The murder of 14 year-old schoolgirl Jodi Jones near Edinburgh on 30 June 2003

[gordo30]

But, if this was a crime staged to look like a sexually motivated attack, it failed fairly quickly, since police dropped that as a possibility by mid July.


The police were always going to get something right, at the start when faced with fogged up information regarding Jodi where she was,when,times and with who they would have been forgiven if thinking this was sexually motivated, it wasn't.
It did however help to lead them to thinking the boyfriend, the staging could never be enough to put them off the right track for long but they simply took another wrong route.
Thats why I suggest that the staging had the desired effect.

[sandra L]

Sandra was the blood in the hoodie and the armpit as well as the injury to the mouth on the same side, if so it's consistent with someone bleeding from a wound on the face while lying on their side arm extended above their head and the head nestled into the arm pit.
The hoodie wouldn't need to be over the head it would naturally fall to that side.

Armpit and face injury were opposites sides - not entirely sure about the hoodie - from memory, the hood was stained on the same side as the armpit, which would put that at the opposite side to the face injury as well.

[sandra L]

Initially, police were convinced it was a sexually motivated attack, which I don't think was unreasonable. But they changed their mind about that, claiming that because there was no evidence of sexual assault, then it couldn't have been sexually motivated. I thought then (and still do) that was a really naïve conclusion to draw - I probably have a dozen examples of sexually motivated crimes that didn't result in what are generally accepted to be "sexual assaults" - by its very nature, deviant sexuality won't necessarily produce standard sexual assaults.


I find this a little misleading as any deviant sexual assault could only be acertainted once the culprit is caught, it would not be wise for the police to assume any crime could have a deviant aspect to it. Some people gain sexual gratification throught simply stealing from shops and other obscure activities.
What the police were saying is that the crime wan't of an "A" sexual nature as opposed to a pseudo
sexual crime.

Never my intention to mislead, Gordo! Maybe I didn't explain myself clearly enough - in my opinion, the police decision that the attack wasn't sexually motivated was premature, given that a 14 year old girl was found naked and her body mutilated, and that sperm heads and semen were found on her clothing. At the time they ruled out a sexual motive (on the basis of no evidence of a sexual assault or injury), they dismissed the fact that stripping Jodi naked and leaving her body out in the open was, in itself, a sexual assault. They did not have all the DNA results back when they changed their minds about it being sexually motivated, so, again, they were discounting evidence without, at that specific time, any justifiable reason to do so.

Again, in my opinon, investigators should not have been ruling out any possibilities that early in the investigation. I was not arguing so much that they should have assumed it was sexually motivated, more that they should have left open that possibility on the basis of other evidence available to them at that time.

[gordo30]

misleading was the wrong choice of word sry.

I meant that at the early stage of the enquiry with what they knew there was a specific route to investigate , when at that point there was no concrete evidence of sexual assault then they proceeded to not interview known sex offenders and other proceedures relating to a sexual offence. Im not sure if they really ever lost sight of that possiblity though.

[sandra L]

Thats what im saying there is a third theory where these samples were placed innocently on the garment/s if the garment/s belonged to someone else. This is the point where the police were banging their heads between sexual/non sexual crime but I can't believe they looked for an explanation that discounted these samples from being linked to the crime and not simply being used to solve the crime.

So, the garments we're talking about have to be the bra and the t-shirt, since the hoodie was definitely Jodi's, and the trousers appear to be the ones Luke described Jodi wearing at school that day.

The police had a perfect opportunity to bolster their innocent transfer theory - JaJ had two identical t-shirts, one of which she and SK claimed Jodi "might have been" wearing, and which forensics officers reported appeared to have been freshly laundered. They could have taken the other, identical t-shirt, freshly laundered, and checked for a full DNA profile for sperm heads, etc on that. They never did. Partly because at one point JaJ claimed to have been wearing the identical t-shirt the night they found Jodi, and as we know, the search trio didn't hand in their clothes until more than a week later, when they'd all been washed. I've never seen test results for any of those items of clothing.

But there was another opportunity - a pair of trousers found in Jodi's washing pile (unwashed) were claimed to have been borrowed (without permission?) from JaJ. Would those have yielded innocent transfer sperm heads?

My point is, although it would have proven nothing of significance, I'm surprised they didn't use it to back up their "innocent transfer" claim although, god knows, the DNA results were confusing enough, without throwing another identical t-shirt into the mix.

