Television programmes

In May 2007, a BBC Scotland Frontline Scotland television programme documentary examined a theory that the murder might have been committed by a student who was alleged to have handed in an essay about killing a girl in the woods a few weeks before the murder. A friend of this suspect saw him soon after the murder and claimed that he had scratches on his face. The documentary also challenged the theory that Mitchell was an obsessive Marilyn Manson fan and had a keen interest in the Black Dahlia murder, stating that there is no evidence that Mitchell knew of the Dahlia case until after the murder. Professor Anthony Busuttil pointed out dissimilarities between the injuries to Jodi Jones and those to the Black Dahlia victim Elizabeth Short.[15]

In 2021, Channel 5 aired Murder in a Small Town, which raised the possibility that five other suspects could have been the murderer. The show, which was watched by 1.5 million people, was the subject of complaints to Ofcom, including one from a witness in the trial. Jones’s family objected to the implication in the show that they were part of a cover-up. Tom Wood, who was second in command of Lothian and Borders Police at the time of the murder, called the programme “very one-sided” and pointed out that Mitchell’s appeals had been unsuccessful.