10 years on, DNA tests ordered in review of Jodi killing
THE brutal murder of schoolgirl Jodi Jones is to be reinvestigated using DNA technology, it emerged yesterday.
Ten years after the teenager’s death, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) has reopened the case and ordered new forensic tests.
Her boyfriend, Luke Mitchell, is serving a life sentence for the murder – but DNA found on Jodi’s clothes could not be matched with him.
Now new advances in technology could use just a few skin cells to either place him at the scene or support Mitchell’s claims that he is innocent.
The murder of 14-year- old Jodi shocked Scotland in 2003, after she
‘Pave the way to him being freed’
was found mutilated in woodland near her home in Dalkeith, Midlothian. Her hands had been tied behind her back, her throat cut, and her body repeatedly slashed.
Mitchell was found guilty in 2005 and will serve at least 20 years in prison for the crime. Now 25 and held at high-security Shotts prison in Lanarkshire, he was said yesterday to be ‘delighted’ by the new developments.
The fresh forensic tests could focus on male DNA found in a knot on the right leg of Jodi’s jeans, which were used to tie her hands, or on the fly button or zip.
These were previously tested, but a clear genetic profile of the killer could not be found. It is understood this is because the samples retrieved were too small but, a decade on, a profile can be created from just a few skin cells.
Criminologist Dr Sandra Lean, who – alongside Mitchell’s mother Corinne – has led the campaign to clear his name, said yesterday: ‘We hope this will pave the way to him being freed. The evidence used to convict Luke was so poor and there was so little of it. A 14-year-old girl was butchered and the man who did it is still out there.
‘Luke has a combination of feelings about this – he is obviously pleased this is finally getting looked at but there is an element of frustration and anger that it has taken so long.’
Mrs Mitchell said: ‘I am happy this is finally being done, but furious it wasn’t done ten years ago. There was no evidence against Luke – end of.’
The Scottish Daily Mail was unable to reach Judy Jones, Jodi’s mother, but she has previously branded Mitchell a ‘sociopath’ and expressed her relief that his repeated appeals against his conviction have failed.
On the day Jodi was killed, she was going to meet Mitchell, then aged 14. Her family reported her missing when she failed to return home. It was her teenage ‘ goth’ boyfriend who joined the search and found Jodi’s body behind a wall beside a path in the woods, with ritualistic slash marks across her eyelids, cheek, breast, abdomen and forearm.
The SCCRC has not confirmed which items from the crime scene will be re-examined, but Mitchell’s defence team believes the tests will
‘I am happy this is finally being done’
focus on Jodi’s trousers. Other items of her clothing, including her T- shirt, underwear and trainers, may also hold DNA evidence.
The Scottish Government-funded quango, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, will ask the Crown Office for the items it wishes to test before sending them to an independent laboratory for analysis.
Mitchell’s first appeal against his conviction was refused by senior judges in Scotland in 2008. In 2011, the UK Supreme Court ruled there were no grounds for further appeal and announced the case ‘closed’.
Last year he passed a lie detector test in jail, denying he had stabbed Jodi, but this has no legal validity in the British courts.
Mitchell’s defence team believe Robert Greens, the man known as the Da Vinci rapist, should have been investigated in connection with the murder.
Greens attacked a young woman in 2005, close to the Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian, which appeared in the novel and film of The Da Vinci Code. He raped his victim at knifepoint and left her so badly beaten she looked as if she had been in a car crash.
At the time of Jodi’s murder, he regularly visited a relative living near to where her body was found.
A SCCRC spokesman has confirmed it is investigating the case, but added: ‘Once we have accepted a case for review, we are unable to say more with regard to the details of the investigation.’