Justice Site | Case Name: R v Michael John Stone |
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Michael Stone |
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The Prosecution. "The evidence of the
main prosecution witness Damien Daley should not be dismissed Michael Stone was convicted of murder before two juries, but can a person ever receive a fair trial and be safely convicted on the strength of a confession which merely repeats facts that are in the public domain? He was arrested on 17th July 1997 just over a year following the crime as a result of a tip-off from his psychiatrist who said the police e-fit looked familiar. Stone denied any knowledge of the crime and was remanded in custody while an ID parade was arranged. On 23rd September 1997 he was moved to a cell next to a heroin addict named Damien Daley who admitted to being an accomplished liar "in order to get by in life." In the evening Michael Stone (also a drug addict) allegedly confessed his guilt to Damien Daley by speaking through a gap between a heating pipe and their cell wall, which was reported to the police three days later. The Confession - 'spoken' by Michael Stone on 23rd September
1997
The jury agreed that it would have been "like winning the lottery" for Damien Daley to have discovered the details of the crime "which only the murderer could have known" in the time-scale available to him while locked up in the segregation unit of Canterbury Prison; and accordingly Stone was found guilty. The jury was not told however that all the details in the confession had actually been published in the morning newspapers on the 23rd September 1997 (the day of the 'confession'). The jury heard that Daley had read some of the details in The Daily Mirror published on that day, but it was not told about when or where the remaining details had appeared - only that "they were either in the public domain, or capable of being inferred from material in the public domain." This clever admission by Mr Nigel Sweeney QC for the Crown was accepted by Mr William Clegg QC for the defence, but it served no purpose other than to conceal the link between the confession and the newspaper articles, which were not shown to the jury following the agreement between counsel. The jury therefore could only speculate on how easy or difficult it might have been for Daley or even Stone to have learnt about the crime from published sources. The verdict hung on the sole issue of which drug addict was telling the truth, but if the national newspapers published on 23rd September 1997 had been shown to the jury, they could have addressed the question that if prisoners could be aware of the contents of the Daily Mirror, why not other newspapers? The jurors were told they had to be sure Stone had confessed before they could convict, so they visited Canterbury prison and took turns to lie on a mattress in Daley's cell while a forensics expert in Stone's cell recited an extract from a Harry Potter novel. The jurors were able to hear every word spoken through the tiny hole which Daley had faithfully described, but they could not have suspected while cupping their ears to the wall that even if Stone had shouted out his confession from the rooftop, or had admitted his 'guilt' to the prison governor, his account of the crime would have been equally worthless. The Daily Mirror - published
on 23rd September 1997 The Daily Mail - published on
23rd September 1997
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Trial Summary and Appeals Michael Stone said he was "fitted up by other prisoners", but experienced police officers and legal counsel (who should have known better) must accept responsibility for the consequences of turning a blind eye to newspaper articles published on the day of the alleged confession and for not showing those newspapers to the jury in two trials. Ms Anne Rafferty QC (now Mrs Justice Rafferty) told the jury that Mark Jennings, a convicted murderer, felt moved to testify against Stone because "his conscience had troubled him." It was "not because of a £5,000 reward" promised him by the Sun newspaper, with a further £10,000 to be paid if Stone was convicted. The learned QC added that "Stone was in the mood for killing. He is a tourniquet-using, E-fit resembling man with local knowledge of the area." Mr Nigel Sweeney QC (now Mr Justice Sweeney) told the Court of Appeal that Damien Daley - the 'hard man' of Canterbury Prison - "had been so upset by the horrific details he heard in the confession that he needed medical help" and was prescribed sleeping pills by a psychiatric nurse for a week after hearing Stone confess. It is not known what effect this submission had on their Lordships' judgement and whether they had to adjourn to regain their composure, but the consequences of naively accepting the word of prisoners while withholding evidence to gain a conviction meant that the search for the murderer ceased and other innocent victims would pay the price for the miscarriage of justice. Nobody in authority considered it remarkable that if Michael Stone's confession was genuine, it would indeed have been like winning the lottery, since it contained all six details of the crime which had ever been published - and no other details. Barry Thompson was one of the early prisoners who claimed Stone had confessed. He retracted his evidence post-trial and said: "None of what I said was true. They've put a man away for life for nothing, while the man who did it is still at large." |
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Levi Bellfield
An 'agitated' suspect driving away from the crime scene had a "round red face with podgy cheeks and short gingery-blonde hair in a straight fringe. He was aged between 20-30yrs". (Levi Bellfield photos and witness descriptions). Several witnesses saw a "beige Ford Escort-style family saloon"
in the vicinity.
