World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 20 - Vincent Tabak - Full Episode | Forensic Files

-Christmas Day, Bristol, 2010. A couple walking their dog along a country lane made a startling discovery.
It was the body of a 25-year-old woman called Joanna Yeates. She'd been missing for eight days.
-When Joanna Yeates's body was discovered, it was partially covered in snow, and she is partially undressed.
-She is found to have 43 injuries, focused on the head and neck. Her ultimate cause of death is manual strangulation.
-A nationwide hunt for the missing landscape architect had come to a tragic end, and the prime murder suspect
was Joanna's landlord and neighbor, Christopher Jefferies. -When you're confronted with police telling you
that you're under arrest on suspicion of murder, the shock is so great that really,
it's a question of feeling numb. -But the police had arrested the wrong neighbor.
The real killer was 32-year-old Dutch national Vincent Tabak. -But he takes one life in a terrible way,
and then proceeds to try and convince the world that he could not possibly have had anything to do with it.
It is an act of gross depravity in my mind. -Vincent Tabak killed Joanna Yeates to satisfy his sexual urges.
Despite trying to cover his crimes and frame an innocent man, he was caught. The police proved him to be
one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -December 25, 2010, Clifton, Bristol,
in the southwest of England. The city should have been celebrating Christmas day,
but the news of a murdered woman stunned the local community and the nation. -It's thought Joanna must have crossed
or been taken across the bridge to the point where her body was found. Police are still searching that road,
which runs beside a golf course, but no details have been disclosed of how or when she died.
The police say they're treating Joanna's death as suspicious, but it is not yet a murder inquiry.
-I think one of the most heartbreaking elements of this case is the fact that it turned
from a missing persons inquiry into a murder investigation. It was Christmas day.
There was snow on the ground. It was quite an exciting time, and we all wanted a happy ending to this case.
-Joanna's killer was 32-year-old Vincent Tabak, a Dutch engineer who had an obsession with hard-core sex
and violent pornography. -He was obsessed with sado-masochistic pornography. He would watch, at length, pornography that was dedicated
to the proposition of binding women, torturing women, humiliating women. -After Joanna rejected his advances,
Tabak strangled the 25-year-old to death in her own flat and then dumped her body in a country lane
3 miles away from where they both lived. Reporter Claire Hayhurst worked on the case.
-The disappearance of Joanna Yeates became front-page news very quickly. I think part of that was because people were looking forward
to celebrating with their loved ones at Christmastime, and everybody was thinking of this woman
who was missing from her family at such an important time of year. -The police, in their attempt to try and find the killer,
arrested the wrong man, Joanna's landlord, Christopher Jefferies. -The worst part of the experience
was when I started to read the sort of reports in the press, the sort of hideously distorted image
of somebody purporting to be me. That was the image which had been projected nationally
and, indeed, to a degree, internationally. -Eventually, Tabak was arrested, but the calculated killer continued to deny
that he had anything to do with the murder. -His own family, his girlfriend, his girlfriend's family
were absolutely convinced that he was innocent, so he was able to maintain this façade of normality,
this idea that he was this gentle giant, this innocent person. And I think when you can fool those closest to you,
you're potentially a very dangerous person. -He's never perpetrated a sexual assault.
He's never attacked anyone. He's never raped another woman. He seems to have moved from law-abiding citizen
to calculated, first-degree, premeditated murderer, all in one step. -This killer's story begins in 1978.
Vincent Tabak was born on the 10th of February in Veghel in the south of the Netherlands.
He grew up in the town of Uden near Eindhoven and was the youngest of five children.
-His parents were quite a bit older than the parents of his peers, and he had quite a solitary upbringing.
And his relationships with his fellow pupils at school, the kids in the community, they weren't that great.
So he was a bit of a loner. -He wasn't desperately gregarious. He kept himself to himself.
He didn't play with other children. He was kind of reserved, but he was undoubtedly clever.
