Jodi Jones and Luke Mitchell. Part 3; Absurdity and Analogy

It's not possible to look into the murder of Jodi Jones without being struck by the sheer absurdity of the investigation. I've removed comments from previous articles for fear of appearing disrespectful. This piece is simply the heretical or silly thoughts that came to mind after hours spent trawling through farce, cowardice and obfuscation.

I have used some posters from Scarfolk by Richard Littler, a dystopian series about a land that cannot advance beyond 1979. Much as I enjoy Scarfolk, I prefer it as fiction. It should not be an apt way of representing policing in post-millennium Scotland.

The Jodi Jones case is overwhelmingly tragic and nothing I say here can change that. It's not a topic ripe for satire. Nonetheless, if powerful people and institutions can't see absurdity, there's wisdom in simply alluding to the farce they created. Jodi deserved better.

You were tasked with preparing a pilot for a children's television programme, targeted at children in Scotland between the ages of two and six? 

SIO: I was.

And you were given vast sums from the public purse to finance that pilot?

SIO: I was.

And you were seeking a collaborator based in New York and advised how to get to Sesame Street.

SIO: I was.

But you did not bring that pilot to Scotland. Why was that?

SIO: We disagreed with The Counts sums. He said that 2 + 2 = 4. We approached the sum cryptically. The Count is not necessarily good at adding. He is good at counting.

2 + 2 do equal 4.

SIO: Unless you think about it for six months. We took the remaining funds and allocated them to Geoff the human pump, the world’s greatest maker of balloon animals and hats. We were impressed by the hats he made that resembled a cock and balls.

How was this to serve as a reasonable substitute?

SIO: It was exactly what we wanted.

That's only as absurd as what happened when Lothian and Borders Police investigated the murder of fourteen-year-old Jodi Jones. Mark Safarik and his team at the FBI compiled a detailed profile which disagreed with the conclusions of the Scottish police force; The killer was not fourteen-year-old Luke Mitchell. Instead of looking elsewhere as the FBI advised, the Scottish officers found an American who would tell them what they wanted to hear and the human lie detector, Paul Eckman, did just that.

In Scotland, with disclosure practices being what they are, the FBI report did not see the glare of a Scottish court, though taxpayers paid handsomely for it. No one in parliament was furious about that.

Perhaps I am being unfair to Paul Eckman, but it has been argued that his theories on micro expressions do not work outside the US as there is a strong cultural element to his work. Eckman did not have footage of his subject in his normal state, he saw Luke Mitchell sedated and under the intense glare of the national media.

Luke and his mum asked for an actual lie detector from the start and when they eventually got it and both passed, many years later, voices in the Scottish parliament were furious that these tests had taken place.

Unlike both the White House Farm murders and the case of Lucy Letby – similarly contested murder cases, there is no convincing narrative to contest. While the White House Farm murders were dramatized, the murder of Jodi Jones will not be. A plotline based on the crowns case wouldn't make sense.

Indeed, the most plausible way of conveying Luke’s journey to and from the murder scene would involve the Benny Hill theme. Journalists did report that his speed was impossible, but seemed to marvel that he must have managed it nonetheless.

It is important to establish what is and isn't possible. Private Eye were clear, ‘As the 2021 Channel 5 documentary illustrated, that (confirmed sighting - court transcript link) would make it all but impossible for him to have been the killer.’

I imagine the senior minds of Lothian and Borders Police, coming together at the center of the storm.

Senior Investigating Officer (SIO): We've bought 50 scientific calculators, we've got two hundred officers sharing them, that makes one calculator per group of three and the serious fraud squad are counting steps to see how that wee bastard could get there in that time and do that. Now six months, a trip to America, ten balloon hats and a bag of Hershey chocolate that tastes of sick later, we can report back. We've identified a window of time that makes it almost possible, IF he committed the murder at 5.15 precisely. What is it Dixon?"

Dixon: We have identified two individuals who were at the murder scene at 5.15 precisely.

SIO: The two boys who left their moped unattended at the murder scene and scrapped it within 48 hours of the murder?

Dixon: Yes Sir.

SIO: Ignore that.

Dixon: One was known to have supplied both Luke and Jodi with cannabis.

SIO: I know that. I also know that boy's gran. Don't want to piss her off. She'd scratch my eyes out.

Yes, the boys at the murder scene at the time of the murder were, we are told, 'eliminated' from the enquiry'. How exactly, I don't know. They couldn't remember why they were there or what they were doing and said so on the stand. The police can hardly know if they don't know. Their bodies were not examined and their homes were not searched. How then were they eliminated? They responded to direct appeals to come forward after five days of hysteria.

Joe Beattie, Glasgow 1969

In 1968 Detective Joe Beattie hunted the serial killer known as Bible John. These murders remain unsolved. Beattie could have dragged an innocent man through the courts to satisfy his ego and bolster his conviction rates. He didn't. The third victim of Bible John was a young mother, killed just as she was approaching home, having shared a taxi with her killer. Beattie made her young husband strip and examined him for defensive injuries. Beattie did this to a young man who had just been made a widower with two very small children.

