DETECTIVES have refused to reopen the murder case of Janet Muller despite a jury accepting that others were involved in her death.

Yesterday Christopher Jeffrey-Shaw was found guilty of manslaughter, after accepting he knew Janet was in the boot of a car when he set it alight, but not guilty of murder.

However immediately after the verdict, detectives said they were satisfied with their investigation and would not be looking for anyone else in connection with the 21-year-old's killing.

Jeffrey-Shaw, 27, of no fixed address, was cleared of murder after a six-day trial at Guildford Crown Court but found guilty of manslaughter by a majority verdict.

DCI Karen Mizzi said the force would respect the jury's verdict even though the court heard how the student had been shot in a robbery gone wrong before Jeffrey-Shaw was told to burn the car by a drugs gang.

She said: "He has admitted his responsibility for the manslaughter.

"The jury found him guilty of manslaughter, and as the evidence was presented in court, she was alive within that vehicle at the point of when it was set alight.

"We accept the decision of the jury."

The University of Brighton student's twin sister stormed out of court after hearing the verdict and Jeffrey-Shaw held his hands to his face and cried in the dock.

Jeffrey-Shaw will be sentenced on Friday, but the family are said to have been disappointed by the verdict.

DCI Mizzi added: "They are very upset at the decision here and they need some time away to reflect on that decision today.

"I want to pay tribute to the bravery of Janet Muller's family, who have had to listen to the harrowing evidence in this case.

"The loss of a family member is always tragic, especially in these circumstances.

"This was a horrifying attack on a very vulnerable young woman who had her whole life ahead of her."

Jeffrey-Shaw insisted in court he was ordered to torch the car by a traveller, named as Steve, because it had been seen driving away from an armed robbery in which Janet Muller was shot.

DCI Mizzi said: "The first time Jeffrey-Shaw made reference to these two individuals [Steve and accomplice Mickey] was in his defence account, which he served only in late November last year.

"At no point up to this stage or during the enquiry or in the five months after the evidence was released was any of the information shared with us by Mr Jeffrey-Shaw or his defence.

"We followed all lines of enquiry provided to us by the defence statement."

The police have not been able to identify Steve or Mickey.

Miss Muller was found burned alive in the boot of a hired Volkswagen Jetta in Crawley on March 13 last year.

QUESTIONS UNANSWERED AFTER MANSLAUGHTER VERDICT

1) Why did Christopher Jeffrey-Shaw get his girlfriend to hire a car for him?

ON MARCH 11, Jeffrey-Shaw’s girlfriend hired a Volkswagen Jetta from a Europcar branch in Kennington, London.

But why hire a saloon car, specifically, and why did he get his girlfriend to sign the paperwork?

Also, why was she not in the witness box?

She was the assigned driver of a car in which a body was found burned alive, yet the court didn’t even hear a witness statement from her.

Jeffrey-Shaw told Guildford Crown Court it was so he could carry out work for a traveller he had taken money from in order to pay off a drug debt.

The traveller – Steve – had given Jeffrey-Shaw £800 to pay off his cocaine dealer after blowing his own profits from dealing the class A drug up his nose.

After trying to vanish without paying back the cash, he told the court Steve caught up with him in Beckenham, beat him up with a wooden plank and ordered him to canvas for drug users in Brighton.

That is what brought him to Sussex on the evening Janet Muller was last seen alive, he said.

2) Was Janet Muller being monitored by social services?

THE night she went missing, on March 12, Janet Muller made a seven-minute call to her partner Helen Sutton – the details of which have yet to be released.

Neither was Ms Sutton called upon as a witness.

It was around the time of the phone call that she went missing – for the second time that day – from Mill View Hospital in Nevill Avenue, Hove.

The first time, she was found in the Devil’s Dyke area.

This time, she was captured on CCTV wandering, seemingly aimlessly, around Portslade and specifically Boundary Road – but why?