-Tabak came from a good, caring family. The only thing that we know about him psychologically
as a child was he was a bit of a loner, and that is very common for people who have sexual pathology,
especially if it's what I would call secretive sexual pathology. So, no indications of a traumatic event
being the cause of his disturbance. -I think one of the things about Tabak that emerges through his adolescence
is that he was probably fascinated by pornography from a very early age. -Young Vincent struggled to fit in with his peers,
but he was an exceptionally bright child. -The thing is, he was developing quite quickly intellectually.
He did incredibly well in school. But those social skills that we all have to develop,
he wasn't developing those as quickly as he was developing his aptitude for academic subjects.
So there was something that was a little bit odd about him. -Nevertheless, Tabak continued to excel academically,
and in 1996, aged 18, he went to study architecture, building, and planning at the prestigious Eindhoven University of Technology.
It was here that he was exposed to the city's Red Light District. -Well, when Tabak was at university,
he lived in an area opposite the Red Light District. I think there was a fascination that he had with these women,
because he hadn't really been exposed to intimate relationships. He was quite socially stunted in terms of his development.
-Tabak thrived in higher education and went on to earn his PhD. -No question a talented young man, if a bit --
How do I put it politely? -- removed from the world. -Even in his late 20s, Tabak continued to struggle with forming relationships,
especially with those from the opposite sex. -He certainly found relationships with women
very difficult. There is very little evidence that he had any girlfriends. I think he saw women as objects
and had done so from quite an early age. -In 2007, while studying for his PhD, Tabak found work at Burohappold,
an engineering company in Bath, England. -So, he's working for a company that specialized in exploring
how people move through public spaces -- sports stadiums, schools, places like that.
There's a lot of science behind it, so I think it suits Tabak down to the ground.
-A year later in 2008, tragedy struck for Tabak when his father, also an engineer, died.
The 30-year-old continued to work for the same company in Bath. -I think Tabak's first real job
was a learning experience for him. So, he's spending time with people who perhaps haven't had the same experience
that he has, being at university for nearly a decade, living a rather kind of solitary life.
He's being exposed to new people, new behaviors, and he's looking at how people behave in social situations.
And because he's very bright, he's picking up on this. He's realizing what's appropriate,
what's not appropriate, in particular circumstances, and he's starting to mirror the behavior of other people.
-And in November 2008, he even met a woman, and they began dating. -The couple met through the Guardian's online dating site,
perhaps predictable, in a way, given the fact that Tabak was very reserved when it came to women.
-Now, bear in mind that he's 30 at this point, so his development is a little bit behind
what would be considered normal and average. And he meets his first girlfriend online.
And that for me is actually quite interesting, because you don't have that same kind of social pressure
that you do in a face-to-face environment. -The relationship flourished, and after just seven months,
the couple decided to move in together. In June 2009, the couple moved to Clifton in Bristol
to an up-market, hilltop suburb and rented a flat from Christopher Jefferies, a retired English teacher.
-Well, one of the garden flats became vacant, and a letting agent told me that they had signed up this couple.
-Christopher recalls the first time he met Tabak. -He was physically quite tall and imposing,
but in manner, comparatively gentle and fairly deferential, quite reserved. He always struck me
and, I think, other people in the building, as very, very pleasant, very respectful in his manner.
-Life for Tabak was going well. He'd secured a reputable job. He was in a stable relationship and had settled into a new city.
-He lived in a delightful part of town. He had a very good job, and he was on his way up.
He had a good social life. He vacationed. -But the 31-year-old engineer was hiding something sinister.
He was leading a double life. Whilst he was away on business trips, Tabak was interested in women, soliciting sex.
-There was one trip to Newcastle in the northeast of England, and there were records of him looking up the local sex trade,
looking up escorts, looking up sex workers. So this was something that he would indulge in
when he was away. -So this is a person who has lived in the world, at least in his fantasy, of sexual domination.
