This week we’re going to the former mining community of Easthouses in Midlothian, less than ten miles south of Edinburgh city centre with the case of the murder of Jodi Jones.
In 2003, Jodi Jones was a 14-year-old schoolgirl who enjoyed plenty of the same things most schoolgirls do, she hung out with her friends, she liked music, films, and boys. She was a pupil at the St David’s Catholic High School in Dalkeith, a town a couple of miles away from where she lived in Easthouses. Like many teenagers she had a bit of a rebellious streak and was figuring out who she was. She was a goth, liked rock and heavy metal music and horror films, and she liked boys who were into the same things.
In March 2003 Jodi began going out with her first boyfriend, Luke Mitchell. He was a student at the same school as Jodi in Dalkeith. He was a good student and although his parents had separated when he was 11, he had a comfortable life. Though he was Jodi’s first boyfriend, she was not his first girlfriend and he was rumoured to be seeing other girls behind Jodi’s back.
We don’t really know much more about Jodi’s childhood or teenage years, but we know that Jodi’s social life began to revolve a lot around her relationship with Luke, and that in June 2003 her mother had tried to curtail the relationship somewhat. But like all rebellious teenagers, Jodi wasn’t going to listen to what her mother said about her boyfriend and she was still determined to see him.
On June 30, 2003, Jodi left her family home in the late afternoon to go and visit Luke, and that was the last time she was seen alive.
A few hours later when she hadn’t returned home, her mother discovered that she hadn’t ever made it to Luke’s home, and so she reported her missing and a search began in the local area. Luke was one of those who showed up to help with the search, and he brought with him his pet dog, Mia, a German Shepherd.
At 10.30pm that night, less than six hours since she’d last been seen by her mother, Jodi’s body was found behind a high wall in a wooded area of Easthouses, close to the woodland footpath Jodi usually took from her house to Luke’s. She had been murdered in a brutal knife attack and the savage attack had seen Jodi’s wrists bound, her throat slashed so deeply that she was almost decapitated, and she had stab wounds to her stomach, chest and face. Her wounds were said to resemble those inflicted in the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short in LA – better known as the Black Dahlia Murder.
Although he was initially questioned as a witness, suspicion fell on Luke Mitchell pretty quickly. He had been searching the wooded area with Jodi’s family, but broke away from them slightly to find her body behind a high wall. He claimed that his dog had pulled in that direction and led him to her body, but police thought that it indicated that he had guilty knowledge of the crime – meaning that they believed he knew where her body was and that he played along with the search party to create the image of a concerned boyfriend.
Jodi’s family made it known that Mitchell was not welcome at the funeral, and teachers reported that they had difficulties in him returning to school.
The case against Mitchell was largely circumstantial. Luke was into all the same things that Jodi liked including heavy metal music, horror films and goth fashion. There were also a number of other factors which raised alarm bells when it came to Luke Mitchell.
At just 14 years old, he was already known for smoking cannabis and even dealing it to some of his and Jodi’s friendship group. No matter what your opinion on cannabis and legalisation, it is a known fact that it can cause psychosis and other severe mental health problems in teenagers.
Staff at St David’s had concern for the other students at the school, and so following Jodi’s murder he was required to be taught in isolation from the rest of his classmates, but after two months of Mitchell flat out refusing to be taught in isolation, he was suspended from school.
In the months leading up to Jodi’s murder, Mitchell had been writing some “troubling” essays at school.
According to a BBC article, Mitchell was obsessed with the devil and the occult and was open about it in his essays written at school. In an essay questioning God’s existence, he claimed the world needed Satanic people. He wrote: “People like you need Satanic people like me to keep the balance.”
In another essay, he wrote: “So what if I am a Goth in a Catholic school? So what if I dress in baggy clothes? Just because I am more violent than others and cut myself, does that justify some pompous git of a teacher to refer me to a psychiatrist? Just because I have chosen to follow the teachings of Satan doesn’t mean I need psychiatric help.”
Teachers also found the number 666 written in the back of his jotter, along with the sentence: “I have tasted the Devil’s green blood.” He had also scratched 666 on his upper arm with a compass sometime in the months before Jodi’s murder.
