Convicted killers Gail Maney and Stephen Stone head to court 35 years after disappearance of Deane-Fuller-Sandys. Video / NZHerald
August 1989: Tyre-fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys is presumed to have drowned after failing to return from a fishing trip at Whatipu on Auckland’s west coast. Five days later sex worker Leah Stephens disappeared and her body was found three years later near Muriwai Golf Course.
March 1999: Gail Maney and Stephen Stone were jointly convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for Fuller-Sandys’ murder. Stone is also convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for Leah Stephen’s rape and murder which was allegedly connected to Fuller-Sandys’ killing. Colin Maney and Mark Henriksen are found guilty of being accessories to Fuller-Sandy’s murder.
Now the case is before the Court of Appeal. This is Maney’s third appeal following unsuccessful attempts to clear her name in 2000 and 2005.
Two of the four key witnesses who gave evidence against the people accused of murdering Deane Fuller-Sandys and Leah Stephens have recanted their evidence and a third doesn’t want anything to do with a retrial if one is ordered.
Gail Maney and Stephen Stone were jointly convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for Fuller-Sandys’ murder following a trial in 1999. Stone was also convicted of raping and murdering Stephen. The pair have been fighting to clear their names ever since.
Today, they and two others who were found guilty of being accessories to Fuller-Sandys’ murder have taken that fight to the Court of Appeal where a two-day hearing is underway in Wellington.
Arriving in court earlier this morning, Maney told reporters she’d been “waiting a long time for this day”. She said she wanted “the truth to be told” and for her and the others involved in this case to get their lives back.
The appeal follows last month’s startling admission by the Crown that a miscarriage of justice had taken place after two key pieces of evidence weren’t turned over to the defence in the 1999 trial and a subsequent retrial in 2000.
The Crown are asking for the convictions to be quashed but want the court to order a retrial for Maney and Stone.
However, Stone’s lawyer Paul Wicks KC told the court a retrial wasn’t feasible.
He said any retrial would be 36 years after the murders, two of the four “pivotal” witnesses in the case had now recanted their original statements to the police and the evidence of the two remaining witnesses was both contaminated and unreliable.
The four witnesses - two men and two women - were granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for giving evidence against Maney and Stone. Three have permanent name suppression.
Since the trials, the two women have recanted their original statements saying they were pressured by the police and were frightened of going to prison and losing their children. They also feared being prosecuted themselves if they didn’t go along with the police case. One has since died.
Wicks said that meant the case now relied on the evidence of the two men, one of whom was now living in Australia and said he wanted nothing to do with the case.
The court heard that during the lengthy police investigation, the two men were shown each other’s statements before giving their own accounts to the police - although police denied this at trial.
The Crown says Dean Fuller-Sandys was murdered by Stephen Stone,
Photo / FOTOPRESS
Wicks said there had been deliberate non-disclosure by the Crown of a number of documents including witness protection reports that weren’t turned over to the defence until May this year. Both men expected payment for their testimony, one in the order of $30,000 and who was granted immunity from prosecution. However, it appears neither man was paid for giving evidence.
‘A labyrinth of lies’
Annabel Maxwell Scott, who is also representing Stone, presented a chaotic picture of the evidence gathered by the police. She said the police actions ignored the usual rules of evidence and included unrecorded statements, missing evidence, multiple statements over a period of many hours, site visits before statements were taken and the sharing of witness statements.
“What’s occurred is a labyrinth of lies which leads us to the cul-de-sac with no way out,” she said.
Maxwell Scott concluded by saying the Crown’s case was in ashes and well beyond the point of salvation meaning the case couldn’t return to a retrial.
Maney’s lawyer Julie-Anne Kincade KC described the case as a combined holy trinity of witness contamination in 1997 and 1998 which cannot be undone. She said the Crown failed to disclose documents in 1999, 2000 and 2005, and there was relentless pressure on witnesses, which was evident in the witness protection reports.
In relation to the DNA testing, which the Crown has suggested it may pursue if a retrial is granted, Kincade maintained there was none to be found. The last time the garage, where Fuller-Sandys was allegedly shot, was luminol tested for blood was in 1997 (eight years after the alleged murder) and it showed nothing. In 1998 further testing in the corner was inconclusive.
