please read part 1 prior to reading this blog
Michael Stone
The Police investigating the Chillenden murders were in a difficult position, stranger murders are uncommon and for this one to have taken place outdoors in the countryside meant there was few scientific clues. Meanwhile their hopes were pinned on young Josie, a girl with life threatening injuries who was fighting for her life in hospital. At the time, she was not in any condition to talk about or to describe what had happened to her and he Mother and sister that fateful afternoon and the police did not know even if she would survive, let alone be ever able to describe her attacker.
So Detectives began the unenviable task of a deep dive into criminal records looking for anyone who could be remotely responsible for such a frenzied and unprovoked attack on a defenceless mother and her young daughters.
During the months following that attack, as Josie slowly healed Police researched literally hundreds of men with convictions for violence and interviewed and eliminated each one in turn in thorough and painstaking work.
Then, in July 1997, a year after the murders, detectives questioned and then arrested 37-year-old Michael Stone.
Michael Stone is the man behind bars convicted of one of the UK's most heinous crimes convicted in 1998 of the Murder of Dr Lin Russell, her youngest daughter Megan and the attempted murder of her eldest daughter Josie who miraculously survived despite suffering life threatening injuries in the random attack which took place on a narrow country lane on a summers evening a year earlier.
Stone is an ex-heroin addict from Tunbridge Wells with a history of mental illness. He is serving three life sentences and is likely to remain in prison until at least 2023, when he will be 63.
Michael Stone was born Michael John Goodban in 1960 to Barbara Stone, as one of five children in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent in 1960.
His childhood home was not a happy one. His parents separated and he was never sure of the identity of his real father, and his mother subsequently married four different men and was known to have had a constant casual relationships who came and went making his childhood home turbulent and unhappy. According to relatives of Stone one of the husbands, Peter Stone, from whom he and Barbara took their family name, beat him with a hammer, which is of course the weapon used in the Russell killings.
There was during this time numerous incidents of domestic violence and the physical and sexual abuse he received at the hands of some of the men in his mother’s life. According to relatives of Stone, one of the husbands, Peter Stone, from whom he and Barbara took their family name beat him with a hammer, which is of course the weapon used in the Russell killings.
it was that assault which originally brought him to the attention of the authorities as a victim and eventually resulted in his being placed into a care home where it is reported, he became the victim of further sexual and physical abuse
As a criminal he first came to the attention of the Police at the age of 11 or 12 whilst in care and received the first of 14 convictions amassed during this time, these were mainly for being involved in shoplifting and burglary a pattern of offending which continued into adulthood. whilst reports of his childhood are more disturbing as reports suggest he was known to steal animals from pet shops and then torture them to death and had even forced a schoolgirl at knifepoint to strip whilst in a play area.
Once leaving the care system, Stone began using heroin and soon became an addict and often stole to feed his habit. He was also displaying clear symptoms of mental illness. He heard voices in his head and on a visit to a drug rehabilitation centre went ‘berserk’, yelling that he would decapitate his victims.
It wasn’t long before Stone found himself being put behind prison bars. He served three prison sentences in the 1980s for robbery, burglary, grievous bodily harm and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
In the early 1980's in relation to the GBH conviction Stone stabbed a former school friend in the chest while his victim was asleep on a sofa. When the police arrested Stone for this offence, he attacked the two arresting police officers gouging the eye of one. For these offences he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.
Shortly after his release in 1987 he was again jailed this time for eight years for armed robbery, and he ended up serving six years.
released yet again Stone went to live with his mother by the Medway. Prior to the murders, Stone had received support for his drug addiction and mental health problems and was under the supervision of the National Probation Service during this time.
Stone was also to spend months in psychiatric hospitals following his convictions. A local authority report released a decade after the murders revealed both his mental health problems and failures in the health system to address them properly in the months before July 1996.
