SCHOOLGIRLS swapped pin-up pictures of a teenage killer on their mobile telephones yesterday as they waited outside the Edinburgh court where Luke Mitchell was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years for butchering his 14-year-old girlfriend.

Prison officials are troubled over how to deal with his growing cult status and the legion of young female fans who have been bombarding Mitchell with sexually explicit letters in youth jail.

Senior officials told The Times that they were powerless to censor his mail or even to read the letters which arrive from around the world.

There are websites dedicated to him, prompting fears that a disturbed young person might try to copy his murder of Jodi Jones who was strangled, stripped, and mutilated.

On the steps of the High Court, four giggling female admirers held up a homemade banner with Mitchell’s photograph and the message: “This boy here is a sexy boy!” Like most of his young supporters, these fans, who refused to give their names, protested Mitchell’s innocence though they seemed more interested in discussing his tattoos than the murder case.

After he was sentenced the 16-year-old killer, dressed in his signature black outfit, was taken out of a back entrance to avoid any scenes of adulation from his excited fans.

Officials admitted yesterday that prison rules state there is nothing they can do to stop Mitchell receiving more of this fan mail unless there were clinical evidence that it was disturbing his mental state.

A prison insider revealed how most girls who have written to Mitchell at the Polmont Young Offender Institute in Stirlingshire have turned him into some sort of tragic hero.

Some of the correspondents beg to be allowed to visit him and he proudly displayed photographs of some of the female fans on the walls of his room.

Jim Dawson, of the Scottish Prison Officers’ Association, said that envelopes and packages can be checked for their content to ensure that no drugs, weapons or any other illegal items are smuggled inside, but that written material is delivered unseen.

“Mitchell’s mail has not been read in the past and it will not be read now he has been convicted. It is a prisoner’s right to receive letters unread and that will continue,” Mr Dawson added. “There is really nothing much we can do about it except keep an eye on him and if his mental state deteriorates we have a system and people in place to deal with that.”

Nor can prison staff alert the parents of the letter writers, some as young as 14, the same age as Mitchell’s victim.

Mr Dawson said that it was not unusual for prisoners convicted of high-profile crimes to receive fan mail. “Even murderers who have committed quite horrific crimes receive mail from some females.” In Mitchell’s case the correspondence began soon after his arrest at his home in Dalkeith, Midlothian, last April.

The fan mail arrives from across Europe and America, much of it from admirers of the shock rocker Marilyn Manson, whom Mitchell worshipped. In their letters some of the schoolgirls discuss the violent lyrics in Manson’s work including his obsession with the slaughter of the Hollywood actress Elizabeth Short in 1947 which was known as the Black Dahlia Murder.

The perverse hero worship is evident on websites and chat rooms, some of which detail how the vicious wounds inflicted on Jodie matched the injuries suffered by Short.

Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist who works with young adults, said that the teenage girls writing to Mitchell could be responding to the idea of the killer as misunderstood.

Lord Nimmo Smith, sentencing Mitchell yesterday said that the schoolboy’s heavy use of cannabis and his obsession with Satanism could have been factors in “one of the worst cases of murder of a single victim to have come before the court in many years”.

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