The dark side of work at the botanics

Published on Tuesday 12 December 2006 11:52

IT is almost two years since teen killer Luke Mitchell was found guilty of murdering his girlfriend Jodi Jones in a crime which shocked the nation.

His conviction followed months of intensive police work to bring the schoolgirl's killer to justice, with officers under mounting pressure for a result.

Now though, there are suggestions that they got it wrong.

Mitchell's solicitors are said to be investigating reports of an essay entitled Killing a Female in The Woods, said to have been written three weeks before Jodi's murder in the Dalkeith countryside.

Its author is thought to be a recovering drug addict who was attending a rehabilitation course held near where Jodi's mutilated body was found in 2003.

With mystery DNA understood to have been found on Jodi's body which belongs neither to Mitchell nor his victim, the prospect of a new suspect looms large.

As the focus returns to one of the most notorious killings in the country, one expert in the city's Royal Botanic Garden recalls his involvement in the original investigation - revealing the more gruesome side of work at the Capital's serene gardens.

For soon after police began scouring the woodland where Jodi's body was found for clues as to the murder weapon, they called on Douglas McKean for help.

He says: "They had an idea that the murderer might have used an unusual weapon like a malacca cane [an exotic wood] so they asked me to go to the crime scene and see if I could spot any wood material which looked out of place.

"It was about three weeks after the murder and there was lots of wood lying about covered in blood. I had two policemen with me as I walked around looking. I couldn't see anything unusual though, the wood was all native.

"It wasn't stressful, it was interesting," he adds when asked what it was like seeing first-hand the aftermath of one of the country's most shocking murders.

His apparently very scientific view of death as more fascinating than horrifying is cemented by his description of the reference collection room at the Botanics as "like a morgue," as he gestures, grinning cheerfully, to the row upon row of cold grey metal cabinets behind him.

Each one is filled not with corpses but with dead plants, all carefully collected from around the world.

There are more than three million specimens, from mosses to meadow flowers, collected over 300 years including some dating back to Darwin's time.

Pulling out one drawer McKean, 58, reveals stacks of pale brown folders, one of which he opens to display a fern, squashed flat as if by an old-fashioned flower press.

Dated 1866, it is carefully annotated with descriptions of its parts, alongside a map showing where it was found - information to help experts identify unknown plants.

As assistant curator in charge of the British section and botanical recorder for Midlothian, McKean has spent most of his near-40 year career at the Botanics editing science journals, compiling guides or identifying plants sent in by curious members of the public.

But when police do call on his skills, the cases he is asked to help solve tend to be serious, like that of Jodi Jones.

It was also McKean to whom police turned when hunting for the body of missing mum Louise Tiffney, who vanished from her home in Dean Village after a row with her son Sean Flynn in 2002.

Officers suspected that Flynn - who later walked free from court after a jury recorded a not proven verdict - had murdered her, and they hoped that McKean might help lead them from Flynn to his mum's body.

After seizing Flynn's car they collected plant material and mud which they gave to McKean to see if he could find anything unusual which could point to where the body was buried.

McKean recalls: "I spent about three days solidly going through it, using tweezers to put the pieces of leaves under my microscope.

"There was nothing unusual that was only found in a certain place, which could have suggested that the body was buried there."

While McKean drew a blank in both the Jodi Jones and the Tiffney cases, his findings are still invaluable to police, says Derek Scrimger, head of biology at Lothian and Border's forensic science base.

"The information is important to us even if it is negative because it can help us rule out certain lines of inquiry," he says.

Emphasising the importance of work by experts like McKean he adds: "It is only rarely that botanical evidence comes up in a case.

I have only used the Botanics three times since I started work here in 1988 - so when we are going to that degree it is for something high profile that requires that level of expertise in botany which we do not deal with in the lab."

The experts have found positive evidence to help convict a killer - and it can be an unnerving experience.

Bryologist Dr David Long is more at home examining mosses in the city's botanical gardens or in China.

But last year the police in Glasgow asked him to put his knowledge of mosses to use in helping solve a grisly killing.

"There had been a murder on some wasteland near Glasgow and the body had apparently been moved in a wheelie bin," he says.

"Mosses had been found in the wheelie bin and there were bits of moss and plant with the body, which was found hidden somewhere else.

"I looked at it with a colleague and we did find one moss which was present at all three sites."

"In the end the accused pled guilty so we didn't have to appear as witnesses in court."

Meanwhile, Long is also involved in tackling an unusual-sounding modern seasonal crime - illegal moss harvesting.

Wild moss, picked to create traditional Christmas wreaths, can only be harvested with the landowners' permission.

As a result moss theft is big business, with estimates that the combined legal and illegal trade is worth around half a million pounds nationally each year.

Long is clearly incensed by the crime, which he says needlessly endangers rare species in Scotland.

But he is cautious about recent moves which have made what was a civil offence a criminal offence, punishable by fine and ultimately potentially by imprisonment.

Instead he favours a voluntary code of conduct and education policy explaining which mosses and areas can be harvested without turning them into yet another victim of crime.

As for the future, he knows he could be called upon to help solve another gruesome murder any day.

As he says: "You never know what might come up. You always have to be ready."