Sighting at top, for me, nothing like jodi, description not even close.
Keep saying these people were not traced, but was there any call for them to come forward in newspapers or police actively looking for them. I don’t remember anything at the time looking for these 2 people? Maybe they did not either and also did not come forward as they had no need to, they had walked past the path seen nothing and never gave it a second thought or didn’t want involved. Were the 2 people at the top of the path shown on the police re-enactment?
There was never any call for these two people to come forward. Even though the police had AB's statements from July 1st and 2nd, the police were still claiming, via the media, that there had been
no confirmed sightings of Jodi right up until the first reports of Stocky Man on July 16th. Those sightings were reported as "the first confirmed sightings of Jodi" but there was no mention of the two people at the entrance to the path and these sightings were 15 minutes later than AB's.
Although the police appear to have known about the Stocky Man sightings by July 7th, when the police reconstruction was filmed, they chose not to release that information for another 9 days. The reconstruction was inaccurate in the following ways:
(1) It didn't show anyone at the entrance to the path
(2) It didn't show Stocky Man
(3) It was 15 minutes too late (according to the prosecution's final timings)
(40 It showed Jodi turning into and walking down Roan's Dyke path even though no witness ever claimed to see this.
Notice the time of the reconstruction - Jodi leaving her home "a few minutes after 5pm" - fitting with the 5.05pm sightings involving Stocky Man. On what was the timing of the reconstruction based? There are only two possibilities - Judith's early account that Jodi left "about 5 o'clock" or the witnesses to Stocky Man whose sightings were timed at 5.05pm. Either way, by the time of that reconstruction, police had had AB's statements for five and six days respectively and chose to report that there had been no confirmed sightings of Jodi and to place her leaving time at just after 5pm - as I said, 15 minutes too late for the AB sighting.
Sighting at the bottom, I still dont understand the relevance of this, maybe someone can explain. Was Luke not on that road waiting on Jodi, so even if it was him they saw does that not kind of corroborate luke story that he was waiting for Jodi at the other end of his street and walking back and forth on that road? I know I must be missing something here if someone can correct me or fill in the blanks?
The"significance" of these sightings are that they were claimed to be at the Newbattle end of Roan's Dyke path, much further up the Newbattle Road than Luke claimed, or was witnessed, to have been that evening. There are problems with the location and timing of this sighting:
(1) It was claimed to be at the same time as Luke was seen sitting on a wall at the end of his street, several hundred yards away.
(2) A colleague of one of the witnesses (who reported her claimed sighting to the police) insists she was saying she saw the youth at the the entrance to Newbattle Abbey College (the wall where Luke was witnessed sitting is directly opposite that entrance)
(3) According to their own statements, they could not have seen a jogger (who emerged from Newbattle Abbey Crescent,) from the point on the Newbattle Road where Roan's Dyke Path emerges, because of the bends in the road. Yet they described the jogger perfectly, suggesting they were very close to Newbattle Abbey Crescent/Newbattle Abbey College when they saw the youth and the jogger in the same sighting and not, as they claimed, at the entrance to Roan's Dyke Path.
(4) Their description did not fit Luke - in particular, they claimed the youth had thin, straggly, dark hair "stuck" to his head.
(5) The youth was not agitated, breathless or behaving strangely in any way. There were no signs of blood or dishevelment on his clothing. He was, quite simply, looking at the pavement.
Lawyers have a way to work people on the stand, a lot like the claims with Shanes evidence, this raised questions as to what he actually remembers and what he was backed into saying on the stand. The boys on the moped, for me, is the same. As they could not remember it could have been ‘made out’ to look like they were at the V when they were not? I always took it that there was a witness who saw the bike sitting at the murder scene V at 1715 and reported this, and thats what DF was referring to in court. Can someone clarify on this too, did someone SEE the bike, or did DF ‘put it to them’ the bike was there and they agreed?
After the boys on the moped passed through the tool hire place, an employee there told police that s/he spotted the bike parked against the V break (with no people in sight) on the witness's drive home. JF's original statement was the one lying about the time they were on the path - according to that statement, they simply drove straight up the path to Dickie's home at around 4.30. However, along with the statements from the tool hire place, a witness driving up the Newbattle Road saw them pushing the bike into the entrance of Roan's Dyke path just after 5pm. In his second statement, Ferris conceded that he'd given the wrong time to the police - his next statement was very detailed, talking about the bike "keeping cutting out" and he and Dickie having to take turns to push it to get it started again. He talked about them having to take rests because their arms were tired from pushing. He stated, in this statement, that they were on the path "maybe 20 minutes, half an hour" - there was only time, at the end of that, to ride the bike "a couple of times" up and down the path before getting back to Dickie's house about 5.30pm. So, no direct admission from Ferris in statements that the bike was against the wall at 5.15pm, but, taken with the evidence of the other two witnesses (the one who saw them pushing the bike just after 5pm and the one who saw the bike against the wall at the V at 5.15pm), it's clear the bike was not running for the first period on the path, after 5.05pm and they were "taking rests" between pushing it to try to get it started.
I don’t think the boys on the moped had anything to do with the murder, for me it just raises questions as to the time of death. I do also think it’s possible if they were there they could have had a smoke with Jodi.
Me neither - it's the time of death that bothers me - we know they were on the path just after 5pm, we know the bike wasn't running for a good portion of the time they were there, but they saw and heard nothing. It's strange that they didn't see LK or he them, though (although LK wasn't sure of his timings, since he regularly took two different routes when out on his bike and couldn't remember which route he'd taken that evening). But, even so, LK initially reported a "rustling sound, like leaves or an animal" - he stopped, listened, the sound had stopped and he moved on. When asked by DF how that had changed to a "struggling sound" (which was later again changed to "a strangling sound") he told the court, "I was nervous. I felt like I was being treated as a suspect."
LK's is not the only account where witnesses were pressured to agree to a much different version of their original statements - there is evidence throughout the case of witnesses' accounts ending up far removed from what they said they saw/heard and records of their discomfort with the changes in some cases.
