Tabak ‘planned to plead guilty’, trial hears

Peter Brotherton has been visiting inmates at Long Lartin prison in Worcestershire since 1975.

He had assumed the role of a volunteer chaplain in January this year, just a month prior to his first meeting with Vincent Tabak. Tabak, he said, was on 24-hour watch, with a perspex door fronting his cell.

It was during their third meeting, on Monday 8 February, when, as the court heard, Tabak revealed that he had something to tell the chaplain which “would shock him”. According to Brotherton, Tabak went on to say that he was going to plead guilty, confirming that it involved the killing of Joanna Yeates.

According to Brotherton, Tabak said he was going to plead guilty, confirming that it involved the killing of Joanna Yeates.

Mr Brotherton told that court that the meeting lasted around 30 minutes and that he could sense Vincent Tabak “getting upset” towards the end.

Before he left, the chaplain shook hands with the prisoner and offered to pray with him, but Tabak declined. Brotherton handed him instead a handwritten prayer saying: “You can use it or do whatever you want with it.”

Mr Brotherton then told the jury how he deliberated over whether to tell his boss about what had just taken place. Given that Mr Tabak did not appear to have a religion, he told the court he decided on disclosing the information on the basis that their conversation had not constituted, in his view, a “religious confession”.

He went on to claim that at their next meeting, when he apologised for having had to disclose the information, Tabak replied, with “a little bit of anger” in his voice: “I’m not going to tell you anything else’.”

Vincent Tabak took notes briefly during Mr Brotherton’s evidence, but for the most part he sat forward in the dock, looking at the floor, with his head in his hands.