Smash hit

Although they seemed well suited, however, they were fundamentally different and their lives at home had little in common.

Jodi was the youngest of three children and came from a loving but strict home, which had already been touched by the tragedy of her father, Jimmy’s, suicide five years earlier.

Her cannabis smoking, for which her mother repremanded her, her style of dress and her occassional melancholy, fuelled by her father’s death, were in many ways an independent girl’s rite of passage.

But for Luke, the interest in "Satanic" shock rockers like Marilyn Manson and his heavy, daily use of cannabis, had more sinister undercurrents and went beyond mere symbolic rebellion.

The neat exterior of his home in leafy Newbattle gave no hint of the chaos inside. His mother, Corinne, 45, a caravan dealer, appeared to have little control over him and even later encouraged his flirtation with Satanism, buying him a demonic tattoo although he was underage, and incredibly, a knife, the Christmas after Jodi died.

His brother Shane, 23, used cannabis and Luke’s own bedroom dope smoking went unchecked. He was allowed to sleep with his girlfriends there despite being underage. At weekends he visited his father Philip in nearby Livingston.

It took police ten months to gather enough evidence to charge him with Jodi’s murder, despite first interviewing him within hours of the discovery of her body.

There was no DNA proof linking him to the crime scene, no obvious motive, or any murder weapon found, but the Crown believed they had sufficient circumstantial evidence.

Crucial to the case was the fact that Luke was the one who found the body - in the dark, in a wood, even though it was hidden behind a crumbling stone wall which ran along the shortcut they both used, after joining the family search for her when she failed to return home.

The gruesome discovery left him dry-eyed and calm, while around him her family collapsed in grief and shock. He claimed that his dog, Mia, had alerted him to the spot, but his fellow searchers insisted that he climbed the wall and found Jodi behind bushes unprompted.

Luke claimed that Jodi had never shown up when he went to meet her, and that he was at home cooking tea with his mother between 5pm and 5.45pm, around the time she was murdered.

Mrs Mitchell lied to back his story but witnesses reported seeing him near the path with a girl at around 5pm. His brother, Shane, 23, also a heavy drug user, testified that Luke had not returned home until 5.15pm.

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