Tabak sorry for Jo parents ‘hell’

20 October 2011 Last updated at 06:54 ET

Tabak lived next door to Jo Yeates

Dutch engineer Vincent Tabak has apologised for putting Jo Yeates’s parents through “a week of hell” after strangling their daughter.

The 33-year-old told Bristol Crown Court that he was “so sorry” after killing her and leaving her body next to a roadside verge.

Tabak has admitted Miss Yeates’s manslaughter on 17 December last year but denies her murder.

“I still can’t believe I did that,” he told the court.

Tabak, in the witness box, has been telling the court about the sequence of events which led up to her death, and how Miss Yeates had made a “flirty” remark to him.

He said he was invited into Miss Yeates’s flat after waving at her when he walked past her kitchen window.

Tabak told jurors that he walked past Miss Yeates’s flat on his way to the supermarket and saw the security light came on.

‘Cat comment’

Tabak said: “She invited me in. I took off my coat. I hung it on the coat rack in the hall. We both went into the kitchen.”

While in the kitchen, Tabak claimed 25-year-old Miss Yeates made a remark about her cat, which he said had recently got into the defendant’s flat.

Tabak told the court that Miss Yeates said: “The cat went into places where it shouldn’t go. A bit like me.”

“I decided to make a pass at her… I got the impression she wanted to kiss me.”

After the comment, Tabak leaned forward, put a hand on her back and tried to kiss her.

Jo Yeates was found dead on Christmas Day after going missing on 17 December

She then screamed and Tabak put his hand to her mouth to stop her.

“I was panicking. I wanted to stop her screaming. I wanted to calm her down.”

After strangling her for less than a minute “she went limp, she fell to the floor”, Tabak said, adding: “I still can’t understand what happened.”

Tabak told the court how he briefly took Miss Yeates’s body back to his flat to put her in a bicycle cover.

“I carried her with my arms. One hand was underneath her back, the other was under her knees,” he said.

‘State of panic’

“I didn’t want anyone to find out what had happened and I decided to put her in the boot of my car.”

He then went back into her flat and picked up a pizza which she had bought on the way home and a sock which had come off as he moved her body.

Tabak told the court he was “in a state of panic” as he put her body in the boot of his car.

He then went to Asda, which he had originally planned to do before his encounter with Miss Yeates.

“I was responsible for her death. I’m so sorry,” he told the court.

The body of Miss Yeates, originally from Ampfield, Hampshire, was found on a roadside verge on Christmas Day.

Tabak told the court how he grew up in the small town of Uden where he has a brother and three sisters.

He told the jury that he studied architecture in Eindhoven and qualified in computer science. He then spent four years gaining a PhD in movement of people through office buildings.

He moved to Bath in 2007 to take up a job as a “people flow analyst”.

Tabak met his girlfriend Tanja Morson through an internet dating and moved to a flat on Canynge Road, Clifton, Bristol, with her in June 2009.

In October 2010, Miss Yeates and her boyfriend Greg Reardon moved in to the next door garden flat.

Tabak told the court that until 17 December he did not know Miss Yeates or Mr Reardon by name and had only seen the pair in passing.

The trial continues.

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