It is one of the most confounding decisions I've ever come across - a murder case where police actively discount, and come up with "innocent explanations" for DNA at the crime scene. As a general rule, you'd expect them to be all over that instantly, rather than trying to explain it away.

[sandra L]

misleading was the wrong choice of word sry.

I meant that at the early stage of the enquiry with what they knew there was a specific route to investigate , when at that point there was no concrete evidence of sexual assault then they proceeded to not interview known sex offenders and other proceedures relating to a sexual offence. Im not sure if they really ever lost sight of that possiblity though.

I'm fairly sure they didn't lose sight of it - they were just doing everything in their power to weave it into the "boyfriend dunnit" story. In August 2003, they threw the most vile sexual accusations at Luke (who, remember, had just turned 15), including a claim that a "partial DNA match" from semen was found on Jodi's bra. There are two problems with their "partial match" claim - firstly, a partial can never be claimed to be a "match" and secondly, there were markers in those samples that did not appear in Luke's profile - if all of the markers present in the samples were assumed to be from one contributor, those samples actually ruled Luke out.

I would also assume the use of the FBI profilers was expected to throw up some sort of sexual deviancy possibility which could be linked to Luke, but it didn't, hence the reason they tried to bury it, and then, when it was finally released, it was redacted so much it was unreadable. Had there been anything in that report to even hint at Luke, I'm pretty sure the media would have got hold of it "somehow."

[nugnug]

blood on the bra strap now cant see why somone under violent atack would suddenly stop and take there bra so i belive the killer must of undone the bra.

[notsure]

Hi sandra

forgive me but are the clothes allowed to be tested by the defence?

can they be tested again now? Can his defence team get hold of all forensic evidence and have it re tested

[sandra L]

Technically, notsure, the answer is yes and no!

They could have had second opinions run at the time of, or prior to trial, had they known the significance of the various bits and pieces as they related to the prosecution case. But the prosecution didn't run its case on forensics, (i.e., they didn't rely on forensics to prove their "chosen scenario(s)") because it would have sunk their case before they started.

One of the legal technicalities the defence faced was that it was very difficult for them to then bring in all the DNA/forensic anomalies, except as they related to the prosecution case. To a large degree, the defence can only respond to what the prosecution has claimed - if the prosecution doesn't claim (or doesn't appear to claim) X,Y or Z, then the defence can't really raise it, because they're only there to defend their client against the claims made by the prosecution.

I know that goes against everything we believe about the fairness of our justice system, and I was shocked to the core when I found out, but that's the way it is.

If the defence were to try to say, for example, but there's forensic DNA evidence pointing here, here and here, the judge's response would be, "It is not unknown persons on trial here today, but the defendant in the dock - the prosecution case against him is ......, is your point addressing any part of that case?"

Two of the prosecution's forensics experts were nailed to the floor by Findlay - one who claimed a profile on a pair of Luke's trousers "could have been" linked to the murder was forced to admit she had zero evidence on which to make that claim, and another, who stated Luke "could not be eliminated" as a contributor to a sample was forced to admit that one in every 2 males "could not be eliminated." But that's as far as it could go - Finlay couldn't then take it further and say, "What do you think explains these contact stains?" That's just not allowed.

The defence is not there to prove their client is innocent - by bringing in all of the DNA etc (even if that had been possible), the defence would have been seen to be trying to prove Luke's innocence, rather than demonstrating that the prosecution had failed to prove his guilt.

The appeals process is not a re-run of the trial, so re-testing of the DNA/forensic evidence would only be allowed if a technical, legal argument could be made that the significance of evidence of this sort was over-stated or mis-represented to the jury (such as the cases of Barry George, Sion Jenkins and all of the mothers jailed for the tragic deaths of their babies on the discredited evidence of Roy Meadow). But the jury in Luke's case never convicted on such evidence (so it could never be claimed they'd been misled by it) so it doesn't count.

The biggest hope was that the SCCRC's re-testing would show that accurate forensic tests  critically undermined the prosecution case from the off - unfortunately, the Commission was not prepared to go that far.

The chances of an independent group in Scotland being able to obtain the samples for independent testing is slim (but not impossible) - that is now Luke's only hope in this respect, unless a full DNA profile, matching one from the crime scene, should come up in another similar case, but even then, the state is under no obligation to release that information, because Luke's case is closed, and has no live proceedings pending. The only reasons they were forced to release the information about JaF's DNA turning up three years later, in relation to another crime,  was because Luke's appeal was pending.

