MICHAEL STONE gave a warning that he would kill a family five days before he bludgeoned to death Lin Russell and her daughter Megan, an inquiry reported yesterday.

The violent career criminal had also missed an injection required to control his behaviour eight days before the Russell family was attacked in a Kent country lane in July 1996.

However, the highly critical report into the care received by Stone said that it could not conclude that anything could have been done to prevent the attack on the Russells. Stone is serving life sentences for the murder of Dr Russell, 45, and Megan, 6, and the attempted murder of Josie, now 19. The family had been walking home from a swimming gala when they were tied up and beaten with a hammer in Chillenden, near Canterbury.

A disturbing picture of Stone’s mental state in the weeks before the murders was disclosed by the inquiry. He had a dangerous personality disorder diagnosed that was exacerbated by his addiction to drugs. Only five days before attacking the family, Stone made threats to his psychiatric nurse that he would kill his probation officer and family and murder prison officers if he was returned to jail. The nurse was so alarmed by the threats that she called Stone’s GP.

But although the GP said he had increased Stone’s medication, he did not tell the nurse that three days earlier Stone had missed an injection of the two drugs needed to control his behaviour. Indeed, the GP, in Gillingham, Kent, who was not named in the report, had changed the prescription from Stone’s psychiatrist and was injecting two drugs that should not be used together. It meant that the dosage had not been increased.

The report also criticised the record-keeping of the GP, stating that some of Stone’s medical notes were not contemporaneous.

But it concluded that the delays in giving the drugs in the period up to the murders did not have “any significant adverse effects on Mr Stone, either then or later”.

Shaun Russell, Josie’s father, said yesterday: “He (the GP) was one of the few people, the individual cases that you can fix on, but I think there is a range of institutional errors and inadequacies.”

Stone had grown up in a violent household, received his first conviction for theft when 12 and by the age of 19 was a drug addict. He was jailed twice, once for stabbing a friend and later for a series of armed robberies.

The report stated that he had made repeated threats to kill children. In 1992 he told a GP that when he was walking in the woods he felt like killing children and later claimed to have attacked people with hammers. A year later he told a psychiatrist that “a voice had told him to stab someone. When passed by children he feels he’ll kill them.”

A lack of communication between the organisations involved in Stone’s treatment over the years was criticised by the inquiry. It also criticised the Prison Service for losing most of Stone’s medical records, the failure to help him to tackle his drug addiction, and a consultant community psychiatrist who considered him too dangerous to receive treatment.

Robert Francis, QC, the chairman of the inquiry panel, said: “We have made criticisms, some of them in strong terms, but we are unable to say that the murders could have been avoided by a better standard of care in these respects.”

Because Stone had a personality disorder rather than a mental illness, doctors were unable to force him to receive treatment. A change in the law that would have allowed the forced treatment when needed for the estimated 2,400 men with dangerous and severe personality disorders was dropped by the Government this year, although it is expected to be reintroduced.

The report was commissioned by the three agencies that had been treating or supervising Stone: West Kent Health Authority (now NHS South East Coast), Kent Social Services and Kent Probation Service. It was completed in 2000 but publication was delayed by Stone’s unsuccessful appeal against his conviction in 2001 and his claim that the report breached his human rights.

TIMELINE

1981 Stone jailed for two years for attacking man with a hammer

1982 Jailed for stabbing man in chest

1987 Jailed for 8½ years for armed robberies

December 1994 Sectioned under Mental Health Act

July 9, 1996 Lin Russell and her daughters Megan and Josie attacked

July 1997 Michael Stone arrested

October 1998 Stone convicted of murdering Dr Russell and Megan and the attempted murder of Josie

February 2001 Convictions quashed on appeal after a key witness admits lying

October 2001 retrial: Stone convicted of murders and attempted murder

January 2005 Court of Appeal dismisses appeal

June 2006 Stone says publication of care report would breach his human rights

July 12, 2006 Judicial review concludes that report should be published

MAIN CRITICISMS IN THE REPORT

GP gave inaccurate information over Stone’s compliance with drug treatment shortly before murder

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