Christopher Jefferies's life is turned inside out when one of his tenants disappears without a trace just before Christm | dHNfQXNabmZpNW9NNW8
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00:00 One moment, Christopher Jeffreys was a concerned landlord and neighbour.
00:07 The next, he was a murder suspect, an innocent man and a life changed forever.
00:12 Well, I think I was probably just numb at the time.
00:16 With the shock of it all, I was able to think of nothing
00:20 except what was going to happen next.
00:24 What was that whole process like for you, though?
00:27 In the event, I suppose, something which started to make me feel
00:32 really rather angry, that I knew that I was innocent,
00:37 nobody else knew that I was innocent,
00:40 but nevertheless I was required to go through
00:43 these very protracted series of interviews
00:47 during the course of three days.
00:49 And as police concentrated on Christopher Jeffreys,
00:52 Joanna Yates' real killer, Vincent Tabak, remained a free man.
00:56 Whether they were making other inquiries at the same time or not,
00:59 I don't know, but certainly a lot of their time and attention
01:03 was taken up with me, yes, and it did occur to me at the time
01:07 that perhaps the focus should be elsewhere.
01:12 And looking back now...
01:15 It's absolutely clear that the focus should have been elsewhere, yes.
01:20 The lingering suspicion and the attention it attracted
01:23 pushed Christopher Jeffreys into hiding.
01:25 He was forced to stay with friends and to change his distinctive appearance.
01:29 But for quite a few days, I certainly stayed inside all day.
01:35 I went out occasionally under cover of darkness,
01:39 but it wasn't for quite a few weeks
01:43 after I'd been released from custody, in fact, not really,
01:47 until the police bail had been lifted in early March
01:52 when I felt I was able to start going about more or less as normal.
01:58 Did you resent that?
02:00 It was certainly the most difficult time of my life.
02:05 His arrest had prompted a media thirst,
02:08 especially for intimate details about his life.
02:11 He was variously vilified as strange, creepy, lewd and obsessed by death.
02:16 Reading those and reading them in such a concentrated
02:20 and pointed form for the first time was very, very upsetting indeed.
02:26 Did you recognise at all the person they were reporting?
02:29 Absolutely not. Absolutely not.
02:32 This was an entirely foreign personality that was being foisted on me.
02:40 One tenant killing another has been just a small part
02:43 of what Christopher Jeffreys has had to learn to live with.
02:46 It is something that one could never imagine
02:51 in one's wildest and worst nightmares happening, quite.
02:57 But that nightmare, he says, is insignificant
03:00 compared to the pain the Yates family is feeling.
03:04 They have had to relive the whole of that
03:07 as a result of the court proceedings,
03:09 which must have been almost indescribably painful.
03:13 I can't begin really to imagine what they have had to go through
03:19 all over again in these last few weeks.