Chilling footage of Scottish killer Luke Mitchell has emerged from Channel 5 documentary, Murder in a Small Town, showing the murderer maintaining his innocence for the brutal crime claiming he will never confess.
The video was released on YouTube today which sees the interview from the documentary released in full, of the 31-year-old from Dalkeith denying any involvement in the murder of Jodie Jones.
Mitchell was 16 when he was convicted in January 2005 of killing 14-year-old Jodi in woodland close to her home in the Easthouses area of Dalkeith, Midlothian.
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He was found to have slit Jodi’s throat and repeatedly stabbed her, he was detained for life with a minimum of 20 years in prison but has always maintained his innocence.
Speaking in the video Luke Mitchell said: "I've not spoken out in all this time because every time I've tried to speak out I've been shouted down and just been called evil, manipulative and twisted.
"I can't be more clear I absolutely did not kill Jodie and I've been locked up for a crime I didn't commit.
"I will not admit to something I have not done.
"I want to clear my name."
He continued: "It's obvious from the police treatment of me that I was a suspect from day one, I was told to sit separately from the rest of the members of the search party.
"One of them had tried to hand me a cigarette when we were sitting waiting and they were told they shouldn’t be having any interactions with me yet the other three were sat together all talking together while I was kept separate.
"This was genuinely from the very first moment that police arrived I was being treated separately."
The killer believes that his alternative lifestyle is the reason he became the main suspect for the crime.
"Other than me being a convenient suspect because I was seen as out of the ordinary and into alternative styles and lifestyles and dress sense and music I don't know why they went after me like this.
"Its not as though I had criminal involvement with the police before hand, before any of this. I was the local weirdo it was easy to put it on me, it was easy to make people believe these evil nasty things about me" he said.
The now 33-year-old said "I was still going through my trial expecting the jury would see through all the lies and misinterpretations of the purely circumstantial evidence.
"I was still believing that I would be found not guilty and when I was found guilty if I wasn't gripping the bench at the dock so tightly I would've collapsed.
"They've taken everything from me, my friends, my family, my home, my childhood, my adolescence, my early adult years but they will not bully a false admission of guilt out of me.
"As long as I can get up every morning and look myself in the mirror and hold my head up high I'll get through this.
"If it was put to me that I would almost be guaranteed release and parole if all I did was admit guilt, absolutely not I would not do that.
"I will not admit to something I have not done. I will maintain my innocence if that means I stay in closed conditions for the rest of my life if needs be thats what will happen."
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On eyewitnesses in court being unable to identify Luke as the killer the now 33 said: "That was a big moment for me, at the very least I thought well that's a massive hole in the crown's case, here is somebody who is actually willing to stand up and say you know, no this is not the person.
"It takes a lot of guts to stand up there and you know go against the grain and say actually no this is wrong.
"The police were becoming increasingly aggressive in an attempt to physically intimidate me.
"I requested to go to the toilet, and I was taken to the toilet and standing at the urinal with two very large males shouting at me 'just to confess you little bastard, just tell us what you did and we'll make it okay.'
"A lot of the time I still feel 16/17 and I have to remind myself that I'm nearly 32 now, they took me away in April 2004 and I've still not managed to go home yet. I'm still waiting to go home."
