Who was Jodi Jones and what happened to her?

TEENAGE Jodi Jones was just 14 years old when she was brutally killed in 2003.

Two decades later, we take a look at the tragic events surrounding Jodi’s death.

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Who was Jodi Jones?

Jodi Jones was a 14-year-old schoolgirl from Easthouses, Midlothian, Scotland.

She has been dating Luke Mitchell since March 2023, who was also 14 at the time.

The couple both grew up in neighboring counties in the small parish of Dalkeith.

Just months after she started dating Mitchell, Jodi was brutally killed.

When was Jodi Jones killed?

At 5 p.m. on June 30, 2003, Jodi left home to walk to Luke’s via a forest trail known as Roman’s Dyke.

However, alarm bells began to ring when the student failed to arrive at Mitchell’s or return home.

At around 10 p.m., Luke Mitchell informed his mother of Jodi’s disappearance and left to form a search party.

A few hours later, 14-year-old Mitchell was the first to find her body behind a low wall along the trail.

After passing a V-shaped gap in a stone wall by the side of the trail, Mitchell claimed his dog sniffed the air, leading him to look behind the wall where he found Jodi’s body.

She had been strangled and stabbed before her throat was cut.

After ten months of investigation, Mitchell was arrested and charged with Jodi’s murder.

The fact that Mitchell found the body first was later used by prosecutors to imply “guilty”.

Mitchell pleaded not guilty and filed a special defense as an alibi that he was cooking dinner at home at the time of the murder.

In January 2005, the then 16-year-old Mitchell was found guilty of murder after a trial in the High Court in Edinburgh.

After being found “really evil” by Judge Lord Nimmo Smith, Mitchell was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison before being paroled.

Mitchell has always denied any involvement in the assassination of Jodi Jones.

Where is Luke Mitchell now?

As of August 2023, Luke Mitchell remains in prison.

He was transferred from HMP Shotts high security station to HMP Greenock in July 2021.

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He was housed at the Greenock Nick’s Chrisswell House, normally used to ease long-term prisoners’ transition to open prison.

In June 2023, The Sun revealed that Mitchell, who could be paroled within the next 18 months, had failed a prison drug test.