Lies, fury and murder: The terrible tragedies of the ‘Gone Fishing’ case

Saturday, 3 May 2025

On Wednesday, Stephen Stone walked from court a free man, the final act in one of New Zealand’s worst miscarriages of justice. But after 36 years, and four people being wrongfully jailed, Mike White investigates whether we’re any closer to knowing the truth about what happened in the ‘Gone Fishing’ case.

Amy Maas wasn’t enthused.

Early in 2016, her editor had packed off the Stuff journalist to do a “puff piece” at Auckland Women’s Prison, the kind of story that’s full of false names and fragile hope for rehabilitation.

But when Maas was shepherded into the prison kitchen by her Corrections chaperones, she got talking with the head cook, a 40-something prisoner who mentioned she wanted to write a cook book when she got out.

It sounded like an interesting story, so Maas filed away the woman’s name, intending to catch up one day, post-prison.

The woman’s name was Gail Maney.

And she was a murderer.

At least, that’s what Maas’s Google searches turned up.

Supposedly, in 1989, Maney had got pissed off with a guy called Deane Fuller-Sandys who she thought had burgled her Auckland flat and stolen leather clothes and cannabis.

So she hired 19-year-old strip club bouncer Stephen Stone to kill him.

In grisly, gory detail, Maas read newspaper reports of how Stone shot Fuller-Sandys in the garage of Maney’s flat in front of eight other people, then got some of them to fire bullets into the dead man.

Worried one of the women who’d witnessed this, 20-year-old Leah Stephens, would blab to the cops, Stone then raped and murdered her.

All this was far removed from the prison pavlova and pie recipes Maas initially imagined she would discuss with Maney, but she tracked her down after Maney’s release.

“And we met up, and she said she didn’t want to talk about the cook book,” remembers Maas.

“She wanted to talk about the murder - because it never happened.”

The Murder That Never Was

On August 21 1989, 21-year-old tyre fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys finished work, drove to his parents’ Blockhouse Bay house, and loaded two fishing rods into his car.

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

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

Fuller-Sandys was never seen again, though his car was found at Whatipū Beach.

For eight years, it was accepted Fuller-Sandys had been washed from rocks on an incoming tide, in a notorious area where many other fishers had drowned.

But in the mid-90s, gossip reached police that Fuller-Sandys might have been murdered. And that somehow it could be connected with the disappearance of Leah Stephens just five days after Fuller-Sandys vanished, whose body had been found in a shallow grave at Muriwai three years later, in 1992.

Led by Detective Mark Franklin, the two cases were quickly tied together.

The glue was the testimony of four witnesses who said they saw Stephen Stone shoot Fuller-Sandys in the garage. And that Stone then raped and killed Stephens to stop her snitching to the cops.

The initial stories didn’t match - different locations, different methods, different motives.

But gradually, over numerous interviews, and with the offer of immunity and name suppression in return for their evidence, their stories coalesced into the macabre scenario presented to a jury in 1999, which convicted Maney and Stone.

(One witness was told by police she could choose which box she went in at the trial: the witness box or the dock. She chose the witness box.)

Maney’s brother, Colin, and Mark Henriksen, were convicted of being accessories after the fact.

Maney got a retrial, but was reconvicted.

Stone couldn’t get legal aid, and his appeal was rejected without a hearing.

And for years, that’s how it stayed, Maney, a mother of five, and Stone, dubbed the Stone Cold Killer, sitting in prison with nobody listening to their claims of innocence.

But once Maas got the case files from Maney, and became convinced something had gone terribly wrong, things began moving.

Maas and fellow Stuff journalist Adam Dudding released their Gone Fishing podcast on the case in 2018.

And in doing so, they attracted the attention of former detective Tim McKinnel, who also sensed a horrific miscarriage of justice had occurred.

This was reinforced when two of the four key witnesses recanted their evidence, saying they’d been pressured and threatened by police into giving false statements.

(Another witness has subsequently refused to cooperate with police, saying they ruined his life.)

But it took until 2024 for the Crown to admit serious mistakes had been made, and crucial documents hadn’t been disclosed by police.

By then, Stone had served 27 years in prison, and Maney 16.

In October 2024, the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of all four, stressing, “there is no evidence at all against Ms Maney, let alone credible evidence”.