-Tabak was also a regular consumer of online hard-core pornography. -A man who took a great interest in escort agencies,
in pornographic websites, some of them involving the abduction, torture of women.
And indeed, some of the others involving the abuse of children. -I think that there is very often that connection made
between consuming violent pornography and being a sexual predator and being a violent individual.
But I think for Tabak, this didn't cause his violent behavior. I think when he was consuming this violent pornography,
it simply reinforced these existing values and attitudes and beliefs that he had about women.
-So what we have is a hidden man. We have the man on the surface who goes to Bristol
and gets on the train to Bath and comes home, in a steady relationship, and you have the secret Tabak,
the Tabak who is hidden beneath the surface, who exists on the web, and who exists in front of his computers.
Here is the Tabak that is about to come out. The genie in the bottle, if you prefer,
in the twilight world in which his girlfriend knows nothing about. -On October 25, 2010, another young couple
rented a garden flat from Christopher Jefferies. -Now, this flat was located in the same house
as the flat occupied by Vincent Tabak and his girlfriend. -The new tenants were 25-year-old Joanna Yeates,
a landscape architect who was originally from Hampshire, and her boyfriend, 27-year-old Greg,
also an architect, from Sheffield. They both worked at the same firm in Bristol and started dating in 2008.
-They were living together for the first time. They were obviously very much in love with each other.
-Joanna Yeates was a very clever, very ambitious woman, and she was working as a landscape architect,
and her work took her to Bristol. -Jo struck me as being a slightly nervous young woman.
She was very, very attractive. Again, very pleasant to deal with, but a little bit nervous in manner.
She was a sort of person, for example, if I had to go and speak to her, would hesitate for a little
before deciding whether or not to invite me in. -Although they were neighbors, Tabak and Joanna Yeates
didn't have any interaction with each other. -Now, I believe that Tabak was fascinated
by his next-door-neighbor and increasingly fascinated by her. She represented the figured that he'd seen on the Net.
He would like to have some kind of sexual relationship with her. She, however, was entirely unaware of his interest in her.
-On the 6th of November, Tabak went on another business trip, this time to America.
And once again, he was looking at adult escort websites. -So he's playing the role of the committed partner,
the devoted boyfriend at home, and then there's this other side to him, the real side to him that comes out when he's on his own,
and he doesn't have those controls over his behavior. -Unable to control his sexual fantasies,
Tabak made contact with an escort. -Goes to a motel in San Luis Obispo, about 150 miles north of Los Angeles,
and hires a girl and pays her $200. Again, he's ostensibly working, and yet, in that twilight world that he inhabited,
he's making contacts with escorts, prostitutes. -I would say that Tabak had an obsession
with what sex represented. I think for him, it represented power. It represented control.
It represented an opportunity for him to see himself as important, because these women were there to serve him.
And I think that's a value that he continued to develop over many years. -After five weeks away, Tabak returned to Bristol.
-The 11th of December in 2010, Tabak comes back from California, back to his girlfriend.
On the surface, nothing has altered one iota, except something has. -Tabak's secret addiction to violent pornography and sex
was escalating by the day. -I think that Tabak was essentially a bomb waiting to go off,
a bomb fueled by an addiction to pornography. Not fueled by alcohol or drugs, but simply the addictions of pornography,
which I've always believed is potentially every bit as dangerous. -Across the hallway, new tenants Joanna Yeates
and her boyfriend Greg had now settled into their new life in Bristol. They'd made friends
and were preparing for the festive period. -During the day of December the 17th,
Jo had gone out to lunch with her boyfriend, Greg. He was going away to Sheffield for the weekend.
-Greg kissed Joanna goodbye and then made his way to the north of England to see his family.
Little did they know, it would be the last time they would see each other. Joanna was now home alone.
-I gather she had told friends that she was a little bit nervous about spending the weekend on her own without Greg.
And I think she had been intending to do some cooking or some baking in preparation for Christmas.