During a search of Mitchell’s home police found a leather knife pouch with the letters JJ and 1989-2003 written on it, along with the quote: “The finest day I ever had was when tomorrow never came.” The prosecution claimed that someone whose girlfriend had died in the way Jodi did wouldn’t be likely to memorialise them using knife paraphernalia.
A tree near where Jodi’s body was found also had the initials JJ+LM carved into it, and Mitchell was known to have an interest in knives.
Luke Mitchell did have an alibi for Jodi’s murder, his said he was in the family home at the time and his brother corroborated it.
However, there was a witness who claimed to see Mitchell and Jodi smoking cannabis together in the woods on the evening that she was murdered.
Remember before when we said that the injuries on Jodi’s body resembled those on Elizabeth Short’s body way back in 1947?
One of the musicians Mitchell was really into was Marilyn Manson, and Manson has produced a number of watercolour paintings which resemble Elizabeth Short’s murder, and in the months leading up to Jodi’s murder Mitchell had begun to express an interest in Elizabeth’s murder.
All of this is circumstantial evidence, and aside from the witness who saw Mitchell with Jodi in the woods hours before her body was discovered, there isn’t really anything that definitively points towards Mitchell as Jodi’s killer. Despite all of this, 10 months after Jodi’s death in April 2004, Luke Mitchell was arrested and charged with Jodi’s murder.
Mitchell has always maintained his innocence, and pled not guilty, although he did not testify in his own defence at his trial which began in November 2004 at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh.
During the trial his brother was cross examined and that was when he admitted that the alibi he had given Mitchell was fake, he said that he hadn’t seen Mitchell in the home on the evening of Jodi’s death. His brother said that he was watching porn which he would only have done if he believed there was nobody else in the home, therefore he believed that Luke Mitchell wasn’t at home where he said he was during Jodi’s murder.
The defence on the other hand argued that Mitchell only discovered Jodi’s body after following his dog and continued to maintain Mitchell’s innocence that he was in the family home at the time of the murder. In January 2005, Mitchell, who was now aged 16, was found guilty after just five hours of deliberations. He was also found guilty of a separate charge of supplying cannabis.
Mitchell’s trial had lasted for 42 days and made history as the longest trial of a single suspect in Scottish history, and the most expensive at that point in time.
Sentencing took place in February 2005 and Mitchell was sentenced to detention without limit with a minimum term of 20 years, meaning that he should be eligible for parole in 2025. However, Mitchell has said that he will not confess or admit fault in order to secure an early release, making parole very, very unlikely, so the only way he will be released is if his conviction is overturned.
Mitchell had so far lodged four appeals, all of which have been denied.
The third of his appeals is perhaps most interesting. In 2011 he made a bid for his sentence to be overturned following a human rights ruling by the United Kingdom Supreme Court in the case of Cadder vs HM Advocate, referred to as the Cadder Case.
Peter Cadder was convicted at Glasgow Sheriff Court of assault and breach of the peace on 29 May 2009, following an incident in May 2007. The complainant had been unable to pick Cadder out in a police line-up, and so the prosecution case was largely built upon police interviews with Cadder.
However, Cadder was denied access to a solicitor. In Scotland you were allowed to be questioned for up to six hours without a solicitor, but after that one must be provided, Cadder wasn’t given any of this, and neither was Mitchell.
This breaches the European Convention on Human Rights which states you are allowed to have legal representation in questioning with police and allowed private consultation before questioning begins and at any time during questioning at your request.
Interviewing suspects without a solicitor present had become such a horrific problem in Scotland that following Cadder’s Supreme Court appeal 867 cases were abandoned, including 60 serious cases, nine of which were High Court cases. Those nine High Court cases included five rape cases and one firearms case. Congrats Police Scotland because rape is already difficult enough to prosecute, you made it even more difficult.
Cadder was granted a retrial but the case collapsed, and he was released in 2012.
But Mitchell’s claim that it infringed upon his human rights because he didn’t have a solicitor was rejected at an appeal court in Edinburgh. Later that year he applied to take his case to the UK Supreme Court, but in November 2011 that too was rejected on the basis that it had been dealt with at the appeal court in Edinburgh.
