They are values Mrs Yeates and her husband David instilled into Joanna from her earliest years, and they stayed with her as she matured from a clever, sporty little girl into a beautiful and much-accomplished young woman.
‘Jo always played things straight,’ says 58-year-old Mrs Yeates, giving her most moving and insightful interview yet.
‘She never had two boyfriends at the same time. She had a moral conscience. When she broke up with boyfriends, they always stayed friends,’ she says, adding with a sorrowful smile: ‘She also liked to test her boyfriends and would always challenge them to an arm wrestle. It was a sort of initiation.’
Mrs Yeates knew her daughter better than anyone — ‘We were very close, not quite like sisters, but almost’ — and in the light of her grim fate, every clue to her lifestyle and character may be highly significant.
Three weeks ago, while her live-in boyfriend Greg Reardon, 27, was away for the weekend, someone accosted Joanna, almost certainly at her Bristol flat, and eight days later — by the cruellest of ironies on Christmas Day morning — her frozen body was found.
The 25-year-old architect had been strangled and dumped on a lonely, snowbound country lane.
Perhaps because Joanna appears to have been the archetypical English rose — albeit a very modern version, with dozens of Facebook friends and a hectic social and professional life — her murder has touched the nation’s heart, making this wretched winter seem that much darker and colder.
The case is also deeply perplexing. Eighty police officers are hunting Joanna’s killer — yet from the non-committal platitudes offered this week by the lead investigator, Detective Chief Inspector Phil Jones, it is clear that many vital questions remain unanswered.
They all lead back to one central conundrum: who would have wanted to take the life of a young woman who delighted almost everyone with her joie de vivre and infectious optimism, and how did he — or perhaps they — do it?
Searching for clues this week, I was helped by a retired former head of the South West Regional Crime Squad who solved many murders and caught a notorious serial sex attacker who once stalked the area where Joanna lived.
As the police did yesterday evening, I also retraced Joanna’s likely footsteps on the night she disappeared, visiting key scenes along the way.
When the working week ends, there is always a lively buzz in the Bristol Ram — a trendy bar in the heart of the city.
On the last Friday evening before the Christmas weekend, however, the ambience was frenetic.
Determined to let their hair down after a depressing year, and to escape the arctic weather, 150 raucous office workers thronged the small bar.
Manager Alex Major remembers it as ‘the busiest night we’ve ever had’.
Amid this melee, around a high wooden table was a group of regular customers from the architect and design company BDP, whose office is just up the hill. And laughing among them was Joanna.
According to friends, she invariably seemed cheerful, but on December 17, she was in particularly high spirits, for it promised to be the best Christmas since her childhood. The festivities would begin the following Tuesday, when she and Greg were to host a party at the stylish flat they rented in the Clifton area of the city.
As her boyfriend would be staying with his brother in Yorkshire until Sunday night, however, Joanna was looking forward to a ‘girlie’ weekend, pampering herself, shopping for presents and baking mincepies.
Jo drank with her workmates in the Bristol Ram for about two hours on the night she disappeared. As the bar was so crowded, strangers may have overheard her discussing her weekend plans
So much for Joanna’s fun-packed plans on that fateful Friday night. They were never to be fulfilled.
She drank with her workmates — male and female — in the Bristol Ram for about two hours, so it seems fair to assume she told them Greg would be away for the weekend.
As the bar was so crowded, strangers may have overheard her discussing her weekend plans.
She also sent emails to friends, mentioning that she would be alone.
As the police plan to interview all her Facebook friends, it seems she may have made it known via messages on the social networking site.
Search: Officers have been looking under cars and carefully examining Joanna Yeates' street for clues into the murder
Several of her colleagues stayed at the Ram long into the evening.
However, Jo left at 8pm and, donning her cream winter jacket, began walking home.
It was a steep climb of more than a mile and a half, but as a keen rower she was very fit.
First, she would have headed up Park Street, with its bustling restaurants and bars, then veered leftwards through a warren of quiet residential streets, dimly lit by mock Victorian street lamps, which lead into the fashionable village of Clifton.
There she would have walked along busy Regent Street, prettily illuminated with Christmas lights, before wending along another long, darkened road and across a grassy square to reach her basement flat at 44 Canynge Road.
