Part 7. Knives, Texts and ffs sake.

Two 14 year-olds are engaged in a text conversation, one phone belongs to a parent so the conversation is not private. Within seven hours the messages are irretrievably lost from both phones. At least, according to the Police.

In those seven hours one of those teenagers has been brutally murdered not far from her home. Yet those hours are confusing decades later. In years to come, case will morph. At trial the search party who found the poor girls body, her own sister and grandmother, left from their home a few miles away, not hers. Quietly that would be switched. Her gran couldn’t answer a call in her home and walked miles in mere minutes. She did until she didn’t. The plates switch easily. The girl, Jodi Jones, was said to have been grounded but she must have been grounded for less than an hour given she had been out with her boyfriend the previous Friday, Saturday and Sunday and out within an hour of returning from school the following day.

Clarity is hard to find here but some things, such as texts and phone calls, are very hard to dispute.

In the past I’ve written about the failure to disclose statements regarding the last positive sighting of Jodi Jones alive. When those statements surfaced ten years later, memories were hazy. Her boyfriend had been convicted of her murder and he and his mother were largely friendless and demonised. Locals questioning their guilt found a hostile and threatening environment. But phone calls and texts do not degrade like memory and are not so easily intimidated.

The last positive sighting of Jodi Jones was widely reported in the press but, with a lack of enquiry from the media and the public, it was swept aside and managed to go undisclosed at trial.

As the press were reporting on the last sighting, they also quoted the texts the police claimed they could not recover. “Are you coming to mine or am I coming to yours?” The kind of text you’d expect Jodi to send. It fits neatly with her boyfriend’s early statement as Luke clearly states he suggested she come to his house. (DC Towers Day 1 page 38).  

This text does not mention the grounding. It does not mention meeting halfway. Two ingredients of the Crown’s case.

Do you think it’s likely the police would fabricate the text? What purpose would that serve? Or do you think the texts, like the sightings, undermined the case they were trying to build? Luke had his phone taken on the night of the murder. The fate of the phone Jodi used is not known. I submitted a freedom of information request to Police Scotland regarding efforts to reclaim the texts. Police Scotland responded to my request but would not confirm whether their efforts were successful.

That’s not the Knife, THIS is the Knife.

After publishing The Amazing Disappearing Knife trick, many were quick to point out that a   hunting knife was found in a skip close to where Jodi was found. Freedom of information requests for this knife list a rusty yellow handled knife, not the hunting knife Mr Halliday and others at the site, described. Photos will not be released under FOI with the dubious excuse that the pictures of the yellow-handled knife contain identifiable individuals. The knife would have been photographed in situ at the top of the skip and I struggle to understand how every image would be photo-bombed.  

On X, Mr Halliday (#Scottish) had this to say;

“I can 100% say that no tip was found for the hunting knife in the skip, that was confirmed to me by police after they had completed their search… They did not mention the yellow handled knife, it is possible it was in the skip, but it wasn’t the knife that was reported. It seems strange that so much detail is supplied regarding the cheap knife but very little about the expensive hunting knife. In regarding to the hunting knife, I read the name on the blade while waiting for the police to attend, I then did an internet search and found the exact knife for sale around £100. Had there been no murder, that knife would be in the blade drawer of my toolbox. The only possible explanation for that knife being there is that it was being disposed of, the reason behind that decision is a question that hasn’t been answered. We all gave statements confirming it didn’t belong to anyone working at the garage.”

This prompted a reaction from members of a small group who continue to bay for Luke and Corinne’s blood;

Mr Halliday references the suspect who cannot legally be named, an individual who comes up so often it’s hard NOT to work out who he is. Mention of this troublesome suspect provokes anxiety and activity. Now is as good a time as any to introduce you to Susan and Peter Parkinson.

Though Peter Parkinson talks of Luke Mitchell and the murderer as two different people, they insist they are one.  

But Susan is the only one who has really shocked me.

I wasted a lot of time engaging with arguments like this. Many continue to express fury regarding the visit to Jodi’s grave. Slights seem to upset them more than her murder.

I don’t believe they think Luke guilty, I suspect some played a role in what was done to him. For their own sanity, they cannot allow for the possibility that he was just like Jodi.  

Dinner. The moveable feast

Dinner is a useful starting point for those looking to trace someone’s movements. Like the texts, the stocky man and the knife, dinner is curious in its absence.

When the police revised statements to push back the time Jodi left her home, they left very little time for her to have dinner. Her mother’s statement records that Jodi asked her to save some of the lasagne she was making. Though destroyed among productions, the contents of Jodi’s stomach would reveal whether or not she had eaten a substantial meal but it does not suit the prosecution of Luke to go into this. It damages the timeline either way.

It is unlikely she could have eaten properly and left before five. On the other hand, if Jodi hadn’t eaten a meal, it raises questions about why her mother didn’t raise the alarm earlier and means that Jodi would be left waiting while her friends ate. Jodi knew Luke routinely had dinner around 5.30 therefore leaving after or around five, as originally stated, makes a lot more sense.  

For Luke, one of two things happen on the day of the murder.

He returns home after school and calls the family business, his gran answers, gives the phone to his mum who tells him what to cook. Luke then answers a call from Shane, his elder brother, who is returning home after trying (but failing) to check out a problem with his friend’s car.

