Tabak admits landlord car claim
Vincent Tabak admitted today he should not have tried to blame his landlord Christopher Jefferies for Joanna Yeates’s murder.
Tabak gave a witness statement to police – after Mr Jefferies had been arrested for her murder – saying he had noticed the former Clifton College teacher’s car moved on the night Miss Yeates died.
Tabak told detectives he had seen Mr Jefferies’ Volvo parked on the driveway facing away from the road on the night of December 17.
The following morning the car was facing the opposite direction, still on the driveway but facing towards the road.
Tabak’s statement implied that Mr Jefferies had moved his vehicle during the night.
Questioned at Bristol Crown Court about why he made that statement to police, Tabak accepted he should not have said it.
“I shouldn’t have said that about Chris Jefferies,” he told jurors.
Asked why he implicated his and Miss Yeates’s landlord, Tabak replied: “Probably just to deflect attention away from me.”
Prosecutor Nigel Lickley QC, cross examining Tabak, asked: “Misleading the police, wrongly incriminating Mr Jefferies?”
Tabak replied: “Yes.”
Mr Lickley asked: “Not something you were doing in a panic?
“Hoping it would deflect attention away from you?”
Tabak replied: “Yes. I was stressed but I shouldn’t have done those things.”