During his stay in psychiatric hospitals Stone had told doctors several times that he felt like murdering children. he spoke about using a hammer and going into the countryside. He also missed taking medication when not being supervised correctly which affected his stability.
The last threat to kill was made only five days before the Russell family were attacked.
Whilst free Stone developed a new ‘modus operandi’, to feed his need for cash he would drive into the rural parts of Kent and find remote locations such as houses and farms. Stone would break into these premises to steal items of value all to sell to support his heroin addiction. He also robbed small village post offices for quick cash due to lack of people and CCTV in these small villages.
On the day of the murders police believed he was in the area on such a mission. There was a report of a theft of a motor mower from a garden in the next village to Chillenden. The owner had witnessed a car driving away following the theft, but was unable to make a note of the License plate, but he did remember the make and colour. When police checked, they found Stone owned an identical car at that time.
in early May 1997, 10 months after the incident, Josie's memory began to recover and her speech was improved enough for Police to sit down with her and videotape a full interview of the day in question.
on 9th July 1997, on the first anniversary of the attack, using evidence gleaned from several eyewitnesses in the are and brave Josie's testimony, BBC TV decided to run a crimewatch reconstruction of the day in a hope of jogging people's memories or getting another lead to point Police in the right direction.
Following that reconstruction a Psychiatrist called the police about one of his patients he was worried about, Michael Stone who looked like the e-fit and he told the police "Stone was in the mood for killing."
In July 1997, police arrested and charged Stone, who was 37 at the time, with the crimes
When he was arrested Stone denied any knowledge of the crime and was remanded in custody while an ID parade was arranged.
During his time in custody on remand on 23rd September 1997, he made a request to the prison Governor to be moved to the segregation unit to 'escape from prisoners who were making up stories about his involvement in the crime', he was placed in a cell next to a heroin addict named Damien Daley.
A key piece of evidence used at Trial was that during his time in the next cell to Daley, Stone confessed to him that he had committed the murders. This confession has been often disputed as it merely repeated facts that were in the public domain and Daley, admitted in court to being an accomplished liar "in order to get by in life."
Stone 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, on the evening of 26th September. Two other prisoners, Barry Thompson and Mark Jennings, who had heard Stone making incriminating remarks which tended to support Daley's evidence about the confession.
"I tied them up with wet towels while their dog barked loudly. One of them tried to run away."
The Confession - 'spoken' by Michael Stone on 23rd September 1997
At the trial in October 1998, Stone, pleaded not guilty two counts of murder and one of attempted murder, before a Jury of nine men and three women. Flanked by three uniformed prison officers he wore a white T-shirt and dark coloured tracksuit trousers.
His sister Barbara and mother Jane Standen were in the public gallery. Before he was brought into the dock the court heard Stone was unhappy because his handcuffs, which he must wear in his holding cell, were too tight.
Evidence came in the form of testimony from Daley, Thompson and Jennings about the confession.
A friend of Stone - Sheree Batt - was called to testify that she remembered seeing Stone a year previously wearing a blood-stained tee shirt at around the time of the murders.
After the trial however, Thompson admitted to a newspaper he had told the jury "a pack of lies" in order to obtain a fee of £5,000 from ‘The Sun’ for his story (with the promise of an additional £10,000 if Stone was convicted);
Jennings's family confirmed they had received money from a tabloid newspaper; while Sheree Batt's mother publicly disowned her daughter for lying.
The trial revealed there was no forensic evidence linking Stone to the scene, but that he was familiar with the area.
Despite pleading his innocence, Stone was sentenced to three life sentences at Maidstone Crown Court in 1998.
After Stone's conviction, there was obviously a lot of public feeling that a man with such a history of violence and mental health issues would be able to roam the countryside, he was a known drug addict and ex-violent offender under supervision of the National Probation service and yet was still stealing and now convicted of murder. However, individuals diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder, such as Stone were unable to be detained under the 1983 Mental Health Act as their disorder meant they were considered untreatable.
