11:11am UK, Wednesday January 19, 2011
Police have confirmed that murder victim Joanna Yeates did not eat the pizza she bought on her way home the night she vanished.
The 25-year-old's shopping trip was re-enacted last night by an actress playing Joanna in a TV reconstruction, as detectives urged anyone who saw the victim to call them.
Joanna stopped in a Tesco Express at around 8.40pm on Friday, December 17, and then left with the pizza to walk 10 minutes or so to her flat in Clifton, Bristol.
She vanished soon after and police have found no trace of the pizza, a Tesco-brand tomato-and-mozzarella variety.
So, what does it mean now that a pathologist has established that Joanna did not eat the pizza?
It may help them with timings, because police still don't know where or when she died.
Joanna Yeates was filmed on CCTV buying the Tesco pizza
The revelation suggests that Joanna left her flat, dead or alive, soon after she arrived, assuming that she bought the pizza to eat that night.
That means detectives can focus on identifying anyone who was in or around the area between Tesco's in Regent Street and her flat in Canynge Road, Clifton, at that time.
The revelation also adds weight to reports from neighbours who heard screams around 9pm.
But where is the pizza?
Joanna's killer may have destroyed or thrown it away to remove evidence if it was caught up in a struggle, or if it was touched in some other way and got traces of the killer on it.
Sky's crime correspondent Martin Brunt
If the killer threw it away, it would show police he was forensically aware. That might help them narrow down a list of suspects.
The pizza is considered such a vital bit of potential evidence that investigators have spent many hours sifting through 300 tons of domestic rubbish collected by refuse workers since before Christmas.
The killer might have kept it as a souvenir, using it to remind him of the murder.
Other killers have kept otherwise valueless things, even body parts, that belonged to or were connected with their victim.
BBC Crimewatch reconstruction of Joanna's final steps
That is more usually a phenomenon of a serial killer, though in this case detectives continue to insist they are not hunting such a suspect.
Meanwhile, Joanna's parents have appealed to the country's "armchair detectives" to help police find their daughter's killer.
David and Theresa Yeates believe millions of people have been moved by the murder and have urged anyone with information or suspicions to call police.
They made a direct appeal to anyone trying to protect their daughter's killer, saying they would be prolonging the family's torment.
In a joint statement, the couple said: "Many of us are armchair detectives, but if this activity triggers anything please come forward.
"If you do know something and you do not come forward you are consciously hampering the apprehension of Jo's killer and the perpetrator is still free."
Speaking of the anguish the couple had been going through, Mrs Yeates told reporters: "We spend much of our time - as I imagine most of the country does - thinking of scenarios which took Jo, alive in her flat, to being found dead by the side of a country lane."
Joanna Yeates Murder 
See all the key locations in the case
Police believe Joanna made it as far as her home in the Clifton area on Friday, December 17, before she was attacked.
Her snow-covered body was found on Christmas Day in a country lane three miles from her home. She had been strangled.
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