Episode 1 The Chillenden Murders

This programme contains some strong language

and some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

GREENWICH TIME SIGNAL

-REPORTER:

-Kent Police have begun a murder enquiry after

the terrible deaths of Lin Russell

and her six-year-old daughter, Megan.

They died near Canterbury, from head injuries.

A second daughter, nine-year-old Josephine,

is alive but seriously injured in hospital.

-REPORTER:

-Their bodies were found huddled together

on this isolated track just half a mile from their home in Nonington.

The family were beaten with a blunt metal instrument, like a hammer.

-REPORTER:

-This tranquil corner of Kent,

now the scene of a double murder.

Killings which have shocked this quiet, close-knit community.

In the summer of 1996,

a young family were brutally attacked

down a quiet country lane in Kent.

-REPORTER:

-One of the most tragic events of the summer.

A case unprecedented in British criminal history.

The hunt for the killer became one of the biggest stories

of the decade.

The tragedy happened on a footpath coming home from school

in one of the most rural and scenic parts of Kent.

-REPORTER:

-Since the investigation began, more than 9,000 people

have been interviewed and 1,000 witness statements taken.

-REPORTER:

-Here, the best lead so far.

This could be the image of the murderer.

A year later, Michael Stone was arrested.

He was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

-REPORTER:

-Michael Stone, heroin addict,

a man with a violent personality disorder, a criminal record,

now a convicted killer.

The judge told him, "There can't be anyone in this country who does not

"understand the horror of these offences."

At that point, Stone shouted out,

"It wasn't me, Your Honour. I didn't do it."

Despite that verdict, the case is still in the headlines,

and doubts continue to be raised about Michael Stone's guilt.

Michael Stone's conviction hung on a very delicate thread.

I think that there's a considerable

question mark about whether this

kind of evidence

can safely be used at all.

And for the last 20 years, Stone himself has stuck to the same story.

-MICHAEL STONE:

-I never murdered them people and I had nothing

to do with it. I don't know who done it.

I had no involvement whatsoever, and that's why I'm innocent.

But is Stone a liar and a killer, or could the wrong man be in prison?

Now, to try and answer that question,

a panel of independent experts with decades of experience

in criminal justice has agreed to re-examine the original case files.

I think you're missing that they have completely changed

their account of what they're saying they've got!

Lawyers...

This one lace could contain the key to who killed this family.

..detectives...

This has left a lot of unanswered questions.

..a forensic scientist...

The DNA can't be Michael Stone.

..all digging deep into one of Britain's most notorious crimes...

To me, it puts him as prime suspect.

..to see if justice has been done.

If it's not Michael Stone, then who is it,

and where's that individual been for the last 20 years?

'In these files, we've got an extraordinary range of material.

'It's a story of an investigation.

'It's a story of a conviction.'

You're cracking open a time capsule going back 20 years.

In 18 archive boxes lie thousands of documents,

a paper trail left behind by those involved in an infamous crime,

investigation and controversial conviction.

It's both daunting and exciting.

In there are nuggets which are going to give you answers.

I've never known a case not to produce surprises.

A panel of leading experts is gathering

to examine paperwork that's lain untouched for years.

We're coming in with a such a neutral perspective

that I'm looking to see whether the evidence is going to push me

in one direction or the other.

I come to it thinking, "This guy's been convicted."

And so, one has to have some...

faith that the jury came to the right view.

Together, they'll painstakingly reconstruct the events,

examine the evidence and seek answers to any questions

that remain.

'You're looking at a case from 1996 with 2016 eyes,'

as if anything may have slipped through the cracks.

I'm going to talk you through what happened on that day,

9th of July, 1996.

You've got a map in front of you.

I've got a large one up there on the board,

and we've also got up there some crime-scene photographs.

Former Detective Chief Superintendent Jane Antrobus

spent 30 years investigating serious crime for

Greater Manchester Police.

She begins any case review by focusing on the known facts

of the crime.

In the initial stages of an investigation,

a senior investigating officer will put together what they call a

timeline.

Where's that victim been?

How many witnesses have they been past?

What forensic has been gathered?

So the timeline is a visual aid to understanding the crime.

So, we've got here the school where Lin and her daughters

and the dog started off from.

The children have been to a swimming gala

and at 3:55, they start their walk home.

So they come along here and they turn up in the direction, left,

towards Chillenden.

Their route home is along Cherry Garden Lane.

Now, I've put that significant dot, because that is where their journey

ended that particular day.

By 8:30, Shaun Russell...

..father of the girls and husband of Lin, was starting to panic.

Shaun reports his wife and the children missing.

It's at quarter to one...

..the following morning...

..that the bodies are recovered.

Initially, thought to be three bodies.

Lin, Josie and Megan.

