BELLFIELD CONFESSION GIVES SISTER
HOPE FOR MICHAEL STONE CONVICTION
Stone was convicted on scant
evidence
Review Commission to assess murder case
Big Issue North magazine, 14-20 February 2022
The sister of Michael Stone, convicted of the Chillenden
murders in Kent, hopes that serial killer Levi Bellfield’s recent four-page
confession statement to the murders of Lin Russell and her daughter Megan, six,
in July 1996 will finally lead to her brother’s release from prison. Bellfield
has also stated he killed Judith Gold, a mother of three battered to death in
Hampstead, London, in 1990. Barbara Stone, who has always insisted her brother
is a miscarriage of justice victim, began campaigning after he was first
convicted in 1998 of the murders, plus the attempted murder of Josie Russell,
aged nine.
Stone was arrested following a reconstruction of events on
the BBC Crimewatch series. His psychiatrist claimed his profile matched the
killer’s. From the start he denied any involvement. His defence was strange –
he could not remember what he was doing on the fateful day or on many days
during the summer of 1996.
No forensic evidence
The Russells had been tied up with towels and bootlaces and
attacked with a hammer. Robbery was cited as the motive by the police who said
that, as a heroin addict, Stone kept bootlaces to use as a tourniquet when he
injected himself. Yet the police never produced any laces belonging to him or
found anyone who had witnessed Stone using such a method.
The scene of the crime was a secluded six-feet wide path next
to a cornfield. It was alleged that Stone had sat in his car watching the
Russells cross a series of fields before walking down the path. It was said he
had intended to rob them to get money to feed his heroin habit.
The jury was taken to the scene at the first trial in
October 1998. You could see a good distance. The murders took place though in
July when you can’t watch people approach as the trees are too tall and the
vegetation is too dense. It is an unlikely place for anyone desperate to commit
a robbery to sit, especially if Kent Police’s claim was true that Stone knew
the area.
There was also no
forensic evidence to link Stone with the crimes, no DNA samples were left
behind and there no witnesses. Josie, then nine, had been left for dead and
mercifully recovered.
Miraculously, she was later able to recount some of her
experiences but was unable to give an accurate description of her attacker. At
an identity parade she did not pick out Stone. After Stone’s appeal failed in
January 2005 her father Shaun said: “Josie and I have made an effort to put our
memories of this terrible affair behind us.” No one can blame them for doing
so.
“Dishonest character”
Key to Stone’s conviction was the claim that in 1998 he had
confessed, at separate times, to three prisoners that he’d carried out the
murders. Within days of his conviction, the statement of one of them, Barry
Thompson, was discredited when he admitted lying after obtaining a fee of
£5,000 from The Sun for his story, with promises of another £10,000 if Stone
was convicted. A second witness,
Mark Jennings, was known to be unreliable and was not used
by the prosecution at the second trial. Stone’s conviction was quashed and a
retrial ordered. In 2001 at Nottingham Crown Court, Stone was found guilty
after the jury, with a majority verdict of ten to two, decided that Damien
Daly, was telling the truth when he gave evidence that Stone had confessed to
him in Canterbury Prison that he had attacked the Russells. Daley, who Stone
had never previously met, had a string of convictions for robbery and burglary
and was on remand. Attempts by Stone’s defence team to get the judge at the
trial to give the jury a warning “to be cautious” about “an oral confession”
from “a person of dishonest character” were rejected.
Bellfield’s confession
Stone’s later appeals against his convictions were
dismissed, leading Barbara Stone to say outside the Court of Appeal in January
2005 that Daley had “lied his way through two trials” and that there was “not a
scrap of evidence” to convict her brother. In Chillenden in 2005 residents gave
their opinions on the case. Jerry Copestake, landlord of the Griffin’s Head
pub, said: “Most people round here don’t think Michael Stone did it.”
Stone was given a
minimum sentence of 25 years. He can now apply for parole but won’t be doing so
as that would be “admitting his guilt as he did not commit the crime,” said
Barbara Stone. She has also supported other people campaigning to overturn
their convictions.
Bellfield is serving a life sentence for the murders of
Marsha McDonnell and Amélie Delagrange, and the attempted murder of Kate
Sheedy. In 2011 he was also convicted of killing Milly Dowler, 13. He has converted
to Islam and is known as Yusuf Rahim, His confession is being added to an
appeal by Stone’s solicitor, Paul Bacon, to the Criminal Cases Review
Commission, which turned down a 2010 appeal. Bacon said in 2011 that he
believed Bellfield may have committed the Chillenden murders, stating that
Josie described a beige Ford car at the scene. Bellfield was driving a beige
Ford Sapphire at that time.
Call for impartial investigation
Barbara Stone said: “It is good news as if what he has
written is proved to be true it should lead to Mick being released. Bellfield
does look like the photofit of the killer and I believe there is a lot of
detail in the letter that means we can track his movements throughout the
fateful day. It should all be provable.” She does not want Kent Police involved
in any new
investigation. “Some of the officers from the time are still
working there and they have never been willing to take an unbiased look at the
case,” she said.
“They denied for years that they did have the bootlace,
which we know they do. Some other force should investigate and the terms of
reference should be more open than an earlier review by Hampshire Police.”
Barbara Stone said that her brother was “now optimistic” but
did not want to “get too excited as he has had so many knockbacks over the
years and there never was any evidence.” She thinks Bellfield’s statement may
be “him trying to make peace with his actions”.
MARK METCALF
