Wow 8 pm was roughly the time I was thinking for Jodi making her way towards Lukes, still early enough for her to see him before getting home before curfew and after the timing of JF being there. I can't help feeling that Jodi had stumbled upon something and someone she knew on her way to Luke's when she decided to make her way there. She wasn't going there at 5 but later on, it's where was she and what was she doing that's the problem and the DNA available is speaking volumes I just don't know what the hell its saying
Ever since I learned of the "shoo... be quiet... go out" comments, I've thought there might have been a reason Jodi had to leave far too early for meeting Luke. The vague text about meeting "later" also concerns me. In the weeks leading up to the murder, they had a fairly reliable routine of sorts - a group of them would meet up around 6pm. (Even Jodi's mother said so.) That week was different because some of the group they usually met had gone off on a school trip.
From memory, Luke texted Jodi at 4.34 to ask if she was coming out that evening, she responded that she was, where would she meet him, Luke responded saying she could come down to Newbattle after tea, she responded that she'd be down "later." Did that mean later than "after tea" (which, up until then, had been 6 o'clock?) Of course, we can't know any of this because, the texts were deleted from both phones, but that was Luke's earliest recollection, on the night. He called the house at 20 to six to say that was him finished his tea and "out" (not, as has been repeatedly reported, to find out where she was) - he was told she'd "left" (not "left to meet him" as was later claimed). he says he waited about half an hour (the time he would have expected Jodi to take to get to Newbattle if she'd only just left home at 20 t0 6), then went to the Abbey and hung around there, after telling his mum if Jodi turned up at the house to tell her he was in the Abbey.
All of this suggests Luke originally was expecting Jodi later than 6pm, that expectation only changing with the 5.40 call - when Jodi didn't show, he wouldn't necessarily have thought anything of it - the "later" text would have suggested she had something else in mind before getting to Newbattle.
When I very first met him, three and a half months after the murder, he told me he wasn't sure what Jodi might be doing "in between" and didn't want to call her house again in case he got her into trouble.
I've never seen anything to suggest there were sightings of Jodi after 5.05pm but the public was never asked about seeing someone who could have been Jodi anywhere else except the Easthouses Road and Roan's Dyke path - I said this at the time, and have been saying it ever since - the very young pictures of Jodi and the decision to concentrate on one small area, instead of areas Jodi was known to frequent meant that witnesses who may have thought they saw someone who could have been Jodi in, say, the Mayfield area would never have come forward, because that wasn't what police were looking for. Also, it was three days before up-to-date pictures of Jodi were circulated, just adding to the confusion.