When they then get out the medical practitioner

to certify life extinct, like you do at any murder scene...

..he finds Josie's not dead.

She's still alive, but only barely alive.

She's then rushed to hospital.

All the victims have suffered significant blunt force trauma

to their heads.

And how Josie has survived is beyond belief.

It really is.

So a murder investigation is launched.

The scene's preserved and the forensic science team

are called in to examine that scene.

I was travelling on the M25

when I received a phone call from

the Principal Scenes of Crime Officer to say

that they had found two bodies...

and there was another person seriously injured...

..and that they might need some coordination or advice about...

the scientific potential of the scene.

So I pulled off the motorway and headed back towards Kent.

In 1996, Professor Jim Fraser was head of

Forensic Investigation for Kent Police,

and one of the first people on the scene.

I was met by my Principal Scenes of Crime Officer,

who basically took me to the scene and started to kind of

walk me through it.

At that stage, it still hadn't been fully examined yet.

The bodies were still there.

People were still forming their first impressions

about what might have happened.

The bulk of the...

assault had taken place in a small, kind of enclosed copse.

And all the bodies were found inside that area, including the dog.

The main conclusion that I reached related not so much to the area

where the bodies were found, but to the track adjacent

to the copse where the bodies were found.

And there were four groups of bloodstains on the track.

That enabled me to conclude that the attack probably started on the track

and then moved into the copse, where...

Essentially, where the victims were murdered.

Outdoor scenes are not that common

and they present kind of different problems.

Most people are murdered indoors,

or in kind of enclosed spaces,

so there is an immediate scene where the bodies were found

and there is a wider scene.

Do you search the lay-bys that are along the road from the scene?

Do you search some 500 metres?

A mile?

It's difficult to know where an outdoor scene like this

begins and ends.

As the forensic team searched for scientific clues,

detectives began a nationwide search for witnesses.

My appeal tonight is anybody who's got the slightest idea at all,

please, please come forward.

Pick the phone up tonight and call us.

Dave, thank you very much. Well, we all here can only echo that.

Please call, if you can help.

If you have any information. O500 600 600. It's a free call...

Within the case files, the panel find the witness statements

of the first people to come forward.

It is quite a remote area.

People stand out, so witnesses will come forward.

You're looking to seek commonalities within those statements.

In cases like this, it's those small pieces of information

that all come together to make the full jigsaw.

Witness one, called Nicola Burchill.

Nicola was here at the junction.

It was 4:43.

-REPORTER:

-A woman came across a beige car pulling away

from a junction that led to the murder scene.

So she sees a beige car.

So Nicola was in her car.

That's when she said,

"Saw a car at the junction and it pulled off in front of me,

"forcing me to come down a few gears.

"I could tell he was angry.

"He kept looking at me through his wing mirror."

Now, this is key,

because Nicola Burchill is the lady that later did an E-fit of the man

she saw in the wing mirror.

That's the E-fit.

White male, very short, gingery hair, stocky,

wearing a red T-shirt.

I'm going to move on now to the next witness.

She's driving past the windmill.

About half a mile away, there's a local landmark outside

Chillenden village.

The woman was driving out of the village on Cave Lane,

and approaching the windmill, when she saw a man standing by

the road.

She's driving.

She doesn't see a vehicle.

But what she does see...

..is a man acting strangely.

She says, "He's very agitated."

Plus, the fact she said he's holding an implement in his right hand,

and she actually says, "It's a claw hammer."

The next key witness.

Now, he says it's ten past five.

He sees a car and he says,

"I thought it was an old Escort in beige."

So a common theme coming here.

Beige car, possibly an Escort.

Half an hour later, he takes his dog for a walk

and he goes to where he saw that agitated man.

Dog pulled in towards the hedge

and I noticed a bag had been stuffed in the bushes.

He actually then saw it was a string bag.

And it had strips of blue towel inside it,

and the victims' blood were on the strips of towel.

That is significant, because it is used to tie the victims up,

put there by the suspicious, agitated man.

The killer.

-The killer.

-Yeah.

They had quite clear elimination criteria.

Evidence implicating a white man, I think in about his 30s, in a beige,

Ford Escort-type car.

So anybody who didn't fit that description, you could eliminate.

Back at the crime scene, Jim Fraser and the forensic team

were still searching for evidence.

In the copse where the bodies were found,

there were three items that kind of stood out.

The first one was, there was a fingerprint that appeared

to be in blood on one of the lunchboxes.

The second one was that we found some hairs

that looked as if they didn't come from any of the people

at the scene.

And then outside that area, on the track, found a little time later,

was a black bootlace.

The lace was considered to be so important because

it was bloodstained from two of the victims.

It was obviously used in the attacks in some way.

Those items were tested, but offered no immediate link to an offender.

