Top cop accused of lying, manipulating witnesses in controversial murder case

Tuesday, 13 August 2024

As the “Gone Fishing” murder case goes back to court today, the controversial detective who led the investigation is facing damning accusations he lied in court, hid documents, and threatened witnesses. Mike White investigates.

The first clue was a random phone call to police about an unsolved murder.

About a guy who might have killed a girl eight years ago - you know, the one they found buried on an Auckland beach, the caller said.

Within three years, that tip off had turned into a sensational case that saw four people charged with crimes related to two murders.

At the heart of what happened in those three years, was Detective Senior Sergeant Mark Franklin, who led the investigation that tied together the disappearance of 21-year-old tyre fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys in August 1989, and the murder of 20-year-old sex worker Leah Stephens, a few days later.

The police story was that Fuller-Sandys had been lured to a west Auckland house and killed by 19-year-old strip club bouncer Stephen Stone, on the orders of Gail Maney, because she believed Fuller-Sandys had stolen marijuana and leather clothes from her Larnoch Rd flat.

Stone had shot Fuller-Sandys in front of eight people.

Fearing one of them, Stephens, would blab about what she’d witnessed, police said Stone then raped and stabbed her at the Larnoch Rd address, and buried her body near the Muriwai golf course, where it was found three years later.

But it wasn’t until a decade later, in 1999, that Maney and Stone were convicted of murdering Fuller-Sandys, Stone of raping and killing Stephens, and Mark Henriksen and Gail Maney’s brother Colin found guilty of being accessories after the fact.

All insisted they were innocent, and the case was the subject of a Stuff/RNZ podcast, Gone Fishing.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Court of Appeal will hear another application to acquit the four.

Mark Franklin drove the investigation, which relied on four other people, who said they’d witnessed Fuller-Sandys’ murder.

All four were given immunity in return for their evidence, along with name suppression.

However, since then, two have recanted their evidence, saying they were coerced into making false statements by police.

Another eyewitness angrily told a detective in June that police “had f….d his life”.

But it is something else that last month, after 25 years, led the Crown to accept a miscarriage of justice has occurred, and Maney, Stone, and the two others, should have their convictions quashed.

It’s something Mark Franklin was central to, and sees him now accused of extremely serious wrongdoing by lawyers for the defence.

On July 1 1998, Franklin sent a fax to high-profile Auckland lawyer Barry Hart, who was representing one of the four eyewitnesses police were relying on to testify against Maney and Stone.

Attached to it was the transcript of an interview with another of the key eyewitnesses, detailing what he said about the Fuller-Sandys and Stephens’ murders.

The two men’s versions of events had varied widely until then.

But after the fax was sent, Hart’s client, who had already given nine differing statements to police, gave an interview which largely fitted with events described in the faxed transcript of the other man, and for the first time said he had witnessed Fuller-Sandys’ murder at Larnoch Rd.

This dramatic change in evidence fitted with accusations made at Maney and Stone’s trial, that police had manipulated the four witnesses, who initially made very different claims, into eventually telling a similar story.

Showing a witness another witness’s statement is almost never acceptable practice - it introduces the possibility of contamination, rather than corroboration, of their evidence.

So Franklin’s actions were extraordinary.

And, it appears, they were never disclosed.

Even the Crown acknowledges that if the fax had been given to defence lawyers, it would have become a major issue at their trial.

At that trial, Franklin was quizzed specifically about sharing of statements between witnesses.

“None of the witnesses in this case have been furnished with any other witness’s statements,” Franklin told the court.

Instead, he indicated witnesses had only been told in “very broad terms” what other witnesses had described.

In recent affidavits, Franklin has stated he believes the fax actually may have been disclosed to Maney and Stone’s lawyers. But this is undermined by even the Crown, which says if it had been handed over, much would have been made of it at trial - yet there is no mention of it.

Franklin also says it was an extremely rare thing to share another witness’s statement - and this was the only time he ever did it. But he intended it to be read only by Barry Hart, not the eyewitness, and there was a handwritten note to this effect on the fax coversheet.

However, this communication was occurring at a time when Hart’s client was seeking immunity, and had been told by police that this depended on his cooperation with police.

