Maths graduate appears in court charged with murdering his statistician girlfriend

A high flying maths graduate has appeared in court charged with murdering his university sweetheart at the flat they shared.

Joe Atkinson, 25, is accused of killing statistician, Poppy Devey-Waterhouse, 24, following an incident last week.

Paramedics were  called the couple's executive flat in Leeds, West Yorkshire shortly before 9am on Friday where Miss Devey-Waterhouse was pronounced dead.

Mr Atkinson, who was wearing a grey prison tracksuit, appeared at Leeds Magistrates Court after being charged with murder.

He spoke only to confirm his name, address, date of birth and nationality. No pleas were entered to the charge and he was remanded in custody to appear before Leeds Crown Court on Tuesday.

Relatives of Miss Devey-Waterhouse sat in the public gallery throughout the hearing.

The couple met while studying mathematics at Nottingham University, where they both graduated with First Class Honours degrees.

After completing a masters degree in statistics, Miss Devey-Waterhouse, who is originally from Frome in Somerset moved to Leeds with Mr Atkinson, where she secured a job as a quantitative trading analyst with the bookmakers William Hill.

A spokesman for the company said: "I can confirm she was an employee and that we are providing support to her colleagues, who are clearly very shocked and saddened."

The couple were keen travellers who posted details of their globe-trotting adventures on social media.

This year alone the pair had visited the Greek island of Santorini, Belgium, Morocco, Sweden, Denmark and Lithuania, where Mr Atkinson celebrated his birthday.

Last year the couple spent six months backpacking in South America and the United States on a trip that Miss Devey-Waterhouse said would "make or break them".

Miss Devey-Waterhouse grew up in Frome, with her parents, Rupert and Julie, and younger brother Zebedee.

As a teenager, she worked as a volunteer children's tennis coach at the Writhlington Tennis Centre in Somerset.

The couple moved in together in late 2017 and Miss Devey-Waterhouse began working as a statistical analyst.

Outside their flat last night five bouquets of flowers had been left in tribute.

A police officer remained stationed outside the second floor property, where forensics teams had been seen coming and going since Friday.

Mark Graydon, a 44-year-old teacher who lives in the flat next door, said detectives had ssked if he had heard or witnessed anything between 2am and 8am on Friday.

He told The Telegraph: “I came back on Friday at about 4.15pm and there was a uniformed police officer outside and there were officers coming in and out - it was like something out of Breaking Bad with their white overalls.

“They have been taking things out of the flat since then, like laptops and tablets, but they’re often in evidence bags so you can’t see.

“Forensics have been in and out all over the weekend, I got a knock on the door from CID detectives at around 10am on Saturday.

“They asked me if I had heard anything in the early hours of Friday morning. They said it had happened between 2am and 8am.

“I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t hear them come in late if they had been out drinking or anything. The thing is with this block is that the flats are ex-council so they are very thick walls.

“I had only seen the lad, never the girl, I was just taking down the rubbish one morning and crossed him in the corridor and said hello.

“On Friday, there was a call on my buzzer and there were two lads who said, ‘can you let us in, our friend hasn’t turned up for work’. They went in and spoke to the detectives. They were looking for him, not her.”

Another resident in the complex said he had returned shortly after 9am on Friday to find three police vans and an ambulance outside the block.

He described seeing one man “in tears” outside the building, but added that he did not appear to be under arrest.