And with no suspect, the Chillenden murders

became Britain's biggest story.

I got a...

call from a mate of mine at the Daily Star...

..who said there'd been an incident in a place called Chillenden.

"Where's that?" So I looked at the map and he said,

"Get your arse down there."

So we got our arses down there.

You had The Express, The Sun, Star, Mirror.

The whole lot all descended on the middle of nowhere.

We obviously knew that this was going to be a big...

It would be page-one news in every paper.

You know, it dominated your life for weeks.

It was dramatic from the get-go and it didn't let up.

Despite the media frenzy, after several weeks,

Kent Police were no closer to solving the case.

-REPORTER:

-Since the investigation began, more than 9,000 people

have been interviewed and 1,000 witness statements taken.

-REPORTER:

-With the killer still on the loose, there's an uneasiness

in this quiet Kent village.

The police were obviously under a lot of pressure.

I know that, because myself and my colleagues were the ones

putting them under pressure. We were the ones that wanted answers,

and we were the ones asking them.

Because they are a fairly ordinary middle-class family,

it just means that everybody could see themselves in the Russells,

and the question you would ask yourself is,

"What if it was my family? What would I have done?

"What would I want to happen now?"

And everybody wanted to see somebody go to prison for it.

Four weeks after the attacks,

nine-year-old Josie Russell was finally able to leave hospital...

..and, over time, told police what she could recall.

Her mother was hit by this man,

and told Josie to run for help.

Josie did run for help, but she didn't get very far,

cos the man caught her up, and hit her with the hammer as well.

She identified a hammer as the weapon,

and she said that her hands were tied with a shoelace.

And she describes the man...

..as "rooting through the lunchboxes."

She mentions that the man asks for money.

A suggestion that robbery was the motive

connected to a separate lead the police were following -

the burglary and theft of a lawnmower near to the crime scene

on the same day.

But it still didn't connect them to a suspect.

To understand what was going on behind the scenes

of the investigation, the panel turn to the logbook

of the operation, known as the Policy File.

It's the daily record of every decision made, and the reasons why.

For the Chillenden murders, it covers months of enquiries,

and runs to over eight books, and hundreds of pages.

Well, the months after the investigation, obviously,

it's going 100 miles an hour.

I've looked at the Policy File, I've looked at the case papers,

they are following all those leads and potential leads.

Speaking to MO suspects - you know, paedophiles...

..cars are being looked at.

The beige car is being looked for, for months.

The SIO is still under the spotlight.

"Why haven't you cracked this case?"

But ultimately, they're not producing any new leads.

They're not getting anything.

A full year after the deaths, the police were forced, once again,

to turn to the public.

A year ago today an unprecedented crime took place

which astonished and sickened the whole nation.

Dave Stevens, a year has passed, you still haven't found the murderer.

How have the public helped you in that year?

The public, really, have helped enormously.

Their support has been overwhelming.

We've pieced together a story which hasn't led to the killer.

We still haven't received that vital piece of information

that's led to an arrest.

-REPORTER:

-A renewed appeal on the BBC's Crimewatch programme last week

-resulted in 600 calls to the police.

-PHONES RING

Amongst hundreds of calls, one stood out -

from a psychiatrist who said his nursing staff had named a patient

as a potential suspect.

The patient's name...

..Michael Stone.

Stone lived 40 miles from the scene of the attacks,

in the Medway area of Kent.

He was arrested at his mother's house on the 17th of July 1997.

There he is, in the middle.

Early in the morning, they knocked the door,

and said they were arresting him

for the murder of the Russells.

And then they come back...

..the next day, and searched my flat.

Took all the washing off the line, which belonged to Michael.

And then the next minute, you'd get the paper people.

I couldn't go out of this door for months.

They even...

I know it's naughty, but they kept shouting through the letterbox,

and I emptied the kettle on them, you know...

..to shut them up.

Good job the water was cold.

I remember the day when they

came to the door, the police.

But me, I was not only in a state of shock,

but felt I ought to listen to them.

And they were saying to me, things like, "He looks like the Photofit."

We actually went out into the road, myself, with a police officer,

and we were holding this Photofit up in the street

with a picture of Mick, and he was pointing out the features

on the Photofit that he felt were looking like Mick.

And I'm going...

And even then, I kind of thought to myself,

"Oh, perhaps somebody just did a poor drawing,

"or a poor description or something."

This was a horrible crime.

And if my brother had done this, you know, I would agree,

he would have had to have been prosecuted, and convicted for it.

But I gave them a chance to show me,

cos they were so keen to show me that he did it.

But they never could quite manage it.

I just, you know, couldn't believe it.

Stunned, really.

How can you be left feeling?

You know what I mean?