And why too was a woman described as very vulnerable, and who had been sectioned under the mental health act on March 3, able to walk out of a hospital twice in one day?

3) Why is there no CCTV footage of Christopher Jeffrey-Shaw in Brighton canvassing for drugs, and why is there no footage of Janet Muller with him?

JANET Muller was last seen alive at 1.13am on Kingsway in Hove, heading east towards Brighton.

Around that time, Jeffrey-Shaw told jurors he was in Brighton – in and around the clubs – talking to people and offering them drugs on behalf of the traveller Steve, who he owed money to.

Yet there is not a single CCTV image of him in the area that night.  Where was she trying to get to?

And why did none of the hundreds of CCTV cameras in Brighton town centre not pick up any footage of a man wandering the streets suspiciously?

4) Why did it take Jeffrey-Shaw the best part of an hour to drive 20 miles in the middle of the night?

THE next thing we know for certain is that Jeffrey-Shaw’s hired Jetta headed north on the A23 at 1.38am.

But the jury would’ve been satisfied, given their verdict, that Janet Muller was not in the car at that time.

It took him almost an hour to drive 20 miles in the middle of the night.

He says it was because he was ordered by Steve to pick up three bags at addresses in Crawley and Croydon after not having a successful canvassing night.

The prosecution argued Janet Muller was in the car and that they had stopped at some stage, or taken a different route.

There was no activity on Jeffrey-Shaw’s phone from 12.19am on March 13 to 8.42am.

He said his phone died, the CPS argued it was because he was with someone – Janet Muller.

5) How did Janet Muller’s body end up in Crawley?

JEFFREY-SHAW drove to a Tesco petrol station in Hazlewick Avenue, Three Bridges, filled a Jerry can with £2.89 worth of petrol and placed it on the back seat of the car shortly after 1.34pm.

Why put it on the back seat and not in the boot?

The prosecution say it was because he knew there was a body in there, something the jury agreed with by handing him a manslaughter charge.

But if he knew there was a body in the boot and that he was going to torch the car, why would he – in broad daylight – go to a petrol station where he knows his face and the car are going to be picked up by dozens of cameras?

He panicked, he said.

The same could be said of burning a car with a body in it on a Friday afternoon in a lane that backs on to a busy golf club and a neighbouring house yards away.

Julia Farmer saw it all unfold.

She said she saw the boot closed the first time she noticed the Jetta up in smoke, but open the second time after she’d returned to her house for a pen and paper to write down the registration.

It was then that she noticed the burning body of Janet Muller hanging out of the boot.

6) But how did her body end up hanging out of the boot?


SHE’D received a number of blows consistent with that of a blunt object to the head which the court heard would have rendered her unconscious or at the very least stunned.

Nobody knows how she got those injuries, who inflicted them upon her, when or with what.

The prosecution said it was Jeffrey-Shaw, the defence said it was a man called Steve who has not been identified.

There are three potential reasons why she could have gone from being in the boot to being discovered hanging out of it.

The first is that the force of an explosion caused by the fire blew the boot open and she was partially thrown out of the car.  The second is that she regained consciousness as a result of the fire and attempted to escape.

The third is Jeffrey-Shaw’s story that he opened the boot to retrieve a bag, and upon seeing Janet Muller’s body, tried desperately to drag her out only to fail because of the heat and smoke before walking away.

But the jury found him guilty of manslaughter, meaning they believed he knew there to be a dead body in the boot.

He’d been told Janet Muller had been shot.

7) So why did Jeffrey-Shaw risk his own life trying to drag what you know to be a dead body out of the boot of a car?

HAD he convinced the jury he was completely unaware of Janet Muller’s presence in the boot of his car, he would’ve walked free.

So they are sure he knew there was a body in the boot, but thought Janet was dead.  There are only two outcomes here – he lied on oath, or the jury got it wrong. 