-Coincidentally, Tabak's girlfriend tells Vincent Tabak that she's going to be going to a work's party,
and it won't finish until the early hours of the following morning. -It was agreed that Tabak would pick his girlfriend up
after her party. At approximately 6:00 p.m. that same evening, his neighbor Joanna left work
and made her way to see some friends for some Christmas drinks. -Perfectly innocently, Joanna goes out for a drink
with some friends in the Ram pub in Bristol. -She was there for about two hours,
and she then made her way back up to Clifton where she lived. -At around 8:10 p.m.,
Joanna went into a supermarket but didn't buy anything. Approximately 20 minutes later, she called her friends
before heading to two other shops, where she bought pizza and cider. With her shopping done, Joanna then made her way home.
-In one of the most chilling moments in this case, Joanna Yeates encounters a priest walking his dog
and then conducts a conversation. It was a week before Christmas. It was a very uplifting, cheerful time.
People were looking to celebrate and to celebrate the season. -After talking briefly about the weather with the priest,
Joanna then headed to her flat. -The last sighting of her is from some CCTV footage
from a pub just 600 yards from her home, and it shows her walking home alone. -Joanna made it back to her flat at approximately 8:37.
Her neighbor Vincent Tabak was also home alone and decided to pay her a visit. But he wasn't there to be neighborly,
as Joanna would soon find out. -I presumed she opened the door willingly, and there was her neighbor,
though they were not, by any means, friends. -Now, at some point during this evening, Tabak enters her flat.
We're never gonna know exactly what happened here, but it's likely that the entry wasn't forced.
Joanna probably let him in. He was one of her neighbors. She was a trusting individual.
-It was to prove a terrible mistake. -Once inside the flat, Tabak made sexual advances
towards the 25-year-old. -And at some point during that interaction, Joanna Yeates realizes, "Oh, crikey,
this is turning nasty." -Joanna rejected the unwanted attention from Tabak, something that only angered him further, and he attacked her.
-At about 10 to 9:00 that evening, a couple attending a party near Jo's flat at Canynge Road
in Bristol heard a woman scream twice. -Now, those screams almost certainly came from Joanna Yeates.
-As Joanna tried to fight Tabak off, the 32-year-old placed his hands around her neck
and started to strangle the defenseless woman. -Most people know what it feels like to choke on something,
to find it difficult to breathe. For that situation to be suddenly inflicted on you
out of the blue by another human being would be terrifying, confusing, distressing.
-And she ends up with over 40 injuries to her body. -It's a horrifying, horrifying thought
that a young woman just back from celebrating the coming of Christmas with her friends
should be snuffed out by this loner next door who is hiding another individual, hiding Mr. Hyde in plain sight of Dr. Jekyll.
-And literally, in one fell swoop, he's wiped out the life of this individual who had so much hope and so much promise.
-Shortly after killing Joanna, Tabak sent his girlfriend a text message. He then went about covering up the murder
in a seemingly calm and calculated fashion. -After Tabak murdered Joanna Yeates,
he starts to clean up very quickly. -He carries -- and this must have taken quite a considerable effort --
he carries the body of Joanna Yeates out and puts it into the boot of his Renault Menage car.
-He sets about constructing an alibi for himself, so he drives to a local Asda supermarket,
where I think he knows he's gonna be seen on CCTV. -Tabak wandered around the supermarket
but left without buying anything. CCTV footage then captured him returning to buy crisps, beer,
and rock salt. -And I think probably he bought those items because he was hungry and because he wanted a drink.
Here's somebody who is very self-obsessed, so he's going to do the things that he wants
when he wants to do them. -With Joanna's body still in the boot of his car, Tabak casually sent his girlfriend another text message
at 10:30 p.m. -And bored is a word that tends to come up quite a lot with Tabak.