I can't say heartbroken, because Mick is Mick, isn't he?

No, he's done some things he shouldn't have done.

Police now had a suspect in custody.

But was he capable of committing the Chillenden murders?

To help answer that, the panel's legal team put Michael Stone's

criminal history under the microscope.

It's led by Stephen Kamlish -

a QC with 35 years' experience

working on the country's most serious crimes.

Including acting for Stephen Lawrence's family.

He's supported by junior counsel Sheryl Nwosu.

Their examination of Stone's history reveals he was a

long-term heroin user with multiple convictions for burglary.

And a regular thief of items, such as lawnmowers.

People's previous convictions show basic propensity to commit a crime.

In a case like this, a person with previous convictions -

and he was a drug addict -

you're not judging them by your own standards,

they don't live the same sort of life as the jury lives.

You've got to be careful that they aren't stereotyped into being guilty

because they're criminals.

But Stone's record also reveals a more violent side.

This is someone who's got a background with extreme violence,

apart from the fact that he's...

..a burglar - a shed burglar, really, low-level shed burglary

for the most part, he has also got some significant convictions.

There was an armed robbery of a bank and a theatre,

where he used a shotgun.

So this was someone who was clearly violent, potentially very dangerous.

There was a previous conviction for a stabbing in 1983.

Attacked a man he'd known from childhood,

stabbing him in the chest when he was sleeping.

-Whilst he was sleeping?

-Whilst he was sleeping.

He had a previous conviction for a hammer attack,

for which he received a two-year sentence.

Who was the hammer attack of?

Stone went to a man's house, he got into an argument,

which turned into a fight.

And it appears that he wasn't armed, but in the man's house,

there was a mallet on a workbench which Stone picked up, swung it,

hit the man, and then ran away.

From a police point of view, you know, this is going

to be significant.

You're asking us to compare this to what the man's alleged to have done.

He's not adverse to committing acts of violence, right?

So he's prepared to get money, to be violent, to get his own back,

to be violent, that's what his record shows.

But it doesn't show that he is a man who lies in wait for women

and children to kill them.

Questions raised by the panel during their investigation

are put to Stone in prison.

'Yeah, I was violent then, but this is a different type of violence.

'I've got no form for violence against women or children.

'Yeah, I've done robberies and stuff,

'but whenever I've done robberies

'I've not hurt anybody, unnecessarily.

'I'm a thief. When I commit crime, I nick things.

'I go into the house when no-one's there.

'I nick a car when no-one's in the car.

'I don't touch the people.

'The nature of the crime, and the victims in this case,

'it's not the kind of crime that I'd do.'

There's violence, and then there's this.

But the idea that he couldn't do this crime because he hadn't done it

before is a nonsense, because there's a first time for everything.

It puts him in that percentage of the population

of people who could have done it.

-But it doesn't mean he did it.

-And who've got pre-cons for violence.

-Yeah.

-Sure.

-REPORTER:

-Detectives investigating the murders of Lin and Megan Russell

have questioned a man in connection with their deaths.

13 months after the attacks, Stone was being held

at Chatham police station, where officers were interviewing him.

Within the case files are the transcripts of more than 22 hours

of interviews.

There are three types of police interview.

One is where people are advised to make no comment.

That doesn't mean they're guilty,

but the advice comes from the solicitor.

The second type of interview is where a person makes some comment,

and then refuses to answer certain questions.

And the third one is one where the person essentially says,

"You can ask me anything, and I'll answer anything."

And this was what happened here.

Stone was saying that he was innocent throughout,

and he basically said to the investigators,

"Do everything you want, you'll find it's not me."

He has no trouble explaining himself.

He's really clear on answering all the questions.

I think it's significant,

the fact that throughout these hours and hours of interviews,

Michael Stone's actually spoke and answered questions,

rather than done the conventional...

..no comment.

A solicitor would be expected to advise that in this case,

cos there's so much detail.

-Yeah.

-And who knows who might put their foot in it?

-It's just a standard advice a solicitor would give.

-Yeah.

25 hours, answering every question.

'The reason why I answered the questions - cos normally I

'would have done no comment in the police station,

'I've always done no comment.

'But because it was a little girl that got murdered,

'and the murderer was out there loose,

'I spoke with the police to help them eliminate me,

'so they could go and catch the real murderer.

'Do you know what I mean? That's the only reason why

'I answered all those questions.'

In interview, the police challenged Stone to provide an alibi

for the day of the murders.

It was a year after.

And I couldn't give an alibi.

I had no reason to remember 4:30 on the 9th of July.

Former senior detective Jane Antrobus tries to piece together

Stone's movements that day.

She finds a receipt, pinpointing him to a location.

On the 9th of July, the day of the murders,

he was in a shop in Chatham high street.

