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Anorak News | Joanna Yeates: Weird Chris Jefferies’s Candy Floss Hair Made Him Do It?

Joanna Yeates: Weird Chris Jefferies’s Candy Floss Hair Made Him Do It?

by | 30th, December 2010

JOANNA YEATES: SO, what do you remember about suspected murderer Chris Jefferies? Anorak asked that question of a former scholar at Bristol’s Clifton College. “Weirdo,” came the reply. Anything else? “Yeah. They were all weirdos.”

Chris Jefferies was Joanna Yeates’s landlord. Reports said he’d seen her on the night she vanished. He said he could not be certain he had. He’d reportedly been parking his car at the flats and seen three people near the doorway.

Suspicious minds get to work. He was in his car on the night of Miss Yeates’s vanishing? He was in his car about the time she vanished? He has spoken to the police voluntarily? He says his words have been misinterpreted? He is vague?

Armchair detectives are having a field day. And get his for the BBC’s short bio of Chris Jefferies:

Neighbours have said that Mr Jefferies, a bachelor who sports a distinctive mane of straggly white hair, plays a prominent role in his local Neighbourhood Watch group.

Oh, throw away the key. That mane is more akin to remnants of candy floss struck to a pinkish stick. A neighbour of his tell us:

“It is one of the problems. His appearance is unusual. We weren’t good friends. I wouldn’t say he was weird but unusual and the hair is an affectation. He’s a very intelligent man, very sharp.”

Weird. That’s two who says he’s weird. What says Mark Moore, headteacher at Clifton College. Jefferies retired from his post as head of English in 2001. Any issues on his record?

“There was nothing in his record at all. He took early retirement, which he’s perfectly entitled to do, when a new head of English came into the school and he decided to bow out.”

Someone came in to take over his role, eh? Would Mr Moore care to tells us more? Well, no. His line is that this has nothing to do with the school. Nothing to see here. Nothing to see:

“I’ve been headmaster here for six years and I’ve certainly never met Mr Jefferies and there will be very few people on the current teaching staff, and pupils, who have ever met Mr Jefferies. Although he lived locally, he had no formal contact with the college since he retired.”

Still. He was a teacher at a school. And lots of people will have met him. One of them is Jeremy Wayne. He writes for Tatler:

“I knew Chris Jeffries by name and by sight but he did not teach me. He was always Christopher Jeffries, or more often called ‘CJEJ’ (which were his initials) in those days. He was always odd in his manner, turning pink at the least provocation. And I seem to remember he liked to wear a school scarf, which even in 1975 we though rather cheesy.”

Send the man down!

“However, none of these things makes him guilty of murder.”

So you say…

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Posted: 30th, December 2010 | In: Reviews Comments (8) | TrackBack | Permalink