Firstly:
We do not choose better secluded routes for anyone making their way home, we follow the forensic trail picked up by specialist equipment then the dogs.
Nothing picked up by the high tech equipment going N/NE/E/SE/S nor SW. It was W and NW = Newbattle. Then, we do not ignore that further trails were picked up over Newbattle Road into that other area of woodland. We do not apply bleaching anywhere to make dogs go in one direction only. We apply again what was picked up by the equipment prior to the dogs being brought in. Erasing the utter BS of 'They bleached the scene to make the dogs go one way'
Glad we still have LM where he was, at the one and only kerbside gate, exactly where the two ladies saw him. Not several hundred meters down, several meters in off the roadside, placing him yet again, somewhere he never claimed to be, at someone's driveway gates far in off the road. He claimed to go to the cottages to see if he could see Jodi, not walk all the way into them. But you re-write most of anything anyway, so we can simply say here, carry on as you will anyway.
We do not apply that he should have had his hood up, we apply the fact it was down. LM is the only person with the answer here. Who knows Faith? Running over that road at haste, the hood falls back, a car is coming over the brow of the hill and he stops in his tracks, head down. What exactly is it you are expecting here from this killer? That in that split second he should have chosen your perfection, rushed to pull the hood back up if it had fallen down? - Behave yourself.
Time and this utter BS of the police shoehorning the only time they could to fit this lad up for murder - And again, have a word, behave yourself. Time is as it was, we can not change time Faith, so we apply reality of time. A mile walked at a brisk pace is the reality of time LM had to initially change/briefly clean. We think what is actually achievable in our day to day lives of what can be done in X amount of time.
QC asked the question around the Maryburn, I believe? I have always maintained the fresh flowing water of the Esk. But of your hood and up, which has been applied many times to when LM was actually carrying the murder out, using whatever means, to prevent as best possible, transfer to his actual self. Did he have ample means to clean his 'coupon' up a bit in the RDW? And again, and repeatedly, I have stated, absolutely no idea of suitability of anything. Crossed that road, without a doubt a haste, a risk that had to be taken, and a car came. His head down - Stop having this utter fallacy applied, constantly of someone shining bright red! - Utter nonsense.
While I have much to take issue with in your first point it is beyond doubt that the crime scene was so compromised in so many ways that any evidence gleaned from it was, understandably, open to interpretation.
Now let’s look at your claim that Luke was seen to be standing at a ‘kerbside’ gate (naughty, naughty). Neither Walsh nor Fleming described it as such….they described it simply as a wooden gate. As to Fleming and Walsh’s estimation of the the distance to their sighting from RDP, we know from the testimony of the jogger herself seen by the pair just after they had seen Luke that she was 400 yards away from where Fleming and Walsh said they’d seen her at the time when they said that they’d seen her. Therefore it is more than likely that the same happened with Luke. Memory is fallible. It makes more sense that Fleming/Walsh saw Luke at the wooden gate a small way past Barondale Cottages and the jogger just after at the entrance to Newbattle Abbey Crescent where she said she joined Newbattle Road at around 17.40.
The photograph I posted earlier are of wooden gates situated between the end of Newbattle Abbey Crescent and Barondale Cottages and Luke would certainly have been passed them if he went as far as Barondale cottages. Further contrary to your claim several independent witnesses identified Luke as either in a driveway or at a driveway.
Carol Heatlie.
“ Ms Heatlie said she first saw the youth at the driveway which is close to the entrance to Mitchell's home in Newbattle Abbey Crescent.
She said: 'He was standing on the pavement and down the road.When he saw my car, he quickly stepped back into the driveway out of my view.
'The fact he stepped back made me wonder what he was doing. I slowed down and watched what he was doing and looked into the driveway. ”
Andrew Holburn, Dean Houston and Grant Elliot.
“Mr Holburn, 18, a photography student, told the court he and his friends were cycling on Newbattle Road towards the Jewel and Esk College in the evening of Monday June 30.
He said they saw Mr Mitchell standing at an entrance to a driveway before Newbattle Abbey Crescent, where the accused lived. He said they would have cycled past at about 5.55pm or 6pm.
The witness said he saw a young man, whom he did not recognise, standing at a break in a wall. Mr Holburn asked his friends, who attend St David's High School in Dalkeith, who the young man was.
''What was the answer?'' he was asked in court. ''Luke Mitchell,'' the witness replied.
Grant Elliot and Dean Houston, both 15, confirmed to the court that they had seen Mr Mitchell on that evening in June. All three identified the accused in the dock at the High Court in Edinburgh.
Dean said that he occasionally cycled to school with Mr Mitchell, and Grant said the accused was still standing at the same spot as he made his return journey home some 20 minutes to half-an-hour later”
Marion O’Sullivan.
“ Marion O'Sullivan, 36, told the trial that she saw a male who looked "suspicious" standing at a pathway entrance on Newbattle Road, Dalkeith, just before 6pm on the day Jodi died.
She said the man, who was in his "late teens or early 20s", was wearing a green bomber jacket and dark jeans.
As to ‘running over that road at haste’ Walsh and Fleming’s sighting was not seen running across the road but standing, minding his own business at a place, so we are told, several hundred metres across from the entrance to RDP. Or do you think he scaled that embankment parallel to where the youth was allegedly seen standing and ran from there? Why would he take that risk when he could, within seconds, exit RDP at its Newbattle entrance, cross the road and slip through the gap between the wall and the fence which was almost parallel with that entrance. Wouldn’t that be the easiest, and more importantly, safest route for a murderer? The hood falls, it immediately gets pulled back up, this is life or death for this young man.
Washing in either the Mayburn, Esk ( no matter how free flowing) or indeed Ochre, all have all sorts of microorganisms living in them yet none were identified on Luke’s hair or any part of his body. Another anomaly?