Lawyers for Maney at this week’s appeal have been extraordinarily damning in their accusations about what happened: Franklin lied to the court, when he said witness statements hadn’t been shared.

They point to the judge summing up at the trial saying the four key eyewitnesses had little or no opportunity to collaborate about their evidence, and yet they all told “remarkably similar stories”.

“Police knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was wrong,” Maney’s lawyers have written in their submissions.

“Mark Franklin, sitting in the courtroom, knew that this was wrong.

“They took no steps to correct the court.”

They say Franklin’s recent account about what happened, “is untethered from the actual facts and documents” and “should not be believed”.

“It is extremely regrettable that Franklin, to this day, seeks to bend the truth to suit his view of Fuller-Sandys’ disappearance.”

Stone’s lawyers are equally excoriating about Franklin, saying he gave “untruthful evidence at trial and the Court of Appeal”.

They also point to the difficulty of knowing everything that happened, saying there are no notebooks from Franklin for a crucial period of nearly three weeks in the investigation.

The undisclosed fax meant the evidence of Hart’s client, who became a crucial police witness, “is contaminated beyond salvation”.

In their submissions, Stone’s lawyers label Franklin “the puppet-master” who manipulated witness evidence.

“The police acted with contorted motives, inscrutability, and impropriety, to wrongly convict Mr Stone and his co-accused.”

There was another critical document that didn’t see the light of day when the “Larnoch Rd Four” stood trial in 1999.

That was a police job sheet recording a meeting Franklin had with another of the key eyewitnesses.

After meeting with Franklin, the witness gave a statement that matched the narrative police were forming, and mentioning the Larnoch Rd garage murder scene for the first time.

That eyewitness has now recanted her evidence, and says in an affidavit:

“The shooting in the garage scenario never happened.

“Mark Franklin had told me what others had said. That is how the information ended up in my statement.

“Police spent two to three hours with me before the statement was taken, talking through what they knew, what others said happened, and what my role was.”

The Crown is not cross-examining the witness on her position at this week’s hearing, and has suggested the Court of Appeal can consider her truthful.

Stone’s lawyers say no reliable or credible evidence remains against Stone.

“The Crown’s case, essentially, has the rug pulled from under it.”

Similarly, Gail Maney’s lawyers say the evidence now demonstrates Franklin’s “wrong-headed approach to the investigation”, and the “specious chain of reasoning” that linked the two cases, leading to Maney and Stone being jailed for so long.

Franklin had “coerced and threatened” all four key witnesses to get the evidence he wanted from them, and the two undisclosed documents were “a slim fraction of the police misconduct in this case,” they say in their submissions.

“There is no way to cleanse the Crown case of the muck,” Maney’s lawyers concluded.

Mark Franklin doesn’t want to say much in response to the accusations made against him.

“I’m over it.

“This case has consumed my bloody life, and quite frankly, caused me stress over the years, and I don’t want to be put through the wringer again.”

Retired from the police since 2005, Franklin says it’s not up to him to criticise or comment on decisions of a government agency, like Crown Law, which has agreed a miscarriage of justice occurred in the Maney/Stone case, due to non-disclosure of two documents involving him.

When asked about the claims he lied in court that no statements had been shared between witnesses, Franklin is bullish.

“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.

“I’m not going to make any comment on that.”

Franklin, now 65, has had something of a chequered reputation and career.

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

It involved the high-profile case which saw David Dougherty wrongfully jailed for three years after he was convicted of the rape.

Eventually, Dougherty was acquitted, and Nicholas Reekie convicted.

In between, Franklin led a second investigation into the crime, and in a report wrote that the 11-year-old may have engaged in sexual activity, and then made up the rape allegation to cover for this.

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

But after retiring, and moving to the Cook Islands, Franklin was caught selling cannabis, and jailed for a year.

Previously, Franklin has defended his investigation of Maney and Stone, and said it was done “by the book”.

And he insists he’s cooperated with the police and Crown on the case.

“Absolutely. I’ve never stopped working with them … and I’ll continue to do so.”

Meanwhile, police have confirmed they have referred the investigation into Gail Maney, Stephen Stone, Colin Maney, and Mark Henriksen to the Independent Police Conduct Authority.

However, they would not comment further, until after the Court of Appeal proceedings.