At 12:20, a Cash Converters.

So, at 12:20, he was in Cash Converters...

..40 mile away from the murder scene.

That would give him ample opportunity to get

to the scene of the murder.

Although we can't physically put Michael Stone at the scene,

we can't alibi him out of it.

So he could have been there.

With Stone unable to rule himself out,

police are examining his links to the evidence.

In particular, the beige car spotted by multiple witnesses.

There's a lot goes on, especially in the interviews of Michael Stone.

About what cars he owned and had access to

during that relevant period.

Before the murder, he wasn't driving a beige car.

-I believe he was driving...

-White Toyota Tercel.

A policeman gives a statement,

that four days before the murder he sees Stone in a pub,

and that Stone's driven there in this white Toyota Tercel.

And on the 16th of July, which is after the murder,

he's stopped again, a few days after by a different police officer

and he's actually driving it.

So two separate days, each side of the murder, he's in that Tercel.

They spent a lot of time trying to tidy Stone down to a beige car.

But the Toyota Tercel is constantly being confirmed as Stone's.

That's a definite.

That's the only definite at the time.

-MICHAEL STONE:

-'At that time I only had one car.

'Nobody's in any doubt that that car was in my possession before,

'during and after the murders.

'They took the car apart, and looked for blood and stuff like that,

'anything, and checked all the forensics at the murder scene.

'There's no way that car was involved in the murders.'

But anyway, the car used by the offender wasn't a white car.

-No.

-Nobody says white.

-Nope.

It still comes back to the main point - there is no beige car.

You look at every possibility -

purchases, scrappings, thefts - nothing.

It doesn't actually mean that he didn't get another car.

If he planned and intended to commit a crime that day,

would he go and do it in his own car that everybody knows?

How do you get another car without being able to prove that?

He either steals one, in which case the owners would report it.

-Borrows one.

-He either borrows one, nobody says that.

It's quite a big deal to get another car and for the police

not to be able to prove that.

I'm really surprised about the car.

It seems extraordinary, because it's the only piece

of consistency that we can lock onto.

-And link the witnesses.

-And link the witnesses.

-REPORTER:

-Police are questioning a man over the murders of Lin Russell

and her six-year-old daughter Megan.

After being arrested at his home in Gillingham, they were given

until late last night to either charge or release him.

After questioning Stone for 24 hours, the police were forced

to apply to the courts to hold him for another 48.

Vital to the investigation was testing whether Stone

could be linked forensically to evidence at the scene.

The blood-covered towelling, the black lace...

..the bloody fingermark inside the lunchbox

and the strands of unknown hair found on items, including the shoes.

That evidence is examined by forensic scientist

Dr Georgina Meakin, who has worked on more than 100 criminal cases.

She starts with the bloodstained bootlace.

The reason the bootlace is really important is that we think that this

was used in the tying up of one or more of the victims.

It appears to have been brought by the perpetrator,

it's then been left down the path, away from the scene.

So presumably dropped by the perpetrator walking away?

And, in total, 75 sections were examined.

And there's no forensic link to Michael Stone.

We also have a string bag found with the six strips of blue towel

inside, that we believe had been ripped into strips, and used.

-The blood staining that we see that's covering them...

-Yeah.

..that was sent for DNA testing, and it comes from Lin.

And the bag itself was heavily bloodstained,

and that also comes from Lin.

So, again, we've got no forensic link to Michael Stone.

OK, let's talk about the lunch bag.

And this was found at Lin's feet.

And it's actually on the top of this lunchbox,

that a potential fingermark is found.

It's been found in blood.

But what the fingermark examiner finds is that there is a low count

loop pattern. So this...

..loop pattern, Michael Stone doesn't have it on his fingerprints.

So this actually excludes Michael Stone from having left

-that fingermark.

-But Lin Russell.

-But Lin Russell.

-Lin does on one of hers.

So it says, "Could be her right middle finger,

"could have left that mark."

This is where there's a real issue with that.

And one of the things to really remember is that

when the crime scene examiner arrived at the scene,

those lunch bags we've just seen were zipped up.

They were closed. They were not open.

So what I find really hard to believe

is that that fingermark would come from one of the victims,

because it would suggest it was then closed up afterwards.

And I feel...

I feel that the fingermark's much more likely to have come from

the perpetrator.

With none of the DNA pointing to Stone,

perhaps the unknown hairs found at the scene

could provide the missing link.

-REPORTER:

-It emerged today that the police have discovered a hair

belonging to the offender at the scene, and have succeeded

in compiling a DNA profile.

The test has worked, we have a profile.

We have something to compare suspects with.

The only problem with this is that we have two have the suspect in the

first place, before we can compare it,

because we need to take a sample from that person.

Now that they had a prime suspect, they could compare that DNA.

