(From The Independent, se link below)
A teenage boy obsessed by the occult and the music of the singer Marilyn Manson was convicted on 21st January 2005 of the murder and mutilation of his 14-year-old girlfriend. Luke Mitchell, 16, faces life imprisonment for the “the most gruesome killing of recent years” after he was found guilty of murdering Jodi Jones in June 2003.
A jury of eight women and seven men took just five hours to convict Mitchell, who was 14 at the time of the crime, after a 42-day trial at the High Court in Edinburgh – the longest single-accused murder trial in Scottish legal history. The victim, who was described as a “caring” and “thoughtful” schoolgirl, was killed after going to meet her boyfriend, who lived less than a mile from her home in Dalkeith, Midlothian.
Her naked and mutilated body was discovered by her family in circumstances which prosecutors said resembled the notorious “Black Dahlia” murder of a Hollywood starlet in the 1940s – celebrated in song by the musician Marilyn Manson. Just as the teenagers responsible for the Columbine High School massacre in the USA regularly listened to Manson’s music, Mitchell – a self-proclaimed Goth with a fascination with horror films and Satanism – was also said to be under the spell of the pop star, and the wounds left on Jodi’s naked body were similar to Manson’s paintings of the 1947 murder.
Suspicion fell on Mitchell within days of the crime because of inconsistencies in his story, witness accounts of his suspicious behaviour and a sighting of somebody matching his description at the murder scene. Despite there being no scientific evidence linking Mitchell to the murder or even a clear motive, the circumstantial case presented by the prosecution was enough for the jury to reject Mitchell’s special defence of alibi – claiming that he was in or around his home at the time of the killing.
Check http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?s… for further reading.