Firstly, an apology - I have very little time at the moment to read forums or post, so i won't be able to join in the debate for a number of weeks.
However, there are a couple of things I can clarify from what I have read today. Firstly, the photograph of Luke which has been posted here was taken on August 14th 2003 (six weeks after the murder) in Dalkeith Police Station at 8am. It was placed in a spread of 11 other pictures that morning, and all 12 were taken to AB that day for her to "identify" Luke. Those events have been severely criticised by Roy Ramm and John Scott, John Scott commenting that they didn't have an arrow pointing to Luke Mitchell, but they might as well have done, because Luke's picture stood out so much. Having seen the other 11 pictures, I agree completely - the others were of much younger children, the hair- styles, although all similar to each other (close cropped), were very different to Luke's. All of the other backgrounds were "rooms" of some description, Luke's was a polaroid style with a white band across the top, and very little background detail.
This photograph was not, as has been claimed, taken when Luke was arrested in April 2004 - the "identification" by AB from that photograph was made on August 14th, six weeks after the murder, and the day before pictures of Luke began to appear in newspapers.. However, the picture of Luke did not match the descriptions AB gave to the police in her first two statements in July 2003, right after the murder. she was describing someone completely different - late teens, early twenties, brown, thick, messy hair, some of it sticking up at the back, wearing "fishing gear" with the same colour jacket and trousers. She said in both of those early statements that she would only recognise him again by his clothing and hair as she had not seen his face.
Fleming and Walsh's statements are so far removed from "descriptions" of Luke, it is surprising that they were ever actually used as witnesses. Both said, in their initial statements, that the youth had dark hair, both said they didn't see his face, one had him wearing jeans - definitely, categorically not baggies, because she would have noticed that, their descriptions of his jacket differed from each other, and neither could say what he was wearing under the jacket, although they weren't sure if the jacket was zipped up or open. By the time it got to court, one stated she would never forget his eyes (which, according to her statements, she had never seen), they described a black t shirt with writing on it (which neither had mentioned in their statements), and, at one point, one of them was pulled up in court for using the exact phrase the other had given in evidence the day before - a phrase which had never appeared in any of their statements (the obvious point being that they were discussing their evidence).
These witnesses were shown newspaper photographs of Luke by police investigators, apparently becuase they had claimed to recognise Luke from newspaper photographs prior to August 15th (before which there had been no newspaper pictures of Luke).
Other witnesses have since come forward to say that one of them told work colleagues that the youth she had seen was at the entrance to Newbattle Abbey College (which was the opposite side of the road to where Luke had been standing waiting for Jodi before crossing over to the Abbey) - she never mentioned to any of them, at any time, the youth being at the broken gate near to the end of Roan's Dyke path. They were unable, in their statements, to decide what time they had been on the Newbattle Road, and claimed to have seen a jogger at the same time as they saw the youth - the jogger was, they said, 200 yards ahead. Had the youth been at the broken gate, that was impossible, as the road goes into a series of sweeping bends - it would be impossible to see anyone 200 years up ahead, because of those bends.
The inscription on the knife pouch is not on the website because I had a limited amount of time to get the info for the website together, no other reason. I haven't had a chance to properly update the website, due to other commitments, but I will do so when I get the chance.
It is an offence in Scotland to make public many documents relating to a criminal case, so I am restricted in law as to what I can post from transcripts, statements, etc. I have tried to post as much as I thought I could, without crossing over any legal lines - it's sometimes a difficult judgement call.
Someone commented that they wre "not impressed" with me - that's ok, I'm not doing this to impress anyone, I do what I do because innocent people are being jailed for crimes they did not commit, and that could happen to any one of us, including me and my family. Doing something just because it's the right thing to do doesn't seem to be particularly popular - people are always looking for ulterior motives - for the record, I have none - being involved in MoJs has cost me greatly over the years, in many different ways, but I do not regret getting involved. I understand that people will believe whatever they want to believe - the way I see it, I can put the information out there, and people can do as they please with it. If it's not out there, then people don't know about it, so they can't discuss it, and - far more importantly - they are not forewarned that this could happen to them.
