Murder of Jodi Jones

Jodi Jones, a 14-year-old schoolgirl from Easthouses, near Dalkeith, Scotland, was murdered on 30 June 2003 while walking along Roan's Dyke Path to meet her boyfriend, Luke Mitchell, also 14. Her body was found bound and stabbed behind a wall along the path she habitually used to meet him. Mitchell, who said he discovered her body shortly after joining a search party organised by her family that evening, quickly became the focus of the police investigation.

Jones was born in 1989 to James and Judy Jones, both Royal Mail employees, and was the youngest of three children. Her father died by suicide in 1998. She had begun a relationship with Mitchell in early 2003, and both had experimented with cannabis. In the weeks before her death her mother had restricted her social contact with Mitchell after discovering drug use, a restriction lifted on the day of the murder.

Mitchell was arrested and charged approximately ten months after the killing, also facing charges of carrying a knife and supplying cannabis. At his 2004–2005 trial at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, prosecutors presented evidence including the disappearance of a knife Mitchell habitually carried and a coat he had worn on the night of the murder, both of which were never recovered; his mother, Corinne Mitchell, later gave him replacement items and denied the originals had existed. A knife pouch recovered from the family home bore Jodi's initials and dates carved by Mitchell after the murder. Phone records indicated Mitchell had called the speaking clock at 4.54pm that day, undermining his claimed alibi that he was at home. His brother testified that he had actually been alone in the house watching pornography at the relevant time, contradicting the alibi both he and Corinne Mitchell had initially given; Corinne Mitchell was subsequently charged with perjury, a charge dropped after Mitchell's conviction. The prosecution also cited eyewitness sightings resembling the couple near the path, Mitchell's apparent prior knowledge of the body's location, and messages and imagery relating to Satanism and musician Marilyn Manson found among his schoolwork and possessions.

On 21 January 2005, a jury convicted Mitchell by majority verdict of Jones's murder and of supplying cannabis, following a 42-day trial. He was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years' imprisonment, later reduced to 15 years on appeal in February 2011. Mitchell has pursued multiple unsuccessful appeals, including a 2008 appeal upholding his conviction, human-rights-based challenges relating to police questioning, and a referral to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which in July 2014 found no grounds to overturn the guilty verdict despite identifying a breach of his rights during questioning.

Mitchell has continued to maintain his innocence, supported by campaigners including alternative therapist Sandra Lean, and a 2021 Channel 5 documentary revisited alternative-suspect theories that were later criticised as one-sided and inaccurate. Jones's family have stated they remain satisfied of Mitchell's guilt and have reported sustained online abuse and false accusations from his supporters.