Depressing, isn't it?

[marty]

That's what I was thinking, Nugnug. The thing is, I can't quite get it all to fit together in my head.

Initially, police were convinced it was a sexually motivated attack, which I don't think was unreasonable. But they changed their mind about that, claiming that because there was no evidence of sexual assault, then it couldn't have been sexually motivated. I thought then (and still do) that was a really naïve conclusion to draw - I probably have a dozen examples of sexually motivated crimes that didn't result in what are generally accepted to be "sexual assaults" - by its very nature, deviant sexuality won't necessarily produce standard sexual assaults.

Then we have all the semen samples and sperm heads.  Do those suggest a sexually motivated attack, or do we accept the "innocent transference" theories?

But, if this was a crime staged to look like a sexually motivated attack, it failed fairly quickly, since police dropped that as a possibility by mid July.

The very clean bra, I agree with Gordo - Jodi could not possibly have been wearing it when the cut-throat injuries were inflicted - apart from anything else, the blood saturation of the t-shirt makes the cleanliness of the bra a physical impossibility, if it was being worn under the t-shirt at the time those injuries were inflicted. But the transfer stain on the clasp area means someone with some level of contamination of Jodi's blood touched (or undid) that clasp. The only other possibility (please forgive me, I include this only because it's the only other plausible explanation) is that a bleeding Jodi undid the clasp herself.

The pathology reports, and the forensic evidence from the scene (drips and splashes of blood on foliage, branches etc) suggest that Jodi had bleeding injuries before the fatal cut-throat injuries were inflicted - her lip was burst, for example.

But here's something that might throw even more confusion into the mix (sorry!) Jodi's hands were filthy - caked with dirt, embedded right under her fingernails - if it was Jodi who undid the clasp, she had to have done so before her hands got so dirty, or the clasp area would have been heavily dirt stained. It wasn't.

So, if we're turning this around and Jodi was not stripped after death (again, something I've been arguing for years), how do we explain the known evidence, and how does Gordo's hypothesis fit with alternative explanations?

The cut t-shirt was "heavily bloodstained" around the neck area. If Jodi was killed in a sitting position, facing the wall, I'd have expected the t-shirt to be heavily bloodstained definitely down the whole of the front, at the very least, over the shoulder areas, and potentially down the back. If the hoodie was being worn at the time, then I'd expect the t-shirt to be possibly less stained, but the hoodie to be saturated. It wasn't - it was bloodstained on one side of the hood.

I never understood the bloodstaining in the armpit of one of the sleeves of the hoodie- there were no injuries on Jodi's body that could account for that heavy staining, and no cuts in the hoodie to suggest an injury inflicted through it. There were also no "matching" cuts in the t-shirt

Which brings me to the "defensive wounds" on Jodi's arms. She couldn't have been wearing the hoodie when these were inflicted - no cuts to the hoodie sleeves in the areas of these injuries, no bloodstaining to match with those injuries, either directly or indirectly (e.g. sleeves rolled up when the injuries were inflicted.) So, what about the t-shirt? Could that have been still worn when the arm injuries were inflicted? Again, I'd be inclined to say no. These were horrific injuries. If Jodi had done the instinctive thing when they were inflicted and drawn her arms towards her body to shield them I'd have expected to see extensive blood staining on the t-shirr around the chest or stomach area, most probably soaking through to the bra. If she was flailing her arms, trying to fend off further blows, then I'd have expected to see splashes of blood from those injuries on the front, back and sleeves of the t-shirt, as well as the jeans, and again, because of the level of blood loss, where those splashes landed on the t-shirt, I'd expect to see soak-through onto the bra.

I have no idea where all of this might lead - I'm just thinking out loud, all these years later, about the anomalies, the things that just don't add up, and never have.

Then we have all the semen samples and sperm heads.  Do those suggest a sexually motivated attack, or do we accept the "innocent transference" theo
I thought that if the t shirt had been washed as suggested smelled of detergent " then there would be no chance of a full profile to be obtained from blood as it would have been totally destroyed by the washing of the shirt. Am I right in saying that?

[sandra L]

Yes - the argument has been made elsewhere that the blood was "deposited over" an existing DNA sample already on the t-shirt after fresh laundering, and was Jodi's blood.

I think this suggestion was put because the sample was claimed to be a "mixed" sample with male and female DNA, but it is not reported in the results as such.

