A man yesterday given life imprisonment for the murder of a woman and her small daughter as they walked along a country lane cried out his innocence to the judge passing sentence.
A jury at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent returned three guilty verdicts against Michael Stone (38). During the 13-day trial he was described as a violently uncontrollable drug addict who bludgeoned Dr Lin Russell and her daughters, Megan and Josie, in a 15-minute frenzy that began as an attempted robbery. Josie (11) survived, but Megan died.
When Mr Justice Ian Kennedy told Stone there was nobody in Britain who did not understand the "complete horror" of his offences, Stone called out: "I didn't do it your honour. It wasn't me."
Sentencing him to life imprisonment on all three counts, and stipulating that he must serve 14 years before he can apply for parole, Mr Justice Kennedy said Stone should "take no comfort from that figure. It is purely academic."
Stone's lawyers said they would be launching an appeal against the convictions.
Speaking after the verdict, Josie's father, Dr Shaun Russell, said the main emotion he felt was "relief" that the whole case was over. He said he felt a degree of pity for Stone and sympathy for his family. When he had told his surviving daughter a man had been convicted her response was: "Good." During the trial, the jury was told that on a summery July afternoon in 1996, Dr Russell had collected her daughters, Megan, who was then six and Josie (9) from Goodnestone Primary School in Chillenden, Kent. They began walking home along a country lane with the family dog, Lucy.
Suddenly Stone confronted them. Waving a hammer, he demanded money. After discovering the family had none with them, Stone tied them up and attacked them killing Lin and Megan Russell and leaving Josie for dead. Her injuries were so severe that her father was initially told that she was dead too. She has spent the last two years trying to recover her health after suffering horrific head injuries.
Det Chief Inspector Dave Stevens, who led the hunt for the killer, described the murders as "among the most horrific crimes ever heard of". However, with no forensic evidence left at the scene and with only sightings of a man matching Stone's description to work on, it was more than a year after the murders before he was arrested, initially in connection with a robbery.
It was Stone's confessions to inmates while he was being held in prison on remand for the Russell murders that eventually incriminated him. A former inmate, Damien Daley, told the court Stone confessed that he had killed Lin and Megan. Stone also told a friend that he would be prepared to kill women and children to eliminate them as witnesses to a crime. As Stone began his life sentences last night, one of the detectives in the case said: "It is difficult to know if Stone really has forgotten in a haze of drugs that he did it, and is mentally disturbed, or if he is just truly evil."
West Kent Health Authority is to hold a full independent inquiry after it was disclosed that Stone had a history of mental illness and had contacted its staff shortly before the crime.