Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. On Christmas morning of 2010, snow fell on a quiet suburb in southwest England.
But just after 9 a.m., the quiet was shattered by the sound of police sirens racing through town.
The police cars came to a screeching stop and a veteran detective inspector stepped out into the cold.
He walked towards a stone wall that separated the road from a tree-covered field on the other side.
The detective inspector reached the wall, crouched down, and started digging through a pile of snow and leaves.
And when he saw what was underneath this pile, he knew he would not be spending Christmas with his family.
But before we get into that story, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please glue together every other page of the book that the follow button is currently reading.
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At 6 p.m. on Friday, December 17, 2010, a 25-year-old woman named Jo Yates sat drinking and listening to Christmas music at the Bristol Ram Pub with some of her coworkers in Bristol, England.
Jo, who was a landscape architect and her coworkers, were regulars at this pub.
But tonight, they were there specifically to celebrate an early Christmas together.
Jo sipped her cider and looked out the window at the falling snow.
The sun had just set, and the snowflakes seemed to glow under the streetlights.
This, along with the holiday decorations on the shops outside, made the whole street look like the cover of a Christmas card.
Jo looked away from the window and joined in on the conversation with her co-workers, who were talking about their various holiday plans.
Jo said she was very excited because this was the first Christmas she was going to spend with her boyfriend, Greg Reardon.
Greg had gone on a weekend trip, but when he got back, they were going to spend a week with their family and then travel, just the two of them, to Scotland for Hogmanay, which is like a Scottish New Year's celebration.
As Jo spoke about Greg, she couldn't help but smile.
A few years earlier, she'd been a university student just trying to figure out what she was going to do with her life.
And now, she had a great job, she had a perfect little flat, and the man that she loved, Greg, had recently started talking about getting married.
Life was perfect. At about 8 p.m., so two hours after Joe had gotten to the pub, she wished all her coworkers a happy Christmas.
She got up from the table, put on her long cream-colored coat, and headed outside into the snow.
It was cold, about 27 degrees Fahrenheit, or almost negative three degrees Celsius, but Joe was used to the winter weather.
She pulled her coat collar up around her neck and started walking home to her flat, which was about a 30-minute walk away.
After walking for a while, Jo ducked into a convenience store to grab a frozen pizza, and then after that, she went into a small shop called Bargain Booze and bought two bottles of cider.
And so now, with her food and drinks in hand, Jo continued the walk home.
She knew her flat would feel empty without Greg there, but she was still looking forward to spending a relaxing Friday night with her cider and her pizza, and of course, her cat.
A little after 8.45 p.m., Jo finally approached her flat, which was a basement unit in an old stone house.
Jo and Greg's landlord, a retired English teacher, lived in the unit right above them.
Jo unlocked the outside door that led directly into her flat, and then she walked inside and put her food and drinks on the kitchen counter.
She took off her coat and hung it on a hook near the door, slipped off her boots, and then called for her cat. but after calling for him, she didn't hear him clacking across the hardwood floor like she expected.
She looked all around the flat, but she couldn't find him anywhere.
Jo shook her head and went back to the kitchen.
Her and Greg's cat was a bit of an escape artist.
He frequently got out. Their landlord had found their cat in his place upstairs several times, and also, the cat had even made it across the small front garden to their next-door neighbor's place before.
And so Joe felt confident the cat would come home when he got too cold.
And so for now, she just grabbed a cider, cracked it open, and sat down in the front room.
And after she'd only taken a couple of sips, she heard a knock on the door.
Joe hoped it was her landlord returning her cat.
So she got out of her chair, opened the door, and when she saw who was there, she gave a huge smile.
On the night of December 19th, so two days after Jo had met her coworkers at the pub, her boyfriend Greg got back to their flat after being gone for the weekend.
He unlocked the flat door, walked inside, and put his bag down on the floor.
He was about to call out for Jo, but he heard a strange sound coming from the kitchen.
His and Jo's cat was meowing, but it sounded like the animal was afraid or angry.
Greg walked into the kitchen, and he saw the cat pacing back and forth in front of an empty food bowl.
This was really strange because Joe always made sure that bowl was full.
And so Greg scooped some cat food out of the bag, dumped it in the cat's bowl, and then walked to the bedroom looking for Joe.
