Author Topic: The murder of 14 year-old schoolgirl Jodi Jones near Edinburgh on 30 June 2003  (Read 723129 times)

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Offline notsure

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Great news this is being looked at again. I don’t believe Luke has is guilty, let’s hope the real killer gets caught

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Great news this is being looked at again. I don’t believe Luke has is guilty, let’s hope the real killer gets caught

Who's looking at this again? You mean Mojo?

Offline sandra L

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It's always difficult, in cases like this, to post meaningful information because of the tendency for it to be misrepresented, misquoted or used against the very case it's trying to assist. So please bear with me and read between the lines where necessary.

There is "new information" in the literal (legal) sense - information that was not known about (and could not have been known about by the defence) at the time of trial and the appeal.

There is new information that has not been released to anyone other than those most closely involved in the new initiative, and will not be released publicly until it becomes a matter of law.

A group of people with individual, specialist understandings has agreed to carry out a whole case review. That means reviewing the investigation, the evidence, the media involvement, the legal arguments - pretty much every aspect of the case will be scrutinised and held up against accepted norms and values and the findings of those involved will be offered at the end of that review. It is not a new concept - it has been done in a number of other high profile cases (some of them discussed on this forum) and it's had a number of successful outcomes, even though, unfortunately, it has taken a great deal of time to get there.

I think I've answered all of the questions asked in the last few days - if not, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer anything I've missed.

Thanks to everyone still interested almost 14 years and 4 months later.




Offline notsure

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Who's looking at this again? You mean Mojo?
[/quote

Yes read it on google news ,

Offline notsure

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Paddy isn't quoted as saying "at trial," is he? Everyone who has ever worked with a claimed wrongful conviction knows there is so much more than simply the evidence presented at trial. And, as it should be, Professor Jamieson is going to review the forensic evidence.

What does it matter which cases groups or individuals have reviewed previously? The suggestion that they "got it wrong" in the Simon Hall case (I'll reserve judgement on that, since there are still so many unanswered questions) can't then be used to infer either that their opinions/reviews are worthless or that they will "get it wrong" in other cases.

The criminal justice system is deeply flawed and is getting away with convictions on the flimsiest of evidence - that's not justice for anyone. Trying to address those flaws and ensure true justice for all is, in my opinion, a responsibility that belongs to all of us.

Great post Sandra

Offline notsure

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It's always difficult, in cases like this, to post meaningful information because of the tendency for it to be misrepresented, misquoted or used against the very case it's trying to assist. So please bear with me and read between the lines where necessary.

There is "new information" in the literal (legal) sense - information that was not known about (and could not have been known about by the defence) at the time of trial and the appeal.

There is new information that has not been released to anyone other than those most closely involved in the new initiative, and will not be released publicly until it becomes a matter of law.

A group of people with individual, specialist understandings has agreed to carry out a whole case review. That means reviewing the investigation, the evidence, the media involvement, the legal arguments - pretty much every aspect of the case will be scrutinised and held up against accepted norms and values and the findings of those involved will be offered at the end of that review. It is not a new concept - it has been done in a number of other high profile cases (some of them discussed on this forum) and it's had a number of successful outcomes, even though, unfortunately, it has taken a great deal of time to get there.

I think I've answered all of the questions asked in the last few days - if not, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer anything I've missed.

Thanks to everyone still interested almost 14 years and 4 months later.

Why do the wheels of justice go at snail speed.the justice system is so u fair and I really pray that Luke gets his freedom sooner rather than later

Offline nugnug

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    • http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnnyvoid.wordpress.com%2F&ei=WTdUUo3IM6mY0QWYz4GADg&usg=AFQjCNE-8xtZuPAZ52VkntYOokH5da5MIA&bvm=bv.5353710
well it stands to reason noting is going to be disclosed at this stage theyd be mad sat anything this early in the process.

Offline notsure

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well it stands to reason noting is going to be disclosed at this stage theyd be mad sat anything this early in the process.

Your right and I for one would rather not know anything until it is deemed acceptable to be in the public domain. If I was in that situation I wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of justice. I do hope the media are fairer this time round though. They were so bias last time.

