JAMES MATTHEWS: It’s 65 days since Jodi was killed, Luke, clearly it’s a tragedy for her family, do you see it as a tragedy for your family as well?
LUKE: Yes.
JAMES MATTHEWS: Tell me about your experience over the last two months.
LUKE: It’s just been worse than a nightmare. At least a nightmare you wake up from eventually but this, you can’t wake up from it.
JAMES MATTHEWS: What’s been the worst part of the last two months?
LUKE: The worst part would be still finding Jodi. That was still the worst part. All the rest of it, the police and accusations and everything I couldn’t care about, it’s just … I just want to find out what happened and who did it.
JAMES MATTHEWS: Do you feel that the finger has been pointed at you as the person responsible?
LUKE: I feel it has been left to the media and public to decide. It is trial by media. They haven’t actually come out and totally accused me, apart from in interviews, the police have accused me but I feel it has been left to trial by media to see what the public decide, who’s guilty and who’s not. The way the police are handling it, they have searched other houses and they have other suspects but I seem to be really the only person they are mentioning by name in specific detail.
JAMES MATTHEWS: But you have an alibi for that night because you were with friends?
LUKE: Yes. I was, first I was waiting just at the end of the estate where I was in full view, cars were passing, people were just getting home from work on buses, then I met up with my friends.
JAMES MATTHEWS: Who vouch for you?
LUKE: Yes, they gave statements the same as mine.
JAMES MATTHEWS: It is a question on everybody’s lips in this community, it is a question you clearly have an answer for. Did you kill Jodi Jones?
LUKE: No, I never, I wouldn’t think of it. All the time we were going out we never had one argument at all, never. We never fell out or anything.
JAMES MATTHEWS: How do you feel at being told to stay away from the funeral?
LUKE: That was a hard blow. I was dreading going to the funeral but I did want to go and being told not to go due to the fact that it would turn the funeral into a circus, a media circus, was bad. It would have been a media circus without me but that was, if it was the family’s wishes, that’s what I was going to do?
JAMES MATTHEWS: You have paid your own tribute, you have written a poem. Tell me why you felt you needed to do that?
LUKE: I just felt I had to say goodbye in my own way.
JAMES MATTHEWS: So what would you say to those who would look at you and think he killed his girlfriend?
LUKE: I just say they are being naïve and not to believe everything you read in the papers. As a lot of folk know from what they’ve said and what’s turned out in the papers, they do change what people have said, not the whole truth is published in papers. It is basically what the people want to hear is what printed.
JAMES MATTHEWS: I suppose the difficulty is from 5 p.m. to whenever Jodie was found, that's a long time to fill and to account for, especially if you lose track of time. The question I suppose for detectives, for people who look at that is could anybody account for every minute in that sort of period? Can you, can you account for every minute?
LUKE: No. Well the police seem to expect people to, as you say, pin down every minute of their life, to expect us to know when we do small insignificant things like doing the dishes, expect us to have a time for that, it isn’t possible to keep a pin of every minute that you do something.
JAMES MATTHEWS: This burning of clothes keeps getting mentioned and there is also the subject of a missing knife, is that your missing knife?
LUKE: No. The burning clothes that wasn’t us. They just stated that a female relative of the suspect admitted to burning clothes.
JAMES MATTHEWS: Was that you or anyone connected to you?
LUKE: No, not that we know of.
JAMES MATTHEWS: Finally, do you miss Jodi?
LUKE: A lot. It’s just, everything I do seems to remind me, her views and everything come up everywhere. Everywhere you look, going about the streets, there are posters. It’s just, I can’t believe … it still feels like a nightmare.
ENDS
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