Kent On Sunday, June 14, 2009

Jump straight to Chris Murphy’s article

On June 14, 2009, the regional newspaper Kent On Sunday ran a front page article on the appeal I put out on my main website. In spite of its superficially hostile tone this is an excellent feature from our perspective, and even at this late stage, no publicity is bad publicity. The lion’s share had to go of course to Shaun Russell, who would obviously rather this thing went away so he and his surviving daughter can obtain closure, as they say in the media, but unfortunately it won’t.

In the article he alludes to a website publishing details of the autopsy reports; this can actually be found in the Schedule Of Admitted Facts from the second murder trial. Dr Russell is not too pleased with this either; he would have been horrified if I had been able to obtain what I wanted to publish, photographs from the crime scene and possibly from the autopsy itself, but these are restricted and probably will not be released until myself, he, and everyone else connected with this case have long departed this Earth.

Neither myself, nor John Aidiniantz, nor any member of Michael Stone’s legal team, and certainly not the man himself, wishes to cause either Dr Russell or his daughter unnecessary distress, or any distress at all, but as I said, unfortunately this thing will not go away. They have suffered and continue to suffer psychologically, but Michael Stone is also a victim in this case. And I would add something of which Dr Russell himself might like to take note. In his comment in the Kent On Sunday article he alludes to the conspiracy cranks and nutters who have plagued him and Josie for years. He must be aware that some of these cranks will have pointed the finger at him, but early on in the inquiry, such suspicious fingers would not have been pointed solely by those long on speculation and short on facts. Murder is a horrible business, and sometimes the investigation of murder is every bit as horrible. By virtue of his relationship with the victims, Dr Russell would have been a bona fide suspect from day one, and although the police would not have let on, they would have investigated his movements at the time of the murders extremely thoroughly. His associates would also have been investigated, as would any apparently suspicious financial transactions.

Now suppose they had run out of suspects, and out of ideas, what would have prevented Damian Daley or some other lowlife putting him in the frame? What if he had rebuffed the advances of a sympathetic female colleague, and she had gone to the police and claimed he had hired a hit man to murder his wife but to make it look like a random attack?

Four years ago I wrote to the Home Secretary suggesting this method of taking terrorist suspects off the streets. Although I have published this letter in the Humour Section, it is really no laughing matter.

As John Aidiniantz is fond of saying, this case is not really about Michael Stone. When Chris Murphy asked me for a couple of lines about the distress my approach would cause Dr Russell and Josie, I told him he could have four lines and gave him the following:

Look at the massive evidence against Siôn Jenkins,
then look at the so-called evidence against Michael Stone, and ask yourself honestly and objectively -
why is Stone in prison,
and why is Jenkins walking the street?

Siôn Jenkins is without doubt a cold-blooded murderer for the simple reason that no one else could have murdered his foster daughter within the mousehole of opportunity available, but after his first conviction his legal team were able to successfully obfuscate the only real issue in that case to such an extent that the Court Of Appeal on one occasion and the juries in both retrials were left with a lingering, and wholely unreasonable, doubt about the presence of a third, ectoplasmic individual at the crime scene.

Jenkins though is an extraordinary exception to the rule. True, guilty men and women do walk free from criminal trials every day for fairly trivial matters, serious indictable offences, and occasionally for the ultimate crime. But very many people are convicted even of murder on extremely tenuous evidence, for which the threshold for conviction should in theory be high.

If a man, any man, can be convicted of murder on such evidence as that used to convict Michael Stone, then nobody is safe. The only reason Damian Daley’s nonsense was given the time of day, was because the authorities not only wanted to believe him, but needed to believe him.

Alexander Baron
Sydenham
London

June 17, 2009