8) Why were police still asking for evidence and calling for witnesses to come forward by releasing Janet Muller’s last moments to the world with Jeffrey-Shaw in custody?

AS THE investigation unfolded, police had a man in custody who is on CCTV hiring the car, buying petrol in a can and putting it in the car – the car in which Janet Muller’s body was found burned alive.

What more do they need?

It’s clear now he was not talking and that became apparent in the number of gaps in the prosecution which did not see them succeed with their murder charge. There was no defence statement until November.

Jeffrey-Shaw said it was because he was ill and that he had attempted suicide twice in prison.

But it was not until the end of January – days from the trial – that the prosecution and police attempted to find out more about the mysterious Steve the traveller and accomplice Mickey.

JURY BELIEVED HE KNEW SHE WAS IN THE BOOT BUT THOUGHT SHE WAS DEAD

CHRISTOPHER Jeffrey-Shaw has been found guilty of manslaughter – meaning the jury believes he knew Janet Muller was in the boot of his car when he set it alight, but thought her to be dead.

He was cleared of murder.

The jury at Guildford Crown Court was satisfied he did not pick her up from Brighton the night she went missing on March 12.

Instead, they agreed with parts of both the defence and prosecution by deciding Jeffrey-Shaw knew Janet Muller was in the boot of his hired Volkswagen Jetta but thought she was already dead when he torched the vehicle.

Jeffrey-Shaw said that on the evening of March 12, when Miss Muller went missing from Mill View Hospital in Nevill Avenue, Hove, he was in Brighton selling drugs to work off a debt to a traveller who lent him money.

He was canvassing for customers.

At 1.38am on March 13, he was picked up travelling north on the A23 near Pyecombe.

He told the jury he was heading to Crawley and Croydon to pick up bags from three addresses given to him by the traveller, named in court as Steve but never identified.

Having picked up the bags, he said he returned to his mother’s house in Beckenham, and fell asleep at about 7am.

Less than two hours later, he took messages from Steven asking about the bags, so he travelled to a house in Crawley to meet him, leaving at about 10am.

Arriving in Crawley, Steve answered the door and Jeffrey-Shaw was ushered inside.

There, he saw Janet Muller and two unknown men in the lounge.

They were laughing and taking drugs, acting like friends, Jeffrey-Shaw told the court.

Shortly after that, all four left in the car, and Jeffrey-Shaw was left in the house alone with a Jack Russell dog.

About 40 minutes later, he woke to the dog scratching at a door in the kitchen where Steve and one of the unknown men burst through, arguing and with blood on their clothes.

The unknown man told Jeffrey-Shaw the four of them had been involved in an armed robbery that had gone wrong and the second unknown man told him Janet Muller and another accomplice had been shot.

Steve, it was claimed, then told Jeffrey-Shaw to burn the car as it had been seen driving away from the botched robbery.

Jeffrey-Shaw claims that unbeknown to him Steve and the unknown man must have beaten Janet Muller up with a blunt object and put her in the boot of his hired Jetta.

The jury decided he knew she was in the boot, but believed he must have thought she was dead having been shot in the robbery.

And that is how they came to the verdict of guilty of manslaughter and not murder.

He drove to a Tesco petrol station in Hazlewick Avenue, Three Bridges, filled a Jerry can with £2.89 worth of petrol and placed it on the back seat of the car shortly after 1.34pm.

With Janet Muller in the boot of his car, he headed to Rusper Road in the Ifield area of Crawley and found a quiet lane which backs on to Ifield Golf Club.

He doused the car in petrol and torched it, with Miss Muller still alive in the boot at around 2.22pm on March 13.

Jeffrey-Shaw said that after popping the boot and walking to get his bag, he noticed Janet Muller’s body hanging out of the car.

He told the jury he desperately tried to pull her from the boot, but kept losing his grip of her arm as the raging fire blew smoke in his face and he eventually gave up.

She died of smoke inhalation.