'Weird' attitude of the woman prepared to lie

Published on Sunday 23 January 2005 00:41

CORINNE Mitchell, the mother of Luke, emerged from the trial as a woman who had lost control of her son and who would go to any lengths to help him avoid justice.

Prosecutors in the case said the 45-year-old caravan dealer had gone beyond the role of protective mother to that of accomplice as she attempted to cover up his crime.

The woman, who was adopted as a child by Richard and Ruby Guetta, descendants of a travelling family from Europe, seemed determined to hold on to her son - no matter how awful his crime.

Those who knew the family when Luke was a young child described Corinne’s attitude to her sons as "weird", saying she would dress the boys in clothes similar to her own.

As Luke grew older, the unusual closeness between Corinne and her son led to suggestions that in many ways the relationship was more like that of two adults than of a parent and child.

She seemed to take little interest in exerting parental control over her son’s behaviour in a situation where his drug-dealing, underage sex and obsession with violence would have driven most parents to despair.

The pair’s physical interaction also seemed unusual to many who watched Corinne’s almost obsessive stroking of her Luke’s neck during a television interview he gave on the day of Jodi’s funeral in which he protested his innocence of her murder.

When police descended on the Mitchell house to arrest Luke, they found him in a bedroom with his mother, who said she was comforting him because he could not sleep.

Questioned by police, she claimed Luke had been cooking dinner at home at the time of the murder, even though her older son Shane said he thought the house was empty.

When she went into the witness box during the trial, despite repeated suggestions from the prosecution that she had lied, she showed no sign of the short fuse Luke told a psychiatrist he had inherited from his mother.

Facing Jodi’s mother, Judith Jones, across the courtroom, Corinne insisted: "My son did not kill Jodi Jones."