Well, I suppose we are all entitled to our opinions regarding Sandra. I think she has done an excellent job at exposing this case in her new book, but she does go in extremely hard on the police, almost to a point where it looks very slanderish. I don’t know. She seems and comes across too involved in the case to be entirely objective and has no doubt been influenced by the Mitchell’s over the years.
Something about this case that always confused me was the telephone call from Luke’s mobile at 16:54pm to the ‘Speaking Clock’. In one of the appeals outlined on scotcourts.gov, Mitchell phoned the ‘Speaking Clock’ at 16:54. Why would he want to find out the exact time? This is a service provided that tells you what the time is in the UK. If he was at home cooking dinner, why would he have to use this service? Surely he would have had access to the time via other means, such as NTL, Virgin Media, SKY, a watch or a clock in his house. He seemed pretty concerned about the time, and the phone call was made from his MOBILE telephone, suggesting that either he did not have a landline, which in 2003 most people probably would have, or that he was indeed mobile and wanting to know the exact time.
In any case, his mother confirmed that they DID have a landline, as apparently Mitchell was on it to his mother. This begs the question then why use the mobile to find out the time from the speaking clock? He could’ve asked his mum what time it was on the landline, or if he was adamant he wanting to hear the speaking clock, then he could have used this.
It’s unlikely in 2003 that he would have had easy internet access on his phone. His phone would likely have been a brick at that point, like a Nokia or something. Why did he want to know the exact time? He phoned the speaking clock at 16:54 to find out the time as he was not at home. He wanted to clarify this and crystallise it.
It would be interesting to know whether the speaking clock had been phoned at any other time in his call history. Was this a one off occasion or a pattern? Mobile phones have a clock on them. If he was at home as his mother said, then why is he phoning for the time? There would’ve been an item at home that could’ve told him that information, such as the computer. The last thing you would think about to find out what time it was would be to dial the speaking clock.