Episode #1.2

Even if I were not the Webmaster of ismichaelstoneguilty dot info, I would give this two part documentary nine out of ten. Unlike the legal professionals featured in it, I am not obligated to use temperate language. The conviction of Michael Stone for the Chillenden Murders is not a case of reasonable doubt; it is not a miscarriage of justice; it is the most ludicrous and shameful conviction ever effected in an English courtoom, certainly since women and on occasion men were tried for and convicted of witchcraft. Indeed, in some respects it is worse, because witches were often convicted on their own admission without torture or the threat of torture, for example, in 1612, Elizabeth Southerns confessed to selling her soul to a familiar named Tibb. Michael Stone made no such admission, not to a legally constituted court, not to a police officer, and certainly not to Damien Daley through a prison wall.

Any informed, fair-minded person who watches this documentary must conclude at the very least that the case against Michael Stone was always wafer thin, and the case against Levi Bellfield a great deal stronger. Not mentioned here is another suspect, a local man who was both arrested and the subject of an intense investigation in December 1996. The case against him was likewise stronger than the non-case against Stone, yet it was discontinued.

Not mentioned here is the fact that the man who is most likely responsible for the guilty verdict in Stone's retrial was his Counsel William Clegg, who had also defended him at the first trial. Stone did not testify at either trial; that was a judgment call first time around because of his quite appalling criminal record, but if he had taken the stand at the retrial, all the dirt had already been thrown at him, and if nothing else he could have put it into context, in particular he had no history of sex offending nor of physically attacking women.