Offline sandra L

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Thanks, nugnug and notsure, it's a delicate line and those who understand that know why it's so delicate. I'll do what I can to update, but you know it will be restricted to as and when. My focus has always been justice for Jodi and her family and Luke and his ... nothing's changed

Offline notsure

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Thanks Sandra will be keen to hear anything you feel we are able to know but in the meantime very best wishes to you and the team. HopeLl goes well

Offline nugnug

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    • http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnnyvoid.wordpress.com%2F&ei=WTdUUo3IM6mY0QWYz4GADg&usg=AFQjCNE-8xtZuPAZ52VkntYOokH5da5MIA&bvm=bv.5353710
of course theres no tral harm in talking about things that are already public and there is plenty.

Offline notsure

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of course theres no tral harm in talking about things that are already public and there is plenty.

Very true nugnug

Offline nugnug

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    • http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnnyvoid.wordpress.com%2F&ei=WTdUUo3IM6mY0QWYz4GADg&usg=AFQjCNE-8xtZuPAZ52VkntYOokH5da5MIA&bvm=bv.5353710
hopefully it wont take to long this time.

Offline nugnug

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    • http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDMQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjohnnyvoid.wordpress.com%2F&ei=WTdUUo3IM6mY0QWYz4GADg&usg=AFQjCNE-8xtZuPAZ52VkntYOokH5da5MIA&bvm=bv.5353710
That's what I was thinking, Nugnug. The thing is, I can't quite get it all to fit together in my head.

Initially, police were convinced it was a sexually motivated attack, which I don't think was unreasonable. But they changed their mind about that, claiming that because there was no evidence of sexual assault, then it couldn't have been sexually motivated. I thought then (and still do) that was a really naïve conclusion to draw - I probably have a dozen examples of sexually motivated crimes that didn't result in what are generally accepted to be "sexual assaults" - by its very nature, deviant sexuality won't necessarily produce standard sexual assaults.

Then we have all the semen samples and sperm heads.  Do those suggest a sexually motivated attack, or do we accept the "innocent transference" theories?

But, if this was a crime staged to look like a sexually motivated attack, it failed fairly quickly, since police dropped that as a possibility by mid July.

The very clean bra, I agree with Gordo - Jodi could not possibly have been wearing it when the cut-throat injuries were inflicted - apart from anything else, the blood saturation of the t-shirt makes the cleanliness of the bra a physical impossibility, if it was being worn under the t-shirt at the time those injuries were inflicted. But the transfer stain on the clasp area means someone with some level of contamination of Jodi's blood touched (or undid) that clasp. The only other possibility (please forgive me, I include this only because it's the only other plausible explanation) is that a bleeding Jodi undid the clasp herself.

The pathology reports, and the forensic evidence from the scene (drips and splashes of blood on foliage, branches etc) suggest that Jodi had bleeding injuries before the fatal cut-throat injuries were inflicted - her lip was burst, for example.

But here's something that might throw even more confusion into the mix (sorry!) Jodi's hands were filthy - caked with dirt, embedded right under her fingernails - if it was Jodi who undid the clasp, she had to have done so before her hands got so dirty, or the clasp area would have been heavily dirt stained. It wasn't.

So, if we're turning this around and Jodi was not stripped after death (again, something I've been arguing for years), how do we explain the known evidence, and how does Gordo's hypothesis fit with alternative explanations?

The cut t-shirt was "heavily bloodstained" around the neck area. If Jodi was killed in a sitting position, facing the wall, I'd have expected the t-shirt to be heavily bloodstained definitely down the whole of the front, at the very least, over the shoulder areas, and potentially down the back. If the hoodie was being worn at the time, then I'd expect the t-shirt to be possibly less stained, but the hoodie to be saturated. It wasn't - it was bloodstained on one side of the hood.

I never understood the bloodstaining in the armpit of one of the sleeves of the hoodie- there were no injuries on Jodi's body that could account for that heavy staining, and no cuts in the hoodie to suggest an injury inflicted through it. There were also no "matching" cuts in the t-shirt

Which brings me to the "defensive wounds" on Jodi's arms. She couldn't have been wearing the hoodie when these were inflicted - no cuts to the hoodie sleeves in the areas of these injuries, no bloodstaining to match with those injuries, either directly or indirectly (e.g. sleeves rolled up when the injuries were inflicted.) So, what about the t-shirt? Could that have been still worn when the arm injuries were inflicted? Again, I'd be inclined to say no. These were horrific injuries. If Jodi had done the instinctive thing when they were inflicted and drawn her arms towards her body to shield them I'd have expected to see extensive blood staining on the t-shirr around the chest or stomach area, most probably soaking through to the bra. If she was flailing her arms, trying to fend off further blows, then I'd have expected to see splashes of blood from those injuries on the front, back and sleeves of the t-shirt, as well as the jeans, and again, because of the level of blood loss, where those splashes landed on the t-shirt, I'd expect to see soak-through onto the bra.