In 2012 Mitchell’s case was referred to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. It was found that his human rights had been breached but he was not the victim of a miscarriage of justice, and that his case would not be referred to the High Court.
In 2014 it was announced that Mitchell would be taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights, but as far as we have found that has not happened and there have been no further appeals.
There is a lot of support for Luke Mitchell and many who believe him to be innocent
In 2007 the BBC current affairs programme Frontline Scotland examined another theory as to who murdered Jodi Jones, one which wasn’t explored by the police. Now, we haven’t seen this programme so we’re just going off of what we’ve read about it and can’t really say much about it.
Frontline focused on the claim from a local man whose friend had written an essay about killing a girl in the woods not long before Jodi’s murder, and had scratches on his face the day after Jodi’s murder.
The programme also reportedly challenged the claims that Mitchell was a fan of Marilyn Manson and that he had an interest in Elizabeth Short’s murder, with an expert pointing out that there were ‘major dissimilarities’ between the two murders.
From what we can gather Jodi’s family had no involvement in the programme. When it aired, they told Scottish press that they were outraged and would not be watching it.
There have been other developments in the case over the years.
As we said before there the case was based entirely on circumstantial evidence. There wasn’t actually any forensic evidence, and the murder weapon was never found.
But, in 2010 a kitchen knife with a six-inch blade was discovered buried on some wasteland in the nearby town of Dalkeith with the name Luke carved into the handle. The knife was handed to the police who have conducted further searches of the site approximately 300 yards from the spot where Jodi’s body was found. The knife was tested for DNA but the results proved inconclusive.
The case was back in the Scottish press last year because a Go Fund Me was set up by criminologist and justice campaigner Dr Sandra Lean in the hopes of raising £10,000 for her to investigate the crime, prove Mitchell’s innocence and find out what actually happened to Jodi. Dr Lean explained that people do not realise that Mitchell’s sentence is open ended with a minimum term, so unless his sentence is overturned it is likely he won’t be released. Donations did start rolling in, as we said there are many who believe Mitchell’s innocence, but Go Fund Me removed the fundraiser because they found it violated their terms and conditions.
In 2019 the 20-year minimum sentence handed to Luke Mitchell was cited by the team working on Aaron Campbell’s appeal. Aaron Campbell was found guilty of murdering six-year-old Alesha MacPhail on the Isle of Bute in July 2018.
If you don’t know the case, Alesha MacPhail was a six-year-old girl who lived with her mother in Airdrie, near Glasgow, but her father lived in Rothesay with his parents on the Isle of Bute, and Alesha typically visited her father and grandparents every other week. But unlike England, Scottish schools let out for the summer holidays in late June and go back in mid-August rather than finishing in late July and going back in early September. So, on June 28, 2018 Alesha had gone to stay with her father’s family on the Isle of Bute for half of the holidays.
On the night by July 1, 2018 Alesha MacPhail was put to bed by her grandparents as usual, but when they awoke the next morning, Alesha was gone. We’re not going to go into the whole case, but Alesha MacPhail had been abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered by 16-year-old Aaron Campbell. Campbell was apprehended two days later on July 4, 2018, and the trial began in January 2019. Due to Campbell’s age, initially there was a suppression order preventing the press from naming him when reporting on the trial – this was lifted following his conviction later that year.
Campbell was found guilty in February 2019 after the jury deliberated for just three hours, and he was sentenced to 27 years in prison.
In September 2019 his appeals team successfully argued that their client had been given a sentence which was unnecessarily excessive for raping and killing a six-year-old child. Part of their argument was based on the fact that Luke Mitchell had been sentenced to a minimum term of 20 years for a murder he committed when he too was 16. Campbell’s sentence was reduced from 27 to 24 years and he will be eligible for parole at the age of 40.
However, it is worth noting that Mitchell was 14 when he murdered Jodi whereas Campbell was 16 when he abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered Alesha. This is obviously not in defence of Mitchell at all, but the slightly younger age may have played a part in his shorter sentence even though neither Mitchell nor Campbell were legally adults.
RELATED EPISODES:
34: Julian Buchwald Kidnapping
07: Scotland’s Secret Serial Killer
FURTHER READING:
Killer Obsessed by the Occult (BBC)