Shane returns home and goes to his room where he logs onto his computer. Then around 5.15 their mother Corinne returns. If pies are cooking, by process of elimination, Luke must be the cook.  Pies are said to have been a little overdone, these are eaten and the brothers go out to visit friends and while out, neither eats a meal. Luke returns around nine.  

Then all hell breaks loose. 

Or rewind and consider the Crown’s version;

Luke gives cooking and eating dinner a miss and commits a very impulsive, very quick, very bloody murder which involves going largely unseen (and when apparently seen, entirely unbloodied) and removing all of his DNA while leaving that of others.

The first narrative is supported by telephone calls, CCTV, witness statements and computer records. The morning after the murder, police are in the Mitchell’s house. A frantic search for the murder weapon is underway. If, in that search, the contents of the kitchen bin are found to contain discoloured broccoli, singed pie trays and packaging with cooking times, the alibi established in the first statements is supported. The police would dispute it if they could. They don’t.

Shane’s first statement does not fit with these records as he forgot about the visit he made after work. He contacts the police when he is reminded by family and friends. This alludes to a reliance on friends to jog his memory, it indicates a weakness.

This is a case where all weaknesses were exploited; trust, childhood, adolescence, trauma and anxiety are to be used, not understood.

After experimenting with drugs in his late teens, Shane entered his twenties clean and with a strong work ethic. In a country in the grip of a drugs crisis, we should acknowledge this is impressive, not shameful. Getting up early for an IT job, checking cars, trying to set up a business, looking ahead to his wedding, Shane was a young man who placed himself under enormous pressure. Drugs had left their mark however and Shane’s short term memory was poor and in the many gaps in his memory he would accept suggestion. Then he would accept another suggestion even if it contracted what he had previously agreed.  

Shane's responds to misinformation from Police.

On the stand, he agreed with Donald Findlay that he gives in just a little too easily.

I have never seen any questioning that suggested Shane was present in the aftermath of the murder, when explanations were supposed to be being given and evidence destroyed. The police have an alibi to destroy, not circumstances to establish.  

The Crown insists that Shane would certainly have been aware of a presence in the house if he was masturbating. The Crown also seem to suggest that he would be unaware, even as he prepared to leave the house, of his brother covered in blood and begging his mum to help him.

All that matters is the question, was Luke in the house around 5pm?

I know not; am I my brother's keeper?

On the stand, Shane goes back and forth in an anxious state, eventually agreeing with whoever asks the questions. Eventually he says, on the stand, that his brother was not at home. The words they needed him to say. These words, though contradicted elsewhere in the testimony, serve as a pillar for the prosecution. The case is held up by weak identification, the lies of the missing knife, the lies of the discovery of the body and Shane’s words. Luke wouldn’t have found Jodi’s body if her gran had not insisted he turn around and walk back down the path he had just travelled down.

Fighting for her son would take over every minute of Corinne’s life. In the first two years of the sentence, there will be regular updates on the violence and abuse Luke is experiencing in jail. The only improvement comes with growing support from within the prison estate. Shane’s role as the man who failed to corroborate the alibi is regularly reported. To expect Shane to fight beside his mother is to expect him to constantly re-live the most traumatic and humiliating moments of his life. Even if he wanted to, would it help if he did?

Dinner – No. Masturbation – Yes

When he was arrested and threatened with three years in jail, Shane was interrogated with many lies and one truth; sexual (but legal) images were viewed on his computer at a time of the alibi the police sought to destroy. Police tell him, “What’s far more important is that you are masturbating away for 22 minutes.” (Shane 2 page 2100). Their tactic is to bully and humiliate until capitulation, a tactic used again by Alan Turnbull in Court albeit with a calm and articulate delivery.

“I honestly can’t remember” cannot be accepted.

Shane: I can’t give you a definite answer

Turnbull: Do you think he was there?

Shane: It’s not my place to think sir.

Turnbull: Well it is you see, because you were…you’re the other party who was in the room. You’re the one we know for definite was in the house because we’re got that on record. If we want to know who else was in the house we can’t go to anyone better than you. When you went down do you think he was there?  

Shane: I don’t know.

The Crowns asserts that masturbation would not have been likely if someone else was in the house. Initially Shane doesn’t accept this logic but is brought round. Turnbull’s certainty carries with it the implication that to disagree suggests sexual deviancy.  

Perhaps, prior to a session of rigorous self-love, the young Turnbull was to be found in a Wee Willy Winky hat and gown, checking rooms with a clipboard. The rest of us use other techniques when we need privacy, such as calling, “Don’t come in! I’m getting changed!” or listening for footsteps or better yet, living with people who knock.

A puff of air and this case would fall but few challenged or questioned. It does not suit the interests of the parliament, the police-force or The Crown, to fail to secure a conviction for a murdered child – especially when the public are so very gripped. But the questions remain and they cannot be wrong, even if the answers are.

The texts could have been reclaimed. They were not. Why?

Circumstances should have been established and evidenced for all interested parties. Why was this not done?

Tam Halliday would have noticed if media reported the all-clear for a knife that bore no resemblance to the one he had reported. What happened to the knife staff saw?

Keep asking questions.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/9795271/knife-skip-jodi-jones-murdered/