I have no idea where all of this might lead - I'm just thinking out loud, all these years later, about the anomalies, the things that just don't add up, and never have.

i think they chnged there mind once they found there chosen suspect.

they must of had a reason to think it was a sexaully motivated atack to start with.

Offline sandra L

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If the case papers are anything to go by, the finding of a condom so close to the murder scene had them pretty convinced before the DNA results came back. But the nature of the investigation into the condoms (there was another found in a cave about 500 yards away) is telling.

In the first instance, they tried to distance the first condom from the murder by expanding the distance from 20 yards, to "within a 20 yard radius" to "within 50 yards." They didn't say, for example, that the blood stained branch was found "within 12 metres" - it was 12 metres west of the body. They didn't say Jodi's spectacles were found "within 3 metres" - they were 2.7 metres east of the body. The only reason I can think of for the lack of precision about where the condom was found was that they wanted to make it seem "too far away" to be of any importance. But why would they do that, especially if they believed the murder to have been sexually motivated and the DNA donor had not been traced?
Oh yes, I forgot - because the donor was not Luke and they needed him to be Luke.

The first DNA results were received 12 days into the investigation - at that point, they would have received the news that the contents of the condom did not originate from Luke. Rather than drop the connection right there, however, they tried to connect that condom with the condom found in the bin in Luke's room. Why? Who knows - a bit like the so-called knife evidence, so that they could say "a condom of the same brand as the one found in the bin in Luke Mitchell's bedroom was also found near the murder scene?"

The condom in the cave is just plain strange. The DNA profile from it was listed in the DNA reports as "unknown male" (it was a full profile). But they traced the two vagrants who had been living in the cave and got DNA profiles from them. However, the DNA results were not amended to link the DNA of either vagrant with the DNA from the condom. So.... if it didn't belong to either of the vagrants, isn't it a least possible they got the wrong flipping vagrants???

The media happily advised us all that the vagrants had been traced and eliminated. What they didn't say was that the originator of the condom contents had NOT been traced or eliminated.

By the end of the first week, the FLO was telling Luke and his family that Jodi had not been sexually assaulted (I guess, in her defence, the presence of sperm heads and semen deposits all over her body and clothing hadn't been recorded in the forensic report by then).The same day, the media broke the story that Jodi may have disturbed someone committing a sex act in the woods. So whoever was leaking information to the media knew (or had a damn good idea) that the sperm and semen deposits were not likely to come back from the labs identifying Luke - after all, the deposits were known about from the off - stains testing positive for semen, etc. I don't believe for a moment that senior officers sat twiddling their thumbs for 12 days saying, "It's ok, we'll just wait for the lab reports" - not a chance. I believe there has to have been contact throughout.

In fact, I know of another case where the Senior officer was emailing and calling a contact at the labs repeatedly, suggesting they use a specific technique on a specific sample from a specific area on a specific article of clothing. It took months - the lab kept coming back saying there was no point, the chances of a strong profile were miniscule, the technique in question did not provide as reliable results as other methods, there were better samples on other articles of clothing, etc, but eventually, after months of pressure from this officer, they agreed. (Direct funding had also been refused, so the agreement to test in this particular manner was on a "non urgent," when they could get around to it basis. Bet nobody can guess the outcome??

Yup, miraculously, they found a "full" DNA match (well, not quite, but it was close enough and they provided a plausible explanation for the missing bits!) Interestingly this "match" was found from a tiny group of cells lifted from a tape which had somehow acquired a mysterious cut... the cells were right next to this mysterious cut (which sliced right through both top and bottom layers of tape "sandwiching" the sample between them). The expert asked to comment on this said it was, in her opinion, highly unlikely that any contamination of the sample, via the mysterious cut, could have occurred.

Sorry to digress, but I think it's an important point - the labs testing these deposits are far from "independent" - they are aware of where their money comes from and if a senior officer calls up looking for a heads up before all the results are available, are they really going to refuse?