Where a mixed male/female sample is indicated, the first column shows:

XX
XY

If it was, for example, a full profile from Jodi, with a partial sample from a male, the "numbers" for Jodi's sample would be recorded at each marker (as the XX, or female markers) and the "unknown" male markers would be placed in brackets to differentiate them.

Like this:
XX
     |1,2|3,4 (22)|5,6 (23,24)|7,8|9,10|11,12(25,26)|13,14|15,16|17,18 (27)|19,20|Jodi Jones& unknown male
XY

In this example, the numbers in bold are the "full match" female profile, the numbers 22 - 27 in brackets are the additional, male components in the sample.

The sample we're talking about is labelled simply XY - a male sample. There are additional markers, which should indicate that this is a mixed male sample, yet it is entitled SK and JJ.
However, some of the additional markers (or partial markers) are in brackets - the usual way of differentiating male/female - and some are not. (Doesn't need me to say the DNA results were a shambles!)

Two points to be made about this - of the additional markers, outwith Kelly's own, (there are ten of them out of the 20 required for a full profile), if they were female in origin, then JaJ (9/10), JuJ (6/10), YW (6/10) and AW (3/10) "could not be eliminated" as contributors.

Therefore, the existence of those other indicators means the blood cannot be claimed to originate from Jodi, especially if the "deposited over" theory is being used. The t-shirt was claimed to be JaJ's, AW did her washing, she spent time with YW, and JuJ is her mother - DNA from any of these other females could be innocently explained as being left over on the T shirt after washing (or even deposited there after washing) - what it cannot do is indicate decisively, that the blood on the t-shirt, in which these markers were found, was Jodi's.

Looking at these, I've just found something very interesting with the possibilities (apart from probably every male closely associated with the case (including police officers and the pathologist himself) coming out "could not be eliminated") - that, in itself shows how careful we have to be a about claiming matches from mixed profiles.

There is a particular marker in this sample that appears in only 4 of the profiles in the defence papers. Two of those are definitely eliminated as suspects for other credible reasons. Which leaves 2 - we know SK is one. The other is DD. It's interesting that this "unusual" marker (unusual in the sense that it only appears in four profiles whereas a "common" marker from the same batch of profiles appears 48 times, another appears 58 times, etc).

Of the 3 unbracketed indicators in the "additional" profile, DD's profile could be claimed to account for two of them. The remaining bracketed indicators may be female in origin, simply because they are bracketed.

If we look at those two profiles in combination, they share identifiers at 9 places. So, technically, this sample has a claimed full match to SK, but could also be claimed to match DD at 11/20 points (two of those showing as "additional" markers in the original profile). Of course, we could never claim a "match," nor should we, but the existence of this one unusual marker in the DNA profiles available, the fact that it turns up in the only full DNA profile connected to the crime (at the time), and then appears in the profile of someone else closely connected to the case, whose movements, explanations, etc, left a lot to be desired should, at the very least, have had investigators looking a little more closely, I would have thought.

[nugnug]

does anyone think its a bit funny that jodi borrowing her sisters clothes is mention a fair while before the dna results came back long before theres any reall reason for it to be mentioned.

[notsure]

Very depressing sandra. Do you think defence teams have a disadvantage from the off . Why are some things with eld from the defence.? I think the law should change

[gordo30]

There were loads witheld from the defense in this case but not everything is as sinister as it appears, the law requires proper corroboration and i feel he police have their hands tied to a point. I also think its easier for us to see how things may help with hindsight.
This doesn't excuse the proceedural problems with this case that got to the point where almost nothing could be relied on and very basic mistakes were made.

[sandra L]

does anyone think its a bit funny that jodi borrowing her sisters clothes is mention a fair while before the dna results came back long before theres any reall reason for it to be mentioned.

On the surface, what you say here is true nugnug, but behind the scenes it was a little different. The "statements" (clearly led) by SK and JaJ about the possibility of Jodi "borrowing" JaJ's t shirt are dated exactly the same day as the aunts mention borrowing her sister's clothes in their appeal to the public.

Up to that point, there had been no mention, publicly or otherwise,  of borrowing clothes- the investigation, until that point had not considered that possibility because, it would appear, there was no reason to consider it. And nowhere, in any statement, is there any mention of it - not JuJ, JaJ, AW, YK - no-one.

It's not just borrowing, either, it's borrowing without permission that emerges on this date, and that really muddied the waters - did Jodi or didn't Jodi wear certain articles of her sister's clothes? And of course, the answer is "maybe."