Stephen Stone speaks out for first time after further delays in controversial murder case
Tuesday, 10 December 2024
Make no mistake, there’s anger in Stephen Stone’s voice.
The kind of anger that’s pent up, barely bridled, undeniably seething.
Nearly 30 years of shit from the justice system, and still it keeps coming, Stone says.
In 1999, he was convicted of murdering Deane Fuller-Sandys and Leah Stephens, in what’s become known as the Gone Fishing case.
But in October this year, Stone, Gail Maney, who’d been found guilty of hiring Stone to carry out a hit on Fuller-Sandys, and two others all had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal.
Maney had spent 16 years in prison. Stone was still in there. All had lived with the notorious case hanging over them for a quarter of a century, despite insisting they were innocent.
Stone was released from jail, but while the cases against his co-accused were dropped, the court left it up to the Crown to decide whether it wanted to put Stone on trial again.
The Crown said it would make that decision by Wednesday, when a preliminary court hearing takes place. But it is now seeking an extension until March, so police can carry out further investigations, including DNA tests.
For Stone, any hopes of spending Christmas not branded a murderer are gone. Any chance of getting a job and getting ahead remain on hold.
After 27 years in jail for something he says he never did, Stone wonders if he’ll ever be allowed to get his life back.
He’s frustrated as hell about that.
But that’s not all he’s angry about.
Deane Fuller-Sandys disappeared in August 1989, and for eight years, it was presumed the 21-year-old tyre fitter had been swept from rocks while fishing on Auckland’s west coast.
But when rumours he’d been murdered surfaced, nightclub bouncer Stone’s name was offered up by informants.
As police investigated Stone, a Black Power member with a string of convictions, they formed a theory linking Fuller-Sandys’ case with that of 20-year-old Leah Stephens.
Stephens disappeared from central Auckland a few days after Fuller-Sandys vanished, with her body found three years later, buried near Muriwai.
According to police, Maney was angry about a burglary at her Auckland flat, blamed Fuller-Sandys, and hired 19-year-old Stone to kill him.
Maney and Stone insist they never even knew Fuller-Sandys.
The murder supposedly happened in the garage at Maney’s flat, with eight witnesses, during the day, in the middle of suburbia, with no reports from neighbours of the multiple shots fired.
Police said Stephens was one of the witnesses, and when Stone feared she was about to blab, he raped and killed her.
At his trial in 1999, Stone was represented by top barrister Roger Chambers.
In 2018, Chambers was interviewed for a Stuff/RNZ podcast about the case, and called Stone “a born thug”, suggesting Stone enjoyed the notoriety of the crimes “because it meant a couple of serious notches in his belt”.
But most damningly, Chambers said he thought Stone was guilty - despite having been his lawyer, with the enduring confidentiality that relationship confers.
“If he’s proclaiming his innocence now, that does come as a surprise,” Chambers said.
“He’s entitled to hold a view, but I don’t believe him.”
Chambers’ public condemnation of his former client was so serious, the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal in November ordered him to pay $5000 compensation to Stone for his misconduct, and more than $15,000 in costs.
Suggesting Chambers had “dropped his guard” during the podcast interview, it noted he immediately admitted his wrongdoing, in what it judged was an “isolated lapse”.
But Chambers made numerous other contentious claims about Stone in the interview.
One is that Stone’s father was “no stranger to criminal law” and that Stone “came from a borderline criminal family”.
“My father has never in his life been in trouble,” Stone insists. “He’s my biggest supporter, he’s my best mate. That shit just gutted me.”
Chambers claimed he used to put money into Stone’s prison account.
“Never did that. Never. Nothing,” insists Stone.
Chambers also said Stone spent much of his trial ogling a “rather attractive female juror”.
“My wife was there,” says Stone, “and my father, and if I was ogling anyone in court, I would have got a slap straight after I finished in the box.”
In contrast, Chambers commended the officers who investigated Fuller-Sandys’ disappearance and Stephens’ murder, including controversial inquiry head Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Franklin.
During the investigation into Stone and Maney, Franklin was seen smoking cannabis in downtown Auckland by other officers, but received only a warning by his superiors.
But after retiring, and moving to the Cook Islands, Franklin was caught selling cannabis, and jailed for a year.
In submissions to the Court of Appeal, lawyers for Maney and Stone alleged Franklin lied during court hearings, and manipulated witnesses to change their evidence.
Franklin has declined to comment about these claims other than to say: “Well, that’s a matter that can be put to the Crown, and a complaint of perjury can be made, if that’s the case.”
However, he has previously defended his investigation and said it was done “by the book”.
During his podcast interview, Chambers acknowledged he always got on well with Franklin and visited him in prison in Rarotonga, where Chambers had a house.