However, the court left it up to Auckland Crown Solicitor Alysha McClintock whether Stone should face a retrial - his situation being different to Maney’s and his additional conviction for murdering Stephens.

On Wednesday, after a six month delay while police re-tested forensic samples, McClintock stood in Auckland’s High Court and acknowledged she didn’t have sufficient evidence to put Stone on trial again.

She claimed key witnesses weren’t available; she admitted forensic testing had turned up nothing; she talked of “prosecution guidelines” and “objective assessment” and “evidential tests” and “requisite standards”.

Not once did she suggest the police and the Crown had cocked up.

Not once did she mention it was the Crown who had overseen two trials that resulted in four people collectively spending more than 40 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.

Not once did she apologise to Stone, or acknowledge what he had endured during his 27 years in prison.

(McClintock was offered the opportunity to respond, but said it wasn’t appropriate for her to do so.)

For Stone, McClintock’s address to the court seemed a final veiled imputation and insult by the Crown.

Placed in a courtroom dock once more, feeling he was being judged guilty yet again, it all boiled over.

After the judge acquitted Stone, and pronounced he was free to leave the dock and the court, he stormed from the building telling waiting reporters to “f… off”, all the anger and aggravation unable to be contained, civility a step too far, just then.

‘How Do You Rebuild?’

Just over an hour later, Stone had calmed a little. But not completely.

In an interview with media he distilled his adult life.

“I went to jail when my son was 4 years old. When I got out, he was 34. I didn’t even know half my grandkids.”

He railed against the paucity of support he’d received since his release (“They just pushed me out the gate”), and how life on the outside had been worse than in prison.

“I’ve had heaps of people just turn around and f…… shit on me coz of the bullshit charges.

“How do you feel? How would you feel? F…… angry.

“I want to rub everybody involved in that, rub their noses in the ground. Put them in a cage for 28 years and see how they feel.”

When asked about “rebuilding” his life, reality cut through any optimistic rote rhetoric.

“How do you do that? How do you rebuild?”

Fifty-five, essentially penniless, more than half his life spent in jail, sustained only by his “rock solid” family, and legal team, just for a second you could see the bleakness that bred anger.

Standing to the side, Stone’s lawyer, Annabel Maxwell-Scott, who’s stood by his side for five years, gently suggested the interview was probably done.

For Maxwell-Scott, the day had been draining, the entire protracted legal process exhausting.

It didn’t need to be like that, she says.

“You read Stephen’s file and very quickly I was like, ‘Oh dear god, he didn’t do this.’ And it’s horrible, it makes you sick to the stomach.”

But the state doesn’t like admitting it’s made mistakes, Maxwell-Scott says.

“They protect the police, and they protect the convictions, even in the face of overwhelming, irrational, illogical evidence.”

What she can’t comprehend is how officers who worked on the investigation accepted statements from the four crucial witnesses that changed so dramatically as they were continually re-interviewed by police.

“It shows that someone was lying - there’s no other rational explanation for it. And any cop worth their salt would have realised what was going on.”

The Stephen Stone she has come to know is different to the police caricature of a violent hitman.

He’s intelligent, honest, never put a foot wrong in prison, says Maxwell-Scott.

Sure, he had bad history before he was convicted of murdering Fuller-Sandys and Stephens. Sure, he’s angry.

“The reality is, I don’t know what his life would have been like if this hadn’t happened. But it sure wouldn’t have been 27 years in prison.”

Red Wool and Dots

If anyone knows what really happened during the police investigation, it’s Mark Franklin.

The detective led the inquiry, and joined the previously unconnected Fuller-Sandys and Stephens’ cases into a single shocking narrative.

At last year’s Court of Appeal hearing, lawyers for Stone were as frank as the gentility bestowed by their robes allowed: Franklin had lied, they said.

He had failed to disclose crucial documents; he had no notebooks for a critical three-week period; he threatened and bullied witnesses; he was “the puppet-master” who had manipulated evidence, Stone’s lawyers said.

The Court of Appeal said there were “significant questions about the veracity” of Franklin’s evidence at Stone and Maney’s trial, and it harboured “deep misgivings” about his conduct.

Franklin had a chequered career and reputation.

