Several witnesses were identified as having been on the path at the critical time that evening. In total there were a minimum of five – John Ferris, Gordon Dickie, his father, David Dickie, Stephen Kelly, a witness who claimed to have heard a disturbance behind the wall, and the "mystery man" seen following Jodi onto the path.
The above is, indeed, a quote from No Smoke, from 2007. I didn't, until yesterday, have a copy of No Smoke to be able to check.
The reference to Stephen Kelly is clearly a typo, since the sentence goes on to describe him as "a witness who claimed to have heard a disturbance behind the wall."
Eight pages before this paragraph, it says, "others...described a mystery man following Jodi
towards the Easthouses entrance to the path."
I apologise for any confusion - No Smoke was published more than 12 years ago, before I had access to all of the case papers and I haven't read it/referenced it for many years. The book was based largely on court transcripts, which were all I had at the time. I've contacted the publisher today to ask for the book to be withdrawn.
I would like to stress that it was not, and never has been, my intention to mislead. The two errors cited here are simply that - errors which were not picked up at the editing stage.
I accept that it is more accurate to say, "Since gaining access to the case papers, my stance has always been that no-one, ever, saw Jodi walk into the entrance to the path," - until I had access to the papers, I could not have known that to be factually correct.
No Smoke doesn't address the reconstruction because I didn't know the full facts surrounding it until I saw the case papers - at pages 98 and 108, I stated that there had been "no confirmed sightings of Jodi" that evening - we now know that there
were confirmed sightings of her at 5.05pm, on the Easthouses Road, fully 15 minutes after it was claimed, at trial, that she left her home.