The relationship between Chambers, the man meant to save him from prison, and Franklin, the cop who put him away for life, unsettles Stone, who knew nothing of it until recently.
But what concerns him more is something the recent disciplinary tribunal declined to consider, because it happened too long ago.
This was the claim Chambers effectively “swapped sides” when Maney was given a second trial after appealing her conviction for murdering Fuller-Sandys.
At that trial, a crucial police and Crown witness was a woman who gave evidence that Maney and Stone were guilty.
The woman was represented by Chambers, who, despite having been Stone’s lawyer, arranged for her to get immunity to provide the damning testimony she gave police in their case against Stone and Maney.
Later, the woman recanted her evidence, saying she was pressured into making her statements by Franklin and others. She has since died, but her claims are matched by another of the four key witnesses police relied on, who has also recanted her testimony.
Stone says he’s not entirely shocked by Chambers switching horses to help the prosecution, now he knows Chambers never believed in his innocence.
“But no, it’s not good at all.”
He says Chambers’ comments about him have been “soul-destroying”.
In a letter to the disciplinary tribunal, Chambers said he was “prepared to apologise in writing to Mr Stone” and in another memo said: “I regret very much my conduct in speaking in an unauthorised way and apologise to Mr Stone.”
But Stone says he’s never had a personal apology from Chambers and had no contact with him since being convicted.
Chambers was approached for comment but didn’t respond.
But there’s another connection with his former lawyer that makes Stone think he won’t get justice.
Roger Chambers’ son, Richard Chambers, has just been appointed the new police commissioner.
In 2019, Gail Maney’s lawyers asked Richard Chambers to recuse himself from any connection with the police’s reinvestigation of the case and Maney’s appeal, to avoid perceptions of a conflict of interest, given his father’s involvement.
At that stage, Chambers was an assistant commissioner with oversight of all investigations in New Zealand.
Police effectively refused, with deputy commissioner Mike Clement saying there was a robust process to ensure “transparent and objective decision-making” ‒ despite the officer overseeing the police review of the case reporting to Chambers.
Stone is calling on commissioner Chambers to publicly state he will have nothing to do with the ongoing police investigation, which is delaying the decision on whether he should stand trial again.
In a statement on Tuesday, police said Chambers has no involvement in the case, and it was being overseen by assistant commissioner Paul Basham, and detective superintendent Uraia Vakaruru.
“Police have clear processes in place to manage any conflicts of interests in any investigation should these arise,” a spokesperson said.
Stone can’t understand why police need more time to reinvestigate him.
“How many statements are they going to come up with now? How many cracks do you get at it? How much longer do they need to come up with some more bullshit?
“Where’s your evidence? Where is it?”
Stone believes police have spent so much effort and money on the case, they won’t give up without salvaging something from their investigation, and he is their last shot.
Now 55, Stone has spent more than half his life in prison.
“I’ve done longer than Nelson f…..g Mandela.
“I’ve done longer than any other lifer in New Zealand that I know, and I’m still being f….d.”
Stone left prison in October with $178, and a host of bail restrictions that virtually ensure he can’t get a job.
The most recent police and Crown delays were simply prolonging the legal limbo preventing him getting on with his life.
“I’m in the deadlands. I can’t do anything.
“I’m out here having to rely on everybody around me, and I hate that. I should be self-reliant, by myself. I need a job. I need to be busy, productive, working.
“I feel like I’m an inconvenience to my loved ones, and that’s a pretty shit feeling, because they mean the world to me.
“I’ve lost shit you just can’t comprehend. I’m never going to get it back. People have no idea of the hardship. None.”
One person who does have some idea is Gail Maney.
For her, Stone’s conviction makes no sense, now the Crown and courts have declared there’s no evidence against her.
In the police case, Stone’s involvement hinges on Maney asking him to murder Fuller-Sandys.
So, given it’s now accepted that didn’t happen, then the killing in the garage can’t reasonably have happened either, Leah Stephens didn’t witness a murder, and there was no reason for Stone to kill her.
“Honestly, it makes no logical sense at all,” says Maney. “The whole case falls over. It’s just crazy.
“But they don’t want to admit they got it wrong.
“This whole case has been a complete shambles from day dot, and I think the police are making fools of themselves with what they are doing.”
Former detective Tim McKinnel, who has investigated the case against Maney and Stone, says the latest extension allowing police to carry out new investigations is unreasonable.
“It’s incredibly frustrating that what, on any assessment, must now be considered an absurd case, isn’t disposed of in the timeline the Crown and police set themselves.
“I think it’s time for the Crown solicitors, from the very law firm that’s previously prosecuted this case twice, leading to miscarriages of justice, to put on their big boy and big girl pants and put an end to it once and for all, and get on with accepting Deane Fuller-Sandys was swept to his death while fishing, and finding out who killed Leah Stephens.”