GUILTY UK - Lin (45) & Megan (6) Russell, Chillenden, Kent, 9 July 1996

[dennistakes14theteam]

There were pieces of towel also. The murderer had torn a towel into strips but then they got ‘lost’ … which imo is very convenient considering a lot of people think Michael didn’t do it

I also just want to point out (re: your last point) that Josie described a man who did NOT fit Michael stones description and yet the police failed to acknowledge that …

 

[rvlvr]

Still waiting for the major evidence/confession to exonerate MS.

I don't know. We convicted people for many years based on witness statements, expert testimony, circumstances. The absence of forensics isnt the absence of guilt. He may believe his own lies at this point. His psychologist put his name in the frame. Bellfields gf has said he was elsewhere that day. It's a tough one.

I hear what you’re saying, but the problem is that a lot of these convictions subsequently turned out to be unsafe, largely thanks to the discovery post-conviction of forensic evidence.

The Peter Sullivan conviction for Diane Sindall’s murder is probably the best example of this. On the surface the case against him looked pretty sound. He confessed more than once, couldn’t account for his movements on the night of the killing, and bite mark evidence seemed to tie him to the crime.

Had it not been for the emergence of DNA evidence, which eventually exonerated him, then Peter Sullivan would still be in prison, because he also appealed his conviction on the basis that his confessions had been improperly obtained and that the bite mark evidence was junk science, and both of these were rejected by the court (‘dealt with at the time’, ‘not new evidence’).

And quite a lot of people would’ve been quite happy to see this man, this ‘beast’ as he was dubbed, die behind bars. In Peter’s case he had DNA to fall back on, but what of those who were convicted and evidence was subsequently lost or destroyed, for instance? Or those who were jailed based on now discredited ‘science’? A different jury may well have been persuaded by the soil evidence presented in the case against Adrian Bradshaw, for example, and he could’ve spent the last two decades of his life imprisoned wrongly for Victoria Hall’s murder.

I think we all agree Stone was a good suspect in this case but something feels off. I don’t know if he’s guilty or not but I feel distinctly uncomfortable locking people up for life off the back of such flimsy evidence. ‘Better a guilty man go free’ and all that.

 

[dennistakes14theteam]

Levi Bellfield's alleged confession to Russell murders - just thought I’d add my proof that he was not who josie described