Along the way, we know she stopped at a Waitrose supermarket, but left empty-handed; bought two half-litre bottles of cider at a Bargain Booze off-licence (whose security camera captured her smiling broadly, despite the bitter cold); and dropped into Tesco Express to pick up a large gourmet mozzarella and basil pizza.
This last purchase was timed at 8.37pm, so, assuming she walked directly home, she would have been back no more than ten minutes later.
Careful examination: Officers in black jackets were sent out in force to search for anything that could be relevant to the murder investigation
Was she followed? Treading the same path last Wednesday evening, this seemed perfectly plausible.
With stop-offs included, the walk took 40 minutes, but it would have been easy to stalk someone from a discreet distance — particularly on such a busy night.
That said, a report this week suggesting that CCTV cameras filmed Joanna walking a few dozen paces ahead of two shadowy strangers in Clifton appears of little significance, for the images are far too obscure for anyone to be identified.
Did someone lie in wait for her and pounce as she reached the flat — one of six in an imposing, stone-built, Victorian house?
Again this seems possible, for they could have hidden in the garden until she clanked through the wrought-iron gate and took the path to her darkened, side-door entrance.
Then again, was Joanna accosted by someone who called on her soon after she returned — a man whom she considered sufficiently trustworthy to be admitted, or who was already hiding inside the flat?
If she had been expecting a visitor, this might explain why she had bought two bottles of cider on her way home — though not why only one had been opened and partially drunk.
It might also explain why she bought an oven-ready meal large enough to feed two people.
The pizza, along with the cardboard box in which it was contained, has never been found and police say it could be integral to the investigation.
Could Joanna have agreed to meet the person who killed her at her flat — and even bought dinner for them both?
Whatever the truth, her coat, shoes, bag, keys and purse were inside the flat when Greg Reardon returned from his brother’s house in Yorkshire to find her missing, in the early hours of Monday, December 20, so it seems pretty certain she was killed at home or attacked there and forcibly abducted.
Her body, frozen solid and partially covered with snow, was found by an elderly couple walking their dogs along Longwood Lane — a semi-rural road little used by pedestrians, three miles from the flat.
It lay beside a dry-stone wall, behind which is a deep former quarry now used to recycle building materials.
This leads us to wonder whether the killer had intended to drop her into the deep pit, hoping she would be buried when the mechanical diggers began churning, only to be disturbed, panic and abandon her beside the road.
The police have not yet disclosed whether she was throttled manually or with some sort of ligature such as the knee-length, grey ski sock that was missing when she was found. (When I asked DCI Jones this week whether the sock might have been used, he replied that he was ‘keeping an open mind’ — his stock reply to any potentially revealing question.)
Search: Police have been scouring drains in the streets surrounding Joanna Yeates' flat in Clifton. Around 40 have been checked for clues that might help in the investigation
Probe: The drains were pumped with an industrial cleaner to dredge up debris before police worked through leaves and muds with sticks for murder clues
Since ‘stranger murders’ are so rare, the investigation inevitably focused first on those closest to Joanna — including, of course, Greg Reardon, a fellow architect at BDP who had been her boyfriend for more than two years.
To those who know this genial, good-natured outdoorsman — an ace skier and surfer — the suggestion that he might be involved was wildly implausible.
Joanna was his first serious girlfriend, one of his friends told me, and their happiness was plain to see. There was no surprise, therefore, when police quickly eliminated him from the inquiry.
They have not explained officially why they are so sure he is in the clear, but sources say signals picked up from his mobile phone provide evidence he was well on his way to Sheffield when Joanna was at the Ram and could not have doubled back surreptitiously to the flat.
But if it wasn’t her boyfriend, who else might it be? There appeared to be no answer — but then, shortly before New Year, an identikit ‘weirdo’ conveniently emerged.
With his intent eyes, eccentric manner and clothes, unkempt hair that he once dyed blue and an apparent fixation for the death-obsessed 19th-century poetry of Christina Rossetti, the couple’s landlord, Chris Jefferies, might have been invented for a Miss Marple mystery.
Good-natured: Greg Reardon's happiness with Jo was plain to see, according to friends, and she was his first serious girlfriend
He had phoned his next-door neighbour, mechanical engineer Peter Stanley, and asked him to fetch jump leads. Mr Stanley, who is among those interviewed, says this was somewhere between 6pm and 7.15pm.
Suspicions were further aroused when Mr Jefferies told neighbours he had seen Joanna and two strangers leaving her flat at around 9pm on December 17 — then denied he had said this and urged them not to repeat it to the police.
