According to a media article which briefly reported on killer Luke Mitchell’s 22 page police witness statement, which he made on the morning of the 1st of July 2003;

he said he went out to look for Jodi on his mother’s suggestion 

Source here

Why didn’t toxic, abusive and psychological manipulator Corinne Mitchell go out with her younger son Luke Mitchell or ask her older son Shane Mitchell to accompany him?

Also according to Corinne Mitchell’s evidence heard during her sons trial, Corinne told the court;

 I kept trying to phone him as he was late and in trouble

Corinne Mitchell – Source here

‘Late’ for what and ‘in trouble’ about what exactly?

Killer Luke Mitchell didn’t answer his mother Corinne’s telephone calls and when he decided to call her back at 00:30hrs on the 1st of July 2003 according to Corinne Mitchell, he never mentioned anything about Jodi Jones and instead allegedly told his mother;

I can’t talk, I have to go

Source here

Why did Corinne Mitchell tell the court her youngest son was “late” and “in trouble” if she had sent him out looking for his “missing” girlfriend?

When asked by Alan Turnbull “Is it just a coincidence that between 6.30pm and 7pm neighbours noticed the smell of burning coming from your back garden?”

Corinne Mitchell told the court;

I could have been burning pampas grass because I was trimming it

Source here

It is not known where the pampas grass was located in the Mitchell’s back garden or if Luke and/or Shane Mitchell corroborated this.

However the best time to trim pampas grass is in late winter.

The foliage of pampas grass “is tough and razor sharp” and it is advised here, “You’ll need to wear leather gloves, long pants and a long sleeve shirt to avoid getting cut”.

Also how did killer Luke Mitchell know what Jodi Jones was wearing on Monday night?

She liked that top, she like, she bought some of her own stuff, I mean, the clothes, the cords, jeans, she was wearing on Monday night.

I think they were borrowed off her sister

Excerpt from Luke Mitchell’s police witness statement dated the 1st of July 2003

20th December 2004: Jury Heard Killer Luke Mitchell’s 22 Page Written Witness Statement From 1st July 2003 Read Out

Below are excerpts reported by The Herald from the 2004 trial;

Detective Constable Alan Towers, 43, said that Mr Mitchell wrote a statement which ran to 22 pages.

During questioning, he told how he and Mia, his German Shepherd dog, went out to look for the missing girl.

A text message to his mobile from Jodi’s mother at 10.41pm the previous night first alerted him to the fact that something was wrong, he said.

The jury heard how Mr Mitchell then met Jodi’s grandmother, sister and the sister’s boyfriend, and continued searching along the wooded Roan’s Dyke path in Dalkeith, Midlothian. “They were panicky, ” he told Mr Towers

The statement, read in court by the detective, continued:

“We walked past the V-shaped break in the wall and a few yards past that, not even 20 yards past that, Mia stopped and put her nose in the air and put her paws up on the wall as if trying to sniff over.”

Mr Mitchell told police that he said to the others: “I think she has smelled something”.

Then he went back and crossed over the wall before making his way along the woodland side of the wall, shining his torch.

“I saw this white thing which stuck out in the light. I could see it was legs, like a tailor’s dummy. After I saw the legs I just took another step then I recognised it was a body lying there.”

“He was perfectly calm throughout the time it took to take that statement.”

Excerpts from an article by The Herald dated the 21st of December 2004 – Read full article here

In another article which reported from the trial excerpts read;

LUKE MITCHELL thought that Jodi had ‘changed her mind’ about a date with him on the night she died, the court is told

Detective Constable Alan Towers, 43, says that Mitchell told him he wasn’t worried when she failed to show up. But he never mentioned the fact that he had phoned Jodi’s stepdad to ask where she was. 

The detective explains that Luke told him he had invited her to his house ‘to muck about’. 

She texted back: ‘Yes sure. I don’t know what time I will be leaving the house. See you whenever.’ 

The court has already heard evidence that (Luke) Mitchell spoke to Jodi’s stepdad Allen Ovens just over an hour later and was told she had left the house to meet him. 

DC Towers tells the court Mitchell told him: ‘I didn’t worry about why Jodi had not appeared. She was like a missing space but I just thought she had changed her mind.’ 

The police officer explains that at the time of questioning (Luke) Mitchell he didn’t know about the phone call to Jodi’s house, so couldn’t ask him about it.

He adds that Mitchell said that he met up with some other pals and returned home at about 9.35pm. 

Excerpts from a media article headed The finest day I ever had was when tomorrow never
came; -Lines written on an empty knife pouch found in Luke Mitchell’s bedroom dated 2004

Excerpts from a Daily Mail article read;

Today, Detective Constable Alan Towers, 43, read to the jury at the High Court in Edinburgh the statement Mitchell gave to police in the early hours of July 1, 2003.