He's bored quite often, and for me, that's quite interesting, because that's one of the key characteristics of psychopathy,
that proneness to boredom, that need for stimulation. -By now, he's in Asda with the Megane parked in the car park
with the dead body of Joanna Yeates in it. -Most people, when they commit murder,
are absolutely horrified by what they've done. They are not able to function normally whatsoever,
but Vincent Tabak is something just altogether different. -With his shopping complete, the sadistic killer
left the supermarket to dispose of Joanna's body. -At some point later that evening,
he drives the car about 3 miles to a lane in Failand. He parks beside a stone wall guarding a quarry.
He opens the boot, gets Joanna's body out, and he lifts her out and tries to throw her over the wall,
but he finds he can't quite manage it. So in the end, he dumps her on the roadside,
covers her with leaves and snow. -Tabak then drove 3 miles to his flat. -The way he goes about covering up this murder is so systematic.
He's literally going through the problem and the solution process. So he goes away from the supermarket.
He dumps her body, covers it with snow, and then just drives home and gets on with the rest of his festive period.
He's just got absolutely no regard for her as a human being. -Once home, Tabak turned on his computer.
-He began almost immediately doing two things -- Watching more pornography, much of it related and similar
to what he'd perpetrated that night, and doing legal research. -And he starts looking up sentences
for murder versus manslaughter -- which sentence is going to be more severe? What's the difference between the two?
So he's very much concerned for himself at this point in time. -He was already beginning to plot out, if he was caught,
how he would twist the facts in order to make it a manslaughter. He researched the temperature rate of body decomposition.
In short, he did everything conceivable to plan for an escape, because he was aware
that getting caught was a real possibility. -Joanna's boyfriend, Greg, unaware of her tragic fate,
tried calling her at 10:30 p.m., but there was no response, and he left her a text message,
asking her if she'd had a good time in the pub. Just after 1:30 a.m., the brazen killer Tabak
continued to play the role of the doting boyfriend and went to pick his girlfriend up
from her work's Christmas party. -And guess what? They go and collect a takeaway.
What she doesn't know and can't know is that he'd taken the life of their next-door neighbor Jo Yeates.
-With several unanswered messages and calls, Joanna's anxious boyfriend drove back to Bristol
on the evening of the 19th of December, but there was no sign of her in the flat.
-But Joanna's keys, purse, mobile phone, they're all there, as are two undrunk bottles of cider.
Put yourself in his shoes. You walk in expecting to see your girlfriend, and the place is empty.
It must have been a most dreadful shock. -Greg called Joanna's parents, but they had no idea where she was.
Concerned for her safety, they drove to Bristol that evening. Next, Greg then dialed 999,
and at 4:15 a.m., along with a policeman, they knocked on Tabak's door, asking if he'd seen Joanna.
-Tabak brushes it off. No idea. Haven't seen her. His girlfriend, of course, knows nothing at all
because she wasn't there. There is an element to this story that I think is chilling,
and that is Tabak's capacity to deceive. Here is a man who knows full well that he has just taken his neighbor's life
but presents to his girlfriend, who is clearly fond of him, as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth.
-The police found the receipt for the pizza that Joanna had bought less than hour before she was murdered.
But bizarrely, the pizza and the packaging were nowhere to be seen. With no leads, a missing persons inquiry was launched
nearly three days after Joanna had disappeared. Her frantic family had a painful wait ahead of them.
The killer was hiding in plain sight, and his behavior after the murder was peculiar.
-In the days after Tabak committed the murder, looking at his Internet history is quite interesting.
He was continuing to watch violent pornography. He was following developments in the Joanna Yeates missing person case.
So he wants to stay on top of what's happening, 'cause for Tabak, staying in control is very important to him.
He needs to know exactly what's going on. -With no news of their daughter, Joanna's concerned parents appeal for her safe return
four days after she was missing. -When I got to the first press conference, I remember her family coming in the room
as well as her boyfriend, Greg, and it immediately struck me just how distraught and upset they were.
