Christopher Jefferies: So So Sorry

"The media attention and vilification to which Christopher Jefferies was subjected during the Joanna Yeates murder investigation was unprecedented, and I understand how difficult it must have been for him," he said. "It was a complex investigation, carried out under the most intense public scrutiny and the investigating officer had to pursue every reasonable line of inquiry.
"Although I was not chief constable then, I stand by the decision taken at the time to arrest and interview Christopher Jefferies.
"Nevertheless I am happy to accede to his request that we should make it clear that he was completely exonerated in this investigation.
"This is an unusual step to take but these were exceptional circumstances. I had a private meeting with Mr Jefferies on Friday and hope to use his experience to inform our serious crime investigations in the future."

From a letter to Chris Jefferies from Nick Gargan, chief constable of Avon and Somerset Police.

Jefferies was arrested in Jauary 2011 over the murder of Joanna Yeates - cue an orgy of disgusting smears and speculation in the media, which insinuated he was gay and - thus? - a "sexual pervert".
He won damages from eight newspapers, and The Mirror and The Sun were fined for contempt of court.
Chief constable Gargan also wrote; "While it is not normal practice to make such a public statement, in the circumstances of the exceptional media attention your arrest attracted, I acknowledge we should have considered this and I am very sorry for the suffering you experienced as a result."
He forgets to mention that the police were feeding "information" about Jefferies to the press. 

Christopher Jefferies: A Gift To The Tabloids

"If you think back to end of 2010 and last year, the story was something of a gift to the tabloids. It was a readymade Midsomer Murders script set in a respectable and leafy suburb.

"I was the person who had been arrested and the press seemed determined to believe the person who was arrested was the murderer, and to portray me in as dark and as lurid a light as possible.

"Lo and behold you don't just have a sexual predator, but you have a bisexual predator and all sorts of fantastic rumours were latched on to that I would hold pupils' hands while reading poetry, obviously with sinister sexual motives.

"Journalists will talk to 100 people and if 99 say one thing and one says something they would like to believe or will enable them to write the story they want to write, that is the one they will choose to believe.
"The caricature for me was the lewd figure, a peeping tom, I had apparently spied on tenants, I was a loner because I happened to live alone. A lot of people said some nice things about me but they tended to be buried and not given enough prominence in the articles.

"To complete the character assassination it was alleged that I was fascinated by death, because I happened to have shown on a couple of occasions a particularly important documentary about the liberation of Auschwitz.

"Here you have me, this dark, macabre, sinister villain. And that certainly wasn't the whole of it."

Christopher Jefferies - who was falsely accused of Joanna Yeates' murder - speaking at the Benn Debate, Bristol Festival Of Ideas.*

The only tabloids to cover this were the Express and The Daily Star. 

The Sun and The Daily Mirror, who were both found guilty of contempt of court, have ignored it. 

Here's the Star's heartfelt apology to Jefferies for libelling him.

Jefferies suggested one way this could be prevented from happening in the future; "If we're to avoid statutory regulation then the new PCC must have sanctions at its disposal so severe that compliance to the highest possible standards must be compelled."

* Accounts of Jefferies' talk order the above paragraphs differently. 

Leveson Inquiry: Chris Jefferies

Christopher Jefferies told the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking and media ethics how his life was turned upside down over a fortnight of press intrusion in December last year when he was arrested and released without charge over the murder of Bristol architect Joanna Yeates.

The retired schoolmaster said that allegations were made associating him with a convicted paedophile.

He said that person was somebody who was not on the staff of the establishment where he was teaching but had at one time lived in one of the flats in the building where he lives.

"He had sold that flat to somebody else, who sold it to another person, it was that person who I eventually bought the flat from. There was a very considerable gap."

Robert Jay QC says the allegations were "tenuous, indeed fatuous".

He went on to say that there were also claims that he was sexually perverted.

"It was certainly suggested that there may well have been some sort of sexual motivation for the murder of Joanna Yeates," he said.

He went on to say that some articles suggested that he was gay.

"So that created a bit of a problem as far as that particular line was concerned. I think it was then suggested in another article that the answer was that I was a bisexual. The press were trying to have it every possible way," he said.

Daily Telegraph blog.

I'll try and post the full transcript when it comes...

On Stuart Walker and Christopher Jefferies: Shame

Yesterday Vincent Tabak was convicted of the murder of Joanna Yeates.
If we still did have hanging Christopher Jefferies could have swung for it.
Because most of the tabloids decided Mr Jefferies killed Jo last Christmas.
The only "evidence" they had was that some people thought he was "strange" and probably gay.
Case closed!
Here is Chris talking about his ordeal on Sky News - apparently he got a six-figure sum off their sister paper, The Sun, for defamation.
Yesterday an 18 year-old man, Ryan Esquierdo, was charged with the murder of Stuart Walker.
The Scottish press have intimated Stuart was killed by "a secret lover".
That's odd - last weekend the press said they thought he was the victim of an anti-gay hate crime.
This was then sent round the world as fact via Twitter.
During the week some papers hinted he may have been killed in a vigilante attack because he was a suspected child molester.
Of course, they can't all be right.
At the time of writing we do not know who killed Stuart Walker or why.
I hope the press and the public will not rush to judge in this case - for Chris's, and for Stuart's, and for all of our sake.