A person with antisocial personality disorder may:
exploit, manipulate or violate the rights of others
lack concern, regret or remorse about other people's distress
behave irresponsibly and show disregard for normal social behaviour
have difficulty sustaining long-term relationships
be unable to control their anger
lack guilt, or not learn from their mistakes
blame others for problems in their lives
repeatedly break the law
A person with antisocial personality disorder will have a history of conduct disorder during childhood, such as truancy (not going to school), delinquency (for example, committing crimes or substance misuse), and other disruptive and aggressive behaviours.
An inquiry was held into the care he received for his drug addiction and mental health problems.
The diagnosis and treatment of personality disorder continues to generate much controversy among psychiatrists. There is a strong view within the profession that people with personality disorder should not be considered treatable or, if at all treatable, that treatment should be offered only in specialised centres. Studies suggest that about 10–13% of the adult population in England and Wales have a personality disorder
the threats to kill made days before the Russell murders were examined as to whether he should have been allowed to be a free man or if she should have been sectioned as a danger to the community. Stone threats to kill were made to a psychiatric nurse against his family and criminal justice staff only five days before the murders of Lin and Megan Russell.
The findings of the inquiry was that there were 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 report also concluded that the murders could not have been prevented, a finding always challenged by Dr Shaun Russell.
Furthermore, due to Stone's conviction the then Health Secretary Alan Milburn, proposed a reform of the Mental Health Act 1983. The White Paper proposal sought to reform the Act's "treatability test", The test was that only patients whose mental disorders were considered treatable could be detained. It was proposed to make changes to the Act to allow the detaining of individuals who had not committed a crime. The proposed measures were described as "draconian" and a number of changes were made before the bill was finally passed as the Mental Health Act 2007
The four disorders in the original Mental Health Act 1983
• ‘Mental disorder’ means mental illness, arrested or incomplete development of mind, psychopathic disorder and any other disorder or disability of mind, and ‘mentally disordered’ shall be construed accordingly.
• ‘Severe mental impairment’ means a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind which includes severe impairment of intelligence and social functioning and is associated with abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned, and ‘severely mentally impaired’ shall be construed accordingly.
• ‘Mental impairment’ means a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind (not amounting to severe mental impairment) which includes significant impairment of intelligence and social functioning and is associated with abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned, and ‘mentally impaired’ shall be construed accordingly.
• ‘Psychopathic disorder’ means a persistent disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including significant impairment of intelligence) which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned.
The 2007 amendments replaced these four with ‘mental disorder’, defined as ‘any disorder or disability of the mind’.
by abolishing the ‘treatability’ test, a patient with personality disorder could be detained for treatment even if it had no effect, a high-risk patient with a personality disorder could face long-term incarceration because of risk alone, detaining this person a hospital would not have to show they were "curing" the disorder only have to show that appropriate treatment was available to that person.
Meanwhile Stone was continuing to protest his innocence and on 8th February 2001 the matter was taken before the Court of Appeal as a result of the discredited testimony of the fellow convicts. The Appeal Court ordered a retrial
It is worth noting that the prosecution had analysed and collated hundreds of newspaper reports of the crime published at various times to argue that there would be no specific prejudice in allowing Stone to be re-tried, yet during the re-trial only the Daily Mirror article was mentioned (which Daley had been reading while Stone was 'confessing').
in February 2001 the retrial heard how a key prosecution witness went back on his evidence and another witness's credibility was called into question for accepting money from newspapers to sell his story, but Stone was convicted a second time in 2001. Lawyers for Stone once again argued that his trial was not fair, this time because of the way the trial judge had summed up the case. 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
but doubt has always overshadowed if he really was the man who carried out the attack.
read about Levi Bellfield and links that some have proffered may cast doubts on Stone's conviction.
dedicated to the memory of Lin and Megan Russell and to the bravery and recovery of Josie Russell
(c) Kel L 2021
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