Beattie said, 'I'm sorry son. I didn't think for a minute that you had done it but I had to do that.'

Indeed he did, this is how he eliminated him from the enquiry.

The crowns position is that the murder weapon was hidden. In 2010, a knife was found in Dalkeith with ‘Luke’ written on it. I believe it’s possible that someone struck upon the idea of writing 'Luke' on a knife and dropping it. A bit like a toddler blaming the baby. The people intent on demonizing Luke Mitchell are not criminal masterminds. If only you were to ask yourself why so many thugs resort to violence, arson and intimidation even after twenty years you might draw another obvious conclusion. Give them a long enough rope and they’ll hang themselves with it.  

Police Scotland have very little to say but this;

“Following the discovery of Jodi Jones’ body, a thorough investigation was conducted by Lothian and Borders Police. Extensive forensic analysis was carried out along with door-to-door inquiries and other investigative techniques. As a result, Luke Mitchell, was charged with Jodi’s murder, before being convicted in 2005. We are satisfied we do not need to trace any other individuals in connection with this investigation.” 

Detective Chief Superintendent Laura Thomson from Police Scotland.

Other investigative techniques as well as the human lie detector from California? What techniques? Origami fortune tellers with street names on the odd flaps and house numbers on the even? Hopscotch?

I’m not accusing the police of not doing their job, I’m accusing them of doing it very badly. The statement mentions door to door inquiries that stopped a few doors short of the sex offender who lived nearby and whose fresh semen was found in a condom at the murder scene.  The police discovered the owner by accident years later, his identity then as irrelevant at it was when they learned he was not Luke Mitchell.   

Perhaps the police were so committed so safeguarding their officers, they advised them never to approach strong psychotic men and directed them to criminals with lower risk, such as sane children.

It is clear to me that the Mitchell family held a belief that many of us once held, that Scots law was something to be proud of. They despaired of the police, and yes, Luke mocked them, but the Mitchells believed it would all be over when it came to court.

But the crown accepted many pieces of incompatible evidence. Had they known that the star witness for the prosecution would fail to pick Luke Mitchell out in court, I doubt the police would have been able to charge him. The result is that it works at the most cursory level but on examination the case falls apart.

A woman driving by on the day of the murder, glanced at a couple she described as not looking much like either Jodi Jones or Luke Mitchell. The trial and appeals confirmed that she and the jury were entitled to ‘infer’ their identity. Could that be why big white bullish murderer and rapist Iain Packer was mistaken as slight, dark and Turkish? The case against those innocent Turks did collapse. You'd think that would be the obvious outcome but I'm now inclined to think those men lucky.

This drive-by sighting precisely coincided with a call Luke made to the speaking clock. The crown claims Luke made this call because he was outside preparing to commit murder and very abruptly broke off the heated argument witnessed by the driver, to call the speaking clock.

For his small fishing knife to be the murder weapon as claimed by the crown, his hand would have gone into his victim’s mouth. Yet no forensics could link him to the crime, none of his DNA was found at the scene, because, they argued, he killed from behind and so wouldn’t have blood on him.  

The idea that Scottish courts are more grounded and egalitarian than those in England is, if this case is anything to go by, pure fantasy. The Judge, Lord Nimmo Smith, is of Eton and Oxford and no doubt fitted into Edinburgh society very well. I am not suggesting that this background should bar him from working in Scotland, just simply that he did not cross the border and magically turn into one of Jock Tamson’s bairns, jigging his way along the road to Edinburgh and spilling his tenants as he went.

Elites exist in Scotland and those of us born into circumstances that render us unlikely to be a victim or indeed perpetrator of crime, can believe in the sanctity of Scots law. However, if you have lost close family to drink and drugs, turned to despair, mental collapse and then to crime you may find a system you don’t understand, a system designed to confuse. You may find a lack of accountability that those privileged enough to view Scots law from a great distance will never experience nor understand.

‘I cannot ignore your interest in Satanism’ said Judge Nimmo Smith as he passed a sentence on a child that still shows no signs of ending, over twenty years later.

What was it that he could not ignore? The interest in Satanism evidenced with no books, no posters. He didn’t even try to join the masons to get ideas for initiation ceremonies. So what did the judge mean? He referred to school notebooks.

A pupil may cover their jotters in scrawls such as ‘Hibbeees’ ‘Fart of Midlothian are shit’ and ‘'mon Hibees, I want to have yer hibeebies’. If the teacher marking those jotters is a Hearts supporter it doesn't guarantee that pupil's commitment to Hibernian. Just as a nonconformist, cannabis smoking teen, regularly pulled up on the school dress code, would indeed mock teachers at a catholic school by writing about evil.

When the courts let killers like Ian Packer go free and pursue conviction rates above public safety, they do so knowing that the children of judges and lawyers are unlikely to share a bus, work nights with or be easy prey to such killers. Judges and lawyers are paid to make a conviction and paid just the same when they overturn them. Judge Nimmo Smith was of the opinion that as Luke was an intelligent fourteen-year-old and understood his situation, it did not matter that he was denied a lawyer and bullied by police.

It is absurd. Remember, those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If you live in Scotland, you’re paying for them.