-Over the next few days, with no sign of Joanna, the police continued to search her flat.
And on the 23rd of December, the searched the other flats in the building, including Vincent Tabak's, but found nothing.
-There were fairly detailed searches of the gardens around the property, all the flats.
In the end, sniffer dogs were brought in to see if they could find any traces of anything
that might be connected with Jo. -The killer continued with the façade and went to spend time with his girlfriend's parents
in Cambridge. On Christmas Eve, the police contacted Tabak again, asking where he was on the night of Joanna's disappearance.
He claimed that he was home all evening. With the media pressure mounting, the police had no other leads on Joanna's disappearance.
-I remember the parents of Jo Yeates, I think her dad, said how she loved Christmas.
And I know the feeling at the time across the country, probably across the world was,
people were just willing her to come home, to be reunited with her family in time for Christmas.
-But sadly, that wasn't to be. At approximately 9:00 a.m. on Christmas day, two dog walkers found a body
nearly 3 miles from Joanna's flat. -Joanna's body is discovered in its shallow grave of leaves and twigs and snow
in the lane. -The search to find Joanna's killer became one of the largest police operations in Bristol.
Over 100 hours of surveillance footage was examined, and 293 tons of rubbish near Joanna's flat was seized.
A national newspaper even offered a reward of £50,000, but there were no leads. The police then turned their attention
to the night Joanna disappeared. With no signs of forced entry into Joanna's flat,
the police were certain that Joanna knew her killer, and they thought that person had to be her landlord.
-I had gone away to spend Christmas with one of my cousins. As I was on my way back to Bristol,
the following morning, there was a loud knock on the door of my flat with the police saying that they needed to talk to me.
It came completely out of the blue. I had no idea that I might be a suspect, but when you're confronted with police
at 7:00 in the morning, telling you that you're under arrest on suspicion of the murder of one of your tenants,
the shock is so great that, really, it's a question of feeling numb. There isn't, I think, any opportunity
to feel anything else. -Christopher was arrested five days after Joanna's body was found,
and the news broke quickly. -People were very, very quick to assume that Christopher Jefferies was guilty.
This really was trial by media, and the outcome was decided very, very quickly. And this guy had his reputation
absolutely ruined literally overnight. People had decided that this was what a murderer looked like,
and when that has been put out there, when the public have kind of got on board with that,
it's very, very difficult to gain your reputation back. -One person watching the news with great interest
was Vincent Tabak, who had traveled to the Netherlands to spend New Year with his family.
Tabak had seemingly got away with murder, but he was about to make a vital mistake.
-Well, Vincent Tabak, after Christopher Jefferies was arrested, saw a narrative developing.
He saw that Christopher Jefferies had been labeled as a murderer, and he literally could not help himself.
He wanted to help this story line along. So he called the police, and he said, "Well, yeah, actually, I remember now that my landlord
was out and about on the evening that Joanna Yeates disappeared. And I saw that his car was parked the other way 'round
the next morning, and wasn't that strange?" -Keen to hear his version of events, on the 31st of December,
a detective flew out to Amsterdam to speak to him. But for Tabak, it didn't quite go to plan.
-The detective arrives at the hotel and spends around six hours with Tabak, and she becomes very, very suspicious of him,
because he's very curious about the investigation. He wants to know an awful lot about it,
especially when it comes to the forensic tests that have been carried out. And she cottons onto the fact
that he's taking this information, and he's then using it in particular ways. So, he starts to give a slightly different version of his story.
He starts to say, "Well, actually, I didn't just go out once on the evening that Joanna disappeared.
I went out twice. I went out to Asda, and then I went out to take pictures of the snow."
And she thinks this is quite bizarre. And he's also starting to say, "Oh, I may have been inside Joanna Yeates's flat
at some point," and he'd never said this before. -She becomes convinced that there is far more to this
and to Tabak than meets the eye, and crucially, she asks him if she can take a DNA swab.
