The Longwood Lane Google

The evidence from Vincent Tabak’s computers

Joanna Yeates

The computer evidence against Vincent Tabak linking him to the death of Joanna Yeates consisted of a succession of potentially suggestive websites allegedly visited by Vincent Tabak. The following sites are not in the least incriminating, however:

• Online news sites, including the BBC, Metro, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror and The Sun, carrying reports on the Joanna Yeates case – Everyone was reading these. 
• An online article about the Tesco pizza bought by Joanna Yeates – Everyone was reading it. 
• An online article (5th January 2011) entitled: “Did killer take sock as a trophy?” – Everyone was reading it. 
• The unsolved murder 14 years earlier of Melanie Hall, for which a new suspect had been questioned as recently as august 2010 – The media compared this to Joanna Yeates’s murder, so everyone was reading it. 
• The then-unsolved murder of Anni Dewani – As she was murdered a month before Joanna Yeates, and her husband Shrien was from Bristol, everyone was following the story. 
• The unsolved murder of Barry Rubery, a 68-year-old South Gloucestershire landowner, on 28th April 2010, which had received only limited national media coverage. 
• Details of local rubbish collections – At Christmas time everyone wants to know which collections will be skipped. 
• The short-term effects of alcohol – At Christmas everyone drinks too much, and he and Tanja were at a party nearly every evening.

Avon & Somerset
Constabulary

Whether the following web sites would have been incriminating or not depends on when he viewed them:

• Avon & Somserset Constabulary’s website – incriminating if the accused had viewed it before it was known that Joanna Yeates had disappeared, but not afterwards. 
• a Google map zoom on the site in Longwood Lane where Joanna Yeates’s body was dumped – incriminating if he had viewed it before the body was found; after she was found, everybody was zooming in on it. 
• The extradition of people from the Netherlands – incriminating if viewed before the body was found, but not once he realized that he might become a suspect and that Avon & Somerset Constabulary might not be very imaginative.

Google image of the end of the Lane
where Joanna Yeates’s body was found

The IT expert from A & S Constabulary in charge of investigating Vincent Tabak’s computers, Lyndsey Farmery, testified in Court (on 19th October 2011) only to the identity of each of the web pages shown to the jury. It was left to Counsel for the Prosecution Mr Nigel Lickley QC (who was not under oath) to tell the jury that the timeline of Vincent Tabak’s computer showed that these activities took place after Joanna Yeates’s last sign of life and before it became generally known that she had disappeared, or before her body had been discovered.

Nor was the jury or the public told that Lyndsey Farmery is a Criminal Intelligence Analyst, whose usual function is to investigate organised crime and terror cases. She did not tell the court anything about her proficiency in Dutch, which would obviously have been needed by anyone who analysed material on Vincent Tabak’s computers.

However, it is known that the IT expert was also greatly interested in the numerous legal high-quality commercial pornographic videos that she encountered on Vincent Tabak’s computer, and that she drew their existence to the attention of at least one of her colleagues. It can be conjectured that she became sufficiently distracted by these videos to omit to note the dates and timings of the computer evidence of Vincent Tabak’s internet usage, which would have become entirely innocuous had it taken place at another time. Once it had been established in Court by the judge that the details of Vincent Tabak’s viewing of these videos had no relevance to the murder of Joanna Yeates, their disclosure to the journalists in Court without his permission was in breach of the provisions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and significantly diminishes the credibility of this IT expert as a witness.

According to Sally Ramage (Criminal Law News, November 2014), the jury was told that Vincent Tabak had accessed the Internet from his computer at home early on 18th December 2010 and performed some Google searches. At 1.26 a.m., the court heard, he Googled BBC News and weather forecast. At 1.46 a.m. he Googled weather forecast. At 1.47 a.m. he Googled BBC Bristol news. Neither Mr. Lickley nor Lyndsey Farmery seem to have noticed that this was the time when the defendant had been sitting in the car in Bristol waiting for the phone-call from Tanja Morson to tell him she wanted him to pick her up from the coach after the Dyson works party. She called him at 1.32 a.m., and only six minutes later the couple were captured on CCTV, arm-in-arm, going to a takeaway for a hot snack.

Lyndsey Farmery. She did not
tell the jury that she is a
Criminal Intelligence Analayst,
whose normal role is to
investigate organised crime
and terror cases

It could also be that Vincent Tabak would have had an innocent explanation for many of these items of computer evidence, if he had not pleaded guilty and the jury had thereby had a chance to hear his explanations. However, it was not Ms Farmery who testified which of the images had been viewed by Vincent Tabak, as that was left to Mr. Lickley, who was not under oath. So they slipped in a few extra incriminating websites to help the jury reach their verdict, without either of them actually testifying in so many words, “Vincent Tabak was here”:

• Websites revealing the percentage of grey cars and how many Renault Meganes there are in the UK - the colour and model of his own vehicle. 
• A website showing a time-lapse video of a body decomposing at a ‘body farm’: incriminating if he had viewed it before the body was found, but not afterwards. 
• The Wikipedia explanation of the difference between murder and manslaughter – incriminating at any time if you live in a house where your neighbour gets murdered. 
• The Wikipedia page for murder. 
• The maximum sentence for manslaughter and the average sentence rates for murder and manslaughter. 
• The definitions of sexual assault and sexual conduct, and explanations of sexual offences. 
• Life in prison and the prison in Bristol.

Crown Prosecutor Ann Reddrop:
“Vincent Tabak manipulated the police
by his research on the Internet”

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Vincent Tabak “manipulated the police by virtue of his own in-depth research on the Internet to keep one step ahead of the investigation before his arrest, looking up extradition and medical details of decomposition, thinking that his cleverness and deceit would prevent him being convicted of a brutal murder”. This is an own-goal, as a person as clever as Vincent Tabak would never have left such incriminating traces on his computer if he really had killed Joanna. He would have used an internet café or a computer at his work that was not associated with him.

The police IT expert’s failure to testify in court about the timeline of his computer activity during the critical evening when Joanna Yeates is thought to have been killed indicates that such a timeline would show that Vincent Tabak could not have had time to kill her and dispose of the body as the prosecution claimed.

The failure of the police to identify
and protect the abused children
diminishes her credibility

After the trial, an anonymous police spokesman told journalists that it was unlikely that any action would be taken about illegal Group 4 images of child abuse allegedly found on Vincent Tabak’s computer. The identity of the person who found the images has never been revealed, so it is not known whether it was this same “IT expert” who found the Longwood Lane Google, nor whether the same person analysed his viewing of legal adult pornographic videos. The Prosecution made repeated applications to persuade the judge that these videos, and also the defendant’s alleged visits to prostitutes, should be put to the jury as evidence of his bad character. The judge rejected all these applications, but allowed the news media to tell the public about them after the trial. Astonishingly, the Prosecution made no effort to submit the images of child abuse as evidence of bad character. This casts overwhelming doubt over the very existence, not just of these alleged child images, but also of the alleged adult porn videos and the alleged visits to prostitutes, not to mention the Prosecution’s entire case.

The failure of the police, during the nine months that had passed, to try to identify these children and take steps to protect them against further exploitation further diminishes the credibility of this “IT expert”, regardless of whether or not it was she who found them. It may be conjectured, however, that this was just a police bluff and that there was nothing illegal about any of the pictures on Vincent Tabak's computer at all.