Crown accepts miscarriage of justice in controversial ‘Gone Fishing’ case

Thursday, 11 July 2024

The Crown has finally admitted a miscarriage of justice occurred in one of New Zealand’s most controversial murder cases.

Gail Maney and Stephen Stone were found guilty of killing Auckland tyre-fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys in 1989, at a flat in Larnoch Rd, Auckland

Stone was also convicted of murdering Leah Stephens several days later, because he feared she would squeal about Fuller-Sandys’ murder.

Two other men, Maney’s brother Colin Maney and Mark Henriksen, were convicted of being accessories to murder.

The “Larnoch Rd Four” have always insisted they are innocent and had been found guilty on the claims of four other people, who were all given immunity from prosecution, and have name suppression.

Two of those people have subsequently recanted their evidence, saying they were pressured into their statements by police.

Maney served 16 years in prison. Stone remains in prison after more than 26 years.

Maney, Stone, and Henriksen were due to have appeals heard next month.

However, in a dramatic development, Crown Law has now admitted there was a miscarriage of justice in the case.

“We have considered the evidence that has been filed to date by the appellant/applicants, and in our view both the original trial and the retrial miscarried.

“There is an error or irregularity with the disclosure of two crucial documents going to the centre of the defence. One of the documents was not disclosed and the other we can say was probably not disclosed.”

Maney told The Post the news was a complete shock, and she was still processing it.

“I’ve always said that I will prove my innocence, and there’s never been any room for any doubt in my mind.

“I’ve always been very confident that I’m going to win in the end.”

The Crown says the two crucial documents that weren’t disclosed affected the credibility of key witnesses.

One was a 1998 letter faxed to the lawyer of one of the secret witnesses who claimed he saw Fuller-Sandys being murdered, which also included the transcript of a police interview with another of the crucial witnesses.

Before then, the two men’s story about what happened had been different in many respects.

After the letter to the lawyer from police, with the other witness’s evidence, the two men’s stories largely aligned.

The other document not disclosed at any of the trials or appeals was a job sheet from a witness protection programme file that detailed a meeting between the officer in charge of the case, Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Franklin, and another of the key secret witnesses, before she made a crucial statement to police.

“The disclosure failure is crucial, because the two documents would have become fundamental to the defence in undermining the credibility of the four witnesses. This creates a real risk that the outcome of the trial was affected,” Crown Law said in a memo to the Court of Appeal.

“In terms of the Crimes Act 1961, which is the jurisdiction for this appeal and the associated applications, this is a miscarriage of justice.”

The case was the subject of a Stuff/RNZ podcast, Gone Fishing.

Fuller-Sandys, 21, went missing in August 1989.

Earlier that day he had told his boss, and his former girlfriend, he was going fishing, as he often did on Auckland’s west coast.

That night, he collected two rods from his parents’ home, where he was living, and told them he was going fishing.

His mother asked him what he wanted for dinner, and said she would put it in the microwave for when he returned.

He was not seen again, and his car was found at Whatipu Beach.ends

His body has never been found, and it was accepted he had been washed from rocks while fishing on an incoming tide, in a notorious area where numerous other fishers had been drowned.

Leah Stephens disappeared five days later from an Auckland street where she was a sex worker.

Her body was found three years later by a dog walker, buried near the Muriwai Golf Club.

However, the two cases were not connected until 1997, when people suggested Stone may have been involved.

Eventually, the police scenario was that Fuller-Sandys had burgled Gail Maney’s Larnoch Rd flat, and she got Stone to kill him.

To do this, Fuller-Sandys was lured to Maney’s flat, and shot at least seven times in the garage, by Stone and others.

In total, police claimed there were 10 people at the shooting — Fuller-Sandys, Leah Stephens, the four people eventually convicted of the killing, and the four witnesses given immunity by police.

Police said Stone was worried Stephens would speak out about what she’d seen, and decided to rape and kill her also — with the assistance of two of the witnesses later given immunity.

The case was riddled with inconsistencies from the four key witnesses, who admitted lying to police, and who initially gave different descriptions of locations of the murders, how they occurred, and who was present.

None of them named Fuller-Sandys as a victim of murder until police provided them with his name.

However, all four accused were found guilty in 1999.

Gail Maney and Henriksen successfully appealed their convictions, but were re-convicted at a second trial in 2000.