However, she wasn't there. Greg figured she must have gone out with friends or something.
He had messaged her when he was heading home and he hadn't heard back yet, but he really hadn't thought much about it.
However, when he stepped back into the front room, he actually looked around for the first time, and at this point, he did start to get worried.
Greg saw Joe's coat, her boots, and her purse right there in the room.
He knew how cold it was, and so Joe would never have left, at least not without her coat, and she definitely would not leave her purse behind.
Greg grabbed his phone and called Joe, and as he did, he suddenly felt a chill come over him because he heard the sound of her phone ringing inside of her coat pocket right in front of him.
Now, Greg started to panic. Joe was one of those people who never went anywhere without her phone.
And so he immediately dialed 999, the emergency number in the UK, and he told the operator that his girlfriend, Jo Yates, was missing.
In the early morning of December 20th, about four hours after Greg called 999, Detective Inspector Jo Goff of the Avon and Somerset Police walked into the flat.
D.I. Goff had been a police officer for over 20 years, and as such, he'd learned to remain even-keeled in almost every situation.
He spoke in a soft, low voice, and the look on his face almost never gave anything away.
Goff greeted a few uniformed officers who had arrived before him and walked over to Greg, who was standing in the front room looking frightened.
The detective understood why Greg might be upset, but he didn't want to jump to any conclusions.
Now, it was clear Greg's girlfriend had not been home when Greg got there, but besides that, the police didn't have a whole lot of information about what was even going on here.
And so Goff introduced himself to Greg and asked him when was the last time he spoke to his girlfriend.
Greg said that he had seen Jo a couple days earlier before he left town, but he hadn't talked to her since.
Goff asked if it was odd that he would go two full days without speaking to his girlfriend. but Greg just shook his head and said no.
He'd been busy while he was gone, and he figured Joe had been busy too, getting ready for Christmas, so that's why he must have missed her when he'd called.
While Goff listened to Greg, he scanned the room.
He could see Joe's coat, boots, and purse.
Just like Greg, he did think it was strange that Joe would go out and leave all of those things behind.
But still, this didn't prove a crime had occurred here.
Goff also noticed two cider bottles sitting on a small table.
One had a couple of sips gone, and the other looked untouched.
Goff asked Greg if there was anything about Jo, like physical attributes or places she liked to frequent, that might point police in the right direction as they began the search for her.
Greg gave a basic description of Jo. He said she was average height, had short blonde hair, and blue eyes.
And he said she'd been hanging out with co-workers the night he left town at a pub called the Bristol Ram.
Goff jotted all of this down in his notebook, got details of where Greg had spent the weekend, and then joined a couple of officers in the kitchen.
After spending a few hours in the flat, Goff and the other officers had not found anything that stood out to them.
There was no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle, and at least according to Greg, the front door had been locked when he got home.
Goff told his team to speak to the landlord who lived upstairs and also to Joe's other neighbors to see if anyone had seen her in the last couple of days.
For now, Goff was treating this as a missing persons case that he hoped would have a clear explanation and a happy ending.
For all he knew, Jo had just left town without telling her boyfriend.
Maybe she was with the person she'd gotten one of those ciders for.
And maybe she took a different coat and purse with her and accidentally forgot her phone.
I mean, it was just a thought, but either way, Goff felt confident he could retrace Jo's steps from the moment she left the pub and he could find her.
Later that day, Goff sat at the station, poring over CCTV surveillance footage from locations between the Bristol Ram Pub and Joe's flat.
Britain has more surveillance cameras per person than almost any other country in the world.
This is why Goff felt so confident he'd be able to see exactly where Joe had gone on the last night anybody had heard from her.
And he would be right. Using footage from storefront and street cameras, Goff followed Joe's walk out of the pub and through Bristol.
Footage from inside the convenience store showed her buying the pizza, and he saw her go into Bargain Booze and walk out with two bottles of cider.
Goff later picked her up on a street camera in her neighborhood that showed her walking towards her flat.
So, it looked like Jo had just gone home after going to the pub, and Goff could see she was wearing the coat and carrying the purse that had been found inside of her flat.
However, Goff couldn't find any surveillance footage that showed Jo back on the street after she had gotten home.
