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Police treat missing landscape architect's death as suspicious, but postmortem complicated by freezing conditions
Police are expected to formally launch a murder hunt tomorrow after officers said that the body of a young woman found on a roadside verge on Christmas morning was that of Joanna Yeates, the missing landscape architect.
The body was found next to a quarry and between two golf courses, three miles from Yeates's flat in Bristol. A postmortem examination was proving difficult because the remains of the 25-year-old were frozen, but police said they were treating the death as suspicious.
The postmortem could be concluded tomorrow. It could confirm suspicions that she was abducted from her flat in the Clifton area of the city and murdered. Officers are carrying out fingertip searches of the area around the verge at Longwood Lane, Failand, near Long Ashton, where the body was found, clothed and covered in snow, eight days after Yeates was last seen alive.
Detectives appealed for witnesses who had seen anyone acting suspiciously near the spot. They are also to study CCTV footage from cameras that cover the roads between Yeates's home and Failand.
The most direct route from the flat, which Yeates shared with her boyfriend, Greg Reardon, in Canynge Road, takes in the Clifton bridge, but there are many other ways of getting out of the city.
Yeates vanished on 17 December after leaving a pub in Bristol, where she had been drinking with work colleagues. Reardon reported her missing two days later on his return from a weekend away.
The disappearance prompted a police search, but the family's worst fears were realised yesterday when a couple walking their dogs found the body.
This morning, police confirmed the body was that of the missing woman.
A spokesman for Avon and Somerset police said: "While a formal identification procedure is yet to be completed, police are satisfied that the body is that of landscape architect Joanna Yeates, who went missing during the weekend before Christmas."
He added that officers were treating her death as suspicious. A source said the investigation would not be classified as a murder inquiry before the results of the postmortem were released.
Police want information to help "fill in the gap between Joanna's disappearance and the discovery of her body".
The force spokesman added: "Officers are keen to hear from people who may have seen anything or anyone acting suspiciously over the past week in the Longwood Lane area. Police are expected to be continuing their fingertip search throughout today and possibly longer."
Chief Superintendent Jon Stratford said: "Our heartfelt condolences go out to Joanna's family for their loss. We have not stopped working hard throughout the Christmas period to find their daughter after she was reported missing. Now we will work just as hard to discover exactly what happened to her and how she came to be in Longwood Lane on Christmas morning.
"Until the postmortem examination is able to firmly establish how Joanna died, we are keeping an open mind about the cause of her death. However, I would appeal to anyone with any information whatsoever that can help this investigation to please come forward and help us provide Joanna's parents with the answers they so desperately want and need."
On a Facebook page set up to try to help find Yeates, one friend, Bec Wood, wrote: "Rest in peace Jo. You will always be loved and remembered for being so beautiful, kind, successful, and lovely. You made Greg so happy. Our thoughts are with Greg, your parents and all of your families and friends. We will miss you Jo, and hope that you have peace now." Michael Whitcher added: "Rest in peace little Jo, we will miss you always. My hearts and thoughts go out to her family, and I am thankful I knew you. God bless." In her parents' home village of Ampfield in Hampshire, the Rev Peter Gilks said prayers were being said for Yeates and her family.
She was last seen leaving the Ram pub in Park Street in Bristol at about 8pm on 17 December.
She shopped in Waitrose on the way – where she was filmed on CCTV – and then rang her best friend to arrange to meet on Christmas Eve.
She went on to the Tesco Express on Regent Street, a quarter of a mile from her flat. Officers released footage of her buying a pizza in the supermarket.
There was no trace of the pizza, the wrapping or the box in the flat, even though other possessions, including her mobile phone, her keys, handbag and coat, were there.
Yeates's father, David, 63, said in some ways it would be a relief if the body found was his daughter's because her family assumed she was dead. If the body was hers, he added, they would be able at least to say goodbye to her properly.
The family believed she had been abducted because of the state the flat was left in, and because of other details that neither they nor the police have yet revealed.
Thirty detectives have been working on the investigation, codenamed Operation Braid, and are being assisted by another 40 staff, including uniformed officers, scenes of crime officers and search teams.
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