Stone was denied legal aid, and his appeal was dismissed without a hearing.

Colin Maney’s appeal was also dismissed.

Despite one of the key witnesses recanting her evidence in 2003, the Court of Appeal didn’t accept her statement when rejecting a further appeal from Gail Maney in 2005.

Another witness has subsequently recanted her evidence, signing two affidavits saying she gave false evidence at four court hearings, and that her claims of seeing Fuller-Sandys shot in the Larnoch Rd garage were a fabrication.

She said police pressured her into making a statement by raising the issue of the custody of her children.

Another of the witnesses later said police had told him that if he didn’t tell “the truth”, he would end up in a jail cell next to Stephen Stone.

Another was taken to Larnoch Rd and said he didn’t recognise the area, and had no recollection of ever visiting Maney’s flat.

The witnesses said they were essentially given a choice by police of what box they wanted to be in at trial — the witness box, giving evidence against Maney, Stone and the others, or alongside them in the dock.

Maney says the four witnesses who lied were bullied and threatened to give the evidence they did, and it is the police who need to be held accountable for what happened.

When she was called to a meeting in Auckland on Monday with her lawyers and investigators Tim McKinnel and Katya Paquin, who have worked for several years on her case, she had no idea she was going to be told the Crown had accepted there had been a miscarriage of justice.

Maney, 57, said the nightmare had gone on for 27 years, and the worst thing had been the loss of her five children.

“That been a huge thing for me. That’s what’s kept me fighting every day — a mother waking up and knowing she shouldn’t be there, and just that yearning to be with my children.

“And that kept me going all the time.”

Despite this, Maney refuses to be bitter.

“All I want is the truth and for the right thing to be done.

“And for me, to have feelings of bitterness and anger, then they’re winning.”

But the truth was, Maney’s life and those of her children, had been ruined, she said. So had the lives of the others wrongly jailed, and the victims’ families.

“It’s horrendous, absolutely horrendous.”

She said the police theory was so bizarre and incomprehensible, it was hard to credit anyone believed it.

“I’ve never wavered, I’ve never stopped saying I’m an innocent person, I’ve never stopped fighting.

“I’ve stuck with this all the way through.”

Maney admits when she was convicted, her life was a mess — on drugs, in a violent relationship — and she believes police thought she wouldn’t have the strength to battle against them.

“But I got clean, and I fought back.”

Maney paid tribute to her lawyers, Julie-Anne Kincade, KC, and Jack Oliver Hood, McKinnel and Paquin, and journalists Amy Maas and Adam Dudding, whose podcast helped reignite interest in the case.

McKinnel said it was one of the most extraordinary cases he had encountered, and one of the worst miscarriages of justice in New Zealand’s history.

There were many things seriously wrong with the investigations into Fuller-Sandys and Stephens’ murders, other than the ones identified by the Crown this week, he said.

“Non-disclosure is terrible, but it’s not the worst part of this case.

“Miscarriage cases are often like icebergs — what you see on the surface is just the very tip of what’s gone on, and below the surface is a great deal more that needs to be considered.”

McKinnel said he was acutely aware of the effect on the victims’ families, after all these years, with the Crown now accepting mistakes were made.

And McKinnel, a former detective who was central to exposing the wrongful convictions of Teina Pora and Alan Hall, said there was now a need for a formal inquiry into this case, and miscarriages of justice in New Zealand.

Maney’s lawyer, Julie-Anne Kincade, agreed, saying she sincerely hoped there would be an inquiry into “how it could be that four people went to jail on the evidence of four witnesses who had demonstrably lied, over and over again, all of them — in the absence of any other evidence.”

In a statement, Detective Superintendent Uraia Vakaruru said: “Police are aware of an upcoming Court of Appeal hearing on the historical convictions over the murders of Dean Fuller-Sands (sic) and Leah Stephens.

“We are continuing to work with the Crown around preparation for the appeal hearing in mid-August.

“Police are not prepared to comment in detail at this point, as it would be inappropriate for police to comment in matters that are yet to be heard by the Court.

“Ultimately it will be for the Court to make decisions. Police will await any such decision before taking time to consider any next appropriate steps.”

A court hearing will take place in August to decide whether Maney, Stone and Henriksen will be acquitted, or if a retrial will be ordered.