It was like she had gone inside of her flat and then just vanished.
And when the entire day went by without any of Jo's friends or family hearing from her, Goff began to think that Jo very likely did not just ditch her boyfriend and leave town.
And so Goff went to meet with Jo's parents, and when he did, he suggested they reach out to the press for some help.
On December 21st, two days after Greg had reported Joe missing, Joe's parents went on the local news.
They said they loved their daughter dearly and they asked anyone who might have helpful information to please come forward.
By the following day, Joe's story had hit the major newspapers in London and her picture was being shown on TV news programs all throughout the United Kingdom.
And soon, the story of the pretty young missing woman had become a public obsession.
At 9 a.m. on Christmas morning, so over a week after Joe had gone missing, a couple was walking their dog down a snow-covered street that was about three miles away from Joe's flat.
All of a sudden, the dog stopped, sniffed the air, and then looked over to the side of the road.
The couple glanced in the direction the dog was staring, but all they could see was a stone wall standing several feet high that separated the road they were on from a field filled with trees on the other side.
The man tugged on his dog's leash to try to get the dog moving, but his wife told him to actually stop.
And then she walked over to the wall and knelt down to see what was there.
And when she looked, she saw something bright buried beneath the snow and a pile of leaves.
And as she leaned in closer, she screamed.
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Hey listeners, big news for true crime lovers.
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Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A Redacted Medical Mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds, or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now. much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light.
And it's called Lawless Planet. Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
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A few minutes later, several police cars came to a stop on the road where the couple and the dog were waiting.
Goff got out of his car and walked right past the couple towards that wall.
On the ground, he could see part of a brightly colored t-shirt and a frozen blue human arm.
Goff put on his gloves and he was quickly joined by several forensics officers.
And together, they carefully dug into the snow and leaves until they revealed the frozen dead body of a young woman.
As soon as he saw her, Goff closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He really was almost always unflappable, but seeing something like this on Christmas of all days just shattered him.
Goff walked away from the body, collected himself, and then he called Joe's parents to tell them he believed he had just found their daughter's body.
Later that morning, after the body had been positively identified as Joe's, Goff and several forensics officers stood by the wall, staring down at Joe.
Goff wondered if maybe this was just a terrible accident.
Maybe Joe had left her flat in a rush without her coat on, slipped on the snowy ground, and suffered some sort of injury that killed her, or that immobilized her and then she died of exposure.
And because it had been snowing, her body would have quickly been covered and would have gone unnoticed.
As Goff crouched down and searched the area around Joe's body, a few pieces of evidence jumped out at him.
Joe was clothed, however, her shirt had been pulled up around her neck, exposing one of her breasts.
He also saw bruising on her throat. And so right away, this did not seem like something that would happen from a fall.
It looked like something that would happen in a sexual assault.
Also, Goff noticed that Joe had on only one sock, but more specifically, he saw the bottom of her bare foot and the bottom of the sock on the other foot were totally clean.
There was no dirt, no leaves, or any other sign that she'd been walking around in this area.
It was like she'd been dropped here. Goff heard somebody call his name, and he turned to see a forensic biologist crouch down looking at the wall nearby, gesturing to him.
Goff joined her, and she immediately pointed to a section of the wall.
Goff looked and he saw there were blood stains running vertically up this one section of the wall, almost from the very top to the bottom.
He looked at the forensic biologist a bit confused.
She told him that these stains were not the kind of blood spatter that would occur from an attack.
Instead, these were stains that would have been left when someone tried to lift Joe's bloody body over the wall and failed.
Goff stood up and peered over the wall. On the other side was just a big field full of trees.
Had someone been able to actually dump Joe's body onto the other side of the wall, meaning had they not failed to get her over, there was no telling how long it would have taken for someone to finally find her.
Goff exhaled and he could see his breath hanging in the air.
The way Joe's body had been found and the bloodstain on the wall made it pretty clear this was no accident.
He now had a murder investigation on his hands.
Goff also felt sure that Joe had not been walking along this road when she died, so his first thought was that she had been murdered somewhere else, probably near her flat, and then driven and dumped here.
Goff knew the forensics team had a lot of work to do.