In the statement, the accused said he went out to look for Jodi on his mother’s suggestion, after he had been contacted by Jodi’s own mother when the schoolgirl failed to return home on June 30.

He said he met up with Jodi’s grandmother Alice Walker, Jodi’s sister Janine and her fiance Steven Kelly on the Roan’s Dyke path, Dalkeith, Midlothian, that evening.

According to Mitchell, the group walked past a V-shaped break in the wall bordering the path when the dog “had her nose in the air and had her paws on the wall” as if it was trying to sniff over the wall, the court heard.

Mitchell then returned to the gap in the wall and climbed over.

The first thing he saw was “legs, like a tailor’s dummy”, the court heard, as the witness read from the statement.

“It registered it was a body lying there … I could see it was a female,” (Luke) Mitchell told police.

“I could see blood on her neck … She was naked,” the statement went on.

The accused also told police: “I thought it was Jodi. I just recognised the face, it looked like Jodi.”

Jodi’s grandmother was “hysterical” and “crying and screaming” after she went over the wall to look at the scene herself, Mitchell told officers.

He also told police there was “no way” he would go back over the wall after he had come away from the scene.

In the police statement read out to the court, (Luke) Mitchell said he and Jodi were “very close” and that the only day they did not see each other was on Sundays, when he would visit his father.

“We both decided that we would stick together,” the accused told officers.

And according to his statement of July 1, the last time the pair slept together was on the previous Saturday.

Mitchell said that Jodi had told him he was her first proper boyfriend, the court heard.

Excerpts from a Daily Mail article headed Teenager tells of Jodi body find dated 20th December 2004

21st December 2004: Jury Heard Killers Recorded Police Interview From 4th July 2003

The Jodi Jones murder trial yesterday heard a taped police interview in which the accused discussed his sexual relationship with the schoolgirl and his interest in horror films.

The jury listened to the interview with Luke Mitchell, which was recorded over several hours at a police station – days after he found Jodi’s body near the woodland shortcut between their homes.

Detective Constable Stephen Quinn, 43, one of the officers present during the interview, which Mr Mitchell attended voluntarily with his mother on July 4 last year, described it as “quite genial, a fairly relaxed conversation”.

During the questioning at a police station in Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, the accused, then 14, spoke of his own tastes in music and movies.

He said:

“I like horror films like Dog Soldiers and stuff, like that Scream, the Relic and the Omen. I love the Omen series”

Mr Mitchell also told police that he and Jodi had tried to see each other “as much as possible” when they started going out together five months prior to her death.

He said they had favourite places they would go to “get away from the locals”, such as Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh.

As the tape played, the High Court in Edinburgh heard that the pair would also go to a path behind Newbattle High School in Dalkeith, where Mr Mitchell said they “(would) just sit and have a cigarette or whatever. Just sit and talk, or laugh”.

Mr Mitchell’s favourite music was Nirvana, which Jodi had got him into, rapper Eminem and goth rocker Marilyn Manson, the jury heard.

“She loved (Nirvana frontman) Kurt Cobain’s music because he didn’t write it to impress folk . . . She liked it because she listened to the music and what he was saying” he said of Jodi.

Mr Mitchell also made reference to cord jeans he said Jodi had been wearing “on Monday night”, which he thought had been borrowed from Janine, her sister.

Questioning the witness later, Alan Turnbull QC, advocate depute, prosecuting, asked:

“He did say Monday night?”

“He did, yes, ” Mr Quinn replied.

While talking to police, Mr Mitchell suggested a number of reasons why his girlfriend had failed to meet him that night – saying she had only stood him up once before. But he did not mention then making a telephone call to her house and being told Jodi had already left to meet him, the court heard.

Mr Turnbull asked the witness: “Did he provide information in an intelligent and articulate fashion?”

The detective told him: “Yes.”

“Did he seem comfortable talking about Jodi?” asked Mr Turnbull. Mr Quinn replied:

“He was fine at that time, yes.”

Mr Mitchell told the officers he and Jodi first had sex a couple of days after they started going out but it was not a regular occurrence.

Excerpts from a Herald article headed Jodi jury hears of accused: horror films Mitchell tells of sex habits dated 22nd December 2004

24th December 2004: Jury Heard Killers Recorded Police Interview From 14th August 2003

The boyfriend of Jodi Jones apparently spent hours on the phone to another girl after he had had sex with Jodi for the last time, a trial has heard.

The High Court in Edinburgh has been hearing a police interview taped with the accused, Luke Mitchell, in August last year.

On the tape he said he was not two-timing Jodi.

Mr Mitchell denies killing the 14-year-old schoolgirl, whose body was found in woods near Dalkeith in June 2003.

