The Countryside Killer – Britain’s Biggest Unsolved Murder?

When missing turns to murder on the 9th July 1996 a family of 4 who had relocated to the Garden of England, Kent would face such devasting loss and tragedy on one of the most miscarriages of justice from who brutally took the lives of two and gravely injured one on a random attack down Cherry Garden Lane. Despite a man serving almost 25 years behind bars for this awful act the investigation continues to puzzle investigators.

I cannot answer the question why it’s beyond me disbelief was my first reaction when I heard what had happened to my family disbelief is my continuing reaction and the thought that anybody could do anything so so crazy we’re missing turns the murder on the 9th of July 1996 a family of four had just relocated to the Garden of England Kent they would face such devastating loss and tragedy on one of the most miscarriages of Justice from someone who brutally took the lives of two of them and severely injured one on a random attack down Cherry Garden Lane despite a man serving almost 25 years behind bars for this awful awful attack this investigation continues to puzzle investigators hello and welcome back to my channel I have taken a break for a very long time I haven’t posted much because of life um but today we’ll be looking into the chillon murders which has a lot of controversy around who did it why they did it and just generally what had happened just want to State again that these are my opinions and my opinions alone I have researched a lot of this case which multiple things documentaries so everything stated is my opinion and my opinion alone on Friday the 9th of July in 1996 in a small village of chingon near Canterbury a family of four including their dog Lucy had woken up on a Friday excited to finish the week the girls Megan 6 and Josie 9 had a swim Galla and brownie so they’re really looking forward to it on a Friday and just to finish the week on a High um sha and Lynn their parents were also just it’s Friday busy morning get the girls ready to go to school so it started as a normal morning with them waking up they usually would eat breakfast in the kitchen however been on a lovely day because they lived in the countryside they would sometimes sit outside but on this occasion it was inside they had become very well-known faces to the community despite moving down from Wales 2 months prior and they were known for being a friendly family they were very in the community and they just came across as a happy loving family unit so back to our timeline they had woken up started get ready for school um sat down for their family breakfast sea drove Megan and Josie to school and then headed to canbury cuz he worked in the local University himself as Shan said s to work Lynn was known for getting on with housework she loved gardening um loved it a lot she’s known to be that a green Farm she’d be in the front guarden the back gard and speaking to people that would pass by um the girls were also very very excited for their swimming Gara and of course brownies and for those who don’t know what brownies is it’s like a um Scouts kind of situation where they would learn about Wildlife how to fend for themselves it’s very DV but for children Sean during this time he took a trip into Canterbury to check on his bike which was being repaired and then he also took a trip to library to return some books that the girls had taken out and that was mainly his day Library the bike shop and work the only reason why we are identifying se’s timeline right now is because police tend to follow close to the family when an incident occurs it was reaching the end of the school day around 300 p.m. and Lynn decided to pick the girls up from school by walking down Cherry Garden Lane this is a route they had become familiar with after moving down it was quick it was a lovely walk through the fields and it passed woodlands and it was just a nice little walk so she headed off around 3:00 with their dog Lucy this was the last movement we are aware of of ly and Lucy from investigators was they headed down this Trail 700 p.m. Sean hadn’t heard from Lynn um since this morning as they were due to return of the coach from the swimming G and ly was to pick them up with Lucy along the trail at first he wasn’t too concerned it seemed Lynn may have taken him to brownies or something else so he decided to start prepping dinner and cooking for when the girls would return home he was at first confused to returning home to an empty home however he fear something small had happened maybe the dog had gone missing or the family had gone out looking for Lucy mid dinner prep the phone began to ring a friend of a family named Liz phoned to ask if everything was okay sha was very confused as why she was asking is everything okay it was only because she was she was scheduled to pick up the girls at 5:00 p.m. for brownies but when she had arrived no one was home and there was no answer to the door 7:30 p.m. at at this point Shan was beginning to be very concerned as he hadn’t heard from Lynn and was unsure why they wouldn’t have been home at 5:00 p.m. he tried to rationalize the situation he tried to hope for the best he didn’t want to assume something awful had happened but he was concerned he was worried as any parent husband anyone would be if they hadn’t heard from their loved ones he found multiple friends in that situations to see if they had heard from her or the children during this time time was passing he was very scattered he wanted to ask anyone and everyone if they had heard from them or anything literally anything 900 p.m. Sean’s concerned gu and Gru’s time was getting on getting on he was unsure why Lynn would be out this late with the girls and Lucy um it was then he contacted the police to file a missing report for her and his daughters and Lucy the dog it was at this point he decided to try and search for himself he drove down the lanes where the girls would have walked to school or where Lynn would walk to pick the girls up from school he would then would be shouting out all through the fields with his torch trying to see if even Lucy would run back to him from hearing his name or just