Michael Stone (criminal)

Stone was born as Michael John Goodban in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent on 7 June 1960, one of five children. Although the name of his father was registered, and therefore given on his birth certificate, as "Ivor Goodban", there was uncertainty over the true identity of his father and Stone regarded a different partner of his mother, Peter Stone, as having been his father. Both men denied that he was their son. On leaving the care system, Stone began using heroin, He was known to carry weapons, including knives and guns, and would also attack victims with ammonia squirted from a Jif lemon bottle. The first robbery was at Maidstone's Hazlitt Theatre, and the second was at the Leeds Permanent Building Society branch in Brighton, where he stole £577. Stone had been sectioned to a mental hospital in Hull in 1994, and was diagnosed with personality disorder and paranoid psychosis. The motive for the murder appeared to be robbery, since Jegou always carried around large amounts of cash yet only had £3 on him when his body was discovered. He died from multiple stab wounds to the stomach and of head injuries inflicted by being kicked repeatedly. His body was discovered near Maidstone East railway station, very close to the Stone family home at the time, and very close to the probation hostel Stone was then staying in. Stone was 16 at the time, and a prolific offender. Explaining, she commented: "When I was about 14 Mick came up to me with a knife in a sheath. He said I was to hide it for him and I buried it. At the time I was just a kid and did what my big brother told me. Years later he said he knew something about the murder. I knew he was up to no good. The killing was his style – it was done by two or more people and Mick never acted alone. It would have been done to get money and, again, that's something he'd have done." Police also questioned him about the death of a friend who fell under a London Tube train as he stood next to Stone. ==Russell murders==

On 9 July 1996, in a country lane in Chillenden, Kent, England, Lin Russell, aged 45, her two daughters, six-year-old Megan and nine-year-old Josie and their dog Lucy, were tied up and savagely beaten with a hammer while walking home from a swimming gala. ==Conviction for Russell murders==

Arrest In July 1997, police arrested 37-year-old Michael Stone for the crimes after tip-offs resulting from a reconstruction on the Crimewatch television programme. The psychiatrist also told police that the threats were so aggressive that they had made him fear for his own safety and for the safety of other employees, and that the fantasies related by Stone seemed to tally with the nature of the attacks on the Russells. He had also said that he was angry at the world and was going to do "something bad". It was also speculated that Stone could have decided to rob Lin Russell in a desperate need for money to buy heroin. A key witness in the case was a woman driving on the adjacent road, who said she had seen a man hurriedly emerging out of the junction by the murder site in a beige car. These items were scientifically tested using the techniques then available, and no link was found to Stone. The day after the attack, friends noticed that Stone's clothing was bloodstained and that he refused to enter their home as usual. They also noticed bloodstains on his toolbox in his car, and on a blue sweatshirt. He later told police that he then burned all his clothes. As a result, the conviction hinged upon the three confessions Stone was alleged to have made, because there was no forensic evidence linking Stone to the crime. The confessions did not contain any material that had not been previously reported by the national press, but on the contrary, all the details found in the confession had been published in the national press on the day of the alleged confession, apart from the reference to a shoelace, which had previously been publicised. The DNA found on a black bootlace which had been used in the crime and dropped by the perpetrator moreover did not correspond to Stone's profile. The case was otherwise simply circumstantial. However, Stone was convicted a second time in 2001, this time on the sole evidence of the confession allegedly made to Damien Daley (he himself was subsequently convicted of murder) the jury taking less time than in the first trial to find him guilty. The alleged confession merely repeated facts that had been published in the national newspapers on the day it was made on 23/9/97. Any person who had therefore read the newspapers could have given a similar account of the crime: I tied them up with wet towels. Their dog barked loudly. One of them tried to run away. He mentioned something about shorts, shoes or shoelaces. (Josie's evidence was that their dog did not bark). As part of the trial, the jury visited the prison cells where Stone's confession to Daley was alleged to have taken place, and listened as an extract from a Harry Potter novel was read near the gap around the pipe joining the two cells to determine whether the confession was plausible. Later court decisions Stone was granted leave to appeal again in 2004, with his lawyers claiming Daley's testimony was unreliable. On 21 December 2006, a High Court judge decided that Stone should spend at least 25 years in prison before being considered for parole, meaning he is likely to remain in prison until at least 2023 and the age of 63. The judge had said that imposing a whole-life order was appropriate, but that 25 years was the longest tariff he was "legally entitled" to impose. ==Mental health inquiry==

