(2.00 pm)
3 MR JAY: Sir, the next witness is Mr Christopher Jefferies,
4 please.
5 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you.
6 MR CHRISTOPHER JEFFERIES (recalled)
7 Questions by MR JAY
8 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Mr Jefferies, you were, of course,
9 sworn when you last --
10 A. Indeed, yes.
11 MR JAY: Mr Jefferies, you kindly provided the Inquiry with
12 a second witness statement for this module, dated
13 22 February, signed by you under a statement of truth.
14 Is this your formal evidence to are the Inquiry --
15 A. It is.
16 Q. -- in relation to module two?
17 A. It is, yes.
18 Q. In paragraph 2 you explain what the purpose of your
19 statement is and set out your understanding of the way
20 in which the press and the police interacted following
21 the disappearance of Ms Yeates in relation to the
22 leaking of your name and the questions put to you in
23 custody and then why you suspect that other
24 inappropriate interactions took place.
25 Can I take you straight, please, to paragraph 5 and
Page 2
1 ask you to deal with the report on News at Ten on
2 4 January 2011. Did you see that report yourself,
3 Mr Jefferies?
4 A. I did not see that report myself, although it was
5 described in some detail to me. It made, I think,
6 fairly clear the extent to which the Avon and Somerset
7 constabulary, those officers conducting the
8 investigation, felt under considerable pressure at the
9 time, indeed, as I explain in paragraph 4 of the witness
10 statement, and certainly they did not take kindly to any
11 suggestions that they might be conducting the
12 investigation less than efficiently and expeditiously.
13 Q. Thank you. In order to understand the factual context,
14 if I could take you to paragraph 6 of your statement.
15 The first statement you gave was on 21 December 2010.
16 A. That's right, yes.
17 Q. But then you recalled, and this is later on in
18 paragraph 6, what might have happened on 17 December
19 2010. You're not entirely sure of the date, but you're
20 sure as to what happened. You became aware of what
21 sounded like two or perhaps three people leaving by the
22 side gate on the other side of the house, but you could
23 not see because there was a hedge in between and it was
24 dark, this was late in the evening.
25 A. Mm-hm.
Page 3
1 Q. So you telephoned the police and relayed that
2 information; is that right?
3 A. That's right. It was an event which had certainly
4 happened during the course of that week. The more
5 I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that it
6 was Friday, rather than any other day. At the time, it
7 had been an entirely unremarkable event, which is why
8 I hadn't particularly considered it or recalled it at
9 the time that I was giving my main statement, but given
10 the fact that everybody who had been giving statements
11 at the time were encouraged to get back in touch with
12 the police if they did recall any additional
13 information, then that's what I did.
14 Q. You did get in touch with the police, and there was
15 a further statement taken from you on 22 December?
16 A. Yeah.
17 Q. Can I ask you specifically about the content of that
18 statement. It's covered in paragraph 7 of your witness
19 statement. The officer asked you if one of the
20 voices -- this is of the two or perhaps three people you
21 saw leaving by the side gate -- could have been
22 a woman's voice, and you replied that it could have been
23 but you couldn't say either way.
24 A. Precisely, because the event had been so comparatively
25 unremarkable and unworthy of note at the time that
Page 4
1 I hadn't paid that degree of attention to it.
2 Q. When you say the police have since confirmed to you that
3 the fact you gave a supplementary statement raised their
4 suspicions in relation to you, first of all, when did
5 they give you that confirmation? Can you recall?
6 A. This was at the time that I was arrested.
7 Q. What was it about the supplementary statement you gave
8 or the fact that you gave it which raised their
9 suspicions?
10 A. Well, quite. I mean, it came as a considerable surprise
11 to me that they thought that this was a matter to arouse
12 suspicion, given the fact that they had emphasised that
13 supplementary statements would be welcomed. I think
14 they felt that I had perhaps been attempting to deflect
15 any attention from my own potential involvement.
16 Q. You say at the end of paragraph 7 that on the basis of
17 what ensued, you believe it's likely that the police
18 passed these suspicions on to the media. We can move
19 the story forward to Wednesday, 29 December. In your
20 own words, please, Mr Jefferies what happened on that
21 date?
