From Fact and Myth by jigsawman aka Sandra Lean
Monday June 30th 2003, The Police Version.
(1) Luke set off to meet Jodi at the Easthouses end of the path immediately after receiving the last text at 4.38pm. For him to have been the person sighted by Andrina Bryson at 4.48, it follows that he made the journey in 10 minutes.
By the polices own timings, it takes 5 minutes, walking at a brisk pace, to get from the end of Lukes street to the entrance to the path, and a further 10 minutes (minimum) walking at the same pace, to get from one end of the path to the other.
Therefore, Luke must have been at the entrance to the path when the exchange of texts took place.
But, according to Judy, Jodi had been grounded right up to the point where the texts were exchanged, so Luke could not have known until that point that Jodi would be coming out at all, far less that she would be on the path. He would have had no reason whatsoever to be at the entrance to the path at 4.38. Even if he had left his house on receipt of the first text at 4.34, he would still not have been able to get to the end of the path for 4.38 there are only 4 minutes between the texts, and hed need five minutes from the end of his street to the path, plus 2 3 minutes from his house to the end of the street.
There are no witnesses, anywhere, who saw Luke walking towards the end of his street, or on the Newbattle Road going towards the path at that time.
(2) Luke met Jodi at the Easthouses end of the path, and they began walking back down towards Newbattle. En route, they decided to go behind the wall for some privacy. An argument developed, because Jodi had found out about Lukes other girlfriend.
If it was Luke and Jodi that Andrina Bryson saw, we know from all of the timings that this had to have been nearer to 4.54pm than 4.38pm. (Remember the Rod Stewart track? The 4 minutes left for Jodi to get ready and leave have to include the time it took her to walk to the path itself.) So, Luke and Jodi are having a discussion at the Easthouses entrance to the path at 4.54pm. Bryson does not see them walk towards the path she is quite clear that they are standing still. Assuming, however, that they begin to walk towards the path immediately after Bryson spots them, by 5pm, they are on their way down the path. Its reasonable to assume they were not walking at a brisk pace it was a summer evening, they had no particular plans, and they were both teenagers! For some reason, however, Luke phones the speaking clock while he and Jodi are walking down the path. By 5 past five, they would probably have reached the V where the police have it that they climbed over the wall for privacy. Quite bizarrely, there has never been any mention of forensic traces on the wall itself that show Jodi climbing over the wall no fibres, hair, etc. Allowing a couple of minutes to get over the wall (its not a step through break it does have to be climbed), we have to conclude that the argument erupted immediately they got over the wall.
If the argument about the other girlfriend had begun on the path, what possible reason would they have for going over the wall?
(3) An argument erupted, and, the police claim, Luke hit Jodi in the face. At that point, they claim, she turned to head for home, when he hit her on the head with a limb from a tree. Then he strangled her until she fell to the ground almost unconscious. And then he cut her throat 12 20 times.
But the pathologist says she put up a hell of a fight, right to the end. Unconscious, or semi unconscious people arent in a position to put up a fight of any description. According to the police version, after that first hit to the face, she turned to walk away no mention of fighting back. As she turns away, she is stunned by a blow to the head, and then strangled, No fighting back.
The forensics point to a terrible struggle, with Jodis hair being pulled out by the roots, and her being dragged across the ground. She had extensive defensive injuries.
If we accept that this argument must have started at about 7 minutes past five at the earliest, according to the police, Jodi is dead 8 minutes later. At the same time, [Name removed] and [Name removed] are making their way up the path from the Newbattle end, and their bike is propped against the wall almost directly at the spot where this attack is happening. It would take a very, very cool personality to carry on attacking someone, knowing that other people were literally on the spot. Remember that the bike was noisy - if Jodi was being attacked and killed in the few minutes before 5.15, her attacker would have heard that bike approaching, and stopping within a few feet.
(4) Between 5.15pm and 5.45, the following series of events form the official police line. Jodis body is dragged across the ground to where she was eventually found. She is stripped, her hands tied behind her back with her own trousers. Her body is mutilated, some of the injuries being inflicted with careful precision. At 5.32, just 17 minutes after Jodi was killed, Luke phones Judys house in an attempt to cover his tracks. 8 minutes later, at 5.40pm, he calls again, and is completely normal on the phone. 5 minutes after that, he is on the wall at the end of his street, again, completely normal. Somewhere in this half hour, he has managed to get home, get stripped out of his clothing and clean away all forensic traces from himself and his house, get changed and back out to the end of the street. His hair was not wet at 5.45pm, so we also have to assume that he blow dried his hair in this timeframe as well. In between all of this, he makes two phone calls to Judys house to cover his tracks. His mother is instructed to dispose of the clothing.
(5) Two of the neighbours report smoke coming from the Mitchell garden at around 10pm. One claims to have smelled smoke earlier, at around 7.30, and then again later, at around 10-10.30pm. This, the police claim, was Corinne burning the clothes, although two of the witnesses refer specifically to the smell of wood smoke. With lightning speed, this woman has helped her son clean himself of all forensic traces, but then she waits some 4 hours or more before attempting to get rid of the clothing? She had a car and a dog which she regularly walked in the countryside. Why not take the clothes somewhere miles away and dispose of them? The area where Jodis body was found was well used that evening alone, we can place 7 people there with absolute certainty, and at least one other with a high degree of probability, so the body could have been discovered at any time.
(6) Luke then decides to go out with the search party, in order to appear normal, but then leads the family directly to the body. Given that we are to believe that Corinne aided and abetted Luke to dispose of all of the evidence, is it really feasible that she would then happily send him off to the very scene shed worked so hard to distance him from?
As it happened, she received the call to make her way to the police station less than two hours after this fire was first noted by the neighbours.
(7) After Luke called the police to say theyd found something, they called him back for directions, as they couldnt find the path. When they did arrive, they asked Luke to go back over the wall to show them where the body was. Luke was just 14 years old every other member of the search party was an adult, yet at no point did the police turn to any of the adults in the party their communications were solely with Luke.
(8) The police treated the family members of the search party differently because no one was actually in charge of the operation, and the individual officers just did what they thought was best. They were not treating Luke as a suspect when they stripped him, and had him medically examined and took samples, without an adult present. They had no real explanation for why they did this, or for why they didnt do it with the other members of the search party.
Notes: the police records from that night note that Luke's hair was "unwashed" and his fingernails were "grubby." Neither yielded any forensics linking Luke to the murder.
If you live in the Midlothian area, take yourself outside this evening between 5.15pm and 5.45pm - it is broad daylight, yet the police claim that Luke managed to escape the scene, get home, and get cleaned up, all without being seen. The Frontline Scotland documentary showed the "youth" hanging around at the Newbattle Road in darkness - it was 6pm, and still broad daylight. The prosecution claimed that he knew where to find the body "in the dark." It was still light, although the light was beginning to fade, when Luke left home at 10 to 11 to look for Jodi.
Finally, while Luke was still talking to the police up to 7am on the morning of July 1st, the condom leaking fresh semen had been found at the scene. Is that, perhaps, the reason Luke was treated the way he was? Did they jump to the conclusion that the condom was his? Bad mistake.
