In the dock, the killer remained as impassive as he had been throughout his trial for the brutal murder of his girlfriend Jodi Jones. But for all the awful finality of the judgment — and the horrors of the trial which preceded it — outside in the cold air and on the steps of the grey stone building the scene could hardly have been more different.
Here a gaggle of schoolgirls were excitedly texting photos of Mitchell to each other, and holding a banner aloft in the boy’s honour. For anybody who had listened to the ghastly details of the case, the 16-year-old had emerged as irredeemably evil. But these giggling girls had formed an altogether different impression. “The boy here is a sexy boy” read their sign.
The smiles of this group of teenagers have been reflected in the hundreds of letters written to him during and after his trial, while he has been held at Polmont Young Offenders Institute near Falkirk. Some of these are messages of support and friendship, others more sexually explicit fantasies. Even more words have been rattled out in internet chatrooms and on websites. A few teenage contributors claim to know Mitchell. Others have doubts about his conviction. Still more share the goth culture that Mitchell embraced, and claim to be angered by what they see as media distortions of their lifestyle.
What is it about a callous killer that prompts young women to write to him in his prison cell while they fantasise about sex? How can they expunge the details of his brutal and satanic slaying of his girlfriend? “The papers really have it in for this boy and I feel so sorry for him . . . ” wrote one website contributor.
After the guilty verdict, another asked sympathetically, what was going through his head, before adding in adolescent rage (as indicated by the capital letters): “AM I GOING TO SACRAFICE MY 14 YR OLD G/F (girlfriend’s) LIFE BECAUSE OF THE DRUGS I TAKE THE MUSIC I LISTEN TO AND THE SATANIC RELIGION I FOLLOW!! WELL LET ME STOP U THERE SOCIETY IS TO BLAME FOR THIS ONE AND TONY BLAIR!!” Criminal history is littered with cases of women writing to violent criminals, befriending them, and even marrying them. But in this case, when the murderer’s admirers seem themselves to be so young and vulnerable, the behaviour seems more surprising and shocking.
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Those who knew Mitchell testify to his strange love of knives, his bad temper, and his love of large quantities of cannabis. His school jotter was covered in Satanic slogans, with the numbers 666 and references to the devil. He also wrote an essay questioning God’s existence and saying the world needed Satanic people — “People like you need Satanic people like me to keep the balance.” Cara Van Nuil, a former girlfriend revealed to the court that Mitchell had held a blade to her throat.
With these real life testimonies from those who knew Mitchell, why do so many teenagers appear to worship him now? The relationships are a function of age, according to Katherine Ramsland, a lecturer in forensic psychology at DeSales University in Pennsylvania. “While it’s typical for a high-profile defendant in a murder trial to get a lot of female attention, his youth actually makes him more attractive” she says.
“In part, that’s because young girls rarely have a sense of the enormity of what such a young man has done, but it’s also because the television shows involving crime investigation glamorise the subject. Thus a young guy who has committed murder not only acquires the patina of doom, which is romantic, but he represents someone who has broken free of social norms — something that teenagers tend to applaud.
“If there’s a sense that he did not commit the crime, then he remains attractive because then he’s a victim — he’s misunderstood, he’s not part of the mainstream. Mitchell is not the first murderer to be made a hero by adoring fans.”
Joan Harvey, a chartered psychologist at Newcastle University, agrees: “A 15- or 16-year-old’s self-identity is not complete. At that age, they are pushing boundaries, exploring the options psychologically — a process that’s not over until you are in your twenties. I think with them, it will pass.
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“I’m sure in this case some of the girls would be more than terrified if he came out brandishing a murder weapon, but because he’s inside it’s a ‘safe’ way of flirting with something that’s new and different.”
Psychologists agree that Mitchell’s own vulnerability is attractive to some youngsters of a similar age. Once so calm, his demeanour cracked at last after the guilty verdict was passed. In his Polmont cell Mitchell shouted and bawled for his mother, after he had been denied the opportunity to ring her on her mobile phone. A week later he was reported to have been assaulted by other prisoners for being a “mummy’s boy” and spent the night in floods of tears.
Could such reports inspire sympathy? The chances of young women empathising with Mitchell are high when their own current experience is adolescent gloom, as some internet contributions suggest.
One female website contributor said she was “really upset” when she heard the verdict. “I dunno what it is. I wasn’t in court. Yet I feel like they have convicted the wrong person just because it was easier to do (that)than actually look for someone else. Okay he’s got weird streaks but does this really mean he’s a murderer? Also the sentence, if this case was less well known he would have been jailed for like 10 years and serve only about two, but he gets life. In my eyes he’s a confused young boy that didn’t know how to react to the news (that) he may spend the rest of his life in jail.”
Another chat site contributor came from closer to Mitchell’s home in East Lothian. “I am shunned by the people of my village as I am a goth,” wrote the 14-year-old from near Glasgow. “My parents have had the minister round, I was sacked from my job, mothers don’t walk their children on the same side of the street as me. It’s completely ridiculous, the minister has threatened to send me to the local young offenders’ institute for doing what? I ’ve smoked some hash? I’ve had underage sex? I’m a bisexual! Hell it’s not the first time I’ve written 666 in my jotters!” Since Jodi was killed, the murder has not surprisingly been a hot topic of discussion among goths, according to Jennie Kermode, a 31-year-old goth writer and filmmaker.
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“A number of people expressed a more personal type of sadness than we would normally expect to feel over the murder of a stranger — because Jodi was somebody like us, and somebody whom, had she lived, would probably have become a part of one of our local communities in a few years’ time.”
And what of Mitchell and his correspondents? “I suspect there are different motives in different cases. There are always going to be people out there who simply feel excited by the idea of writing to a murderer — especially a young, famous one.
“But the sheer volume of mail received in this case suggests that there are other things going on as well. I expect that some people have written to express their concerns at what they consider to have been a prejudiced trial; and others will, no doubt, identify with Luke. There are hundreds of teenagers stuck in small towns all over the UK who identify as goths, or who simply feel alienated, who may not have had the chance to talk to anyone they identify with before.”
Only the most hysterical commentators would forge links between Mitchell’s wickedness and the goth culture he was attracted to. And there is a good chance that many of these young women will get over an unhealthy obsession for a teenager killer. But we can be equally sure that somebody, somewhere in the world will remain in thrall to the perverted glamour of wickedness which now surrounds Mitchell.