Thirty years on from the 1996 Chillenden murders, a new episode of The Crime Desk's "On The Case" podcast examines lingering doubts over the conviction of Michael Stone and explores claims linking serial killer Levi Bellfield to the crime. Lin Russell, 45, and her six-year-old daughter Megan were bludgeoned to death with a hammer near their home in Chillenden, Kent, while Megan's sister Josie, then nine, survived the attack. The case matters because Stone's conviction is now under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, raising the possibility of one of the longest-running miscarriages of justice in British legal history.

Stone, jailed in 1997 following a BBC Crimewatch reconstruction, has always denied the killings and has pointed to Bellfield, who is serving whole-life sentences for the murders of Milly Dowler, Marsha McDonnell and Amélie Delagrange. Bellfield signed a written confession to the Chillenden murders in 2022 via his solicitor Paul Bacon, later withdrawing it, and reportedly signed a further confession that the CCRC rejected as not credible. Podcast reporter Matt Young, who interviewed Stone's sister Barbara Stone and visited Chillenden, said residents and those involved at the time uniformly find it hard to believe Stone was the killer.