22 A. Well, Wednesday, 29 December is certainly a key date,
23 because until then I had not been the subject of any
24 particular media attention, but that suddenly changed.
25 A Sky News team were extremely anxious to talk to me.
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2 (Pages 5 to 8)
Page 5
1 A large number of reporters and photographers appeared
2 at the address where I lived. They had somehow got to
3 hear about the content of that second witness statement.
4 They had got hold of a very garbled edition of it and
5 they were extremely anxious to know whether I believed
6 I had seen Jo Yeates leaving the premises on 17 December
7 in the company of one or more other people.
8 Q. To be clear, Mr Jefferies, your supplementary statement
9 said, in answer to the question that was put to you,
10 that one of the voices could have been a woman's voice,
11 you couldn't say either way, but you certainly weren't
12 identifying anyone; is that right?
13 A. That's right, that's right.
14 Q. But it came back to you, mediated through the media, as
15 it were, that your supplementary statement --
16 A. That I had actually been a witness to Jo Yeates leaving
17 the premises in company with a person or other people.
18 Q. You'd never said anything along those lines to the
19 police?
20 A. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
21 Q. Might it be said, if I could be forgiven for being
22 devil's advocate, that the press couldn't have got this
23 from the police because the police, had they leaked it
24 to the press, would have said, "Mr Jefferies couldn't
25 identify even whether it was a woman's voice, let alone
Page 6
1 Ms Yeates"? Do you see the point?
2 A. Yes, I do see the point. There is a range of
3 possibilities as far as the source of the information is
4 concerned, including somebody who was not actually an
5 officer to whom I had given the statement, who had seen
6 the statement in any detail, but had nevertheless heard
7 about it.
8 Q. Then, paragraph 9, your home phone rang between 10 and
9 20 times as journalists tried to get hold of you to give
10 your side of the story.
11 A. There was feverish interest indeed in talking to me, and
12 the fact that this happened the day before I was
13 arrested certainly, in hindsight, seemed to me to be
14 remarkable.
15 Q. You draw attention to a piece in the Daily Mail,
16 although your exhibit is providing us with the
17 Mail Online, which may or may not be the print edition.
18 We've had this issue before. Kindly look at page 1 of
19 your exhibit CJ2. We can identify the piece. You're
20 clear in your statement that this is the Daily Mail, not
21 just the Mail Online.
22 At page 2 we see a photograph of you, so obviously
23 someone has startled you to capture you looking in
24 a certain way; is that right?
25 A. Mm-hm.
Page 7
1 Q. Then it says:
2 "The landlord of murdered architect Jo Yeates
3 watched as she left her flat with two people on the
4 night she disappeared, it was claimed yesterday.
5 Bachelor Chris Jefferies, 65, apparently told police he
6 saw three people, including Ms Yeates, walking away
7 together and talking in hushed tones."
8 The source isn't identified there. You say, though,
9 in paragraph 10 it may be that the press had a source
10 within the police who had revealed some of what your
11 second statement said.
12 A. Yes. I think it's worth emphasising at this point that
13 I had told, I think, no more than three neighbours about
14 that second statement to the police, and they all
15 subsequently assured me that they were not the source of
16 the information that then appeared in the media.
17 Q. In paragraph 11, you say with hindsight you believe
18 there was some awareness by the press that you were
19 about to be arrested, "which I duly was the next day",
20 which, of course, was 30 December.
21 A. Yes. It is very much to do with the tone of the
22 reporting, which obviously was on television as well as
23 elsewhere, and friends of mine who happened to be abroad
24 who saw this on television were extremely alarmed,
25 because it seemed to them that suddenly I had very much
Page 8
1 become a subject of suspicion as far as the
2 investigation was concerned.
3 Q. You were arrested at 7.00 in the morning, and as
4 paragraph 12 of your statement makes clear, in fact
5 there were no reporters or TV crews there, as it were,
6 to welcome you, but the police did give you certain
7 advice just in case?