So this was a pair of children's jelly shoes

that were found near Megan's head.

Hairs were taken from the soles of those shoes,

and they were examined microscopically.

They were found to be different from the victim's.

So they were submitted for DNA analysis.

They found that those hairs could not have come from the victims,

and they could not have come from Michael Stone.

So now we have some unknown DNA, at this point.

We cannot connect Michael Stone's DNA to these murders.

-Yeah, exactly.

-OK, so it's another example of a lack.

I'm saying it's not his DNA.

Is it possible to commit a crime like this

and not leave any forensics?

I find it really difficult to believe that an assailant could

commit this offence and not leave traces of himself behind.

Obviously, he's manhandling them, he's tying up the shoelaces,

he's tying up the piece of the towel.

You'd expect him to be leaving his trace, his DNA, on these items.

The problem is, you have to bear in mind, this is 1996.

DNA testing was in its infancy.

You know, people now are a lot more aware of forensic science

and the kind of testing that can be done.

So, back then, you weren't so aware of it.

There are forensic... You know, potential for forensic links,

they just haven't... A person hasn't been found that links with them.

Hairs are a wonderful thing in forensic science,

-because you shed hair.

-But they're also really...

-Exactly. And so they're really easily transferred.

-Yes.

And these three victims had just been to the swimming baths.

Yes, exactly. I'm not saying they're necessarily the perpetrator's,

-but they're not Michael Stone's.

-But they're not Michael Stone's.

Where does this put us in...

-It's no more...

-..Michael Stone's case?

Well, basically, it's not providing any forensic link

to Michael Stone, still.

So just because there is no forensic link,

doesn't prove that Michael Stone didn't do it.

We know the crime occurred, therefore we know there's

an offender. That offender could have been Michael Stone,

it could have been someone else.

Based on the scientific evidence, we simply don't know.

What's Stone got to say about the forensics and DNA?

Well, the thing is, he was quite confident.

The officer actually puts to him on one of the very first days

that he was interviewed, you know, "We're trying to get to the bottom

"of a very serious double murder."

Stone says this. "I'm confident it's going to come back, and it ain't me.

"You've had my mouth swab, as well.

"I've given it, and I'm confident it's going to come back,

"it won't be me."

'They said, "We've put the hair under the microscope."

'I said, "I guarantee you, you'll see that it's not me,

'"it can't be me."

'I was confident. I knew straightaway, as soon as they said

'there was hairs on the body and that, I knew it wasn't mine,

'you know what I mean? But I was confident and bold with my answers

'all the time, because I knew that it wasn't, you know...

'Cos I knew I hadn't been there.

'And I said, "Take my hair, take my DNA and that.

'"That'll show you."

'I was keen to give it, you know?'

I've dealt with cases where there has been no forensic link.

That is a huge disappointment.

It would be a huge disappointment as an SIO.

The police were running out of time, and had to charge Stone,

or release him.

They had no evidence directly linking him to the murders,

but they did have evidence of other unrelated crimes.

Stone was charged with those,

and remanded in prison while the investigation continued.

It's been ages since I've been down here.

In the weeks that followed, he was visited regularly in prison

by his sister, Barbara.

I worried about Mick, and what would happen to him in prison

as somebody who was thought of as somebody who'd killed children.

That's quite bad, in the prison system.

The media were showing a lot of interest in everything

to do with our family life,

and everybody was being led to believe...

that he did it.

Everybody else hated him.

The public hated him.

Even the once-a-week trips to court -

I saw a crowd had gathered and they were all throwing rocks

at the van.

That was probably the lowest point, I think.

But, nevertheless, the back of my mind, I thought,

"It won't last for long."

He would come home, and, therefore, it wouldn't be a problem any more.

While Michael Stone was on remand in prison,

police finally had their breakthrough.

A prisoner named Damien Daley came forward,

claiming Stone had confessed to the killings in graphic detail

during a conversation they were having via a central heating pipe

connecting their cells.

I was, sort of, like, intrigued to hear what he did have to say,

even though it was sickening and frightening.

Something was just, sort of, like, drawing me to the

actual conversation, you know, listening to it.

Basically, I didn't like what I was hearing.

It was like being told a horror story.

Daley's statement was the evidence police needed to make their case.

And on the 20th of October 1997, Michael Stone was charged

with the murders of Lin and Megan Russell

and the attempted murder of Josie.

-REPORTER:

-The man accused of murdering Lin Russell

and her six-year-old daughter, Megan, has gone on trial.

One year later, the trial of Michael Stone

began at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent.

It's the most crowded courtroom I've ever been in.

You had to have a ticket to get in,

cos there was such massive interest.

You could have said it was the hottest ticket in town.

They were so many people here.

Every national paper had at least one reporter here.