It is yet to be established whether Bellfield had adopted his 'blonde' look in July 1996, but family sources have confirmed that he used to bleach his hair regularly. His facial characteristics compared to the police E-fit merits further investigation regardless of his hair colour in the summer of 1996. The police said when issuing the e-fit: "make no mistake, this could be the murderer." If Josie Russell was right about the murderer's height - and she would know because she was in direct physical contact with him - that would rule out Michael Stone, and would explain why she was unable to pick him out in an identity parade: she was looking for a much taller man at 6' tall - "like my father." Michael Stone was then 36yrs old and is 5' 7" tall. He is noticeably shorter than either her father or Bellfield, and older than the suspect described. His hair was receding and mid-brown and he does not have the telling features of "podgy cheeks", whereas Bellfield does. A single fingerprint
impressed in blood was found on Josie Russell's green lunchbox and there was a suggestion
that the perpetrator may have rummaged through the victims' belongings. That fingerprint
did not belong to Stone, but the prosecution implied that it "could have been
made" by Lin Russell, since she had a low loop count pattern on her right middle
finger.
The use of a vehicle to stalk victims before attacking them with a hammer is a unique hallmark of Bellfield's modus operandi; and his predeliction for accosting school girls in uniforms is well established. In a separate case on 15th October 2001 - five years after this crime - 17 year old Anna-Marie Rennie gave a description of her attacker: He was about "6' 3" tall, 25 yrs old, with short blond hair and a round fat face." Bellfield admitted his presence at this crime, but blamed his friend for the assault. The question for the police to investigate is whether Bellfield was in the Chillenden area close to Canterbury in Kent around 9th July 1996. If he was not responsible for the crime then it means another 6' tall man with 'podgy' cheeks, "yellow hair" and a 'short, straight fringe' was also driving around with a hammer looking for schoolgirls to murder. The solution of this
crime will require a thorough forensic investigation rather than a reliance on a patently
bogus confession. Kent police may not be looking for anyone else and indeed
they stopped searching the moment they arrested Stone 14 years ago, but there is as much
chance of Michael Stone being the murderer as the judge who sentenced him.
"This is the
most horrific and terrible murder I have had the misfortune to come across |
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LINKS A report by The
Honourable Fred Kaufman, C.M., Q.C. in regard to Jail Confessions which resulted in the
wrongful murder conviction NOTES: (i) March 1999 - The Guardian (15/3) - Mrs Batt refuses to speak to her daughter. "I disowned her because of her lying. If Mick done it, he wants cutting up in little pieces and put down a sewer. All right, he's a psycho but he didn't kill them. They had no forensics and people lied in the witness box for money. Me and my husband are the only two out of the whole lot who haven't sold our souls." (ii) Feb 2009 - A Scotland Yard task force is investigating Bellfield in relation to as many as 20 unsolved crimes, including murders, rapes, and a number of hammer assaults. These include the murder of Bellfield's school friend Patsy Morris, 14, who was strangled in Hounslow in 1980, as well as hammer attacks on women in south-west London in 1994 and 1996. There are also attacks in Blackpool, where Bellfield went on holiday, and in Sussex, where he worked. (iii) March 2010 - the CCRC have requested to examine the 99cm bootlace found at the scene of the crime which was dropped by the murderer while making his getaway. Such long laces (99 cm to 200 cm) are sold with hunting boots. Levi Bellfield used to go hunting. (iv) October 2010 - The CCRC have confirmed that the bootlace has been 'lost'. The Forensic Science Service state that they would have returned the whole lace to Kent Police, but when it was retrieved for further examination, only small fragments of previously examined lace remained. The Missing Bootlace (v) April 2011 - important items of evidence from the crime scene have yet to be examined for DNA and although small fragments of the bootlace have been tested, the results have never been specifically compared with Bellfield's DNA. DNA Test Results (vi) May 2011 Levi Bellfield has been tried for the attempted kidnapping of Rachel Cowles on 20th March 2002 and the murder of Milly Dowler on 21st March 2002 - as in the Chillenden Murders case, both girls were approached while they were walking home from school wearing school uniforms. CPS Announce Milly Dowler Charges (vii) 23rd June 2011 - Levi Bellfield is found guilty of the murder of Milly Dowler.
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