Joanna Yeates was a landscape architect who lived with her boyfriend in their downstairs flat in Bristol.
The couple were looking forward to Christmas 2010 – they had even organised to have a party for friends at their home. But first, her partner Greg Reardon went back to his native Yorkshire to visit his family the weekend before Christmas.
With her boyfriend away, 25-year-old Miss Yeates went for an after work drink on December 17 with friends. From there she headed home, buying herself a pizza on the way before arriving back some time around 8.30pm.
Only one person alive knows exactly what happened next.
What is known is that Vincent Tabak knocked on the door and entered Miss Yeates' flat shortly after she got back. It was the first time they had met. He had lived in a neighbouring flat for around 18 months with his girlfriend.
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Tabak was an engineer with a dark, secret obsession with violent pornography. His motive for killing Miss Yeates is not known, but in a brutal murder which left the nation in shock he strangled her in the flat before carrying her body out to his car.
There were later reports of a woman's scream around the time of the murder, which is likely to have been Miss Yeates. But until she was reported missing days later, nobody knew anything was wrong.
Mr Reardon was growing worried that his girlfriend had not answered any of his calls or texts. When he returned on Sunday night, his concerns grew.
Miss Yeates was not home. The couple's cat had not been fed, and her phone was in her coat pocket in the hallway. With Bristol temperatures below zero that week, nobody would leave home without a coat.
Mr Reardon reported his girlfriend as missing and the investigation began, with police, friends and family joining the search.
On Christmas Day, with snow on the ground, Miss Yeates' body was found by dog walkers. It had been left on the roadside near the entrance to a quarry three miles away from her home.
The missing person's appeal turned into a murder inquiry. As there were no signs of forced entry, detectives turned to her neighbours.
Tabak decided to deliberately mislead the police in an attempt to get away with his crimes. He called from Amsterdam - where he was visiting family - to falsely accuse innocent neighbour Christopher Jefferies.
While the senior detectives questioned the suspect, Detective Constable Karen Thomas was sent to meet Tabak in Holland on New Year’s Eve to build a case against the man her bosses were holding back in Bristol.
But DC Thomas' intuition told her that something was not right when Tabak began asking too many questions about the forensic work of the case.
The detective grew suspicious, and when it became clear that their current suspect wasn’t the murderer, attention turned to 32-year-old Tabak. Wholly innocent, Mr Jefferies was eventually released.
It was another three weeks until police finally arrested Tabak. The forensic evidence that he was curious about did indeed implicate him. Police found traces of DNA left on Miss Yeates' body when he carried her, along with her DNA in his car.
At the end of October 2011, Tabak was found guilty of the murder of Joanna Yeates – the jury didn’t believe his story that he had ‘accidentally killed her’ while trying to stifle her scream. He was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 20 years.
At the trial, details of Tabak's actions came to light.
Miss Yeates suffered 43 injuries as she fought for her life, but Tabak used his 6ft 4in frame to overpower her.
Miss Yeates, who did not even know her killer’s name, is believed to have been dead within about 20 seconds of Tabak grabbing her neck. For reasons only he knows, Tabak kept her sock and took the pizza she had bought earlier that night.
After murdering Miss Yeates, Tabak put her body in the boot of his car before heading on a shopping trip to Asda. Here, he texted his girlfriend that he was "bored".
Within an hour he had dumped her partially-clothed body in the foetal position on a snowy verge. Just 24 hours later he was drinking champagne with friends.
In the hours, days and weeks following her death, Tabak repeatedly lied about his actions to his girlfriend, his family, police and even his legal team.
During the trial, prosecutor Nigel Lickley QC said: “Vincent Tabak is very clever. He is intelligent and highly educated. He is dishonest, he is deceitful and he is a liar.
“He is when he chooses to be very calculating. Making decisions, covering his tracks.
“There is a word for it – that is shrewd.”
He accused Tabak of being “calculating” in the months after the killing - lying continuously in emails to his girlfriend and family.
But Tabak began to slip up – changing his story over and over again as more evidence emerged as to his guilt – answering “I can’t remember” more than 80 times to difficult questions during his three-week trial at Bristol Crown Court.
From the witness box he wept as he apologised to Miss Yeates’s relatives for putting them through hell. He said he would be haunted for the rest of his life “no matter what sentence I get”.
But the jury failed to be swayed by Tabak’s tears. He had robbed relatives of a much-loved girlfriend, sister and daughter. Miss Yeates and Mr Reardon were described by friends as “the perfect couple”.
In 2015, Tabak also pleaded guilty to possessing more than 100 indecent images of children and was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment, to be served concurrently with his existing life sentence.
He is serving his sentence at HMP Wakefield.
Body in the Snow: The murder of Joanna Yeates airs on Tuesday, January 4 at 10pm on Channel 5.
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