In 2003, he was forced to apologise to a rape victim for not believing her.

While investigating Fuller-Sandys and Stephens’ disappearances in the late 90s, Franklin was seen smoking cannabis in downtown Auckland by other officers, but only given a warning by his superiors.

After retiring in 2005 and moving to the Cook Islands, Franklin was caught selling cannabis, and jailed for a year.

When contacted, Franklin, who now runs a “junk and rubbish removal” business in Auckland, told The Post he was busy and to email him. He didn’t reply to questions sent to him.

But, previously, Franklin has defended his investigation of Maney and Stone, and insisted it was done “by the book”.

However, Detective Superintendent Uraia Vakaruru says police have begun an inquiry into the handling of the original investigation, alongside another inquiry by the Independent Police Conduct Authority.

“Police will be considering any findings from these investigations around taking any appropriate next steps.”

Journalist Adam Dudding, who made the Gone Fishing podcast with Maas, says in his view, concerns about what occurred during the investigation are absolutely fair.

“There’s no question Franklin is at the heart of this story.

“He’s the person who put together the jigsaw puzzle, and arguably used up large quantities of red wool joining dots that perhaps shouldn’t have been joined.”

Dudding says the whole police theory was based on “a tissue of lies, exaggerations and fantasies.

“I realised it was bonkers really fast - just reading through the evidence with the changing stories, and reliability of witnesses.”

That didn’t mean he didn’t “get whiplash” from changing his views on what might have happened, or whether the right people had been convicted.

“But by the end, even those bits where I was agnostic, I was feeling confident that the police case wasn’t safe.”

Dudding isn’t sure we’ll ever get the truth. But he’d like officials to try.

“Every time there’s one of these crazy miscarriages of justice, you’re left with these stonking great questions like, ‘So, OK, what did happen? How did it go so horribly wrong? Who’s to blame?’

“And nobody ever seems to be held accountable.

“But I don’t think a justice system really is about finding the truth. It’s a clearing house for society’s problems, and the clearing house makes a certain percentage of f……. horrendous errors, in both directions, for all kinds of horrible reasons.

“And the after-effects of these traumatic events just echo through so many lives. There’s obviously the people serving sentences for things they didn’t do, and people who’ve lost children and are just torn apart by the conflicting, contradictory information they get about what might have happened.

“So it’s a mess.”

The Cook Book

There never was a cook book.

When Gail Maney got out of prison, she wasn’t really interested in cooking for herself.

Ironically, she works as a chef, but, “I go home and have toast. Peanut butter on toast is really good. Or tomato on toast.”

But without that chance meeting with Maas in the prison kitchen, she wouldn’t be where she is now, wouldn’t be free, Maney insists.

Maas, now living in New York, saw Maney in April on a visit to New Zealand.

“She has a really stable job, she looks great, she’s happy. It was really heartening for me to see that.”

What strikes Maas, after nearly 10 years following the case, is how the justice system managed to convince itself for 25 years that Maney and Stone were responsible for murdering Fuller-Sandys.

“If you look at the case as a whole, none of it stacks up. I don’t know how this whole nightmare has stretched on for such a long time.

“The way the case was handled was pretty diabolical.”

Maas says it’s highly likely Fuller-Sandys was swept off rocks while fishing.

“If Deane was murdered, it certainly wasn’t by this group of people.”

Maney was there on Wednesday to watch Stone being acquitted.

It was the first time she’d seen him in person since they stood trial together in 1999.

The reality was, Maney says, they only knew each other for a few weeks, but had shared a ghastly journey over nearly three decades.

But in all that time, she never doubted she would prove her innocence.

“Because I knew the case was so crazy and bizarre and so full of lies.

“I just couldn’t get my head around how we could ever have been found guilty - it was so fabricated, so insane.”

Seeing Stone’s rage and raw anger this week was emotional for Maney.

Better than anyone, she knows what he’s going through.

But she has little wisdom or advice about how Stone can make a new life for himself.

“I’ve had to dig deep. There’s been some times I’ve just wanted to give up, and haven’t known what direction to go in. But I’ve had to just keep going, and now I’m in a better place.

“But it’s taken a long time. And this is Steve’s journey. And it’s going to take a long time too.”