To Mr Miles Trent / Mr Justin Hawkins,
The Criminal Cases Review Commission
Michael Stone Appeal Application
Alpha Tower - Suffolk Street Queensway
Birmingham B1 1TT                        

25th November 2010

Dear Mr Trent,

Michael Stone Application

Michael Stone was clearly hoping that modern DNA techniques would help to exonerate him, so it is obviously disappointing to learn that the almost 1 metre long black bootlace which was discarded by the murderer and which was painstakingly recovered from the crime scene along with other evidence has been mislaid by either the Forensic Science Service or the Kent Police and is no longer available to test.

It is clearly not an acceptable situation for the lace to simply disappear, but the apparent discrepancy in the reports of Dr Whittaker (point 152) and his colleague Julie Allard (Casework Examinations Report Annexe A) may shed light on the issue.

Dr Whittaker observes that he was expecting to receive the remainder of the almost 1 metre long lace (approximately 80 cm, as 74 x 2mm square pieces had already been utilised in previous testing) but instead he received only six small polybags each containing “what appeared to be” one of the six small sections of lace which Julie Allard had packaged up at the end of her tests in September 1998.

Mr Whittaker refers to the empty exhibit bag bearing “what appears to be” the original CJA label for the lace, but does not indicate whether this bag arrived empty, or whether the six small polybags had been contained within the sealed exhibits bag.

Julie Allard “understands” that Mr Whittaker received the exhibit bag containing the other six polybags, but it is not clear from Dr Whittaker's statement that this was indeed so.

The CCRC is requested to establish the true position to avoid any suggestion that the exhibits bag might have been tampered with from the time it was collected from the FSS on 23.9.98 to the time it was returned to them on 14.4.10.

If there is no suggestion that the sealed bag had been tampered with and Mr Whittaker had received the sealed bag bearing the original seal number 0526952 containing the six small polybags, then it must mean that Ms Allard for some inexplicable reason forgot to insert the approximately 80 cm long length of black lace into the exhibit bag before sealing it and failed to notice the remains of the lace on her desk. Having regard for the meticulous care taken by the FSS regarding the documentation of items, it is unlikely that such an oversight could have occurred.

It is regrettable that Julie Allard appears to have kept no transfer sheet for this item which would have indicated exactly what she was returning in the exhibits bag to the police. Normally a transfer sheet is completed, but all Julie Allard can say about the matter is that "although her case notes don't specifically mention it, my normal practice would have been to place the lace in the exhibits bag along with the other 6 small polybags containing fragments of the lace".

As I have said before however, it seems inconceivable that Ms Allard would not have noticed an 80cm long black lace lying on her laboratory desk.

Paul Phippin of the Kent Police states (154) that in the view of PCSI Griffiths, “the lace had been tested close to destruction” but what knowledge could PCSI Griffiths have acquired about the lace in April 2010 which would have led to such a view when the lace had been collected from the FSS by PC Kelly more than a decade earlier on 23rd September 1998? 

There are many unanswered questions about the loss of this important exhibit, and the apparent sloppiness inherent in Ms Allard's approach to keeping records may help to explain why despite the severity of the bloodied and ferocious assault on three victims, the Forensic Science Service has been unable to identify a single detail from any of its forensic tests which could help identify the perpetrator.

John Aidiniantz
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