Some crimes refuse to stay buried. In July 1996, Lin Russell, 45, and her six-year-old daughter Megan were battered to death with a claw hammer in a quiet Kent lane near Chillenden. Nine-year-old Josie survived the onslaught, though her injuries were horrific. Michael Stone was convicted in 1998, retried and convicted again in 2001 after the first verdict was quashed. Nearly three decades on, the case has lurched back into the spotlight thanks to Levi Bellfield's claims that he did it.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission began its review of Stone's convictions in 2023 after those reported confessions surfaced. Now it has decided to get a DNA sample from Bellfield himself. A spokesperson for the commission put it plainly:
We intend to obtain a sample from Mr Bellfield. No date has been set for this.No rush, apparently. One wonders whether the delay is bureaucratic caution or simply the system's fondness for dragging its feet when the public wants answers.
Fresh DNA was taken from Stone around the 30th anniversary of the murders on 9 July 2026. That timing feels less like coincidence and more like a quiet acknowledgment that three decades of locked-up doubt deserve proper forensic closure. Unidentified male DNA was found at the scene back in 1996, alongside a profile matching Lin Russell's husband. It never matched Stone. Bellfield, currently serving whole-life orders for the murders of Milly Dowler, Marsha McDonnell and Amélie Delagrange plus the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, now finds himself in the crosshairs of modern testing.
Theresa Clark, solicitor for Bellfield, sounded breezily cooperative.
I’m sure he’d agree to the DNA test. He’s going to cooperate.How reassuring. Paul Bacon, Stone's solicitor, struck a more earnest note, saying he was
very hopeful the CCRC review and DNA test will eventually lead to the real culprit being found.One can almost hear the exhaustion after years of appeals that went nowhere.
This isn't about softening accountability for savage violence or indulging in fashionable doubts about the entire justice system. It's about insisting that evidence, not celebrity prisoner boasts or discredited witnesses, decides who rots in prison. Bellfield's track record of confessing to all sorts of crimes, some swiftly dismissed by police, hardly inspires confidence in his sudden fit of honesty. Yet the presence of that unidentified male DNA demands rigorous checking. If it ties Bellfield to Chillenden, fine. If it clears Stone, the system must own the mistake without the usual performative hand-wringing.
The CCRC's job is narrow but vital: decide whether there's a realistic chance the Court of Appeal would quash the convictions. That process should be thorough, unsentimental and focused on the victims' dignity rather than narrative convenience. Lin and Megan Russell aren't footnotes in a miscarriage-of-justice documentary. They were a mother and child slaughtered in broad daylight. Josie has lived with the aftermath for thirty years. The least the state can do is test the DNA properly and stop treating finality as optional.