AMONG the four malign influences on the world of Luke Mitchell named by Lord Nimmo Smith yesterday was the work of the shock rock singer Marilyn Manson.
The judge said that there was some resemblance between the injuries suffered by Jodi and those depicted in Marilyn Manson’s paintings of the Black Dahlia murder victim Elizabeth Short, a Hollywood starlet who was murdered in 1947.
"I think you ca
rried an image of these paintings in your memory when you killed Jodi. I do not know what degree of premeditation there was but, in my view, there was some. I believe that in the way you went, with deliberation, about killing Jodi and mutilating her body, you were acting out a scene which you had previously formed in your mind," Lord Nimmo Smith said.
Manson has a great interest in the unsolved Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles and has posted on a website paintings by him which depict the body and the injuries she sustained.
Short was cut in half by her murderer and other injuries included her face being mutilated and stabbing injuries to her breast. Actual photographs of her body lying in a morgue are widely available on the internet.
Jodi’s boyfriend and killer, Luke Mitchell, was a big Manson fan and the paintings were shown to the jury during his trial, along with photographs of Jodi’s injuries.
The jury also watched part of a Manson DVD which Mitchell received when he bought the singer’s CD, Golden Age of Grotesque, two days after he murdered Jodi in woods near her home.
The clips shown in court portrayed a naked young girl lying on the ground and areas of foliage and undergrowth. Also, two women, bound together, were seen being hooded and molested and put in a car. Manson could be heard saying: "Kill me, kill everyone, let them all die... Stop rehearsing alcohol and start performing narcotics."
Manson’s concerts feature nudity, foul language and what critics condemn as Satan worshipping.
In 2000, the murder of a nun shocked Italy, and the three teenage girls who confessed to the crime were obsessed with Manson. He was arrested after a Rome concert and charged with obscenity.
The full article contains 396 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
