On 30 June 2003, fourteen-year-old Jodi Jones was brutally murdered near her home at Easthouses near Edinburgh, Scotland. Her naked body was found some 6 hours later hidden behind a high wall in a wooded area bordering Roan's Dyke footpath, a well known local short-cut running between Easthouses and Newbattle. Jodi had been subjected to what prosecutors would later describe in court as a "savage knife attack."
Early in the investigation the police suggested that the killer would be a man local to the area because of the location of where the murder took place. It was established that Jodi had set out earlier that afternoon to meet her then boyfriend, Luke Mitchell (14). Her mutilated body was later found by Mitchell, who had joined a search party that included Jodi's 67 year-old grandmother, Alice Walker, her 17 year-old sister Janine, and Janine's boyfriend, Stephen Kelly (19). The fact that Mitchell and his dog discovered the body so quickly despite a search at night, in poor weather, would later play a major part in the criminal investigation.
Luke Mitchell on the day of Jodi's funeral.
Mitchell was initially questioned as a witness but was eventually arrested and charged with the crime some 10 months later following months of media speculation, including the repeated claim that the then 15-year-old was the "only" or "prime" suspect. At Mitchell's trial at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh he pleaded not guilty and lodged a special defence of alibi, claiming that he was at home cooking dinner at the time of the murder. During the 42-day trial which followed, the jury heard evidence from both Mitchell's mother and his brother Shane, as well as visiting the crime scene. The evidence of Shane Mitchell was crucial to the conviction; he stated that at the time of the murder, he had been at the family home, viewing internet porn. He agreed that this was not an activity he would have engaged in if he thought anyone else was in the house and so he failed to corroborate Mitchell's alibi. The trial was the longest of a single accused, and the costliest at £452,687, in Scottish legal history.
On 21 January 2005, the jury found Mitchell guilty after 5 hours of deliberation. Mitchell, aged sixteen at the time of his conviction, was condemned as being "truly wicked" by Judge Lord Nimmo Smith. He was also found guilty of a separate charge of supplying cannabis.