Detective Constable George Thomson carried out the interviews with Luke Mitchell in August 2003, when the boy was just 15.

He said the teenager said he had had a previous sexual relationship with a girl called Kimberley.

The jury heard Det Con Thomson ask: “During the time you were going out with Jodi did you see other girls? Did you two-time Jodi?”

Mr Mitchell told him: “No”

He said he had not seen Kimberley since New Year and the last time he had phoned her was “about January-ish”.

Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull went through phone records which suggested that between January and June last year there had apparently been 79 telephone calls between the two.

Mr Turnbull said Mr Mitchell and Jodi had had sex on the Saturday night, two days before she was killed on 30 June.

He said that when Jodi left in a taxi the accused phoned Kimberley’s grandmother’s house and it appeared they were on the phone more or less continuously between 2207 BST and 0130 BST that night.

During the taped interview Mr Mitchell also answered questions on self harming.

He said he had scratched the numbers 666 on his upper-right forearm with a compass.

He said someone at school had dared him to do this and that he had also stubbed out cigarettes on his hand a few times as a “party trick”.

Excerpts from a BBC article headed Jodi Boyfriend ‘not two-timing’ dated 24th December 2004

Excerpts from the 16th May 2008 court of appeal judgement stated;

The appellant was on 14 August 2003 interviewed under caution by police officers.

In the course of the trial the Crown sought to lead before the jury evidence of some but only a few of the questions and answers put and given in the course of that interview. 

[25] The Crown also referred to the appellant’s police statements at interview.

In particular, in his closing submissions, the Advocate depute referred, at length, to excerpts from an interview on 14 August 2003.

It was suggested that the appellant came across as calculating, clever and dishonest.

Reference was made to contradictory statements concerning the failure to raise the alarm when the deceased failed to meet the appellant; to lies regarding his use of cannabis and the amount of contact he had had with Kimberley Thomson; and to outbursts which demonstrated the appellant’s temper and arrogance.

It was also suggested that the appellant’s claim that no time had been fixed for meeting with the deceased and his description of his movements on the evening of the murder were incredible and that his assertion that he thought that the deceased had not turned up perhaps because she had been grounded did not make sense, given his prior conversation with Alan Ovens.

[27] The appellant did not give evidence.

His position was outlined in a number of statements which he gave to police officers, both as a witness and subsequently under caution as a suspect in the case. 

Excerpts from Luke Mitchel Vs Her Majesty’s Advocate dated 16th May 2008

Killer Luke Mitchell told reporter Grace MacLean, a few days after one of his police interviews in 2003;

My torch lit up the path like daytime and I was about 12 yards from Jodi when I saw her lying there

She was so white. Her throat had been slit and her head was to the side

Her eyes were staring up at me and she was naked but for a pair of socks, I think… no, she wasn’t wearing anything. Her body was so white and she was just staring and staring

I shouted to the others but I couldn’t tell them I’d found Jodi because I didn’t want to upset her gran, but she said she wanted to come over the wall

‘The others held her back but she scrambled over the wall and said if her granddaugher was there she wanted to be with her.

She sat down beside Jodi and cradled her in her arms.

I guess the family are suspicious of me because my dog Mia was the one who found Jodi and I was the one who first saw her lying there

After a few hours I told them, “charge me or let me go”

The cops asked me about my relationship with Jodi’s friend Laura.

They kept asking me about the Eminem song Kim, the song where he fantasises about killing his wife.

They asked me about the follow-up song in which Eminem sings about the “two of us”, meaning him and his daughter.

They asked me about Laura and if I wanted it to be just the two of us and asked if that was why I killed Jodi

It was all rubbish. Jodi and I would still be together if she was here today

I started to get really mad after about four hours and asked them to charge me if they had anything to charge me with

One copper stood, looked me straight in my face and said, “We’ve got you. We found your semen on her bra.

We’ve found sperm similar to yours. I laughed and said, “If it’s similar, it’s not the same then, is it?” 

Jodi’s body was replaced with a tailor’s dummy and I pointed out to police that I could see a limb. That’ s when they switched the video off.’

What happened to Jodi was so ironic because the Thursday before she died we were all talking about what records we would want played at our funeral

The bloke who said this is a fantasist. Another of his friends told police Jodi and I were arguing all the time. But that’s not true. We never had a cross word

The only reason I left it was because she loved that line. I wanted to be with Jodi and nobody else

I was never going to break down in public – I’m not that kind of bloke

Statements by killer Luke Mitchell reported by Grace McLean – Source here

Grace McLean did not publish any of the above until the conclusion of killer Luke Mitchell’s trial on the 22nd January 2005 via the Daily Mail.

Link to Part 66 here