-This is a very experienced detective. She knew exactly what was going on here, and she got DNA,
and she got fingerprints from him, and he gave those willingly. But he seemed a little bit concerned,
and I think this did seal his fate. -On the 1st of January, 2011, Christopher Jefferies
was released on bail, and the following day, a slightly anxious Tabak returned to Bristol.
The police now had his DNA on file, and saliva had been found on Joanna's body. It was only a matter of time
before they traced the results back to him. By the 20th of January, the police had now gathered
enough evidence to arrest Vincent Tabak for the murder of Joanna Yeates. -Vincent Tabak's DNA was found on Joanna Yeates's body,
and traces of her blood were found in his car. So this is very, very compelling evidence.
Now, Tabak's reaction to this when he was arrested was to basically construct himself as the victim and say,
"These forensic scientists, they're all corrupt. They've been taking bribes. They've set me up here.
Christopher Jefferies has been wrongly accused. Now I've been wrongly accused, as well."
-The calculated killer continued playing the innocent victim, even manipulating those close to him.
-He had convinced his girlfriend and his girlfriend's family that he was completely innocent
to the extent that they set up a fund to pay for his defense. Here was this gentle giant,
this intellectual, quiet, introspective guy who wouldn't hurt a fly. -With Tabak now in custody, the police searched his flat
and seized his four computers. What they would find would give them an insight into the mind of the killer
and his sadistic sexual fantasies. -They find the pornography. They find the bound women.
They find the women being bundled into the boot of a car. -Some of the images that Tabak had on his computer
stood out for the police because of their similarity to Joanna Yeates and the way in which her body was found.
-One in particular of the pornographic sites he visited contained an image of a blond-haired woman
pulling up her top to expose her breasts. Now, chilling though it may sound, Joanna's top had been lifted up,
and part of her right breast exposed, exactly like the website that Tabak had accessed.
-On the 21st of January, Vincent Tabak was charged with the murder of Joanna Yeates.
He had fooled everyone, even the man he'd tried to frame. -I was absolutely astonished.
My first reaction was that probably the police were again grasping at straws, and here was somebody else
who would turn out to be entirely innocent because, certainly, absolutely nothing in his manner,
in his behavior, would lead me to have any inkling of suspicion that he might be capable of that in the slightest.
-Tabak was sent to Bristol Prison, then Long Lartin in Worcestershire whilst he was waiting for his trial.
By now, his girlfriend had withdrawn her support for him. Realizing that he was now on his own,
on the 8th of February, 19 days after his arrest, the killer gave a chilling confession to a prison chaplain.
-Now, he hasn't suddenly grown a conscience overnight. He's had a couple of weeks inside.
He's become aware of the strength of the evidence against him. He realizes that he needs to change his version of the story
to secure the best possible outcome for himself. So he admits that he's responsible for her death,
but he doesn't admit to murder. He says this was manslaughter, and he starts to twist the story.
So he says, "She was flirting with me. She was coming onto me. Poor me. I'm the victim.
And she freaked out when I tried to kiss her, and I just reacted. I couldn't help it."
-The original suspect, Christopher Jefferies, was released from police bail on March 4th
and cleared of all charges, just over two months after he was originally arrested.
Two months later, on the 5th of May, Vincent Tabak admitted to the manslaughter of Joanna Yeates
in court, but denied the charge of murder. His trial took place on the 4th of October, 2011,
at Bristol Crown Court. During the course of his testimony, Tabak gave his version of events from that fateful night.
-Vincent Tabak told Bristol Crown Court that he had gone into Jo's flat after spotting her through the window.
She'd apparently had her blind up. He said they'd both chatted about the fact that their partners were away, and they were bored.
-He claims that Joanna came onto him. She'd been leading him on. She'd been encouraging him.
She'd been flirting with him, and that he'd gone to kind of follow up on that. -And he said that Jo then made a flirty comment about her cat,
and he made a pass at her. He grabbed her and tried to kiss her. And he said it was then that she started to scream loudly.