However, they seemed very optimistic that the snow and the low temperatures had helped preserve the body, and so they hoped they'd be able to find blood or other DNA samples that might lead them to Joe's killer.
So Goff left them to it, got in his car, and headed back to the station.
Now that he was investigating a murder, he knew where he had to start, with Joe's boyfriend, Greg.
That night, so Christmas night, Goff sat across from Greg inside of an interview room, and the young man looked like a total wreck.
He told Goff this was supposed to be the first Christmas he and Joe were going to spend together, and he couldn't believe this was happening.
However, as upset as Greg was, he was very cooperative throughout the interview.
He gave Goff all the details of his weekend trip again, he again told the story of what had happened when he first came home, and he agreed to submit DNA samples.
After that, Goff let Greg go. Since Greg was the victim's boyfriend, the detective would not completely cross him off the suspect list.
However, Goth had already followed up on Greg's alibi after they met that first time, and it had checked out.
Also, because there was no surveillance footage of Jo after she had gone inside of her flat and then disappeared, Goff believed the only person who could have carried out this murder would be somebody who lived basically inside of that building that the flat was in, because that's the only way they would escape being seen on camera, going in and out of her place.
And because this case was now all over the news, lots of other people in the United Kingdom were beginning to speculate the same thing.
The killer must have been inside of that building when Joe went into her flat.
But before Goff could even decide what to do about this theory, he got a phone call.
On the other end of the line, he heard the sound of an older man's voice, who was speaking with a very proper, posh English accent, and this man quickly introduced himself as Chris Jeffries, Joe and Greg's landlord and upstairs neighbor.
And Chris told Goff that he had seen the news about the discovery of Joe's body, and he believed he had information that would help.
He said on the night Joe went missing, he had seen a few people he did not recognize walking along the side of the house.
In the days following this phone call, Goff followed up on the details of Chris's story, and the detective got the feeling that the landlord was not telling him the whole truth.
The landlord, Chris, had been aware of the investigation since the moment police showed up after the 999 call.
In fact, members of Goff's investigative team had taken a statement from Chris because he owned the building Joe lived in and was her upstairs neighbor.
Now it struck Goff that during that initial meeting, Chris had not mentioned these strangers he'd supposedly seen near the house.
Chris had also told investigators that on the night Joe went missing, he said he'd spent the entire night at home.
However, since that initial conversation, Goff had reviewed additional surveillance footage.
And late on the night of December 17th, the last night anyone had seen Joe alive, Goff saw a car on that footage that looked a lot like Chris's car driving across a nearby suspension bridge, indicating he had not been home the whole time.
So, on December 30th, five days after Joe's body was discovered, Goff met Chris at the police station and escorted him directly to an interview room.
Chris had long white hair and he wore a sports coat and carried this small leather satchel.
He sort of looked like an eccentric professor.
Goff sat down at a small table across from Chris and asked him how his relationship with Joe had been.
Did he have any issues with her? But Chris just shook his head.
He said Joe and Greg were a nice couple and good tenants.
He said the worst he could say about them was that sometimes their cat got out and found its way upstairs to his place.
Goff asked Chris what he'd been doing on the night of December 17th, the night that Joe went missing.
Chris immediately looked confused. He said he'd been home the whole night and hadn't seen anything unusual, just like he'd already told police.
Now, Goff didn't raise his voice or even change his facial expression, but he said to Chris, hey, that's not true.
Chris had called and said on the phone that he had noticed some unusual strangers walking by the house.
And so he asked Chris, why hadn't he told the police about those people when they first spoke to him?
Now, a worried look came across Chris's face.
He said he had only come here to help, but now it felt like he was being accused of something.
But Goff just asked him again, why hadn't he told the police about the people he saw by the house?
Chris kind of shook it off. He said it was the holidays and people in the neighborhood were having parties, so it didn't seem strange to him at the time that people were walking by the house.
For a minute, there was just silence between the two men.
And then Goff finally said, on December 17th, surveillance cameras had caught a car that looked just like Chris's car driving across the suspension bridge that was the main route between Joe's flat and the location where her body was found.
Chris looked totally stunned. He said there had to be a mistake.
He never left his flat that night. It was too dangerous.
