Midlothian killer Luke Mitchell who stabbed girlfriend Jodi Jones to death gets engaged

The 36-year-old, who is serving a life sentence for the murder of 14-year-old Midlothian schoolgirl Jodi Jones in 2003, is believed to have proposed to long-term partner Gemma Chapman in November.

According to a newspaper report, Chapman has been campaigning for Mitchell's release for the past 20 years. She has previously described him as “kind, caring and loving”, while insisting he was wrongly accused of the horrific murder.

He was transferred back to the high security HMP Shotts in North Lanarkshire after he failed two random prison drug tests while imprisoned at HM Prison Greenock. A source told the Scottish Daily Express: “He asked the prison permission and did it after he was returned to Shotts. His parole condition, if he got it, would only permit him to be with named women.”

Mitchell was 14 when he murdered his then-girlfriend Jodi. The pair started going out in about March 2003 after attending the same school – St David's Roman Catholic High School. They had only been dating for four months.

The schoolboy lived in Newbattle, near Easthouses, with his mother Corinne and his older brother. Mitchell was convicted of murdering Jodi in 2005, when he was 16, following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.

At his trial, Mitchell was found guilty of attacking Jodi by hitting her on the head and body and compressing her neck, restricting her breathing.

He was also found guilty of stabbing the teenager with a knife before and after she died, inflicting wounds to her face, ear, mouth, breast and abdomen.

The jury in the trial heard Mitchell was a fan of controversial American rocker Marilyn Manson, who painted pictures depicting the gruesome “Black Dahlia” 1940s murder of Hollywood actress Elizabeth Short.

Detectives believed Short’s murder was the inspiration for Jodi’s killing. Prosecutors also told the jury how Mitchell was obsessed with Satanism.

The trial is believed to be the longest of a single accused in Scottish criminal history. The jury took just over five hours to reach their decision, and in January 2005 Mitchell was convicted.

In 2021, in a Channel 5 documentary titled Murder in a Small Town, two ex-cops questioned a lack of forensic evidence linking Mitchell to Jodi’s brutal slaying.

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