anyone would respond to him he then contacts the Vets to see as we said before if something had happened to Lucy and he just hadn’t been contacted and she was too wrapped in sorting out if something had happened he even founded all of the local hospitals to see if they had been there and they just failed to contact him nothing there was no trace of them anywhere at all and he was so lost confused he didn’t understand what was going on and he didn’t want to fear the worse Sean was frantic at this point and he couldn’t figure out what had happened or where his family was in this moment he contacted the police again just to say he did fear for their safety and it was out of the ordinary for all of them to go missing with no contact nothing but luckily since the first phone call when he contacted them um they had already set the ball rolling they were sending people to his address um dog units to try and find find them and send out a search party for the girls and for Lucy 11:00 p.m. when the police showed up to the Russell residence the whole unit was dispatched to look around the property starting with the fields that surrounded their home and questioning Shan himself as I’ve stated before a lot of Investigations start with the people that are close to the family like husbands Partners aunties uncles just relatives anyone just because a lot of the time is someone closer to home so Shan was questions in regard to his marriage to whether or not they were having issues in their marriage to Warrant Lynn taking the children away from him the police stated he must remain at the property if she was to return so he wasn’t able to search alongside law enforcement 11 11:30 p.m. Liz who was the one who phoned at during prep for dinner came to the property to support sha in this investigation and also just to explain the timeline at 5:00 p.m. what happened when she had arrived at the property and no one had answered the door this was also to support Shan during this painful procedure of the search it had been 6 hours since they were last seen at school 6 hours of unaccounted time of where they were what they were doing and what had happened to them unfortunately it wasn’t long until all three bodies and their dog was discovered just 100 to 200 ft away from the property down the lanes laying in bushes the grizzly Discovery LED investigators to believe all three were dead where they had been ambushed and brutally attacked in an interview Shan told them he knew the demeanor of the officers had changed when they walked back into his home the sentence that rang out for his head and his home was there seems to be suspicious circumstances he went numb and went into autopilot of what’s happened to my girls what’s going on and and he just wanted an explanation for what had happened and why they were laying 100 to 200 m in the bushes away from his home he was asked to head to deal police station to answer some questions but was given the opportunity to rest beforehand so he could go in the morning if he please however he denied this he said no and he wanted to get this investigation rolling and find out the truth to what had happened to his girls he stated in an interview that his whole world collapsed he he didn’t know what to do anymore he was so lost he’d lost everyone in his family who he cared about and he did state that he had Suicidal Tendencies and it broke him he went numb and he didn’t know what to do Saturday the 10th of July 1996 at 6:00 a.m. sha began to help police map out the accounts of his family and the movements on the day of the horrific attack had taken place this is when the police officer told sha about his daughter Josie who was 9 years old had survived the attack and was in critical condition in hospital in that moment his whole demeanor his whole attitude towards the investigation had changed he no longer felt like he had nothing to live for he had to fight for his daughter he had to fight for justice for Josie cuz he’s lost his wife and his youngest he all he had left was Josie when I was researching into this investigation um one of the officers had said to um Shan did they have lots of freckles and it was the minute detail of describing his daughters but he said that he knew just from that that it was Josie cuz she had loads of little frecks all over her face and she yeah sha was then sent to London Hospital where he would have to identify Josie and basically stay with her to make sure she was okay and help her with her recovery process the news of this disgusting act on a mother and a child had spread like wildfire throughout the community because of the reports of it it was very hard not to figure out who it was and this is it was shocking to the Village because nothing went on there it was a quite dainty little town and the media made this situation completely difficult for them they made it obvious who the victims were and what had happened to them into detail and due to it being reported on radio television print even like magazines and newspapers it spread like wildare the media were also quite disgraceful in this situation they were hanging in bushes trying to get pictures of the um crime scene they were also hanging around schools trying to get people to speak in regards to the situation they had no respect to understanding towards the victims all they wanted was The Latest Scoop and what had happened and how it had happened happened and no privacy was given to the family at that time it was difficult for the police as well because with the media Outlets hanging around trying to get information they were trying to they were around the the crime scene and it was such a large crime scene because it was on a field it was in a public area anything could have been discarded left right and center but luckily the police they were very good with preserving the crime scene tapeover in large areas to ensure that no one would contaminate it or make it any worse than it was so what actually happened so sha after this wanted to move himself and Josie back to Wales as living in the area was too heartbreaking and he wanted Josie to recover closer to home and closer to family and just away from where the crime had happened and to have no