Every morning, there would be the photographers' ballet

of trying to get the van shot.

-REPORTER:

-In custody - the 38-year-old man

accused of murdering a mother

and her daughter and attempting to kill a third member of the family.

You're sitting there, and they bring him up

out of the cells for the first time, you know, you do look at him.

You do want to see what this guy looks like.

And there's a lot of anticipation and a lot of suspense.

Everybody wanted somebody to be guilty of this,

because it was so horrible.

Opening the prosecution, Anne Rafferty QC

said that although witnesses would be called,

there was no scientific evidence to link him to the scene

of the crime.

The theory was that Stone had travelled to Chillenden

to feed his drug habit, by committing a robbery...

..during which the Russell family were attacked.

The case was mostly circumstantial,

but there were now three prisoners testifying about what Stone had

allegedly said in jail.

Mark Jennings and Barry Thompson

claimed he'd suggested to each of them an involvement in the crimes.

But the Crown's key witness was Damien Daley.

Stephen Kamlish QC is examining Damien Daley's testimony.

He says Stone started confessing to him through a pipe in the wall.

And this is what he said...

I'm going to summarise, but I'll read out some of the bits in full.

"On Tuesday the 23rd of September 1997, about 8pm,

"I was alone in my cell when I became aware of a prisoner

"in a cell next to me.

"Michael Stone talked about smashing an egg,

"and that the inside was mush.

"He then said, "I tied them up with the towels,

"but I didn't need to, because they were out of the game."

And then he got the impression that Stone was actually getting off

on telling this story.

"He said the towels were wet,

"and mentioned something about shoelaces.

Then he talked about the dog barking, and he told

Stone to shut up, because he was sickened by what he was hearing.

And he said, "I told him, "I'll tell the screws what you said.""

So that is Daley's story.

Powerful stuff, powerful stuff.

-REPORTER:

-The lawyer defending Michael Stone has told the court

that the prosecution's case relies on evidence from what he called

"a bunch of convicts."

It was now up to Stone to decide whether to take the stand

and defend himself against the prisoner's claims.

The decision whether to give evidence or not

is clearly a vital decision in any trial.

Particularly in one as important as this.

Daley was quite a consistent witness

in the sense that he wouldn't be budged from his story.

In all these cases, it's only his word against Michael Stone's.

There was only one person who could speak to that,

other than the witness for the prosecution,

and that was Michael Stone himself.

-REPORTER:

-Lawyers acting for Michael Stone,

the man accused of the Russell murders in Kent more than

two years ago, say he will not go into the witness box.

Why didn't we hear from Stone?

The impact on the jury of not...

-Not denying it.

-..not hearing from him, I mean, it's a massive risk.

-Not having his day in court.

-It's a massive risk, isn't it?

-Yeah, course it is.

-The real question the jury were going

to be asking themselves is -

all the other evidence is circumstantial evidence,

so it may or may not be him.

So the one thing the jury wanted to hear

was his account of not having confessed to Daley. Right?

That is the reason why he ought to have given evidence, to deny it.

You want to hear what his response is.

You want to see the look in his eye when he says, "I'm not guilty."

You want to hear that and you want to see it.

What about the impact on the jury of not seeing Stone defending himself?

I would infer that there's something to hide,

otherwise they'd be saying, "This wasn't me,

"and I certainly didn't make that confession to him.

"He's lying."

The decision is always made by the defendant and not by his lawyers.

It has to be his decision, whether to give evidence or not.

I found it very easy to form a view early on

that he would be a disastrous witness.

-MICHAEL STONE:

-'I did very, very, very much

'want to defend myself.

'I wanted to scream it out.

'You know, when they said to me, "Did you confess to Damien Daley

'"through the pipe?" I would go, "No, of course I never.

'And as soon as they started going, "Yes, you did, you did,

'"we know you did, he said you did," I would have just lost my rag.

'I would have just lost my rag. I would have just started screaming

'at the prosecution, "You're setting me up, you dirty load

'"of corrupt bastards." I would have started screaming at them,

'and then I would have come across like a nutcase.

'Clegg said, "You will come across exactly like the

'"sort of person that's done this crime.

'"Like a nutcase."'

After 14 days, the trial was now over.

You can see the jurors on the other side, and they're there,

sitting in front of you.

And you know that they're going to decide whether he goes to prison for

the rest of his life, or not.

-REPORTER:

-The jury in the trial of Michael Stone has gone

in to consider its verdict. The judge finished his summing up

this morning and told the jury not to hurry in making their decision.

After deliberating over two days, the jury returned its verdict.

-REPORTER:

-Michael Stone has been found guilty of murdering

Lin Russell and her daughter, Megan, and trying to murder

her other daughter, Josie.

