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Landlord remains in custody as murder investigation continues

Police granted more time to question Chris Jefferies, landlord of murdered Joanna Yeates

Joanna Yeates

The scene at the house in Clifton yesterday

Chris Jefferies

Peter Stanley

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The landlord of murdered Joanna Yeates remained in custody yesterday after police were granted more time to question him about her death.

Chris Jefferies (65) was arrested on Thursday morning and a magistrate granted Avon and Somerset Police an extension to hold him in custody. It also emerged yesterday that cold case detectives are looking into the unsolved murder of a 20-year-old woman who was killed just yards from where Jefferies lives.

Glenis Carruthers was strangled to death nearly 37 years ago on 19 January, 1974. The incident took place near Clifton Downs in Bristol, close to the junction of Guthrie Road and College Road. An Avon and Somerset spokeswoman said: "The investigation remains ongoing into the death of Joanna Yeates and is not being linked to any other murder in the Avon and Somerset area. But it is routine procedure for information to be looked at in any crime if new information comes to light."

On the night Carruthers was killed she travelled from Bedford, where she was a student, to attend a friend's 21st birthday party on Worcester Crescent in Clifton, Bristol. Police say she left the party at around 10.20pm, possibly to get some fresh air or to make a call from a telephone kiosk nearby. Police say she was seen just after 11pm on Clifton Downs, when a witness thought he saw a courting couple on the grass. A short time later her body was discovered. Over the last 36 years the case has been reviewed twice.

Officers spent Friday talking to Peter Stanley (56), a neighbour of the retired public school teacher in Clifton, Bristol, who said he and Jefferies helped start Yeates' boyfriend's car the day she vanished. Stanley recalled how they used jump leads to start Greg Reardon's car, sending him on his way to Sheffield. "It was a non-event at the time, but absolutely poignant now – what if we didn't get the car to start?" he said. Hours later, Yeates, a landscape architect, disappeared and her snow-covered body was discovered over a week later on Christmas Day. Police confirmed Stanley is being treated as a witness. Police would not comment on the possibility that Yeates may have been killed after finding an intruder in her flat, but said they were looking at all avenues of inquiry.

Stanley spent yesterday helping detectives. He said he did not think Jefferies spoke to Reardon about going away for the weekend, and added: "I wouldn't say there was anything tense between them." Jefferies, who sports distinctive straggly white hair and was described by a neighbour as a "nutty professor type", was arrested at 7am on Thursday. He was taken into custody just 24 hours after he claimed he saw three people leaving Yeates' flat on the night she vanished.

A £10,000 reward is being offered to anyone who provides information.