Stephen Stone was convicted of the 1989 murder of Dean Fuller-Sandys and the rape and murder of Leah Stephens, inset, but the convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal.
By Kate Green of RNZ
A man who has spent 25 years in prison for the murder of west Auckland tyre-fitter Deane Fuller-Sandys has been granted bail.
Stephen Stone was imprisoned in 1999 for the murder, as well as the rape and murder of Leah Stephens.
Earlier this month, Stone’s conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal, alongside those of Gail Maney, Colin Maney and Mark Henriksen.
The court ordered a retrial for Stone.
Stone’s lawyer Paul Wicks said: “The Court of Appeal declined to grant him bail pending delivery of its judgment and said that bail would be a matter for the High Court should a retrial be ordered.”
“An application for bail was filed in the High Court and he’s been granted bail today with conditions,” Wicks said.
Deane Fuller-Sandys disappeared without trace in 1989 and for years he was believed to have drowned while fishing on Auckland’s west coast.
But after a cold-case investigation in the late 1990s, police accused Gail Maney of asking her associate Stephen Stone to kill Fuller-Sandys, in revenge for stealing drugs from her west Auckland home.
The police case was that Fuller-Sandys was shot dead at that same Larnoch Road flat, in front of numerous witnesses.
Maney and Stone were both found guilty of Fuller-Sandys’ murder, and two other associates were found guilty as accessories after the fact.
Maney spent 15 years in jail for the crime and was then put on life parole before her appeal was quashed by the Court of Appeal.
- RNZ
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