put on plays at the Redgrave Theatre, five minutes from his home.
Jefferies is believed to have lived in his £200,000 flat since 1991 and in the intervening years bought a basement flat in the property which he leased out. He also owns a property in Nice in France.
Girl at neighbours’ party says she heard screams that night
Screams were heard on the night Joanna Yeates vanished at around the same time she was apparently spotted by her landlord, police have been told.A festive gathering at the start of the last weekend before Christmas was attended by around 20 young professionals.
The party was held in a two-bedroom flat worth £300,000 in one of the Victorian houses opposite the home of Miss Yeates.
Among the guests was a woman, who has not been named, who stepped outside the house for a cigarette. She is understood to have heard two screams just after 9pm, not long after police believe Miss Yeates returned to her flat.
Police work at Miss Yeates' flat today. A party guest at a home opposite said she heard screams coming from the direction of the flat at around the time Mr Jefferies claimed he saw her
Tributes: One of the messages left outside Miss Yeates' flat by a close friend
Miss Yeates poses with boyfriend Greg Reardon. He raised the alarm when he returned from a trip to Sheffield to find she was missing
Most left the gathering between 11pm and midnight. A man helping to jump-start a woman’s car outside her flat at around 8pm was reported, but is not believed to be significant.
Miss Yeates left the Ram pub on Park Street, Bristol, at 8pm on December 17 after drinks with colleagues from the Building Design Partnership.
During her one-mile walk home she stopped at a Waitrose store, the Bargain Booze shop and then a Tesco Express store in Regent Street, Clifton. She left the store at 8.40pm with a pizza.
Her keys, coat and mobile phone were all found at the flat in Canynge Road but detectives are still searching for the pizza and its wrapping.
Guests at the neighbours’ party arrived between 7.30pm and 8pm – most following the same route from Regent Street as Miss Yeates.
The guest who heard the screams told officers that her view of Miss Yeates’s flat was obscured by trees but it came from that direction.
Officers now believe the two high-pitched noises could be connected and give a possible time of her attack - just minutes after she arrived home.
An Avon and Somerset police spokesman said detectives had interviewed the woman who reported the screams and other guests who attended the party.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1342794/Joanna-Yeates-murder-Flat-landlord-Chris-Jefferies-searched-bags-evidence-removed.html#ixzz1AdYAMpo4