And he asked her to stop, and she wouldn't. And he said that he then put his hands around her throat
and started to strangle her in an attempt to control her. And he said that suddenly, after about 20 seconds,
she had gone limp and fallen to the ground. There was a moment in the trial that I think will stay
with everybody in that courtroom for a long period of time. Vincent Tabak's defense barrister asked him
to act out effectively the period of time in which he'd spent strangling Jo. And I remember us counting together those 20 seconds,
and it feeling like an awfully long time. -Tabak's defense was that it was manslaughter, not murder.
To inflict 43 injuries upon a person takes time, takes effort. It is physically demanding,
and the length of time that pressure has to be applied to the neck after a person is unconscious,
you have minutes to realize that the person is not responding. But yet, Tabak is maintaining that pressure
long after it would be necessary just to subdue somebody. To suggest that he wasn't intending for her to end up dead
is just entirely implausible. -The notion that he would think a jury would be naive enough
to believe that story while the autopsy indicated that she had 43 wounds on her body,
most of which around her neck, would tell anyone this was a strangulation. -On the 28th of October, after 4 days of deliberating,
the jury found Vincent Tabak guilty of murdering Joanna Yeates. -In sentencing him, Mr. Justice Field said,
"I think there is a sexual element to this killing. In my view, you are very dangerous.
In my opinion, you are thoroughly deceitful, dishonest, and manipulative." And I think those words are very helpful
to describe Vincent Tabak. -Tabak was given a life sentence with a minimum of 20 years.
Justice was finally served for Joanna and her family. In addition to the charge of murder, in March 2015,
Tabak was also charged with possessing over 140 indecent images of children, and 10 months were added to his sentence.
He remains at HMP Long Lartin. -Vincent Tabak is somebody who is duplicitous. He is cold, and he's calculating,
and he's incredibly narcissistic. It's about me, myself, and I. I think what I can say for sure is that he would definitely
have gone on to harm other people. It's all about pursuing his own desires and his own wants.
If he had gotten away with this, then there would have been absolutely no impetus on him to change his behavior,
to address those underlying values and attitudes and beliefs. He still would have been misogynistic.
He still would have been violent and entitled, and somebody would have been harmed by him.
-He had every opportunity in life, and he forsake that and destroyed his life, Yeates' life, her boyfriend's life,
and the life of his own girlfriend. -He only takes one life, but he takes it in a terrible way,
and then proceeds to try and convince the world that he could not possibly have had anything to do with it.
It is an act of gross depravity in my mind. -Tabak killed a bright young woman who had her whole life ahead of her
just because he couldn't control his depraved urges. He deceived those closest to him
and let an innocent man take the blame for a murder he didn't commit. Undoubtedly, Vincent Tabak
is one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

Vincent Tabak strangled his neighbour to death in her own flat in December 2010. In 2011, he was given a life sentence.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

The episode details Joanna Yeates's murder by Vincent Tabak and the wrongful arrest of her landlord Christopher Jefferies.

Key points

The Discovery of Joanna Yeates. On Christmas Day 2010, the body of Joanna Yeates was discovered, shocking the nation.
A Tragic Turn. Joanna's disappearance turned from a missing persons inquiry into a murder investigation.
Vincent Tabak's Dark Side. Vincent Tabak, a seemingly normal man, harbored a dark obsession with violent pornography.
The Night of the Murder. On December 17, 2010, Joanna Yeates was last seen alive after a night out with friends.
The Calm After the Storm. After killing Joanna, Tabak went about covering up the murder in a calculated manner.
The Chilling Confession. Vincent Tabak confesses to a prison chaplain, claiming it was manslaughter, not murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was a bit of a loner.

Describing Vincent Tabak's childhood.

5:52WatchAug 3, 2021

Tension

80/ 100High tension

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