True Crime Collection

Joanna Yeates

Joanna Claire Yeates was born on 19th April 1985 to David and Teresa Yeates in Hampshire, England. She was privately educated at Embley Park near Romsey. Joanna studied for her A-levels at Peter Symonds College and graduated with a degree in landscape architecture from Writtle College. She received her postgraduate diploma in landscape architecture from the University of Gloucestershire. 

In December 2008, Joanna met 25 year old architect Greg Reardon at the firm Hyland Edgar Driver in Winchester. The couple moved in together in 2009, and settled in Bristol when the company moved there. Joanna later changed jobs to work at the Building Design Partnership in Bristol. Joanna and Greg moved into a flat at 44 Canynge Road in the city's Clifton suburb in October 2010. 

At approximately 8:00pm on 19th December 2010, Greg returned home from a weekend visit to Sheffield to find Joanna absent from their flat on Canynge Road, Clifton. Greg had been trying to contact her by phone and text, but without success. While awaiting Joanna's return, Greg called her again, but her mobile phone rang from a pocket of her coat, which was still in the flat. He found that her purse and keys were also at the flat, and that their cat appeared to have been neglected. Shortly after 12:30am, Greg contacted the police and Joanna's parents to report her missing.

Investigators determined Joanna had spent the evening of 17th December 2010 with colleagues at the Bristol Ram pub on Park Street, leaving at around 8:00pm to begin the 30 minute walk home. She told friends and colleagues that she was not looking forward to spending the weekend along as it would be her first in the flat without Greg; she planned to spend her time baking in preparation for a party the couple would be throwing the following week, and shopping for Christmas. Joanna was seen on CCTV at around 8:10pm leaving a Waitrose supermarket without purchasing anything. She phoned her best friend, Rebecca Scott, at 8:30pm to arrange a meeting on Christmas Eve. The last known footage of Joanna recorded her buying a pizza from a branch of Tesco Express at around 8:40pm. She had also bought two small bottles of cider at a nearby off licence, Bargain Booze.

Greg and Joanna's friends set up a website and used social networking services to help look for her. On 21st December 2010, Joanna's parents and Greg made a public appeal for her safe return at a police press conference. In another press conference, broadcast live on 23rd December 2010 by Sky News and BBC News, Joanna's father David commented on her disappearance: "I think she was abducted after getting home to her flat...I have no idea of the circumstances of the abduction because of what was left behind...I feel sure she would not have gone out by herself leaving all these things behind and she was taken away somewhere". Her keys, phone, purse and coat were left behind at her flat. Detectives retrieved a receipt for a pizza, but found no sign of it or of its packaging. Both bottles of cider were found in the flat, one of them partially consumed. As there was no evidence of forced entry or a struggle, investigators began to examine the possibility that Joanna may have known her abductor.

On 25th December 2010, a fully clothed body was found in the snow by a couple walking their dogs along Longwood Lane near a golf course and next to the entrance of a quarry in Failand, approximately 3 miles from her home. The body was identified by police as that of Joanna. Greg and the Yeates family visited the site of the discovery on 27th December 2010. David Yeates said that the family "hand been told to prepare for the worst" and expressed relief that his daughter's body had been recovered. Funeral arrangements were delayed as investigators retained the body. The pathologist Nat Carey consented to the release of the body on 31st January 2011.

The investigation, called "Operating Braid", comprised 80 detectives and civilian staff under the direction of Detective Chief Inspector Phil Jones, a senior officer with Avon and Somerset Constabulary's major crime investigation unit. It became one of the largest police operations in the Constabulary's history. Phil urged the public to come forward with any information to help catch the killer, especially potential witnesses who were in the vicinity of Longwood Lane in Failand in the period before Joanna's body was discovered. He states that the investigation was seeking the driver of a "light coloured 4x4 vehicle" for questioning.