ties to it so her recovery would be a lot easier um we were only now able to identify the sequence of events due to Josie’s bravery and resilience Josie throughout her time of recovery she would scrap book and what had happened and she would also make little figurines to basically show people what had happened to her her sister and her mom and by doing this she was able to piece together what had happened but this wasn’t until December 1996 which was 6 weeks after the recovery she was able to use her voice as well to tell detective what had really happened so what really happened on the 9th of July 1996 back to the day of the incident the three of them had been returning on foot down Cherry Garden Lane around 4:20 p.m. when a car passed them Josie even recalled waving at the driver’s the car as it passed by as they walked further down the lane the car was parched straight across the track blocking their path the driver got out of the vehicle which was a man and he was holding a hammer in his hand he then approached the family and demanded money from Lynn and she basically said that she didn’t have her purse but she left it at home and was willing to go back home to retrieve some money for him he denied that he didn’t want that he wanted something quick there easy to take and this is when Lynn told her daughter Josie to run run to the nearest person for help get anyone but she didn’t make it for he grabbed her and hit her on the head with the hammer he had held in his hand he then walked the three of them and Lucy the dog off the track to a dense area just off of the PA where he tied them up with strips torn from Josie’s blue swimming towel a boot lace a pair of tights and he also blindfolded them he hit Lynn on the head 15 times causing severe head trauma and killing her josy’s skull was smashed her brain tissue was protruding from the wound behind her left ear and lacerations to her skull which led to extensive tearing to the covering of her brain Megan was then under the same face being hit seven times suffering massive skull fractures and exposing her brain tissue after this disgusting attack um the man got back into his car and just drove away drove away from the scene leaving these girls and their mom tied up Lynn dying from the trauma instantly Megan also passing and Josie some reason she was holding on holding on to her life after about half an hour of the murders taken place um he was spotted um whoever this person was was spotted a mile away from the scene in an agitated State no one could identify him who just very agitated and the bag of blooded towel strips was dropped in a hedge R and he had left the area of his attack shortly after this information was discovered Josie would tell police she thought the attacker was blonde with spiky hair and about in his 20 after this followed suit a man hunt to find the most inhumane person who carried out this attack the news had shocked the whole nation and people were expected to be on high alert for this man and his drawn up image circulated all of the media this led to a lot of parents trying to protect their children by sitting outside the schools and just having coffee on the edge of the playgrounds with the teachers it allowed them to know that their kids were safe and it also kind of gave the teachers a bit of reassurance that they were safe to and the whole Community came together to try and protect each other everyone absolutely everyone questioned the safety of their children as this man was still not caught was still not identified no one knew who it was who had done this to them whilst the media were speculating on who this man was a psychiatric doctor came forward to police about a patient named Michael Stone he had been mentioning acts of violence in regard his case and he just brought up things that had happened that weren’t necessarily out in the tabloids so police began identifying whether he was mentally physically and emotionally capable of committing these murders and trying to build a case around this man so let’s talk about Michael Michael John goodban was born in Royal tumbridge Wells on the 7th of June 1960 and was one of five children his father was unknown due to the different surname so that’s why he goes by Michael Stone because his father was just no one knew who his dad was Stone had a turbulent childhood he had faced a lot of domestic violence to which then he was put into a care home like a kid’s care home he then also unfortunately faced abuse in that care system as well he had said and stated in multiple interviews that he had witnessed his mom um being beaten with a hammer his mom’s former partner had also attacked another man with a meet Cleaver in their home he was prone to uncontrollable outbursts and aggressive mood swings from the age of nine he began using drugs and committing crimes Stone has a long criminal history of violence and Drug misuse there were so many to list so many stories so many incidences and I broke it down into three different sentences he served three prison sentences in the 1980s for robbery Grievous bodily harm and assault occasioning actual B H he was known to police for carrying weapons including knives and guns and he became a figure of the criminal underworld in the Medway towns of Kent Stone was also known to be very violent with previous Partners his former partner Rachel came forward to the press and police and recounted that he had beaten her so badly so many times that she went to the police and tried to press charges on him however she refused to give evidence so the charges were dropped and stone didn’t face any kind of consequences from this action I when I read this I believe that maybe it could have been from the fear of intimidation against him or anything that she was worried it could happen again in the cycle of abuse you you you get scared and you you feel intimidated like there’s this control and manipulation that a partner May hold on you that you don’t you just you don’t want to face it and you made that first step of reporting it but then you can fear that it could happen again or they could come after you Stone was then released from prison in 1993 prior to the murders of the wrestle family where