The owner of the ground floor flat at 44, Canynge Road, ‘The Strange Mr Jefferies’, as pupils nicknamed him when he taught English at nearby Clifton College, was duly arrested.
It was a sensational development. Eccentric as he may seem, though, could this puny, 65-year-old bachelor have overcome a young woman who, though only 5ft 4in tall, prided herself on her arm-wrestling strength?
As he has been released on police bail and remains the only known suspect, we must presume that police still think it possible. Yet he strongly protests his innocence and is said to be considering legal action for wrongful arrest.
So where do things go from here? We are assured by DCI Jones that the inquiry is being conducted ‘meticulously’ (another favourite term) and it is only a matter of time before the killer is caught.
Others are less than convinced, among them ITN, whose camera crew was banned from a police Press conference this week for daring to criticise the investigation.
Retired regional crime squad chief Brian Theobald knows from experience how much pressure Mr Jones is under, and is not among his critics.
Having followed the case closely, however, the man who during the late Seventies trapped the Clifton Rapist by sending policewomen (and even policemen wearing skirts and wigs) on to the streets as decoys, has formed his own theory.
Jo's landlord Chris Jeffries was detained for questioning by police but he strongly protests his innocence and is said to be considering legal action for wrongful arrest
‘Then again, he may have met her in another way, but if I was a betting man, I would say it was someone who knew her. Learning she would be alone, he may have called on her soon after she got home, and something happened as she opened the door.
‘There was then an altercation, and he panicked and strangled her, perhaps with the sock; very few murders are planned.’
Hoping it would help conceal his identity to dispose of Joanna’s body — Mr Theobald’s theory runs — the killer dragged her into his car. He apparently possessed local knowledge, for he headed towards the open country of north Somerset, his most likely route being over the nearby Clifton suspension bridge — assuming he had change for the 50p toll.
Had he known the area really well, however, he would probably not have turned down Longwood Lane, but taken the opposite fork of the T-junction.
‘If he had hidden her body down there, she might never have been found,’ Mr Theobald told me this week, as we ventured for miles along the lane. Gazing at the tangled woodlands bordering the road, I saw his point.
All this is pure conjecture, as he readily admits. But if he is right, it would explain why Joanna’s door was not forced open, and why partygoers smoking outside a house opposite 44 Canynge Road heard two shrill screams at around 9pm.
Joanna’s open, trusting nature may also have been a factor.
She possessed so many other qualities, too, her mother recalled. She was a ‘truly creative’ designer, ‘very organised’, had always made friends easily and ‘got on with everyone’.
Joanna and Greg were drawn together by their shared passion for sports and adventure. They would cycle everywhere together, and had planned to go skiing. ‘As far as I’m aware they never had any arguments and their relationship was very solid,’ Mrs Yeates recalled.
But her daughter also valued her independence, and took up rowing ‘because it’s healthy to have an activity separate to your partner’.
Joanna’s father, David, a 60-year-old IT consultant, agreed. ‘They were so much in love. Last June they went to the Isle of Wight Festival. It was their first holiday together so it was a bit of a test.
‘She met Greg at the architect practice, and after a couple of months they became girlfriend and boyfriend. He was the first boyfriend she had lived with. We went up there to take flowers and champagne.
‘She was close to Greg’s family and stayed with them a number of times. They gave her a moonstone pendant. Jo never wanted to get married for the sake of it, but I feel that Jo and Greg were partners for life. Although they never discussed marriage, we felt it was on the cards.’
Joanna spoke her final words to her father a fortnight before Christmas, phoning to ask what he would like as a gift. A hooded training top for the gym would do nicely, he told her.
She last saw her mother around the same time, when Mrs Yeates travelled to Bristol to watch filming of the TV show Deal Or No Deal, and stayed at the Clifton flat.
Mrs Yeates saw nothing then to indicate Joanna might be troubled: ‘If ever she had a problem she would tell me or her father,’ she says.
That Friday evening, as left the Ram and trudged home through gathering snow, Joanna’s life seemed so good.
Who took it away from her — and why? For her parents and boyfriend, and all those who loved this engaging, energetic young woman, these questions grow more imperative with each passing day.
Additional reporting: Ryan Kisiel
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1345194/Joanna-Yeates-Murder-Did-Jo-buy-dinner-killer.html#ixzz1AQynObBH
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