“There was nothing then and there’s nothing now today that matters.”
And she said the Crown’s request for more time to get more evidence was also a risk.
The Crown case is there’s nothing left, she said. It simply wasn’t fair and wasn’t in the interests of justice to pursue a retrial, she said.
She said there was no evidence and no case against her client and they were asking the court to draw a line under these events and order an acquittal.
Kincade’s co-counsel Jack Oliver-Hood if there was a third trial there would be a 24-year delay between the second and third trials, because of the non-disclosure by police.
“That 24-year delay is entirely at the door of police but its impact would be visited upon Ms Maney and her ability to defend herself.”
“The shocking failure of disclosure combined with the background of this case would harm the integrity of the criminal justice system,” he said.
He said the evidence showed at least nine instances of police informing a witness or a suspect that it was Fuller Sandys who was murdered, or his identify, before the witness ever mentioned his name.
Leah Stephens' body was found near Muriwai three years after she went missing. Photo / NZ Herald
Nick Chisnall KC, who represents Henrikson and Colin Maney, said if a retrial was ordered the evidence of the two key witnesses wouldn’t pass muster, describing their evidence as “problematic”.
“What we have are two witnesses who were granted immunity by the Solicitor General,” he said.
While that was a powerful method to bring criminals to justice it was also regarded as distasteful to judges, lawyers and the public because it brought the obvious risk of giving false evidence, he said.
If a retrial was ordered there would be an obligation on the Solicitor General to revisit the decision about that immunity, he said.
Kincade said if an appeal was to have been granted it should have been in 2005, adding the Court of Appeal had been deliberately misled, during Maney’s second appeal.
What happened in 2005 happens too frequently, she said.
Kincade described it as “twin tactics” used to obstruct justice. The first tactic is to disclose important material late. In 2005, 55 pages of affidavit were sent just a week before the hearing. There were no job sheets or notebooks, nothing to back up what was submitted to the Court of Appeal.
And she said that evidence given at that trial that Maney and one of the four witnesses had contact while they were both in prison, was plainly wrong. Corrections documents now clearly showed the care the department took in placing prisoners and the clear records that were kept of that.
She said the court was misled into believing the two were in adjacent cells and they relied upon it in their findings then.
“This court must guard against being misled again,” she said.
Crown prosecutor Mark Lillico told the court some of the inconsistencies in the witness statements that had been raised by the appellants, were raised at the two trials and put before the respective juries. He will continue his submissions tomorrow.
The Crown’s case
The Crown’s case is that Maney ordered Stone to kill Fuller-Sandys because he burgled her Larnoch Road flat stealing drugs, money and leather goods.
Police say Fuller-Sandys called in at the flat on his way to go fishing in August 1989. He was shot in the West Auckland garage by Stone before the gun was passed around the numerous witnesses who were present and who were encouraged to shoot Fuller-Sandys.
They then put the body into the boot of Colin Maney’s car and drove him to Woodhill Forest where he was buried, before parking his car at the fishing spot in Whatipu, where it was later found.
Fearing one of those present - a young sex worker by the name of Leah Stephens - would talk, Stone raped and killed her five days later.
Stephens’ body was found three years later by a dog walker buried near the Muriwai Golf Club.
All four have denied their involvement in Fuller-Sandys’ murder.
Maney has been the most vocal, steadfastly maintaining her innocence, claiming she never met Fuller-Sandys and is certain he never visited her flat at Larnoch Road. She also said she didn’t meet Stone until after Fuller-Sandys’ disappearance.
Stone’s lawyer said he had admitted guilt only twice in the 26 years he’s been in jail. Of the 12 applications for parole, his denials coincided with his parole hearings in 2009 and 2010 and were partly due to his desire to undertake a programme in jail. Having completed the course, he returned to denying his guilt.
The appeal before Justices Christine French, Rebecca Ellis and David Collins is expected to finish tomorrow.
Stephen Ralph Stone was convicted of murdering Dean Fuller-Sandys.
Gail Maney in 1999 when she was accused of ordering the killing of Deane Fuller-Sandys. Photo / File.
Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media advisor at the Ministry of Justice.