8 A. That's right. The police were obviously very much aware
9 of the heightened media interest, and indeed they have
10 pointed out that on 29 December the senior investigating
11 officer made reference in his policy book to "the high
12 levels of media interest in Mr Jefferies" and was
13 cognisant of that as he pursued the investigation.
14 Q. The police gave out a statement on 30 December which was
15 in fairly anodyne terms but probably sufficient to
16 identify the 65-year-old man as you. The address is
17 given and the number of candidates for that description,
18 I think, was dwindling possibly to one.
19 You say in paragraph 14 that you do not believe the
20 press would have been bold enough to launch into
21 full-scale accusations about you, as they did, built
22 around the fact that you'd been arrested, had they (a)
23 not had confirmation that it was you that had been
24 arrested --
25 A. And indeed we do have confirmation from the Avon and
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3 (Pages 9 to 12)
Page 9
1 Somerset constabulary that, as they put it,
2 inadvertently my name was disclosed.
3 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Yes. There's a difference between an
4 inadvertence, as Mr Port refers to, and what Mr Wallace
5 says, which he describes as "off-the-record guidance".
6 A. Yes.
7 MR JAY: The chief constable, Mr Port, at page 13 of the
8 exhibit bundle, addresses what Mr Wallace says, or
9 alleged in evidence. This relates to what Mr Wallace
10 told this Inquiry.
11 "Mr Wallace has alleged that we deliberately
12 released information in off-the-record briefings,
13 including concerning your personal details and other
14 issues about your arrest. This is untrue. There was an
15 inadvertent disclosure of your name following news
16 reports naming you but as soon as we discovered this had
17 taken place, we made it clear to the journalists the
18 information should not have been released and should not
19 be used."
20 Of course, by then you might say it was rather too
21 late, because --
22 A. Indeed, yes.
23 Q. -- your identity had been 100 per cent confirmed if it
24 wasn't 99 per cent confirmed by the statement which we
25 see in paragraph 13.
Page 10
1 Do we have the timing or the date of the inadvertent
2 disclosure, Mr Jefferies?
3 A. I don't believe that we do.
4 Q. The implication is that it was about the time of your
5 arrest --
6 A. Of the arrest, yes.
7 Q. Maybe we'll find out in due course.
8 A. One comment by the Avon and Somerset police states that:
9 "On 30 December, the Press Association called the
10 press office to ask for an official line about
11 Chris Jefferies being held at Trinity Road custody. She
12 had been told by the police station front office that he
13 was there."
14 Q. The second point you make -- we've dealt with point (a)
15 in paragraph 14, but (b):
16 "... a steer from the police that they believed
17 I was their man."
18 A. Which indeed is a comment from Richard Wallace's
19 evidence to this Inquiry.
20 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Although emphatically denounced by
21 Mr Port, I think.
22 A. Indeed.
23 MR JAY: I believe I'm right in observing that, aside from
24 Mr Wallace, none of the reporters on the ground who were
25 called by this Inquiry said that they'd received an
Page 11
1 off-the-record briefing, let alone one which indicated
2 that you were the police's man, but maybe they -- there
3 are a number of possible inferences.
4 A. Indeed, and as the police have themselves pointed out,
5 it might be necessary to distinguish between an
6 off-the-record guidance from a -- as it were, an
7 official police force and information that might have
8 been gleaned from a source close to the police
9 investigation and who therefore could not be construed
10 as speaking on behalf of the force.
11 Q. Yes. Certainly by the time we reach 30 December and you
12 are arrested and the police statement goes out at
13 paragraph 13, there are only two possibilities. The
14 first was that the press knew that it was you, as it
15 were, and believed it was now open season because the
16 police having arrested you, that was, as it were, enough
17 to suggest your guilt.
18 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: That's remarkably dangerous, Mr Jay,
19 and runs counter to every single understanding that
20 I have of the contempt of court legislation.
21 MR JAY: Yes. I'm just going through the possibilities.
22 The second possibility is that the police did, off
23 the record or otherwise, indicate to the press, not that
24 they're telling us that, save for Mr Wallace, that they
25 were confident you were their man, which wouldn't have
Page 12
1 got --
2 A. And I suppose it would not be beyond the bounds of
3 possibility that the police might wish to give at least
4 an impression of considerable confidence at that point
5 that a significant step forward had been taken in the
6 investigation.
