IN A lilac notebook she used as a diary, Jodi Jones described her blossoming romance with her tousle-haired, rebellious classmate, Luke Mitchell, who shared her passion for grunge music and goth teenage fashion.

"I think I‘m actually in love with Luke. Not in a stupid way. I mean real love. God I think I would die if he finished with me," the infatuated 14-year-old wrote.

"When I’m not with him I want to be. When I‘m with him I am happy. He is the only person who ever makes me forget all the shit in my life. He’s just so sweet."

Her devotion was not uncritical, however, and one entry says: "No matter what he says I believe him and that is really dangerous. I will have to be very careful." Such doubts were to prove tragically prophetic.

On a balmy summer evening on June 30, 2003, three days before the start of the school holidays, Jodi kissed her mother, Judith, at 4.50pm and set off to meet Luke after having sent him a text message.

Her mother, 39, had unexpectedly lifted a month-long curfew for skipping school and smoking cannabis. Jodi was in high spirits. It was the last time her loving family saw her alive.

Six-and-a-half hours later, Jodi’s mutilated, naked body, was discovered by Luke and several members of her family. It had been half-hidden under leaves in a wooded area, next to a secluded footpath she used as a shortcut from her terraced home to Luke’s.

Family members were at first too stunned by grief to think it odd that it was Luke who located the body, despite the fact that it was hidden behind a wall and the night was pitch dark.

The discovery in the Midlothian town of Dalkeith initiated one of Scotland’s biggest murder investigations, during which more than 3,000 people were interviewed and hundreds of DNA samples taken. But from the start, police suspicion fell squarely on Luke Mitchell, then 14.

Jodi and Luke were both bright pupils at St David’s High School. Drawn together by their shared love of Gothic clothes and grunge bands like Nirvana, and by their dislike of school uniform, they formed part of a distinctive teen subculture.

Favourite pastimes were listening to music and smoking cannabis - supplied by Luke - in a nearby park during school lunch hours, or going to Edinburgh to hang out with other Goths at Greyfriars Cemetery. One of their friends was later put on probation for breaking into a mausoleum at the graveyard and miming obscene acts with a skull.

Both Jodi and Luke liked posing as teen rebels and both wore dark, baggy clothes, emulating their musical heroes. Jodi experimented with braided hair and, like Luke, had her lip pierced. Their peers thought them cool.

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