he had received support for his drug addiction and mental health he was later sectioned in 1994 in a hospital in H with the diagnosis of personality disorder and paranoid psychosis he was prescribed regular injections of medications but his treatment was affected by the overuse of heroin so it didn’t work because he was still a consistent user he was passed on to other medical professionals as he was quoted to be too dangerous and had ended up in West Kent Authority July 1997 a year after the murders 37-year-old Michael Stone was arrested for the murders of Lynn and Megan Russell and the attack onto Josie Russell the police had received tip offs resulting in a reconstruction of the crime from crime watch he was staring hard at her and she vividly recalls his face this is the EIT she compiled last year and police today revealed that Josie has been shown this and says it’s very like the man who ambushed and attacked her he’s in his 30s with chubby cheeks his hair was gingery blonde and straight with a short Fringe this leads us back to the doctor who had approached the police who stated that he would tell the nurses he dreamt about killing and torturing children and he would add that even walking past them he would want to lead them into the woods and harm them which which was concerning to hit the leas because that’s what happened that’s where the girls were harmed near Woods tied up and tortured the way they were he was also stated he was so angry at the world and that he was going to do something bad he warned them he was going to do something bad he begged and begged and begged to be admitted as an impatient psychiatric unit but he was he was refused as he was seen as too dangerous a friend of stone also contacted the police after the crime watch episode air and believed Stone looked like the EIT that had been released with the hair and he’d been acting very strangely another friend also said that he had seen him wearing blood soaked clothes on the day of the murders although Stone states he had been in the fight evidence Stone had no alibi for the day he say he could not remember due to him being on drugs and he did state that he felt like more than a year could have passed he had no idea of the time what he was doing and where he was he maintained he didn’t know what he was doing the week of the murders let alone the day of the murders however a receipt proved that he was at the cash converters in chattam at 12:21 on the day of the murders this was putting roughly 40 mil away from where it had happened and he could have easily traveled down in an hour to be at the location for 4:20 when the murders occurred Stone testifies that he didn’t know chillon at all but friends fought this and said he used to state that he knew the aerial at the back of his had because he had grown up in a children’s home almost 2 miles away from where the murder location had happened there was no justification to why he would be at the Mur scene or in chindon for that matter he lived in Gillingham almost 30 miles away but to fuel his addiction he would Rob homes and try and sell High valued items so there was an inkling that maybe he tried to steal from areas in chingon because of the high value homes and what could have been in them the police had their suspect but there was nothing solid connecting Stone to the crime September 1997 14 months after the crime police had their suspect but without a confession to the murders or even DNA connected to the crime they weren’t officially able to charge stone for any kind of offense crime nothing he was placed into Canterbury prison where he made a confession to fellow inmate Damian Dy he informed the police him and stone would talk through the pipelines where he had made some shocking confessions Stone was then arrested and tried at Maidstone Crown Court it was at this moment where two more inmates came forward with similar accounts to what stone had confided in them whilst in prison and also in the gym area October 1998 2 years later the police were finally ready with confessions accounted witness confessions and circumstantial evidence the case was ready to face a judge and its jurors from the get-go a lot of narrative was questioned by a lot of journalists the attack was scripted as if it was a frenzied attack it was quick done over within seconds however when reading out the narrative it was clear from the way the scene was presented that it would have taken minutes not seconds to carry out this attack in this form a bootlace was used to try and solidify the case um the allegation was that this is something people would use for um injecting heroin to tie around their arms and this was found and because Stone was known for being a heroin addict this is something that would hold Great Value in the case to try and put Stone in that timeline of what happened and when it happened Joy was also able to give her account in court re recollecting what happened to her her mom and her sister during this time I can’t imagine what it was like standing up there facing your potential killer and reading out The Narrative of what had happened to you and your sisters and one of the most traumatic events and I a lot of people said it was such a strong statement and a strong testimony and everyone was so proud of her for being able to stand up there and say her case and speak about what had happened to her the jury with a 10 to two majority found Michael Stone guilty of murder Stone’s reaction to this was standing up shouting screaming where he had to be restrained a lot of people hadn’t seen a reaction like that in court for a very long time and people questioned whether this was a reaction of Anger of being caught or whether that was a reaction of a innocent man had been found guilty for a crime he didn’t commit however celebrations were shortlived by everyone cuz the day after the trial westone was convicted for the murders of Lynn Megan Russell and the attack of JY Russell a media frenzy hit everywhere um articles were released stories were on the television that the inmates who had come forward and had their Witness testimony denied it they lied they said they didn’t hear it and stone never made any admission to him um with