7 Q. But both those possibilities --
8 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: That's very measured, Mr Jefferies,
9 but it is also very dangerous, as you have discovered.
10 A. Yes. Indeed, it was as a result of what took place on
11 that morning that all the defamatory articles which this
12 Inquiry is aware of appeared.
13 MR JAY: Yes. In paragraph 17 you deal with Mr Wallace's
14 evidence, which we recall. We also recall Mr Parry's
15 evidence.
16 A. Mm-hm.
17 Q. Mr Jon Clements, you refer to in the second italicised
18 citation. There's a letter of clarification from
19 Herbert Smith on behalf of Trinity Mirror that he was
20 not there at the material time but there's still
21 evidentially, at least, a lacuna in relation to the
22 Mr Smith that you referred to. The Inquiry hasn't heard
23 from him as to whether or not he received any
24 off-the-record briefing.
25 A. That's right.
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Page 13
1 Q. But save for the inadvertent disclosure which Mr Port
2 refers to in his letter, the Avon and Somerset
3 constabulary stringently deny that there was any leak to
4 the press.
5 A. Certainly that there was no leak that they have been
6 able to discover as a result of an internal
7 investigation.
8 Q. Yes. The Inquiry is going to have to make of it what it
9 can, based on that material and inferences which may be
10 drawn from the material.
11 You assist further in paragraph 18 to this extent,
12 Mr Jefferies -- and this may be important because it
13 sort of works almost the other way around. You say that
14 during the course of your questioning over the three
15 days, it's clear that the police were relying on
16 information that was appearing in the press for material
17 on which to base their questions.
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. Can you recall any lines of questions which did reflect
20 the newspaper articles we looked at two or three months
21 ago, when you first gave your evidence?
22 A. Yes, indeed. Obviously this was not something I was
23 aware of at the time, but fairly soon after my release,
24 the solicitor who had been representing me pointed out
25 that he had been very puzzled by certain lines of
Page 14
1 questioning and then discovered that they had indeed
2 been taken from gossip and variation allegations that
3 had been appearing in the press. One example had been
4 that I was supposed to have a furious temper and there
5 was some discussions as to whether this was in fact the
6 case, and no doubt the police were wanting to determine
7 whether or not Jo Yeates might have been killed as
8 a result of some argument which had flared up which had
9 then got out of hand and resulted in my strangling her.
10 Q. Yes. The other issue you raise in paragraph 19 is the
11 length of your bail. You were released on police bail
12 on new year's day 2011. Vincent Tabak arrested on
13 suspicion of murder on 20 January, charged on
14 22 January, by which point he had confessed to the
15 unlawful killing, but not --
16 A. That's right, yes.
17 Q. -- not murder. But of course the jury later finds him
18 guilty of murder, so we're running out of candidates
19 now. There's only one individual who has killed
20 Jo Yeates and certainly not you. But it wasn't
21 until 4 March 2011 that your police bail was lifted. In
22 your own words, what is your concern about that?
23 A. My concern about that is that although the police
24 assured me that the reason that I was still on bail was
25 that they wanted to investigate every possible avenue
Page 15
1 which might, in the future, lead to somebody pointing
2 the finger of suspicion at me, and they wanted to be
3 absolutely certain that should that happen, then they
4 would be able to say categorically that I was in no way
5 involved with Jo Yeates' death, the effect, of course,
6 was to prolong the public suspicion that I might be in
7 some way involved, and indeed to put me through
8 a particularly stressful period of time.
9 Q. Yes. I wonder, though, whether it's possible to link
10 that -- and one fully understands what you're saying in
11 relation to that -- to any aspect of the police's
12 relationship with the press, or whether this is merely
13 a function of the police's own internal workings and
14 thinking.
15 A. One could conceivably suggest that the police wanted to
16 give the impression that I had been arrested on the
17 basis of possibly firmer evidence than turned out to be
18 the case.
19 Q. Your recommendations for the future. We start at
20 paragraph 23, on the top of page 10 of your statement.