Following Stone's conviction, an inquiry was held into the care he received for his drug addiction and mental health problems. The inquiry, led by Sir Robert Francis QC, found failings in his care, but said that Stone's case was "emphatically not a case of a man with a dangerous personality disorder being generally ignored by agencies or left at large". The proposed changes were intended to allow the government to detain individuals who had not committed a crime. The proposed measures were described as "draconian" by Nacro and a number of changes were made before the bill was finally passed as the Mental Health Act 2007. ==Claim of innocence==

Stone continues to argue that his conviction is a miscarriage of justice on the grounds that the evidence against him came from another prisoner, who was described as a "career criminal" who the Crown acknowledged "would lie when it suited him". However, she said that she suspected her brother had killed before. In 2010, the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) announced that it would not refer the case back to the Court of Appeal because it had found no new evidence to justify making a referral. As part of its investigations, the CCRC had carried out a number of forensic tests on the materials found at the crime scene at the request of Stone's legal team. The Court of Appeal found that the CCRC was entitled not to find the new witness's evidence credible based on the length of time it had taken the witness to come forward. With the advance of DNA testing, Stone's team requested that the lace be examined using more modern forensic techniques to see if the attacker's DNA could now be found on it. However, the police said the lace could not be located. However, Bellfield's partner at the time, Johanna Collings, has insisted that she was with him on the day of the murders as it was her birthday. Collings had helped detectives convict Bellfield for his previous murders, such as in the Milly Dowler murder, giving evidence that he knew well the area where her body was left. Two of the legal experts who took part in the programmedefence barrister Stephen Kamlish QC and legal expert Sheryl Nwosustated that there are significant doubts regarding the conviction and are now working on Stone's behalf to have the case re-examined with the aim of launching a third appeal against the conviction. On 29 November 2017, BBC Wales reported that Levi Bellfield had allegedly confessed to the murders to a fellow prisoner, giving details that "would only be known by the killer". Bellfield denied that he committed the murders and denied making the confession. In February 2022 Stone's solicitor, Paul Bacon, stated that Bellfield had admitted the murders, in a statement containing details which, Bacon suggested, would be known only to the actual killer. However, a member of Stone's legal team stated that there was nothing in Bellfield's statement which was not already in the public domain, suggesting he could have fabricated it using known evidence. The detective responsible for investigating Bellfield's known crimes also stated to the press: "Knowing Bellfield as I do, this could be him playing mind games". In April 2023, Bellfield's lawyer claimed that Bellfield had admitted to the murders during a conversation with a prison psychologist. Stone's lawyer declared that a signed confession by Bellfield had been handed over to the CCRC. However, Bellfield later retracted the confessions, and it was reported that he had then sent a letter to Kent Police explaining that he had only confessed for a £5,000 cash payment. Bellfield had previously stated in 2017 that he had been repeatedly offered money by Stone's defence team to confess to the killings. The senior investigating officer on the Bellfield case Colin Sutton commented: "My view is that Bellfield knows he is in prison forever, that he has somehow joined up with Stone and offered to lie on his behalf for payment". It explained that it had "identified no credible new evidence or information" and "considered whether there are any further proportionate lines of inquiry with the prospect of yielding new evidence capable of making a difference to the safety of Mr Stone's conviction", but "has not identified any". In October 2023, the CCRC announced that it was conducting a fresh review of Stone's case. The decision followed a statement by Stone's legal team that they would seek judicial review of the previous decision not to refer the case. The CCRC commented: "While we can't comment on the specifics of an investigation, it is not unusual for different reviews to focus on different arguments or evidence". It added that: "the CCRC's previous reviews found no credible evidence or argument that raised a real possibility of the convictions being quashed – these conclusions are not affected by the new review". In 2026, forensic scientist Angela Gallop was commissioned by Stone's legal team to perform a forensic review of the evidence in the Russell murders. According to Gallop, she discovered scrapings under the fingernails on Lin Russell's left hand which had not been tested during the initial investigation. In response to the finding, the CCRC stated its review was still ongoing. ==References==