-REPORTER:

-Michael Stone - heroin addict,

a man with a violent personality disorder,

a criminal record, now a convicted killer.

The judge told him, "There can't be anyone in this country

"who does not understand the horror of these offences."

At that point Stone shouted out, "It wasn't me, Your Honour!

"I didn't do it!"

-REPORTER:

-So tonight, Stone starts three life sentences for murder.

I heard the guilty verdict,

I actually couldn't believe it.

It's like a big emotional kind of pain, in your heart, really.

I saw Mick, and Mick was going, "I didn't do it!

"It wasn't me! I didn't do it, Your Honour!"

And there was, like, tears in his eyes.

And I think my arm went out, and there was tears in mine.

I just wanted to maintain a bit of self-respect and dignity

for Mick, really.

But from then on, I made a determined effort

that I wasn't the sister of a murderer.

I was the sister of a convicted murderer,

and the two things are something entirely different.

But within 24 hours of the verdict, there was a dramatic turn of events.

One of the three alleged cell confessions they used

in the first trial - Thompson - subsequently admitted

that it was all false.

He admitted, voluntarily, without being pressured,

that he lied about the confession.

So he actually contacted a journalist

after the first conviction to say,

"What I said wasn't true."

And the second prisoner who received...

said a confession, was a guy called Jennings,

who it turned out had been paid £5,000, via his sister,

by The Sun, with the promise of another 10,000 to come.

With two out of the three of the prisoners discredited,

Michael Stone's defence team lodged an appeal.

-REPORTER:

-The Crown had accepted that one of their key witnesses

in the original trial had lied.

For this reason alone, the appeal court judges said they

were minded to allow the appeal.

Stone's conviction was overturned and a retrial ordered.

In the eyes of the law, he was innocent once again.

But there was some evidence that the jury never got to hear.

Buried within the case files is a statement taken after

Stone first became a suspect.

It's from a psychiatric nurse,

part of the team that raised concerns after

the Crimewatch programme.

The testimony was never heard in court.

I think we should just set out some of the things that

his psychiatric nurse says.

She said she only started seeing him in October '95,

so that's, what, nine months before the killing?

So this isn't historic, in that sense.

And this is what she said -

"Michael's behaviour was increasingly agitated and voluble,

"and he was not amenable to reasoning."

In fact, this is on the 4th of July '96,

five days before the Chillenden murders.

So, "Michael's behaviour was increasingly agitated,

"focusing much of his angst towards a previous probation officer.

"The intensity of Michael's anger increased,

"followed by a series of explicit threats to harm or kill this person,

"and his family."

"He was, by now, shouting various threats of violence,

"causing me to fear for my own safety,

"and that of the probation officer and his family.

"He asserted and emphasised his dangerousness,

"suggesting he's too violent to be accommodated in prison

"and would need to be admitted to Broadmoor Hospital,

"with notions of achieving fame and glory for his crimes."

It's made the hairs on my arms come up. It's just...

It's so cold.

So this would have been four or five days before the killings,

where he was so aroused that he started shouting

about what a danger he was to others.

To me, it puts him as...

-..prime suspect.

-The number one suspect.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

On the 4th of July, which was the last time she saw him

before the killing, she says this -

"Michael's behaviour was increasingly agitated and voluble,

"and he was not amenable to reasoning.

"Followed by a series of explicit threats to harm or kill

"the probation officer and his family."

To have this much uncontrollable anger,

this begins to change your perception of him.

And none of this actually indicates that he has done this crime

that we're talking about.

None of them prove this crime at all.

This case, and piecing together who done it,

is about the group of people included within

the killer's profile.

Anybody that says, "I want to go out and kill people,

"and I don't care about it," you'd say was in the broad group of people

who might have committed this crime.

Cos everybody reading about this crime would say,

"Who the hell could do that?"

It's a crime of a psychopath.

-MICHAEL STONE:

-'So far as my probation officer goes, right...

'Obviously, like, he...

'He, he...

'He has decided, right, that...

'Me and my girlfriend, Rachel,

'right, were in a relationship together,

'and he's decided that we're a bad influence on each other, right?

'Then I said, "How would he like it if I did things to him?"

'And I said, "That fucking bastard's been up there,

'"and splitting me up with my girlfriend.

'"How would he like it if I go round his house and fucking kill him,

'"kill his fucking family, and burn his fucking house down?"

'Do you know what I mean?'

-REPORTER:

-The jury has begun hearing evidence in the second trial

of Michael Stone.

If the jury believed Daley, he goes down.

If they don't, Stone walks.

She does remember, distinctly, blood on his top.

I mean, you've got the worst crime in Kent,

and the principal exhibit goes missing.

I'm angry at this situation.

You're on the jury.

Is Stone guilty?