21 It's your very firm view that it must be considered
22 a far more serious offence than it currently is for
23 police to disclose inappropriate information to members
24 of the press, and that to do so should be
25 an imprisonable offence subject to a public interest
Page 16
1 defence.
2 A. Indeed. It seems to me that a significant deterrent is
3 required, and indeed the point is echoed in paragraph 25
4 when I take up the suggestion of the Member of
5 Parliament for Broxtowe, who, in a private member's
6 bill, wished to propose legislation to impose
7 a six-month prison sentence on any journalist who named
8 an uncharged suspect. And indeed that suggestion,
9 I believe, arose specifically out of my own case.
10 Q. If no money changes hands, I'm just musing aloud as to
11 what the criminal offence is in the first place, let
12 alone what sanctions there might be, but I'll be guided
13 by others as to whether there is an offence. It's
14 certainly a disciplinary offence for inappropriate
15 information to be leaked by a police officer, but
16 whether it's a criminal offence if they're not being
17 paid for it, I must say I'm not --
18 A. Yes, I take that distinction.
19 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I think you're right, Mr Jay.
20 I certainly can't think of one, unless you're going to
21 call it "misconduct in public office", and that's not
22 inappropriate if it's in certain circumstances, but not
23 in others.
24 MR JAY: Yes.
25 In paragraph 24, you refer to the ACPO guidance.
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Page 17
1 A. Mm-hm.
2 Q. You're concerned about the vagueness of it; is that
3 correct?
4 A. Yes. I conclude the paragraph by commenting that in my
5 view, this is really not guidance at all but a statement
6 of the rather inadequate status quo. It doesn't pay
7 appropriate attention to the rights of individuals in
8 the context and the harm which may be caused to them.
9 Q. As we've already observed in your case, to refer
10 generally to a 65-year-old man who lives in a particular
11 place, that comes very, very close to identifying you,
12 and the guidance, you feel, should be more stringent to
13 avoid that possibility --
14 A. That's right.
15 Q. -- by inference. Have I correctly understood your
16 evidence in that respect?
17 Mr Jefferies, are there any other matters you would
18 like to raise with the Inquiry?
19 A. No. I think that all the important aspects of the
20 statement have been covered.
21 MR JAY: Thank you.
22 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: There's one that hasn't,
23 Mr Jefferies. You exhibit to your statement a letter
24 from the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset, Mr Port,
25 which identifies that he intends to write to me,
Page 18
1 detailing "my comments on the evidence of Richard
2 Wallace, the editor of the Daily Mirror", and he hopes
3 that the letter that I am to receive will be shared with
4 you by the Inquiry.
5 Have you seen that?
6 A. I received a copy of it yesterday afternoon.
7 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: So you've had a chance to read it?
8 A. Yes.
9 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: I wanted to know whether there was
10 anything you wanted to say, as it specifically affected
11 you -- not so much comment. I'm not asking you to argue
12 the case, but if there's any specific comment that you
13 wanted to make upon that letter.
14 A. I think the only comment that I would make is that some
15 of the explanations which the Avon and Somerset police
16 give are rather gnomic and may conceal as much as they
17 reveal. I'm thinking particularly of their comments in
18 relation to Mr Wallace's assertion:
19 "The arrest of Mr Jefferies on suspicion of the
20 murder of Joanna Yeates on Thursday, 30 December 2010
21 was itself announced in a statement from Avon and
22 Somerset police. The off-the-record guidance to
23 reporters on the ground from the police was that it was
24 Mr Jefferies who had been arrested."
25 And there is then a paragraph of comment where the
Page 19
1 Chief Constable describes this as being disingenuous but
2 perhaps does not say exactly what happened with quite
3 the transparency that one might have wished.
4 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Right. I wanted to make sure you'd
5 seen it and you'd had the opportunity to comment on it.
6 So that it's clear, for those who haven't seen this
7 letter, the Chief Constable challenges the evidence of
8 Mr Wallace in a number of respects and suggests lines
9 for the Inquiry to pursue if it wants to further that
10 particular investigation.
11 But there it is. Thank you very much indeed for
12 returning.
13 A. Thank you.
14 LORD JUSTICE LEVESON: Thank you.