Maidstone man Michael Stone has been convicted twice of the 1996 Chillenden Murders, and is currently languishing in Full Sutton High Security Prison where he will soon begin his twelfth year of incarceration. Stone was a career criminal, a man with an appalling record including two convictions for serious violence, and as a drug user and dealer to boot he is not the kind to elicit much sympathy. But aside from the ludicrous “evidence” against him – a solitary confession he is alleged to have shouted through a prison wall to another inmate in the isolation unit – there are other considerations which lead those who have studied this case to believe he is not the man responsible for the death of Dr Lin Russell and her youngest daughter.
Although Stone had some knowledge of martial arts and was not the type of man most people would invite into their homes, he had no history of violence against women and did not really have the physique or presence that would have enabled him to dominate an intelligent, educated woman like Dr Russell who would surely have fought like a tigress to defend herself and her two daughters if she believed he intended to rape them or worse. At that time, Stone’s criminal activity was related purely to financial gain. As far as he carried weapons they were for his own protection against fellow predators. He was out to make a quick buck with minimum risk. Robbing a woman on a back country lane who was on the way home from a school swimming gala does not fit into that category, nor does the treatment meted out to the victims.
The most likely scenario for this horrific crime is that the perpetrator or perpetrators set out to commit a murder just for the fun of it, and there is now a far better suspect for the Chillenden Murders than Stone ever was.
In February last year, Levi Bellfield was convicted of the murders of two students in South London. Marsha MacDonnell and Amelie Delagrange were followed from their buses and battered to death. In court it was suggested that Miss Delagrange had rejected his advances, but there was no rape, nor sexual assault of either victim, and Bellfield had attacked at least one other young girl in a similar fashion, and had also run down schoolgirl Kate Sheedy and then reversed over her. Again, there was no suggestion of a sexual motive, it was simply an act of pure and totally gratuitous evil.
This is the word that best describes Bellfield, a truly evil man, but there is more. He had not only worked as a night club bouncer but knew Kent reasonably well. Physically formidable, he is the type of man who surely could dominate a woman, her two daughters and the family dog – which was also killed.
Bellfield has also been named as the prime suspect in the murder of thirteen year old Amanda Dowler who disappeared in March 2002, and whose remains were found in woodland six months later.
I set up the website ismichaelstoneguilty in December 2002. Recently, another website has been set up at http://www.michaelstone.co.uk/
Like myself, the webmaster of this new site believes Bellfield is a strong suspect for the Chillenden Murders, far stronger than Michael Stone ever was.
Please study both sites, and if you can add anything constructive, either leave a message on my guestbook or contact one of us direct.
Alexander Baron,
Sydenham,
London
February 23, 2009
[The above essay was first published widely on Usenet as dated.]
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