It was snowing and the roads were bad, so he didn't want to leave his house.
At this point, Goff just excused himself and walked out of the room.
In all honesty, he really didn't know if Chris was guilty.
Chris had easy access to Joe's flat, and that car on the surveillance footage could possibly be his.
This was just too much to ignore, and so Goff needed a bit more time to fully dig into Chris's background and his seemingly flimsy alibi.
Under British law, in the case of serious crimes like murder, police can apply to a magistrate to hold potential suspects for 36 hours without charging them.
Goff felt confident a magistrate would allow him to hold Chris.
And Goff was right. That night, police arrested Chris, took a DNA sample, and transferred him to a jail cell in a nearby facility.
And for the first time, Goff felt like he had a legitimate suspect.
The following morning, which was New Year's Eve, Goff sat at his desk, staring at the front pages of multiple tabloid newspapers.
Goff was very annoyed, because despite all of his team's efforts to hide it, news about Chris's arrest had gotten out.
Goff flipped open one of the papers, and as soon as he did, he got even more upset.
The paper had basically decided that Chris had murdered Joe.
It was not just that he was arrested, but no, he was the killer.
And their proof? Well, just how he looked and how he spoke.
However, as upset as Goff was about this, the tabloid headlines actually ended up benefiting his investigation.
Because that morning, while Goff waited to secure a search warrant for Chris's flat, he got a phone call.
This caller said his name was Vincent Tabak, and he lived in the building right next to Joe's that also happened to be owned by Chris.
Vincent said he had seen Chris's car earlier that night facing one direction, and the following morning, Chris's car was facing the opposite direction.
When Goff heard this, he started to get excited.
If he could prove Chris was lying about staying home on the night Joe went missing, he might be able to definitively link Chris's car to the one he'd seen on the suspension bridge in the surveillance footage.
After Goff hung up, he immediately asked a detective on his team to follow up with Vincent to see if he might have seen or heard anything else that night.
And then soon after that, Goff got the approval for his search warrant, and so he and his team headed over to Chris's upstairs flat.
It was New Year's Eve, and as Goff drove across town, he believed he might actually be able to close this case before people all across the country popped open champagne bottles and welcomed in 2011.
When Goff and his team walked inside of Chris's upstairs flat, it felt like they'd stepped into a library.
The walls were lined with shelves that were overflowing with old books.
Goff told his team to split up and begin their search.
And it didn't take long before one of them called out from the kitchen.
And so Goff and the other officers walked into the kitchen and they found that officer sitting on the floor holding something that he'd found tucked under one of the kitchen cabinets.
When Goff bent down to get a better look, he thought he was looking at the smoking gun that would wrap this case up. because the officer on the floor was holding a pair of trainers, the British word for tennis shoes.
And one of these trainers looked like it was stained with blood.
Even the normally calm and collected Gough could not hide his excitement.
Between the shoe, the call from the next door neighbor, and the surveillance footage from the bridge, Gough felt like he was close to having enough evidence to build a strong case against Chris.
And so officers bagged the trainer and had it sent off to the crime lab for expedited testing.
And by the following day, which was New Year's Day of 2011, the lab came back with the test results.
And on the same day, the lab also reported that they had run tests on DNA samples they'd found on Joe's clothes and skin.
And when all these test results came in, Goff knew that they had found Joe's killer.
Based on DNA evidence, surveillance footage, and interviews conducted throughout the investigation, here is what police believe happened to Joe Yates on the night of December 17th, 2010.
Around 8.45 p.m., the killer stood outside of Joe's front door holding her cat.
The killer clutched the cat close to their chest so it wouldn't dart off and then knocked on Joe's door.
Joe opened the door, saw the cat, and immediately smiled.
She apologized for the cat's behavior and thanked the killer for bringing her cat back.
The killer said it was no problem, leaned in through her door, and put the cat down.
And as the cat trotted off towards Joe's kitchen, the killer lunged at Joe, pushed her further into the front room, and slammed the door behind them.
Joe screamed, but the killer immediately covered her mouth while they shoved her through the flat towards the bedroom.
Joe tried to fight back, but it was happening so quickly, and the killer threw her onto the bed, pulled her shirt up around her neck, and grabbed at her chest.