this in mayate retracting his statement this allowed Stone to appeal his conviction due to the case now falling apart and the integrity was no longer there because those victim statements held great weight to the case to allow him to be convicted the appeal of the trial allowed Stone to have a retrial the trial was moved to not him due to judgment from the media influencing the new juror’s ideas and they were un people were under the impression that everyone would have forgotten about the case two years later and no one would remember what had happened but people did you wouldn’t forget a case like that that was spread like wildfire in the media it was still consistently being reported on and I don’t understand how people would assume that they wouldn’t know it just by moving up to Nottingham the 5th of September 2001 the trial began at Notting in Crown Court the case only left one witness testimony from an inmate in Canterbury prison and the other cell confessions were thrown out 11 hours of deliberations the jury found Stone guilty of free counts of murder considering a lot more evidence was thrown out and there was considerably less evidence to prove he was guilty or even at the scene or any connection to the scene they still found him guilty which held quite a lot of weight for everyone to solidify that that’s that’s the right man he’s not innocent however it gets more interesting 25 years on there’s still no forensic evidence which ties Stone to the murder scene so had was he innocent there was no DNA or no nothing literally nothing that could tie him to the scene at all it’s been widely speculated that hairs at the scene didn’t match Lynn Megan Josie or stone none of the hairs matched anyone that was at the scene the car at the scene was never identified linking him to the scene was simply impossible the only thing that could link him to the scene was the fact he had no alibi for the day he didn’t know where he was and the fact he knew the area and the witness testimony three things that could only link him the fact he was in a porn shop in Canterbury um he no alibi which and he knew the area and then of course the witness testimony but obviously there’s a lot of speculation whether that was legit but um what they did during the case is they took the jurors and a sound expert to the prison in Canterbury they had the sound expert sit in the cell in which um he was conversing with the inmate the jurors then went into the other cell and this sound guy would read out Harry Potter in a book to see if they could hear it on the other side and jurors confirmed they could hear it so this held a massive weight that what he was saying was true because there’s no way not if they could hear what was being said by the sound expert then he must have been conversing with this inmate through the pipelines there was so much pressure for police to get a result from this case they had the media hounding them for answers they had the families hounding them for answers they had the children from the school and the families that had children in the era results because of how dangerous this situation was so do you think Michael Stone was truly the perpetrator and his murders I honestly I’m a bit lost with this I have no idea I think his evidence and his history does hold a lot hold a lot that he could be someone involved but there’s just nothing there’s no scientific data that could match him with the scene one name who came up in the connection as an alternative person who could have carried out these murders was Levi bfield he was a known serial killer with multiple offenses which was targeting women he used to Target women um who just got off the train and they were walking alone and vulnerable hiso was very similar to what had happened to the Russell family he would Target women from the back with a blunt instrument um so it does fit the profile Ando he denied any involvement with the Russell murders in 2017 however recently he produced a four-page document that he carried out saying that he had carried out the Lynn and Megan Russell and assault on Josie Russell but however digging into more research his ex partner came forward and denies any claims that Levi had anything to do with the Russell murders she also say that she wouldn’t ever defend him in that way because of what he had done and who he had harmed during his time as a serial killer however she stated he did in fact have an alibi on the afternoon of the 9th of July 1996 she can recount every movement of him as it was her birthday so why would he confess the murders which were in no relation to him was it more fame or did he wanted to appear more notorious I found like he loves attention and he loved it he loved the media circus around his crimes so maybe it was just a way of drawing more attention to him so my thoughts and opinions was did Michael Stone really commit this crime what are your thoughts and opinions almost oh gosh 27 years later and there still puzzles investigators positive from this case is Josie has gone from strength to strength in multiple interviews that she’s had with like Lorraine with BBC she has stated she’s not a victim she’s not a Survivor she’s just her she just wants to be known as her for her artwork that she does she regularly holds exhibitions in whales uh which focuses on the beauty of whales all of her work is available um online on her Instagram I had a look it’s actually really cool um she’s also an ambassador for bornfree foundation which is a foundation that focuses on saving and protecting animals from exploitation and conserving threatened species amazing so in all this case was heartbreaking and I can’t believe there’s still a question mark headed over this case like of who did it nothing ties anyone to the the scene and has an innocent man been convicted on a crime he didn’t commit I’m slightly a bit lost with it but it was an interesting one [Music] and all I can hope is that one day they will get full justice but for now they’re at peace they’re happy and they are pushing forward with their lives so thank you again for watching this video and if you like it give it a like I’m always open to K suggestions and yeah I’ll try my best thank you bye