Eerie scene poses riddle of woman's final hours

A Facebook photo of Joanna Yeates. Photo / Supplied

Her handbag sat undisturbed on the kitchen table. Her purse was there. So were her keys and her mobile phone. There was even the receipt for a margherita pizza - the last meal Joanna Yeates bought.

There was no sign of Yeates herself, though, nor of anything to indicate forced entry or a struggle.

Minutes after that simple supermarket transaction 10 days ago, she returned to her home and then soon afterwards she left without any of her belongings, to disappear from the lives of her boyfriend and her parents for ever.

Detectives have struggled to make sense of the eerie scene - assuming a degree of coercion in her vanishing, but lacking any evidence to support that. Then yesterday brought the news that a frozen corpse, found covered in ice and snow on a grass verge on the outskirts of Bristol, was that of the 25-year-old landscape architect.

The Yeates family were travelling to Bristol from their home in Hampshire yesterday to formally identify her body. "It hasn't been Christmas for us," said her father, David, 63. "It's been surreal, totally unreal."

Yeates was convinced his daughter was abducted. "We know what she does and doesn't do. We were 100 per cent convinced within 30 minutes of arriving at the flat that she had been abducted," he said.

Detectives have moved house by house through the upmarket Clifton area of Bristol where she lived, checking bins and gardens for evidence that will shed light on her flight.

Detectives still seek answers to two basic questions. How did Yeates cross the Clifton Suspension Bridge, the 400m structure spanning the nearby Avon Gorge, which is the main artery linking Clifton to Failand, where her clothed body was found by two dog walkers on Christmas Day? And where is the margherita pizza, the only item that appears to be missing from her flat?

Detectives are scouring CCTV footage shot around the Clifton Suspension Bridge on December 17, the night they believe she disappeared.

On Avon and Somerset Police's unusual pursuit of the pizza clue, Chief Superintendent Jon Stratford said: "There is obviously the possibility that she went somewhere else to eat that pizza.

"All we know is that we found her possessions inside the flat along with the receipt, but not the pizza. So she did get back in on the Friday evening."

Today should bring the results of a post mortem examination - delayed because the freezing conditions in which her body was found made earlier examination impossible. The hope is to establish a cause of death.

Detectives have also examined the phone and the computer of her boyfriend, Greg Reardon, 27, an architect at the same firm, who reported her missing to police on December 19, two days after the couple last spoke.

Officers have said that they believe he had nothing to do with her disappearance.

A police spokeswoman said: "While a formal identification procedure is yet to be completed, police are satisfied that the body is that of the 25-year-old landscape architect Joanna Yeates."

Roger Feneley, 77, a retired neighbour of Joanna's, said: "She was a very smiley, congenial person, which makes it all the more sad. The police have been very thorough, and rightly so, searching through our bins for any scrap of evidence."

Richard Bland, 74, a retired schoolteacher, said: "There are a lot of young professionals around here and a lot of aged residents in houses that are far too big for them. Many of them go to bed early and haven't seen anything, but the police have been around interviewing every man over 16."

Her body may have been found, but the search for answers has barely begun.

- INDEPENDENT