Joe struggled, and one of her socks fell off in the fight.
The killer tried to keep her pinned down, but Joe let out this loud scream, desperately hoping somebody would hear her and save her.
The killer panicked and punched her in the face.
Blood ran down Joe's cheeks. Then the killer just wrapped their hands around Joe's throat and squeezed.
They sat on top of Joe, strangling her violently for over 20 seconds until Joe stopped breathing and died.
The killer got off the bed and walked to the front room.
They could hear the cat walking around in the kitchen, but other than that, there wasn't any noise coming from the outside.
The killer took a steadying breath, hoping they had somehow managed to keep Joe quiet enough to not get detected.
And so the killer just sort of stood there for a long time, listening and planning their next move.
About an hour after the killer had arrived at Joe's, they went back into the bedroom, picked up Joe, and carried her to the front door.
With Joe in their arms, the killer opened the door, quickly locked it from the inside, then they stepped outside and closed the door behind them.
Then they rushed to their car, opened up the trunk, and dropped Joe's body inside.
Then the killer got in their car and sped across town in the snow.
When they reached a dark, empty road with the wall running alongside it, they pulled over and got out.
They scanned the street and saw nobody was nearby, so they carefully opened up the trunk, picked Jo up, and carried her over to the side of the road near the wall.
The killer tried to lift Jo's body over the wall, but they just couldn't do it.
She was too heavy. And so her body slid down the wall, leaving bloodstains on the wall from her face and neck.
Finally, the killer just dropped Jo onto the snowy ground.
They piled more snow and leaves on top of her, and then ran back to their car and drove off.
A few minutes later, they stepped back inside of their flat, hoping nobody had seen what they just did.
Despite what some people in the media had already decided, Joe's landlord, Chris Jeffries, had nothing to do with Joe's murder.
It would turn out Joe's next-door neighbor, Vincent Tabak, had killed her.
Vincent was the one who had called police to say he believed that Chris, who also happened to be his landlord, had driven off in his car on the night Joe was killed, that he was lying about being in his flat the whole time.
Vincent had called police after reading about Chris' arrest in the tabloid newspapers.
He thought it was a great opportunity to distance himself from the crime and solidify the police's belief that Chris was the killer.
Now, when Goff spoke to Vincent, he learned that Vincent was in the Netherlands celebrating Christmas, meaning he was not home.
Now, this didn't mean he was guilty, but it struck Goff as just a little bit suspicious, and so he wanted to follow up with Vincent.
So, Goff contacted authorities in the Netherlands, and then Goff sent a detective from his team out to the Netherlands to meet with Vincent in person.
Now, the interview itself did not provide any new information.
However, the detective was able to get Vincent to submit a DNA sample.
When the test results for the trainers that had been found in Chris's flat came in from the crime lab, it would turn out that even though there might have been blood on them, there was no connection to the murder at all.
However, the DNA samples taken from Joe's body and clothes that the crime lab had just tested as well did match the sample that Vincent had provided.
After these results, Goff went back to the surveillance footage of the suspension bridge that was near the road where Joe's body had been found.
The car in that footage was not Chris's after all, and police would soon discover that Vincent had taken a different, less direct route to the road, which is why he was never seen on camera.
Goff secured a warrant and he and his team searched Vincent's apartment.
While they didn't find any specific evidence pertaining to the crime there, Vincent had been watching violent pornography on his computer, most of which featured men assaulting women and strangling them.
After police arrested Vincent, they would learn that he didn't really have any real relationship with Jo.
He had just seen her around the neighborhood and thought she was pretty.
He had also brought her cat back to her in the past.
But over time, Vincent developed a violent obsession with Jo.
He wanted to have sex with her and strangle her.
And as Christmas of 2010 approached, Vincent decided he didn't want to wait any longer to act on this obsession.
And when he saw Jo's cat outside on December 17th, he saw his opportunity.
Vincent showed up at Jo's flat, returned her cat, and then killed her.
Vincent was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 20 years.
As for Joe's landlord, Chris Jeffries, who was all but proclaimed guilty in much of the UK media, he's spoken at length in interviews telling his side of the story and saying how all he had wanted to do was help the police solve a horrible crime.
A quick note about our stories, they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.
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