Murder of Danielle Jones Totally Explained

Everything about The Murder Of Danielle Jones totally explained

The murder of Danielle Jones was an English murder case where no body was found and the conviction relied upon forensic authorship analysis of text messages sent on the victim's mobile phone. Danielle Sarah Jones, (16 October 1985 - c.18 June 2001), was last seen alive on 18 June 2001, Jones' body has never been found. Jones' uncle Stuart Campbell, a builder, was convicted of abduction and murder on 19 December 2002. Campbell was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder as well as 10 years for abduction.
After the trial, controversy arose when it was revealed that Campbell had prior convictions for indecent assault on other girls of similar ages. The use of forensic authorship analysis of text messages in the case provoked research into its use in other cases.

Disappearance and investigation

Jones was last seen near her home in East Tilbury, Essex, on the morning of 18 June 2001, while walking to a bus stop.
   Suspicion fell on Campbell almost immediately and he was first arrested on 23 June 2001, five days after Jones went missing. Detectives had delayed his arrest whilst weighing the possibility of endangering Jones's life, on the presumption that she was still alive and being against her will, against the possibility of Campbell leading the police to her. During police interviews Campbell was described as "uncooperative" In one 20 minute interview with the police Campbell refused to comment on 50 questions,.
   The investigation included several appeals to the public for information, including a reconstruction on the BBC television programme Crimewatch UK. During the investigation, over 900 police officers and support staff searched over 1500 locations for Jones' body.
   On 14 October 2002, Campbell went on trial for abduction and murder, having spent 11 months on remand. The trial was unusual in the UK as prosecutions for murder without a body are rare. The Crown's case rested upon several pieces of evidence. Jones had disappeared without contacting her parents and had been seen talking to a man in a blue Ford Transit van resembling Campbell's on the morning of her disappearance. The testing of blood-stained stockings discovered in the loft of Campbell's house found DNA matching both himself and his niece's; lip gloss used by Jones was also found in Campbell's home. A diary kept by Campbell revealed an obsession with teenage girls, with testimonies that Campbell had manipulated young girls into posing for topless photographs. Mobile Switching Center records demonstrated that Campbell's of being at a D-I-Y store half an hour away in Rayleigh was false, and that Campbell's and Jones's mobile phones had been within the range of a single mobile phone mast at the time that a text message had allegedly been sent by Jones to Campbell. This along with forensic authorship analysis indicated that Campbell had written the message, not Jones, implying that Campbell had sent the message to himself using Jones's phone to make it appear that she was still alive. No recommended minimum term was reported at the trial, and there have been no reports since as to whether the High Court has decided upon Campbell's minimum sentence. His conviction came within a month of the European Court of Human Rights removing tariff-setting powers from politicians following a successful legal challenge.

Aftermath of the trial

After his trial, it was revealed that in 1989, Campbell had received a 12-month suspended sentence for forcibly detaining a 14-year-old girl in his house and taking indecent photographs of her.
In 2004, Campbell was granted leave to appeal his conviction, on the grounds that evidence of his obsession with Jones and of his interest in schoolgirls should have been excluded at his trial and on the grounds that one of the jurors should have been discharged because they were the next door neighbour of a police officer involved in the case. The appeal was dismissed In 2005 by the Court of Appeal.
On 28 July 2005, an inquest by the coroner was held into Jones's disappearance, returning a verdict of unlawful killing. Interim, police interviews with Campbell in prison, regarding the location of Jones's body, reported that Campbell hadn't had anything to say regarding the location of Jones's body.

Other cases

Contrast between this case and the murder of Hannah Williams have been drawn, citing the disparity in news media coverage of the two as an example of missing white woman syndrome. Jewkes cites the media coverage of the Jones case as an example of the news media's eroticization of the victim in such cases, pointing to the news media's reports of the "inappropriate" (for example abusive) sexual relationship between victim and murderer, and the news media's publication of photographs of the victim's stockings.

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