MIA'S 'TRACKING MODE' AND THE 'V-SHAPED BREAK'
In Luke Mitchell's initial statement, given to DC Alan Towers, at Dalkeith police, in the early hours of 1 July, 2023, he testified:
I was walking quite fast. I was almost up to the top of the path at Easthouses when I met Jodi's gran, her sister Janine and her fiancé, Steven. They asked me if I had seen her and I said no. They were quite panicky and they had torches with them and they were looking round. I asked them if they had anything of Jodi's that she had worn to get the scent for the dog to follow.
A friend of ours who trained dogs in the Army, he partly trained Mia. Mia was our own dog. She hadn't been a working dog.
We kept together walking down the path again. I was in front with the dog. I said to Mia, 'Find Jodi. Where's Jodi? She's hiding. Seek it. I kept repeating this to the dog. Mia kept (inaudible) going down the path.
In order to track a scent, Mia required a 'target' and indeed an item of clothing would have been ideal.
Mia didn't have a target though and Corinne Mitchell, Luke's mother, commented on the Tapatalk forum:
21 April, 2010
Yes. it is beneficial to have something with the persons scent on it but that is not always possible.
At the end of the day, what Mia did was smell blood. All dogs can smell blood when humans can't. All dogs are attracted to the smell of blood (without going into detail.......ask females!!!!)
9 May, 2010
When going back down the path with the family Luke told Mia "seek Jodi" as the word "seek" was used in her training. (We were being taught dog tracking by a friend of mine whose job it was, in the army, to train tracker dogs).
Therefore, Luke may as well have instructed Mia to, 'seek apples', as 'seek Jodi' would not trigger Mia to search for Jodi's scent alone.
Whether this 'pseudo tracking', without a target, would make any sense to Mia is obviously contentious and what she might have reacted to, is entirely speculative.
For example, might, ironically, the explanation lie in this 19 June, 2019 reply, posted on the Jeremy Bamber forum, by Sandra Lean:
Question: Didn't Dickie snr take his dogs through that point sometime that day? I remember the oldest one wasn't able to jump up that high or was it further down the path that he entered the woodland?
Sandra Lean: He took his 8 dogs through the V point (he lifted the old one through). The problem is, we can't put a time on when that was - their statements are all over the place - anywhere between 5.30pm and 8-8.30pm. I'd have thought the dogs would have left forensic traces on the wall - it's a stone dyke that 7 dogs scrambled up, through and over onto the other side. Dickie Snr said he walked back up from the V break, on the woodland side, to the big break at the junction of the paths (the Easthouses end) and back along Lady Path. If it was the later end of the timescales given, he'd be arriving back at the house shortly before Ferris left to go to Yvonne Walker's, but neither of them ties the two events as happening in such close time proximity.
Continuing his account to DC Towers:
We kept walking down the path.
There's a wall on the right hand side. About 300 yards down the path there was a slight bend in the path, just enough to stop you seeing all the way up the path.
We walked past a V- shaped break in the wall, and few yards, not even 20 yards past that, Mia stopped and put her nose in the air and put her paws up on the wall as if trying to sniff over it.
I went, 'Stop'. Jodi's gran and the others watched the dog. I said, 'I think she's smelt something. I handed the lead to Jodi's gran and asked her to hold on to the dog.
I went back to the V in the wall.
It's a broken bit of wall about half way down the wall. Because I was the one with the dog, I wanted to go over the broken bit of wall to see if anything was there. I didn't know what to expect. The others just waited on the path.
At the other side of the wall, there are woods.
I turned immediately left and followed a dirt path next to the wall for about six feet. There were no branches in my way, just a tree (inaudible).
As soon as I walked along the path, I saw this white thing that stuck out on the right. I could see it was legs, like a tailor's dummy. It was just a few feet past a big oak tree and some low undergrowth and greenery. After I saw these legs, I just took another step to register it was a body lying there.
Comparatively, in court, Steven Kelly is taken back to his earliest affidavit:
Well with that in mind I want to just look at the way you explained this matter to the police. And let's start again with 1st July statement, early hours ours of the morning. Turn on to page 8, the same page we were looking at just a minute or two ago. Now page 8 remember begins, "I walked back the way from which Luke had come with Luke and the girls"?
Next sentence is this. "At one point Luke's dog went to a wall that had the top bricks missing it was sniffing and jumping up. Luke Mitchell jumped over and said he could...", "...said he could...", something. Maybe there is a word missing there. Do you see that?
So that's the way you've explained it in the early hours of the morning. Is that right?
(Steven Kelly) Yeah.
In a subsequent interview, on 30 July, Steven Kelly provided further details, the following summation from trial transcripts confirming:
I was behind him all the time and there were a few times that I had to stop and check things out in the undergrowth, things that Luke had gone past.
These were things again these things were bags or bottles, bits of clothes...".
(...)
I was about 6 ft behind Luke, Janine was still close behind me and Alice next to her.
I'd stopped to check out something in the undergrowth but Alice carried on a couple of steps.
I was aware of the dog pulling Luke over to the wall and saw it standing on its hind legs with its front paws on the wall. The dog is an Alsatian and quite big, when it stood up its head was level with the bottom of the V in the wall. Luke was standing... behind the dog (?)... but doesn't say anything.
Alice was stopped on the path looking at Luke and the dog.
(...)
And didn't pay any attention to what Luke was doing.
We'd gone about 8 yards further down the path when Alice called me back, telling me to go and have a look.
Steven have a look and think she said there was something there.
All versions of both Alice Walker and Janine Jones' statements, reiterate they never travelled any further past the 'V-shaped' break.
It seems patently evident that any related reaction which did occur, took place at the 'V-shaped' wall break and not almost 20 yards further on, as Luke avowed, thus giving him a reason for going back to the break and "immediately" turning left, where Jodi's body would quickly be revealed.
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