The victim: The girl next door was enjoying ‘happiest time of her adult life’

JOANNA Yeates was the girl next door with everything to look forward to.Having recently celebrated a graduation and moved to a new home with her boyfriend, her countdown to Christmas last year was filled with optimism.

Family members described the petite blonde as being at the happiest point of her adult life.

“She had so much life in her,” her father David Yeates said.

For that reason they immediately feared the worst after finding out she was missing.

Mr Yeates said his daughter and her boyfriend, Greg Reardon, were “totally in love and devoted to each other”.

“She had all the space she wanted and no work worries and no money worries,” he added.

Miss Yeates, 25, had been looking forward to Mr Reardon joining her for the festive holiday at her parents’ home.

While she expressed concerns about him being away on the night of 17 December, she had been planning to spend the weekend finishing her shopping and making mince pies. Mr Reardon said: “We also had a get together coming up and she wanted to do some baking.”

Miss Yeates was brought up in middle-class surroundings along with her older brother, Chris in Ampfield, Hampshire.

She began seeing Mr Reardon in December 2008, after they met on a project for BDP, the landscape architects she worked for.