UK News 05-10-2001 Hammer Killer Gets Three Life Sentences who: Convicted killer Michael Stone what: Given three life sentences for Russell family murders where: Crown Court, NOTTINGHAM when: Yesterday snippet: "Michael Stone was jailed for life for the second time yesterday," reports The Telegraph, "after being found guilty of the murders of Lin and Megan Russell and the attempted murder of Megan`s sister, Josie, five years ago." Stone was convicted at his first trial at Maidstone Crown Court in 1998 but was granted a retrial because a witness in the original case later claimed to have lied under oath. Yesterday, a jury in Nottingham found him guilty of tying up and blindfolding the family and battering them with a hammer on their way home from a swimming gala at Goodnestone Primary School in Kent on July 9th 1996. He was given three life sentences. "Yet even Kent police have privately admitted the evidence against him for the Russell murders was fragile," says The Guardian. "A serial criminal who has been known to the police since he was 11, much of Stone`s life has been a blur, either because of his addiction to heroin and its medical substitute methadone, or because of years in prison." The prosecution case relied almost entirely on the evidence of fellow prison inmate, Damian Daley, says The Independent`s Paul Peachey, "who heard Stone`s furtive confession from an adjoining cell while he was on remand." But Josie Russell, who is now 14 and has been brain damaged since the attack, allegedly identified Michael Stone from a picture in The Sun following his first conviction, according to reports today. "Josie jumped up, pointed at the photograph, and said, `It`s him!" says a source quoted in the paper. [... more]

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