{"id":31079,"date":"2026-07-26T18:46:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T22:46:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=31079"},"modified":"2026-07-26T18:46:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T22:46:53","slug":"new-suspect-identified-in-1996-murder-of-lin-and-megan-russell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2026\/07\/26\/new-suspect-identified-in-1996-murder-of-lin-and-megan-russell\/","title":{"rendered":"New suspect identified in 1996 murder of Lin and Megan Russell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two witnesses have identified their own relative as a new suspect in the murder of Lin Russell and her six-year-old daughter in Kent 30 years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Russell and her two daughters were attacked with a hammer as they walked home from a school swimming gala in Canterbury,\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/topic\/kent-6010\/1\" target=\"_self\">Kent<\/a><\/strong>, in July 1996.<\/p>\n<p>Michael Stone has been in prison for 29 years after being convicted of killing Dr Russell and her youngest daughter, Megan, and the attempted murder of her other daughter, nine-year-old Josie.<\/p>\n<p>He has continually pleaded his innocence.<\/p>\n<div class=\"sdc-article-widget sdc-article-image\" data-testid=\"article-image\">\n<figure class=\"sdc-article-image__figure\">\n<div class=\"sdc-article-image__wrapper\" data-aspect-ratio=\"16\/9\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"sdc-article-image__item\" src=\"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/22\/02\/768x432\/skynews-michael-stone-russell-murders_5665832.jpg?20230427155943\" sizes=\"(min-width: 1024px) 1024px, 100vw\" srcset=\"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/22\/02\/384x216\/skynews-michael-stone-russell-murders_5665832.jpg?20230427155943 380w, https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/22\/02\/768x432\/skynews-michael-stone-russell-murders_5665832.jpg?20230427155943 760w, https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/22\/02\/1600x900\/skynews-michael-stone-russell-murders_5665832.jpg?20230427155943 1024w, https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/22\/02\/2048x1152\/skynews-michael-stone-russell-murders_5665832.jpg?20230427155943 2048w\" alt=\"Michael Stone in 2001\" data-testid=\"article-image-image\" \/><\/div><figcaption class=\"ui-media-caption\" data-testid=\"article-image-caption\"><span class=\"ui-media-caption__caption-text\" data-testid=\"article-image-caption-text\">Michael Stone in 2001<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Two people have now given witness statements to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) naming their relative Raymond Buck as the killer, the Sunday Times reported.<\/p>\n<p>One of the new witnesses, Ross Shields, 39, was a child at the time of the murders.<\/p>\n<p>He told the Sunday Times that he overheard Buck confess to another family member on the day of the attack: &#8220;I&#8217;ve done something unforgivable. I&#8217;ve killed three people.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The paper adds that Buck, a carpenter, had a history of violence and took his own life aged 46 in 2000.<\/p>\n<p>Stone&#8217;s solicitor said that the miscarriages of justice watchdog is now reviewing the new evidence and carrying out &#8220;further DNA analysis&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Karen Todner told the Press Association: &#8220;I&#8217;m much more positive than he has been for the last 29 years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re hoping that things are finally, finally moving in the right direction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She added: &#8220;The CCRC are undertaking further DNA analysis. Because obviously the science behind DNA has dramatically improved since his case, and since the last DNA analysis.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So they&#8217;re doing that. And when they&#8217;ve done that, then we&#8217;re hoping that they will test that against various people, Raymond Buck being one of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ms Todner said that while the oral witness evidence was important, &#8220;conclusive evidence&#8221; would be a DNA result.<\/p>\n<p>Stone, and a member of Buck&#8217;s family, are among those to submit to this new round of DNA analysis.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Todner said: &#8220;If DNA comes back as positive for anyone other than Michael, then obviously we&#8217;ll be asking the CCRC to send it back to the Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So hopefully we&#8217;ll know where we are by the end of this year.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Source: \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sky-news-logo-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/sky-news-logo-1.png\" alt=\"Sky News\" width=\"100\" height=\"20\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/news.sky.com\/story\/new-suspect-identified-in-1996-murder-of-lin-and-megan-russell-13567142\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">news.sky.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\">Two witnesses have identified their own relative as a new suspect in the murder of Lin Russell and her six-year-old daughter in Kent 30 years ago. Dr Russell and her two daughters were attacked with <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2026\/07\/26\/new-suspect-identified-in-1996-murder-of-lin-and-megan-russell\/\" title=\"New suspect identified in 1996 murder of Lin and Megan Russell\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[7754,9780,1397,3266,4479,4480,4477,12760],"class_list":["post-31079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-uk","tag-canterbury","tag-criminal-cases-review-commission","tag-dna","tag-kent","tag-lin-russell","tag-megan-russell","tag-michael-stone","tag-raymond-buck","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31080,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31079\/revisions\/31080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}